[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 953-957]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                ASBESTOS

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, if the American people want to know what is

[[Page 954]]

wrong with Washington, they should take a look at what is being debated 
in the Senate this week--asbestos legislation.
  I have said on a number of occasions that Lord Acton, whom I studied 
when I was in college, is right--power tends to corrupt, and absolute 
power tends to corrupt absolutely. Look what we have on the Senate 
floor today--asbestos legislation, legislation that, of course, is not 
ready to be here, but it is being brought here because of tremendous 
pressure by the folks downtown.
  What do I mean by folks downtown? Washington has been run by the 
lobbyists. The Jack Abramoff scandal is no surprise to people who have 
been watching this. The K Street Project and other such things came 
about as a result of too much concentration of power.
  Why do I say that this is an example of why we need lobbying reform 
in Washington today? This legislation is on the floor for one reason: 
15 companies that are pushing this legislation. Thousands of companies 
oppose it.
  The 15 companies that support this legislation spent $144.5 million 
on lobbying in 2 years.
  Actually, I am wrong; 13 companies spent $144.5 million in 2 years on 
lobbying.
  Why is this legislation on the floor today? Why are we not doing 
something about education?
  My friend from Tennessee talked about another very important issue--
whether this country should move to nuclear power.
  Wouldn't it be nice if we had a debate on the Senate floor about 
that? Or about wind energy? Or about why we don't have tax credits for 
wind, for Sun, for geothermal, and for biomass that last more than 2 or 
3 years?
  Why we are not taking a look at nuclear energy? That would be good. 
We could have a debate on this floor about these topics and spend a 
couple days very profitably.
  But we are not doing that. Instead we are talking about asbestos 
because 13 companies spent $144.5 million in 2 years lobbying to get it 
here. For the 13 companies, I guess that was money well spent because 
they are going to save billions if this legislation passes.
  It would be nice if we spent some time on the Senate floor talking 
about why this country is going into financial bankruptcy because of 
its spending these last 5 years.
  Remember, during the last years of the Clinton administration we paid 
down the debt by $.5 trillion. Not this administration. We are going to 
be asked in a few days to increase the debt ceiling above $8.2 
trillion.
  As I said, it would be nice if we had a debate on the Senate floor 
about education.
  I know my friend, the Presiding Officer, has been working in 
conjunction with the distinguished Senator from New Mexico, the junior 
Senator from New Mexico, Jeff Bingaman, about why this country is 
falling behind scientifically in this country. It would be nice if we 
had a debate on that.
  However, these folks who Senator Alexander and Senator Bingaman are 
talking to about increased funding for research cannot afford to spend 
$144.5 million in 2 years for lobbyists to get the goods. So we will 
spend time the Senate does not have on this piece of legislation that 
is flawed, flawed, flawed. Later I will explain what is wrong with it.
  We will spend valuable time on the Senate floor because the lobbyists 
won. Chalk one up for the lobbyists. Do we need lobbying reform? Yes. 
For example, we do not even know all the companies involved in this so-
called asbestos study group. ASG would have to disclose their 
membership under the lobby-reform legislation we have proposed. They 
would not be able to do it in secret, then pay their money under the 
plan.
  I bet they are jumping with joy today--some of whom we do not know 
who they are--because they were able to buy their way into the Senate, 
paying for a bunch of lobbyists.
  These 13 companies employed 168 lobbyists. It is pretty easy to 
figure out what is going on.
  I am going to vote opposing the motion to proceed. Rarely do I do 
that. It is so important that I do it here. I don't know if we have 
enough votes to stop it from going forward, but for the good of the 
American people, I hope so. If we do not, there are a lot of other ways 
we can fight this very bad piece of legislation.
  The Super Bowl was last night. The underdog, Pittsburgh Steelers, 
won. However, turning from football to lobbying, the lobbyists are not 
underdogs when they are given $144.5 million to bring a bill to the 
Senate. They are on the winning side. $144.5 million was paid to 
lobbyists by 13 companies. That is why we are here today. That is why 
we need lobbying reform. With reform we would at least know all the 
companies involved in the so-called ASG, asbestos study group. Talk 
about a blight on legislative standards, bringing this bill to the 
Senate and leaving real problems to someone else another day.
