[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 65 (Monday, April 23, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H3771-H3774]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TORT REFORM
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ellison). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver)
is recognized for half the remaining time until midnight.
Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to stand here
on this floor.
The subject of this special hour will be a debate between myself and
the gentlewoman from West Virginia, Mrs. Capito. But before we begin
our debate, which is aimed primarily at demonstrating to our colleagues
that we can speak passionately about a matter and still avoid name
calling or irreverence or incivility, before we get into our debate on
tort reform, I would like to yield to the gentlewoman from West
Virginia for some special comments unrelated to our debate.
In Memory of Juanita Millender-McDonald and the Victims of the Virginia
Tech Tragedy
Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from
Missouri. I look forward to our second debate, our second civil debate
on a new topic.
Before we move to the subject at hand, I would like to join with my
colleagues in expressing my deep sorrow at the passing of our
colleague, Juanita Millender-McDonald. Just briefly, she was a kind and
gentle person. She was a great advocate for many things that she
believed in. She was a pioneer. But, for me, she was just a very
helpful and warm and friendly person.
When I came to Congress, she had already been here for several years.
She was the chairman of the Caucus on Women's Issues, and I was the
vice chair for the Republican side. Juanita was always very helpful,
always very concerned that I was making my way in my first several
months in Congress, and I think the way she crossed the aisle, the way
that she treated me with kid gloves, so-to-speak, in the beginning of
my term, is something that I will never forget. So my thoughts and
prayers are with her. Bless her family during this very tough time, and
know that she will be missed.
I would also like to express publicly before this body and before
this Nation my deep sadness over the tragic events at Virginia Tech
last week. I haven't spoken publicly on the House floor about this, but
it is deeply crushing to all of us, has been, and it has sort of set a
pall or a feeling of helplessness for all of us.
I have college age children. I can't imagine the despair the families
are feeling who have lost a loved one, to realize that that phone call
that you are waiting for is never going to come.
So, to my friends in the Virginia Tech community, many West
Virginians attend Virginia Tech. We have a great fondness for Virginia
Tech, except possibly when we are playing them in football. But
certainly our collective hearts go out to them during this difficult
time.
I yield back to my friend from Missouri, and we will kick off the
evening.
{time} 2300
Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to associate myself with the
comments of the gentlewoman from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito). I too
would like to express sympathy to Ms. Millender-McDonald's family and
to the families of those young people whose lives were senselessly
taken at Virginia Tech.
The issue surfaces from time to time that there is a desperate need
for us to do something major legislatively for tort reform, that these
greedy trial lawyers are out damaging if not destroying the Nation,
running people out of the medical profession, creating economic
problems for oil companies. I take a different view of that. Obviously,
there are inappropriate lawsuits, and I think the courts usually deal
with those.
But trial lawyers work to provide somewhat of a level playing field
for most Americans, small Americans, so they can hold even the most
powerful corporations accountable for their actions when they cause
injury or death.
Today drug companies and oil companies, big insurance companies and
large corporations too often dominate our political process and they
begin to ask legislators to restrict access to the courts. When
corporations and CEOs act irresponsibly by refusing or delaying to pay
insurance claims, producing unsafe products, polluting our environment
or swindling their employees or shareholders, the last resort for
Americans, and this is our system, is to hold them accountable in our
courts of law. By holding them accountable, trial lawyers and their
families are able to feel that this is a safer America.
From automobile fuel tanks that explode in rear-end collisions to
bulletproof vests that fail to stop bullets aimed at police officers,
we have to realize that there must be some corporation, some individual
held accountable. And these cases that I mentioned earlier were actual
cases and they brought to light deceptive practices and cover-ups by
manufacturers that resulted in serious injury and even death.
The civil justice system helps provide compensation to those that are
injured and helps prevent other needless injury from occurring.
I will now yield to the gentlewoman from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito).
Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you, I appreciate your opening statements. This
may be a very civil debate because I couldn't agree with you more in
that our civil justice system should be readily available, should be
the place for the individual to seek redress when they have been
wronged by either a corporation or corporate injustice or product
failure. And I think that is the intent of our court system.
