Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Without objection, I will go along with the distinguished author of the amendment, Senator Thompson. I will need a little bit of time. You were asking for a time agreement?

Mr. HOLLINGS. Not at this time.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Straight to the point in the limited time available here, Madam President, it is totally misleading to state that there is no test, to say that in criminal law, we have a test, but in civil litigation, punitive damages, there is no test whatever. To the contrary, there is a stipulation going right straight down the line of cases that, in awarding punitive damages, Madam President, you have to look at the ability to pay. There is a listed group of tests that are included. You have to look at the willfulness. These damages have to be found on willful misconduct, and right on down the line. I want to get right to the McDonald's case, when they say there is no limit, that these punitive damages punish. Then in that McDonald's case, I heard the foreman of that particular jury in an interview say she thought it was a frivolous charge at first until they found out there were some 700 cases and that McDonald's had cost-factored out, on a cost-benefit basis, the hotter the coffee, the more coffee you received out of the coffee bin. So they just wrote it off. They could keep taking the 700 claims and give third-degree burns over a sixth of the body and keep them 3 weeks in the hospital and everything else. But punitive damages were awarded in that McDonald's case for $2.7 million. The court itself reduced it to $480,000. There are limits in every jurisdiction. And punitive damages, if you go right to the automobile cases, caused in the last 10 years 72,254,931 cars to be recalled. That is wonderful safety on the highways of America. Why? Because of punitive damages? It has been proved from the Pinto case on down in all of these automobile cases. Had it not been for the punitive damage portion of the award, none of these would be recalled because the manufacturers could put it in the cost of the car. We have garage door openers redesigned, we have cribs withdrawn, we have Drano packaging redesigned, firefighters' respirators redesigned, Remington Mohawk rifles recalled, the production of harmful arthritis drugs ceased, charcoal briquets properly labeled, steam vaporizers redesigned, heart valves no longer produced by Bjork-Shively, hazardous lawnmowers redesigned, hotel security strengthened, surgical equipment safely redesigned. On and on down the list, punitive damages have proved their worth to society. And to come now and say in criminal cases we have sentencing guidelines, but there are no guidelines whatever in punitive damages cases is totally misleading. In fact, they have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld in the several States the punitive damages awards that have been made. So we go right on down each one of the cases over and over again and again and we find, for example, in the leading case to ensure that a punitive damage award is proper, one, the defendant's degree of culpability, which must be willful misconduct; two, duration of the conduct; three, defendant's awareness of concealment; four, the existence of similar past conduct; five, likelihood the award will deter the defendant or others from like conduct; six, whether the award is reasonably related to the harm likely to result.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, we had the occasion to attend the funeral of our distinguished former colleague, Senator Stennis. Time and again the visiting Senators who had served with him talked about his wisdom. My only comment is the wisdom of that distinguished gentleman is not lost to the Senate when you hear the Senator from Mississippi, Senator Cochran, talk. He does talk with professionalism. He does talk of trying to act professionally with respect to a Federal legislative body, and his statement on the amendment of the distinguished Senator from Tennessee is music to my ears. This has been sort of a run-amok situation. When the Senator from Mississippi says it is not the intent to reform the whole civil justice system, we started on product liability--that is what he thought and that is what I thought but that is not what the contract calls for. I do not want somebody to say I had gotten partisan on this thing, because I am welcoming the bipartisanship with respect to the amendment of the Senator from Tennessee. But the RNC talking points show they do not have any idea of product liability. But they do have the civil justice. The contract calls for that. And you have seen what has been provided, Senator, on the House side, which is very, very disturbing. Right to the amendment of the Senator from Tennessee, and particularly his address, which has really been music to my ears. It is like a drink of water in the desert, because he talks professionally of the duty and responsibility here of the U.S. Congress and the Federal Government. We do not find--and I agree with the Senator from Tennessee--the need for the Federal Government to start preempting local jury trials and the handling of tort cases at the local level. So what he is saying is, to try to keep step with the theme upon which he was elected--and incidentally it has been the theme upon which I have been elected for 28 to 29 years--is that the government that is the best government--the Jeffersonian phrase most often quoted--``is that closest to the people'' and the local folks decide these things. As I have said time and again here, you have a solution looking for a problem, because product liability cases are on a diminishing scale. There is no Federal problem with respect to the lawyers' fees nationally with respect to their clients. It is only to deter and enhance and enrich the manufacturer that we even had the Abraham-McConnell amendment. But what the Senator from Tennessee does, as I read this amendment, is sort of bring a little order out of chaos. With respect to applicability, and in diversity cases under title 18 what we have is a jurisdiction and a responsibility. So this would apply to the provisions of this bill, and diversity only in those cases that have been removed from the State courts to the Federal system. Yes. We have in Federal court a responsibility at the Federal level. And let us apply whatever they desire, which is almost open sesame now around here. I cannot tell what the next thing is coming up. But like the