  This bill is anything but fair. But like a lot of things around here, 
we still call it the Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act. This 
is part of the Orwellian world we live in here, where the Clear Skies 
Initiative pollutes the skies, where the Healthy Forests Initiative 
ruins our forests, where the Leave No Child Behind Act leaves children 
behind, where the Budget Deficit Reduction Act increases the deficit. 
Now, we are going to be asked to deal with the Fairness in Asbestos 
Resolution Act, which is anything but fair.
  It is unfair to victims of asbestos exposure. It is unfair to small 
businesses. It is unfair to thousands of businesses in this country. It 
is unfair to the American taxpayer. If this goes through, they likely 
will have to bail out the trust fund created under the bill. It is 
unfair to organized labor. It is unfair to the insurance industry. It 
is unfair to veterans.
  As I said, I don't lightly oppose a motion to proceed. I recognize 
that generally it is the prerogative of the majority leader to set the 
agenda. In this case, however, opposing this motion is absolutely 
justified. This is a terrible piece of legislation to bring before the 
Senate with the state of the legislative calendar that we have. I wish 
the Government Operations Committee, led by Senators Lieberman and 
Collins, would get Congress some lobbying reform. That is what we need 
to do. That would be more important than this.
  This bill is not ready for consideration. It is not even a close 
call. There are so many unanswered questions raised by the current 
bill, too many questions about solvency and adequacy of the trust fund, 
too many questions about the impact of this bill on the lives of 
countless Americans with asbestos-related illnesses. This alone should 
disqualify this legislation from being on the Senate floor.
  The Senate could debate this bill for the next 60 legislative days, 
and we still could not fix the structural flaws of this trust fund. The 
only reasonable approach is to take it back to the Judiciary Committee 
and find a better approach.
  This bill should also be referred to the Senate Committee on the 
Budget before the Senate debates it. Senator Conrad and Senator Gregg 
have said it is not ready for the Senate floor. They have written a 
letter to me and to Senator Frist asking for more time to review the 
massive fiscal impact of this program.
  Asbestos companies, it is estimated--and it is not much of an 
estimate but pretty certain--will save over $20 billion with this 
legislation. Fortune 500 companies will have dramatic reductions in 
their asbestos liability. The sad part about this is that companies who 
are responsible for exposing victims to asbestos could see the harmful 
effects coming. Way back in the 1960s, for example, Dow Chemical knew 
the hazards of asbestos. They had done research and they said 
``asbestos has long been known to be capable of causing asbestosis.'' 
They did not mention mesothelioma.
  Three decades before Dow Chemical recognized this, in 1938, a report 
by the U.S. Public Health Service, which DOW received, described how 
asbestos textile factory workers were exposed to asbestos fibers, which 
led to the development of diseases that killed them. In 1951, companies 
were reporting that exposure to asbestos would kill you. We

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know from reading--pick any book you want--the book titled ``Libby, 
Montana,'' W.R. Grace knew that what they were doing was killing their 
workers. They knew about it. It is documented.
  Is it any wonder that some are asking why we are here? When we 
consider the $144.5 million and 2 years spent for lobbyists, we begin 
to understand why we are here. If these numbers do not add up, and they 
don't, wouldn't it be well advised to have the Committee on the Budget 
involved in crafting this legislation? There is a need for legislation 
that improves the way victims of asbestos exposure receive 
compensation, but this is not it.
  Since this bill was initiated, there have been reforms at the State 
level that have been credible and important in advancing the cause of 
the victims. Our best hope of achieving whatever Federal reforms may be 
appropriate rests with further deliberation at the committee level, not 
in the Senate. I hope my colleagues seriously consider joining me in 
voting no on the motion to proceed. There are just too many problems 
with this bill.
  Let me first focus on people whom this is supposed to be all about, 
the victims of asbestosis and mesothelioma, diseases that come about as 
a result of being exposed to asbestos. If you get mesothelioma, you 
die. Once that disease is diagnosed, no one has ever survived. You die. 
With asbestosis you might continue to live but likely will have a long, 
slow, advance toward death. Sometimes it kills quicker than others. 
People have lived for some time with asbestosis but never mesothelioma. 
The average life expectancy after discovery is less than a year and a 
half. Asbestos is one of the most lethal substances ever used in the 
workplace, and it was unleashed knowingly on communities all over our 
country. More than 27.5 million workers have been exposed to asbestos. 