However, what we are experiencing now in the United States is an
overabundance, a glut of lawsuits that are clogging our courts, that
are in some cases awarding outrageous jackpot types of awards, and
because of that, because of that jackpot sort of mentality, many people
with their legal assistance are clogging the courts so that those
people who have suffered injustices and those people who are due awards
are unable to get there.
One of the issues that I think is extremely important is the cost to
our economy. We talk all of the time on the floor about the importance
of small businesses in the United States. I come from a small State,
and I think small business comprises close to 90 percent of the
businesses in our State. When you look at the burden of the current
tort system on our small businesses, we are breaking the backs of our
small business people.
I would like to refer to my chart over here: effect on small
business, the tort liability price tag for small businesses in America
is $88 billion a year.
Small businesses bear 68 percent of business tort liability costs,
but only take in 28 percent of business revenue. And for the very small
businesses, the tort liability price tag is $33 billion.
These are statistics that show, and this is from an independent
resource, it is not from a group that is shaded one way or the other.
It has shown the rise in the cost of tort claims in this country.
Very small businesses pay 44 percent of tort liability costs out of
pocket as opposed to through insurance. And so what happens is a lot of
times small businesses, one small business is one large case or one
frivolous lawsuit away from having to close their doors.
I yield back to the gentleman from Missouri to see if he has a
reaction to that.
Mr. CLEAVER. I think there are perhaps some legitimate concerns by
small business owners, but I don't think that the trouble is with the
litigation. I think the problem is with insurance companies. Now, the
gentlewoman and I both serve on the Financial Services Committee; and
one of the concerns we have been grappling with, particularly in the
aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the gulf coast, is that
insurance companies that are not regulated by the United States Federal
Government from time to time are the culprits, and I will get back to
that in just a minute. But I wanted to say that the tort filings in
State courts have declined by 10 percent since 1994. And automobile
filings which make up the majority of tort claims have fallen 14
percent.
[[Page H3772]]
So what you are finding is that more and more cases are not finding
their way into the courts. But what troubles me and I think will
trouble Americans when they find out more about it is the fact that the
insurance companies end up really being the beneficiaries in the debate
that occurs from time to time in this country on the subject of tort
reform. The reason I say that is that there was a study done that
showed that even in States where tort reform occurred, insurance
premiums never dropped, and in some instances they actually increased.
So we have a problem with the small businesses that I agree exists,
but I am suggesting that one of the ways in which we deal with this
problem is not trying to restrict the courts from dealing with the
claims that people bring before them, but rather for the insurance
companies.
Let me give one example, Mr. Speaker. A month after passing
malpractice caps, South Carolina's two largest insurers increased rates
by as much as 22 percent after increasing their rates by 27 percent the
year before.
And after Texas passed rate caps in 2003, the Joint Underwriters
Association requested a 35 percent premium increase for physicians and
68 percent for hospitals. This is after tort reform, after things were
supposed to have been reformed so that people are protected. So the
winner ends up being the insurance companies.
Mrs. CAPITO. I am glad you brought up medical malpractice reform
because in West Virginia we have lived this subject since I have been
in Congress. In the campaign of 2002, many doctors were leaving the
State of West Virginia, closing up shop, early retirement, choosing to
try another State because of either the unavailability of medical
malpractice insurance or the astronomically skyrocketing escalation of
medical liability reform.
So an interesting thing happened. West Virginia is known to be a
State that is very tort friendly. So people asked me how did the State
legislature, which is predominantly Democratic, and the Governor, who
was Democrat, how were they able to pass with relative ease such
massive medical malpractice reform legislation. I know exactly how
because I was in that campaign in the 2002 year.
{time} 2310
It was people coming up to you on the street saying my doctor's
leaving. It was grandparents, it was seniors, it was pediatricians, OB/
GYNs, neurologists, trauma specialists. Our largest hospital in my
community had to close and be downgraded in terms of their trauma
because the trauma surgeons left because of the high cost of medical
liability reform causing, in one case, a young child in Putnam County,
which is like 30 minutes away, had to drive all the way to Cincinnati,
he and his parents, 4 hours away, to have a penny removed from his
windpipe because there was no one to do it in our local area. That
could have been a life-ending experience for that family, a very, very
tragic one, and actually had a happy ending.
So the legislature got on board, the Governor got on board and passed
State medical malpractice reform with a cap. I believe it is a half
million dollars on noneconomic damages. I am not 100 percent sure.
