[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 26537-26538]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  (Mr. WESTMORELAND asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, if you get dressed in the dark, you 
are probably going to make some poor clothing choices that will open 
you to ridicule. Well, the same rule applies when you write bills in 
the dark.
  President Obama said last year that the health care reform 
negotiations would air on C-SPAN. That way, he

[[Page 26538]]

said, Americans could see who was fighting for them and who is siding 
with the special interests.
  Based on the President's very own formula, we must assume that the 
Democrat-only, closed-door dealmaking on health care must have put the 
special interests at the forefront. It appears certain that one of 
those special interests at the table behind the closed doors was the 
trial attorneys. Maybe that is why the negotiations were secret. They 
can claim attorney-client confidentiality.
  But those trial attorneys must have charged by the hour, because the 
Democrats gave them quite the payoff in this legislation. This bill 
will override States' malpractice reform laws and it will prevent 
States from capping attorneys' fees or damage rewards.
  Isn't it ironic that it was President Obama who warned us that this 
would happen.

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