They were exposed while they were working with the stuff. However, 
countless others were exposed because this work was going on in their 
neighborhoods. Asbestos was used in schoolyards. And as we have come to 
learn, a worker coming home and having his wife wash his clothes 
exposed her and the family to asbestos-related diseases. And these 
spouses have died. Children who hugged their father, after coming home 
from work carrying his lunch bucket, have gotten these diseases and 
have died. Hundreds of thousands are gravely ill as we speak, hundreds 
of thousands of people.
  The diseases caused by asbestos exposure are painful, debilitating, 
and, as I have indicated, mostly incurable. Every State in America has 
been touched by this scourge. In the relatively sparsely populated 
State of Nevada, Margie Urnberg, Carson City, wrote a letter. She lost 
her father, Ronald. Will Glienke's father died of mesothelioma. Kellie 
Appleton-Hultz lost her husband due to asbestos poisoning and is still 
coping with this as I speak.
  This problem has affected me on a personal level. My three brothers 
and I had no place to live when high school started, so we lived with 
other families or acquaintances. My older brother, Don, lived in 
Henderson, NV, with the Hansen family, a wonderful family. They took in 
my brother so he could go to high school. One of the Hansens who played 
football with my brother, Don, was named Harold. My brother and Harold 
were both halfbacks on the football team. Harold went away to college 
and later became a mechanical engineer. He worked for the State of 
Nevada all of his life. He hung around the State employee workshop. He 
learned less than a year ago that he had mesothelioma. He is dead now. 
He never worked with asbestos, but in the workshop where he spent some 
of his time, they replaced brakes and brake linings containing 
asbestos. Harold Hansen is dead because of this.
  I see in the Chamber the assistant Democratic leader, my friend, the 
distinguished senior Senator from Illinois. He and I served in the 
House of Representatives together. I can remember another man who was 
so helpful to me while I was in the House of Representatives. I had 
been a Member of the House for just a short period of time, and this 
man and I were walking down the aisle to vote. He said: You know, I 
love Nevada. I want to help you get a national park. We did not have a 
national park in Nevada at the time. He was the subcommittee chair of 
the then-called Interior Committee of National Parks. His name was 
Bruce Vento. Oh, what a great guy he was. I worked out at the same time 
he did in the House gym for many years.
  He was probably 6 foot 1 or 2, but really a strong man. He had been 
in Congress for more than 20 years. He practiced law before that. He 
never worked with his hands except once, when he was a very young man, 
around 20 years old. He worked for a while at summer jobs, like we all 
had. He obviously was exposed to asbestos. And just like that, he was 
diagnosed with mesothelioma. He died within 6 months.
  Bruce Vento--and we have a national park in Nevada now; much of it 
due to Bruce Vento's advocacy; the Great Basin National Park, a 
wonderful national park; the only one we have in Nevada--dead because 
of mesothelioma.
  Tomorrow I am going to introduce a resolution designating April 1 of 
this year as Asbestos Disease Awareness Day. The purpose of this 
resolution is to raise awareness that asbestos exposure is still 
prevalent, that asbestos-related diseases continue to kill many 
Americans each year, and that more needs to be done to protect 
Americans from this lethal substance.
  A truly fair asbestos reform bill should meet the unmet needs of 
asbestos victims. This bill does not. Every major asbestos victims 
group opposes this legislation--every one. In an open letter to the 
Senate, dated February 1 of this year, the Committee to Protect 
Mesothelioma Victims, the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, the 
Asbestos Victims Organization, the White Lung Association, and the 
White Lung Asbestos Information Center wrote that they oppose this 
legislation. Specifically, they wrote:

       We do not want this proposed government policy forced upon 
     us. We believe the program will fail to treat victims fairly, 
     while benefitting the very companies that caused the problem.

  And that is what has happened here. But we have these companies that 
spent $144.5 million for 2 years to get lobbyists down here to push 
this bill. I forget the number, about 170 or so lobbyists, as indicated 
in a report by Public Citizen. I will bet they are watching TV right 
now, in their Gucci shoes, having just piled out of their limousines, 
bragging about what they did: bringing the asbestos bill to the floor. 