There was a debate on 250 or 500, but I think it was 500. They created
a West Virginia Mutual Insurance Company, and according to the
statistics that I have in front of me, those medical malpractice
premiums have gone down 5 percent in not only general practice but also
in the specialties.
The large hospital I referred to earlier, where they could not
recruit and retain physicians, they now are adding 49 and 50 new
positions a year, whereas before they were afraid they were not even
going to be able to attract 15 or 20.
So this medical liability reform has had a phenomenal effect in our
State of West Virginia. And if I can get my other chart out here real
quick, this shows some States that are considered to be in crisis,
which I notice your State is in crisis over here, and West Virginia
would have been in the red, in the crisis area, but we moved ourselves
out to caution. We are in the yellow area, where we were actually
considered one of the most difficult climates for practitioners of
medicine to come. We are not a State where we are able to retain and
control, and it is directly attributable to the medical liability
reform bill that we passed, that the State passed in 2003.
Mr. CLEAVER. May I inquire of the gentlewoman from West Virginia, the
white States are what?
Mrs. CAPITO. Stable. They are considered stable. Look over here,
California, which is held up to be one of the States that passed
medical liability reform in the 1970s, it is considered stable, and
West Virginia was modeled after what was done in California.
Mr. CLEAVER. I think, to some degree, that helps my position, not
with West Virginia because I am not familiar with West Virginia, but
you are absolutely right about my home State of Missouri. But it all
relates back to my earlier comments about insurance companies.
A national study conducted in 2005 by former Missouri Insurance
Commissioner Jay Angoff found that insurance companies have been price-
gouging doctors by dramatically and drastically raising their insurance
premiums, even though claims for payments have been flat or decreasing.
According to the annual statements of 15 large insurance companies, the
15th largest in fact, the amount malpractice insurers collected in
premiums increased by 120.2 percent between 2000 and 2004, while claim
payouts rose by only 5.7 percent.
I think if you look at the report from Jay Angoff from the Missouri
Insurance Commission, you find that clearly the insurance companies are
the ones doing enormous damage to this country.
The other issue is that I think the insurance companies have gouged
so much that many of the people in the country, probably even in my
home State, operate under the assumption that malpractice costs run
physicians away from their profession.
The truth of the matter is that, according to the American Medical
Association, the number of physicians in the United States of America
increased by 40 percent since 1990, 40 percent. And so more and more
men and women are going into the profession, even as the insurance
companies are creating this crisis, and they are the ones that seem to
be held harmless. They are rarely the center of the debate. It is
usually the lawyers and the physicians.
I take the position that neither of them are actually the villains
here. It is the insurance companies that continue to increase the
rates. They pay out less money in the payments and then they are
getting fatter and fatter.
One last comment on this. According to the Bush administration's
Justice Department, if I can find their study, the Justice Department
actually says that we are dropping in the number of cases that are
being brought forward in the courts, and so I think what we end up
doing, I think, is fighting a ghost, because the insurance companies
have become ghostly in that they can become invisible during the debate
because they do not have to get in it because they have not been
portrayed as either the victim or the villain. So I would suggest that
our positions may not be dramatically different except that I see the
problem more in the hands of the insurance companies.
Mrs. CAPITOL. Well, I think I would like to go back a little bit to
medical malpractice, talking about it. See, I think you were making my
case for me when you said the situation in Missouri, because you do not
have medical liability reform, correct?
Mr. CLEAVER. That is right.
Mrs. CAPITO. You have skyrocketing costs of your medical liability. A
lot of doctors, and I am sure you have had this conversation with the
doctors, they practice basically with one arm tied behind their back
because they are practicing medicine defensively. Nearly 80 percent of
the doctors say they order unnecessary tests, and 74 percent say they
make unnecessary referrals to specialists due to the fear of being
sued. A lot of doctors are practicing defensive medicine, ordering many
more medical procedures and tests to cover themselves in the case of a
legal test or a lawsuit, and that raises the cost of not only their
insurance but it also raises the cost of every individual's health
insurance because it raises the cost of practicing medicine or
delivering health care in a general sense.