sheepdog can taste the blood, they are going to gobble up all the rights of the individuals back home because all of a sudden we, who have been elected by the people back home--think the people back home have totally lost judgment. We have to tell them how, why, where, and when. You can put in this evidence but you cannot put in this. If that is necessary, the Senator from Tennessee says, let it apply in those diversity and removal cases, and then we will have fulfilled our responsibility. I hate to talk longer on the amendment because you become identified with your position in these matters. Somebody would say--I can hear them now--``Well, Hollings is for the Senator from Tennessee's amendment, you had better vote against it.'' I am trying to laud the distinguished Senator from Tennessee, particularly his comments. I just listened as he went chapter and verse right down the line. That is the first address of which I had the occasion to hear the distinguished Senator from Tennessee. I listened to him through his client, Senator Howard Baker, years ago in earlier proceedings. But now he is speaking in and of himself. I find that solid. When they talk about common sense, that solid common sense is coming through with respect to this particular issue of product liability and the amendment of the Senator from Tennessee. So I heartily endorse the attention, particularly of my colleague from West Virginia, one of the leading sponsors on this bill. When it comes down to law, yes. We have a responsibility on the Federal side--diversity and removal. And let us apply whatever everybody decides by a majority vote is necessary to occur. But let us not in the context of simplicity and uniformity come back in and jumble this whole thing into the 50 jurisdictions with the 50 different interpretations and bring it up to the Federal system for even further interpretations and appeals and say that what we have now is uniformity. The Senator from Tennessee gives us uniformity. There is no question about it in this particular amendment. I heartily endorse his initiative and his amendment. I hope we can sort of calm down now without all of the little amendments of interested parties. They are on a roll--you can see by the way the votes are going--to affect all civil cases with respect to punitive damages. You would never think that would occur on the floor of the U.S. Senate because punitive damages had a salutary effect in our society. All I have heard is about runaway juries and the legal system as a lottery; these catcalls you might call it. It is almost like an athletic event up here. The deliberative body is the cheerleading section. The Senator from Tennessee says let us get out of the stands, get out of the chair, and get down on the field of responsibility and act like Senators and legislate where we have that responsibility, and leave the States and the local folks to their own judgments, their own considerations. It is not a national problem. There have been problems arising. States have treated it differently. They have all revised practically all of their product liability laws in the last 15 years. These State legislatures come up and say, ``For Heaven's sake, leave us alone.'' They testified before the Commerce Committee. The Association of State Supreme Court Justices, a bipartisan group says, For Heaven's sake, let us not put this thing in where we have to take all of these words of art and interpretation in the 50 States. Leave us alone. The American Bar Association, a bipartisan group if there ever was one, and a study group of lawyers said we studied it again. It is totally off base. We oppose this bill. Mr. President, 123 legal scholars have come forward and said now you really, in an effort to give what you call common sense or uniformity or fairness--to get the buzzwords going--what you have really done is given the highest degree of unfairness, the highest degree of complexity that you could possibly imagine. They testified. The attorneys general testified against this measure. There it is. How do I get that over to my colleagues? Well, thank heavens. I know a lot of them would listen to the leadership of the Senator from Tennessee, I yield the floor. Mr. HEFLIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I want to touch on just two or three things quickly, and I want to yield, of course, to the principal author of the amendment, the Senator from Tennessee, with respect to punitive damages. The statement was made by Senator Rockefeller that the Supreme Court said that the punitive damages would just run amok. The fact is, the Supreme Court of the United States of America has not turned down or reversed punitive damages. The most recent case happens to be a West Virginia case of this particular court, dated June 25, 1993, TXO Production Corp. versus Alliance Resources. Actual damages were $19,000, Mr. President. Do you know what the punitive damages were? Punitive damages, $10 million. Do you think that disturbs the Senator from West Virginia, who says he is here for consumers? He is for corporations. They can get all the punitive damages they want. They are not subject to this bill. Oh, no; as a matter of fact, they are not subject to this bill. The leading case in his own State, $19,000 in actual damages, $10 million in punitive damages, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Second, with respect to keeping all the products off the shelf, and particularly as the Senator refers to AIDS and AIDS drugs, and how they are all going out of business. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent we have printed in the Record a statement by Gerald J. Mossinghoff, president of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, made last year before the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I will read two sentences. ``For many years''--says the leader of the pharmaceutical industry-- For many years, the pharmaceutical industry's success in developing new and better medicines has made it one of the country's most innovative and internationally competitive industries. In a study of the industry, the ITC reported that U.S. firms accounted for nearly two-thirds of the new drugs introduced in the world market during the period 1940 to 1988. Forty-eight years, almost fifty years. There is Fortune Magazine, there is the head of the industry, speaking for itself. Now we will bring it up to date, to February and April of this year. February 23, 1995. I hold in my hand an advertisement entitled ``Drug Companies