They have a lot of other important things to do, but what are they 
doing? Because they are good at what they do, we have this bill on the 
Senate floor. Lobbying reform is what we really need.
  An asbestos bill that faces such widespread opposition from the 
victims of asbestos disease is obviously the wrong approach to this 
national problem. The problem seems to be that the so-called FAIR Act--
remember, that is what this is called in this Orwellian world we live 
in--places the needs of a few large companies with asbestos liability 
above the needs of those suffering from asbestos-related illnesses. 
This is the fundamental flaw of this legislation.
  But to show what these lobbyists have done, we need only look at what 
they have done to fool the veterans. These big companies, of course, 
are paying veterans to come back to Washington. They have convinced a 
few of the veterans this legislation is good for them. Not true. But if 
you have this much money to spend, you can pass it around.
  This asbestos study group is claiming that victims who are veterans 
are not recovering under the present system. Unfortunately, the facts 
do not support their claim. Many veterans will be completely shut out 
of all means of compensation if this trust fund proposed under this 
legislation becomes law.
  These false claims about veterans seem to be another effort to ensure 
that corporations receive the more than $20 billion bailout they seek 
on the backs of veterans. It does not matter because the lobbyists have 
done

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their job. They have this bill and they have a few veterans straggling 
in to talk about what a good thing this is for them.
  If this asbestos bill wins, the corporations win and the veterans 
lose. Today, veterans can and do use the court system every day to get 
help with the health and financial consequences of the diseases they 
have.
  Tragically, it is true that many veterans are victims of asbestos 
disease. Much of it came from Navy ships before the 1970s that 
contained high levels of asbestos. Thirty percent of the mesothelioma 
victims are veterans. World War II, as I have indicated, is where most 
of these veterans got exposed to asbestos--World War II. The average 
age of the World War II veteran is about 80. About 1,500 World War II 
veterans are dying every day.
  This legislation will stop some of them from recovering the 
compensation they are owed. If they now have pending trial dates or 
pending settlements, those will be eviscerated if this legislation 
passes. They immediately have their causes of action stayed and would 
become part of the queue of over 600,000 claimants waiting for the 
proposed fund to become operational. Most of them will die before 
recovering the money owed to them.
  Veterans receive no priority status or special protection under this 
bill. They will be tossed into an untested and underfunded bureaucracy 
with all other claimants even though every independent analyst says the 
fund is destined to fail. I repeat, every major asbestos victims 
organization opposes this bill because it is underfunded and unfair to 
all victims, including veterans.
  Veterans are recovering under the current system but will have a much 
harder time recovering if this bill becomes law.
  Though veterans cannot sue the Government for compensation for 
asbestos poisoning, they have successfully sued manufacturers of 
asbestos products, like other claimants have done. This right will be 
stripped from them under S. 852. Thousands and thousands of veterans 
have successfully sued asbestos companies. And, frankly, it has been 
shown that veterans who are dying of mesothelioma and these other 
serious cancers generally receive greater compensations through the 
courts than is provided under S. 852.
  Under this fund, the awards will be one size fits all. In many cases, 
veterans' asbestos exposure as civilians is far greater than their 
exposure in the military. Lester M. Cable, who lives in Bridgeport, CT, 
is a typical case. He was exposed to asbestos as a boilerman in the 
Navy in 1950 and 1951, and also in civilian life doing home 
construction and repair projects working with asbestos-containing 
household appliances and heating systems.
  He suffers from malignant mesothelioma and has a trial date set for 
this July as an accelerated living mesothelioma case in the Bridgeport 
Superior Court. If the proposed asbestos legislation is enacted, his 
case would be wiped out immediately, forcing him to start all over 
again under the proposed trust fund. He will not live that long.
  It is no wonder that asbestos victims oppose a bill that deprives 
them of their legal rights in the traditional civil justice system and 
offers them instead a trust fund that is inadequate and will likely 
become insolvent. Numerous experts have concluded that the cost of the 
program will exceed the amount allotted for the trust fund. Mr. 
President, $140 billion sounds like a lot of money, but, remember, 27.5 
million American workers have been exposed to asbestos. This does not 
include, as I have indicated, people living in the neighborhoods, the 
spouses, children.