I think that a comprehensive solution is certainly part of what we
need
[[Page H3773]]
to look at here, and that does include the insurance companies most
certainly, but it also includes looking at what has happened in some
manufacturing segments that have had extreme loss of jobs; 52,000 to
60,000 jobs have been lost in the manufacturing segment of this country
because of bankruptcies being caused by massive and huge tort lawsuits.
And so I think that there is a median here, there is an easy median
that we can find here.
But I would recommend to you that the experience that we had in West
Virginia with medical liability reform, across the board, bringing more
specialists in as a result, bringing the cost of medical liability
insurance down, recruitment and retention of physicians is something
that we need to look at nationwide, and that is why I support a Federal
medical liability reform which I am sure is no surprise to you that I
would support that and have been pushing for it over the last 7 years.
But I think there is also a cost to just the individual person as we
inflate the cost of defending ourselves, businesses defending
themselves, doctors defending themselves, hospitals defending
themselves.
My final chart here, and I do not know if you can read it or not, but
I will read the bottom line here. It shows that in 2005, the U.S.
population being approximately 296 million, that the tort cost per
capita for each individual is $880.
{time} 2320
Whereas when you were talking about 1990 with the physicians, in
1990, that cost was only $522, which is still too much. So I think that
we need to find a medium here where we can control frivolous lawsuits,
where we can control the ability of people to have mass torte actions
and seek friendly environments for those torte actions. And we tried to
address that in Congress with a class action reform. And we need to
make sure that those people that are damaged, hurt, have access to
court, but also in a timely manner. With all this massive torte
legislation or lawsuits in our courts, it is bogging up the courts and
it is really hurting those people who are genuinely hurt and need to
have remedies.
Mr. CLEAVER. The gentlewoman from West Virginia makes a good point. I
do, however, think that this may cause her to join me. That is,
according to the Bush administration, this is what I was looking for
earlier, this is from the Justice Department of the Bush
administration, their researchers found that the median inflated
adjusted award in 2001 was just $28,000. And most of the discussion,
you hear people talking about, millions, maybe even billions, but the
average median inflated adjusted award in 2001 was $28,000. And even in
medical malpractice cases in which the injuries tend to be far, far
more serious than the average torte case, the median award was only
$170,000, which is far from the multibillion dollar lottery torte
reformers have often brought before us.
The other issue that I would like to bring forth is that, according
to the Congressional Budget Office, malpractice costs amount to less
than 2 percent of the overall medical cost. And so when we start
talking about the cost of medicine and how it is skyrocketing, and it
is, but when you think about the fact that the cost for malpractice or
the cost for the insurance, which supercedes the cost really paid out,
it accounts for only 2 percent of the overall medical costs in the
United States, which is Herculean; but 2 percent is almost nonexistent.
And I think what has happened is that we have created a mountain out
of a mole hill. That is not to say that there are not problems, but
judges will quite often tell a lawyer that the case submitted is simply
frivolous, and that case will never come to court, and then of course
summary judgments can also prevent cases from ever coming to court. So
judges have the option of looking at a case and deciding whether or not
it is worthy of taking up the time and resources of the court.
And then the other part of it is that in an overwhelming majority of
these cases, the amount or the award of the judgment is set by a jury,
which are everyday people. And this is not to say that there should not
be something done. I just think putting artificial caps would be the
wrong thing to do. And that is generally one of the proposals that
comes up. I'm not sure if the gentlewoman from West Virginia is
supporting caps or not, but I think that if that is one of the
solutions, I think a one-size-fits-all kind of solution is unfair to
people who may suffer a very, very debilitating injury in the same
category of someone who has a fender bender.
I yield back to the gentlewoman.
Mrs. CAPITO. Well, I think you are getting to the point here where
you are talking about the difference between a legitimate claim and a
frivolous claim.
I don't have statistics in front of me, but I know they exist in
every court in America where certain frivolous lawsuits are put out on
the table, they overreach in terms of not only are they suing maybe a
business, but they are going to sue the manufacturer, they are going to
sue the car they rode to go to work in, they are going to sue, you
know, anybody with deep pockets is going to get sued for an alleged
wrong. And it is absolutely a fact that some of these cases and more
and more of these cases are not founded in legitimate fact. They are
frivolous. They are trying to get into the system to get a quick fix,
to get a lottery mentality, to have the corporation settle, or whoever
settle, so they can get in and get out of the court system, and then
have their attorney take a 40 or 50 percent cut from that.
