[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9697-9701]
[From the U.S. 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.

[[Page 9698]]

  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.
  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

[[Page 9699]]

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 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

[[Page 9700]]

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, 
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

[[Page 9701]]

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.

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