  The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the program could 
generate at least $10 billion more in claims than the trust fund is 
designed for. But even that figure understates the problem because the 
bill does not adequately take into account the trust fund's borrowing 
costs, further depleting the compensation available to victims. And 
that is what they are, victims. The Congressional Budget Office 
estimates that approximately $8 billion would be required in the first 
decade, an amount that will saddle the fund with a huge debt over the 
life of the program.
  Other experts, though, say the bill is on even less solid fiscal 
footing. For instance, the Bates White economic consulting firm has 
concluded that the program will cost at least $300 billion, and with 
certain contingencies could cost as much as $600 billion. The General 
Accounting Office has recently issued a report describing how at least 
four other Federal trust fund compensation systems that were smaller in 
scope than this had trouble funding the shortfalls.
  But even if the $140 billion were adequate--and it is not--there is 
no guarantee the fund would raise that amount of revenue. The actual 
amount of revenue available to victims depends on the number of 
companies that actually contribute. Yet there is no definitive 
information available to Senators on the number or identity of the 
participating companies. We have talked about that before. Supporters 
of this legislation have asserted that there will be between 8,000 and 
10,000 such companies, but the Congressional Budget Office could 
identify only 1,700 participants. As a result, less than $140 billion 
will be available for this fund. If revenues from the private sector 
are insufficient to fully fund the program, the only options for 
maintaining solvency of the fund will be to reduce compensation to 
injured victims or supplement the privately raised funds with tax 
dollars.
  There is a long list of companies that have contacted Senators 
saying: Please, don't do this. But let me just give an example of a 
few. These are companies that are really old, some of them more than 
100 years old. For example, there is a company called Okonite. They are 
the only company that makes wire in the country anymore. They have a 
few manufacturing plants around the country. The chief executive 
officer said: We'll go bankrupt. If you pass that legislation, there 
won't be an American company making wire anymore.
  Hopeman Brothers, they are ship joiners. They work on big ships. They 
do finishing work on big ships. They said: We'll drop out. We'll go 
bankrupt.
  Foster Wheeler is an engineering and construction firm: If you sign 
this into law, we go out of business. They have asbestos claims. They 
can handle them. One of the companies said: We budget every year what 
we are going to spend on asbestos claims. We can handle that. But we 
cannot handle this legislation. We'll go bankrupt.
  There is a good argument that the Federal Government should 
contribute to the fund, since a large number of U.S. servicemen were 
exposed to asbestos. But that has not happened here. This bill does not 
tap Federal tax dollars in an honest, straightforward way. But that is 
what is going to happen if the trust fund is not sufficient. It 
establishes a private trust fund that will almost certainly become 
insolvent. As a practical matter, the Federal Government will be left 
holding the bag when things go wrong. A Federal bailout of a program of 
this magnitude would have enormous adverse consequences to the Federal 
budget. But with President Bush holding the records for the highest 
deficits in the history of the country, maybe we should not be 
concerned about this.
  The structural problems with the trust fund relate to one of the 
bill's most fundamental flaws: its lack of transparency. From the 
outset, members of the Judiciary Committee and others asked for full 
disclosure of the names of companies that will be required to pay into 
the fund. According to press reports, the major lobbying firms that 
helped draft the bill possess documents listing the contributing 
companies and how much each would be required to pay. But this 
information remains unavailable to Senators and, of course, to the 
general public.
  The Senate is entitled to such relevant information before debate 
begins, but we are not going to get it. There is no reason to waste the 
time of the full Senate debating a bill with so many loose ends and so 
many unanswered questions and, I am frank to admit, a lot of answered 
questions. The budgetary concerns are reason enough to defeat the 
motion to proceed.
  I have been contacted by five courageous members of the majority who 
are

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going to vote against the motion to proceed because they know this is a 
budget buster. And maybe others will come along. I have only been 
contacted by five. First, let me say this: Even if the trust funds were 
adequately funded, the system set up here is flawed for a number of 
reasons in compensating the poor, unfortunate individuals who get these 
diseases. Let me talk about a few of them.
  The startup provisions provide that as soon as the bill is enacted, 
the ability of asbestos victims to obtain compensation in the court 
system is cut off. It also requires that bankruptcy trusts established 
to pay victims' claims be shut down, even before the fund is 
operational. The bill attempts to provide a mechanism through which 
terminally ill claimants will obtain payments in this interim period, 
but all other claimants, no matter how serious their illness or 
disability, would be left without a remedy for an indefinite period of 
time.