I had a very startling thing happen to me. A gentleman approached me
at a political gathering a couple of years ago. He had oxygen, he was
walking very slowly. And he came up to me and he said, I have
asbestosis, and I have lung disease from that. And I took my case to
court with my lawyer. And he didn't tell me how much he was awarded,
but he was awarded some remedy for that. And it was very obvious that
he had difficulty breathing, and it was very obvious that he needed
some help, a lot of help.
But what he wanted to show me that day was the invoice. He got a
settlement every month or every two months, a pay-out, or it might have
even been every year. But he showed me how much he got, and I think it
was around $1,500. And every single time he gets that he has to take
off 40 percent of that, or 45 percent of that, I think it was 40
percent in this case, for his attorney. Every single time he gets a
payment, his attorney gets 40 percent. And this guy was on oxygen,
could barely walk. And I think, you know, there is something wrong with
the system where the harmed person who needs the help and has a
legitimate claim, and certainly I know lawyers take risks by taking
cases, I understand that part of it, but sometimes it just seems
astronomical to me that the fees are 40, by the time you get expenses,
and 50 percent of what the court has determined that victim is due and
willing. I think that is an injustice in the system, along with the
frivolous lawsuits that we see clogging up our courts so this gentleman
can get his case heard.
Mr. CLEAVER. The meritless cases, however, rarely ever win in the
first place. I was offended when I first heard that somebody sued
McDonald's because they ordered a cup of hot coffee and were burned by
the hot coffee that they ordered. I was offended by that as well, and I
think most Americans are. But in reality, the meritless cases rarely
ever win in the first place, and that is contrary to the allegations
that generally come forth, particularly from the major corporations.
They would have us believe that the frivolous lawsuits are just
automatically finding their way to the courtroom and that they are
meritless, but they win. And the truth of the matter is that our
intricate system, with the law and juries and judges and even
independent reviewers, will pretty much weed out the frivolous
lawsuits. And they are filed to no one's benefit, except a lawyer, who
I think we can find one in any profession who is going to try to take
advantage of their system. And it has nothing to do with having gone to
law school. It has something to do with human nature.
But I think that the way that this whole issue has been played out
ends up actually protecting the one entity that I think is the most
culpable, and that is the insurance companies that are not regulated.
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore. There being no Republican hour at this time,
[[Page H3774]]
the gentleman from Missouri is recognized for the remainder of the
hour.
Mr. CLEAVER. I would yield to the gentlelady from West Virginia for
closing remarks on the debate with regard to torte reform, and then I
think we would like to express some concerns about civility, Mr.
Speaker.
{time} 2330
Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for staying up late,
and I thank all those who are listening.
I think we have talked a lot about our different perspectives on tort
reform. I have talked about the need to rein in the system, because we
are losing jobs. We are costing the American public, each individual,
$880 is the cost for every individual for the lawsuit glut that we have
in this country. Unfortunately, some of those who are damaged or who
are due and willing are unable to get into a clogged-up court system.
We are losing jobs in some of our manufacturing segment because of
the exorbitant cost of litigation. In many States, we have a medical
liability crisis where physicians are paying exorbitant amounts of
their hard-earned dollars for the cost of medical liability insurance,
and it has proven in my State, at least, if you pass good sense medical
liability insurance reform, you can rein in the cost of insurance and
can make the system better. I understand there are other players at the
table here. There is the Bar, there is the individual, there is
certainly the business community and there is the insurance community.
I think the best solution to this enormous problem, this very costly
problem to the American economy, is to get everybody at the table for
common sense reform. We passed class action reform, and it is helping
to weed out some of those large and unwieldy cases and make them adhere
to more stringent requirements.
With that, I yield back to the gentleman from Missouri to close on
this topic.
Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Speaker, there are people all around this country
who look at C-SPAN on a daily basis and who look listen to radio talk
shows, look at television news programs, and they see Members of
Congress, both House and Senate, screaming at each other. They see from
time to time the animated debates that take place on these shows, and
even here in this great hall.
Many, many great patriots have stepped into the well of the House of
Representatives to wax eloquent, because this is the place where the
great orators stood and presented their cases to each other and to the
American public. But in the past decade or so, we have seen a dramatic
drop in the civility exercised by Members of this body, and we have
seen it from both sides of the aisle.
Let me share something with you that I read the other day by William
Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. He said this: ``I know of no
religion that destroys courtesy, civility or kindness.'' That is the
kind of statement that the Members of this great body ought to keep in
mind when we step into the well.
I came to Washington and to the Congress with this desire in my
heart, to do what I could to make this a more civil place. With the
intensity and intention of debate, sometimes it is difficult to
restrain ourselves. But restraint is something that we can do and feel
better about having done it on the morrow. It is delayed satisfaction.
We might get some immediate joy from being nasty, but the greater joy
is restraint and receiving greater joy later, that you actually had the
discipline to control your tongue.
I have opinions that are very, very strong. I feel strong about tort
reform, not because I am an attorney. I have four children. None of
them are attorneys. But I personally feel strongly about it because of
some personal things that happened in my own family that could have
gone to court, that we did not take to court for a lot of reasons. One
of the things that we felt strongly about was our own integrity, so we
didn't go to court.
But my challenge is to state whatever strong feelings I have in a
tone that raises the level of the conversation and honors those who
disagree with me.
When you look at the roots of the word ``civility,'' to be civil is
to be a citizen, a respected part of the community. So to be uncivil is
to fracture the community, locally, nationally and internationally, and
that is something that none of us can afford to do.
Not long ago President Gerald Ford died, and I was reminded of a
story of his days here in this House. He held regular debates here in
Washington with his Democratic counterpart Congressman Thomas Hale
Boggs. They would debate at the National Press Club. At Congressman
Gerald Ford's suggestion, they would ride over from the Capitol to the
National Press Club and agree on the topic of the debate. Can you
imagine that happening in 2007? Then, after the debate, they would go
out and have lunch.
Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of House I think we need to demand as a
part of what takes place in this city called Washington, D.C. I hope, I
even pray, that the men and women of this great body will learn to
exercise restraint, because what we do and say here in this hallowed
place actually reverberates and ends up traveling all across the length
and breadth of this Nation, and the words we say will impact the people
around this country.
I say again, there are few Members of this Congress, if any, who
would say to their children, watch C-SPAN and watch the leaders of this
Nation debate, so that they can show you how to act around people with
whom you have a disagreement.
We can do better, and I think we will. I believe that because Mrs.
Capito is interested in doing this, the road towards civility is now
under construction, and I enjoy serving with the gentlelady from West
Virginia.
Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri for
participating tonight. He is a very able debater. I learned in our
first debate when we debated tax reform that you are a wonderful closer
too, so I hate to close.
But I would like to talk a little bit about civility, because it is
very important to me. It is about being polite. It is understanding
that we have different views and that we don't disrespect one another
because of that. It is about believing that our ideas, yes, we believe
our ideas are the right ideas, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the
opposite ideas or a different idea doesn't have merit. It also doesn't
mean that because we are in different parties, we don't have a lot of
to give and we don't have a lot to share. I think a lot of that gets
lost here on the floor of the House.
My great fear is because of the partisanship and the evolved
incivility of our debate, that when that person turns on that TV or
that young person turns on C-SPAN to watch debate, they see the rancor
and they see the acrimonious debate and some of the language that is
used, and what do they do? They turn it off. And then what are they
doing? They are not listening to the merits of the topic. They are not
listening to tax reform ideas or medical malpractice reform ideas or
the war in Iraq differing ideas, because of the tone, and the way it is
delivered and the words that are used have lost their way and have
turned the American public off.
Now, when I go and speak to people in my district and I begin to talk
like that, people start nodding their heads, you are right. We do stop
listening. We are no longer interested.
So I think while these hallowed halls have had more than their share
of vigorous debate, there is a good way to do it, and there is a good
way to convey our ideas in a very civil way.
I really appreciate the way, when you said that Gerald Ford and Hale
Boggs used to drive over together and then have lunch afterwards, I
think it is a little late for lunch tonight, so I think we will have to
do that another time. But I have enjoyed debating this topic. I look
forward to the next topic that we debate. I hope that when we get
together again, maybe we can get some of our other colleagues here and
have more of a round-robin so we can get our colleagues not only
involved in the debate on the topic, but also demonstrating a civil way
to present ideas to the American public.
____________________