  Second, the bill is unfair to victims with pending or settled court 
cases. I talked a little bit about that. Rather than permit asbestos 
claims to continue in court while the fund is being established, the 
bill imposes an immediate 2-year stay on nearly all asbestos cases. 
This is unfair. Exigent cases are no exception to a stay. They will be 
automatically stayed for 9 months from the date of enactment. The 
bill's language is so broad that a trial about to begin would be 
stopped, and an appellate ruling about to be handed down would be 
barred.
  Third, the sunset process under the legislation leaves too much 
uncertainty for victims. If the fund fails to operate as promised, 
instead of allowing victims to return to court, S. 852 allows the 
administrator of the fund to recommend any number of measures to 
salvage the program. This means that victims may receive even less 
compensation or become subject to more stringent medical criteria to 
have their claims successfully approved.
  Fourth, the bill requires some victims to prove that asbestos was a 
substantial contributing factor to their disease--a higher burden than 
victims must meet in court, where it is sufficient to show that 
asbestos exposure was a contributing factor, no matter how substantial 
a factor. The whole concept of a no-fault trust fund is that it is 
nonadversarial, but this higher burden of proof creates the potential 
for endless litigation and a high number of rejected claims.
  Finally, I have serious concerns about the manner in which the FAIR 
Act treats lung cancer and silica diseases victims. Under this bill, an 
entire category of lung cancer victims who were exposed to asbestos for 
15 years or more cannot bring a claim. This bill would deny these 
victims their right to recover damages in court for their exposure and 
deny them benefits under the fund as well. This is an unacceptable 
affront to the rights of an entire class of asbestos victims.
  As for the suffering from silica disease, this act limits recovery by 
individuals who have both asbestos disease and silica-related diseases. 
I know something about silicosis. My dad had it. He worked in the 
mines. I thought all kids' dads coughed the way my dad did, but they 
didn't. My dad was exposed to what we called at the time quartz silica. 
It is well known in Nevada, at the Tonopah mining camp, they would only 
hire, as they referred to it at the time, ``foreigners'' because they 
knew if they hired people who were nonforeigners in Tonopah, they would 
die. It was the worst of any place in the country. It was bad all over 
Nevada, so I know something about silica.
  This legislation prevents someone who has both silica and asbestos 
exposure from going forward with their claim. The only recourse for 
victims of both diseases will be to seek compensation for their 
asbestos disease from the asbestos fund, but victims of silica-related 
disease, including those who have asbestos disease, should also have a 
right to seek redress in the courts. They should be able to do it 
because of their silica disease, silicosis. This is a particular 
problem in Nevada where many miners have contracted both silicosis and 
asbestosis.
  In this and so many other ways, this bill does not meet the needs of 
my constituents or of the American people in general. I predict the 
bill's sponsors will attempt to answer my concerns and those of other 
Senators, as I have heard, by telling us there is going to be a 
managers' amendment to cure all of the problems of the bill. There will 
be so many problems with this bill that this managers' amendment will 
effectively be a substitute bill. I am reminded of the old English 
proverb--I don't know if it is an old English proverb--don't buy a pig 
in a poke. The sponsors of the bill should make the text of that 
managers' amendment available before we vote on the motion to proceed. 
The Senate should not vote to proceed on this asbestos bill and find 
itself debating a different asbestos bill.
  Let's move the process along, some have said. We will fix the 
problems in conference with the House. Boy, we have heard that a lot of 
times. Some of us have been around here long enough to know that 
doesn't work. That gambit should be rejected. If the Senate decides to 
debate this bill, it should be one where we confront the tough 
questions now and get them right before the bill leaves the Senate.
  I am convinced, unfortunately, that we are not ready to face these 
tough questions at this time. The committee-reported bill is too deeply 
flawed. We don't have sufficient information to address these flaws 
through the amendment process. We owe asbestos victims and their 
families a better bill and a better process. The only proper course at 
this time is to defeat the motion to proceed.
  I would say this: Again, the winners today are the 13 companies that 
paid $144.5 million to take the much needed time of the Senate to 
debate these issues. But we are going to be wasting time on this very 
flawed piece of legislation.

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