Target Major Diseases with Record R&D Investment.'' It is an advertisement by America's pharmaceutical research companies, and I read: Pharmaceutical companies will spend nearly $15 billion on drug research and development in 1995. Remember, the Senator from West Virginia said they are all going out of business on account of product liability, and they could not invest. The overwhelming evidence is the opposite of what the Senator from West Virginia contends. New medicines in development for leading diseases include 86 for heart disease and stroke, 124 for cancer, 107 for AIDS and AIDS-related diseases, 19 for Alzheimer's disease, 46 for mental diseases, and 79 for infectious diseases. The pharmaceutical industry categorically refutes the statements made by the distinguished Senator from West Virginia. Now, going right to less than a month ago, April 5, 1995, another advertisement: ``Who Leads the World in Discovering Major New Drugs,'' put out by the America's pharmaceutical research companies. Between 1970 and 1992, close to half of the important new drugs sold in major markets around the world were introduced by the U.S. pharmaceutical companies. Here at home, the broad drug industry has been making 9 out of every 10 new drug discoveries. So when a breakthrough medicine is created for AIDS, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, stroke, cancer, or any other disease, chances are it will come from America's drug and research companies. That totally refutes the Senator from West Virginia's statement. Now finally, the arithmetic, simple arithmetic, refutes this pose for the consumer, whereby the consumer is not getting the majority of the money; the lawyer is getting the majority of the money. Of course, the inference is that the injured party, the plaintiff's lawyers, get the money. Arithmetic says that 33\1/3\ percent, which has been agreed to generally in the debate on both sides of the aisle, and parties pro and con, on a particular measure, 33\1/3\ percent is less than 100 percent and less than 50 percent, so the other 66\2/3\ percent goes to the client. Or take the amendment of the Senator from Kentucky on malpractice: A 25 percent limitation there; 25 percent leaves 75 percent for the client. Now, what are the facts? Why does the Senator use that distorted representation about being so concerned that the consumer is not getting the money he deserves, like every case brought is a winner? No. 1, according to the Rand study of product liability injuries, of 100 percent injured, we find that only 7 percent of the injured parties consult an attorney; only 4 percent hire an attorney; and only 2 percent file a lawsuit. According to the New York Times, one-half of those filing are losing. Now, who pays for all of those expenses, except for the plaintiff's attorney? So it gives no regard and no account for our distinguished group of professionals who are willing to take it on a contingency basis, although they are losing half the time, to try to get middle America and poor injured parties their day in court. I can tell you now, come to this town and get injured, do not go downtown on billable hours. I tried to point that out with my particular amendment. You could not afford to hire the lawyer and we all know that. But they are being derided here as somehow the lawyers are running off with all the money. Where does the money go? According to the National Consumers Insurance Organization, according to this survey, in our hearings, For every dollar paid to claimants, insurers paid an average of an additional 42 cents in defense costs while for every dollar awarded a plaintiff, plaintiff pays an average contingent fee of 33 cents out of that dollar. Thus, in cases in which the plaintiffs prevail, out of each $l.42 spent on litigation, half of that goes to attorney's fees, with the defendants' attorneys on average paid better than plaintiffs' attorneys. They go take it down to where they are getting 56 percent. Now here are the poor plaintiffs' lawyers. They are not even seen but in 2 percent of the product liability injury cases, and of the cases they file they are only recovering in half. So they are taking the expenses of the others. You can bet your boots when they finally prevail and get their third, that is still 66 2/3 percent going to the client and 33 1/3 percent going to the lawyer. So the lawyers they are interested in trying to restrict and with their amendments have voted to limit, they are the ones already in a sense losing. The Senators stand here and say it is shameful? It is shameful to misrepresent the idea that this crowd sponsoring this bill is for the consumer. They know they are for the corporations. They know they are for the insurance companies. They know the drive. It is corporate America: Business Round Table, Conference Board, NAM--National Association of Manufacturers--they have been sponsoring this bill for 15 years and they know it. No consumer organization has come forward with this bill. All the consumer organizations of size and repute absolutely oppose the bill. To come up here and talk about shame, and the consumers are not getting the money, and misrepresenting the facts with respect to percentage when simple arithmetic shows no one gets over a third, and if limited by a vote, 25 percent. That leaves 75 percent for the client if they win. And on that contingent fee, that trial lawyer who is representing the injured party has to assume all the costs and all the burden and all the risk. Otherwise that poor injured party would not have a lawyer because they cannot afford it. They found out $50 an hour was not enough. I tried to limit it here in my amendment. So they come forward here in this town with $100 an hour billable hours and going on up to $500 and more. They could just never get their day in court. We know that is being cared for back home. That is why I am so interested in the amendment of the Senator from Tennessee, because we can stop this pell-mell march to Washington with the Washington bureaucrats administering and determining, not hearing any of the facts, disregarding the 12 jurors sworn to listen to the facts, bureaucrats who say, Forget about you, you all are runaway. You do not know. You have not heard. There is no relief. And it is a national problem and we are going to correct it with this mish-mash bill. I favor the amendment of the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. On behalf of the distinguished chairman of the Commerce Committee, Senator Pressler, the answer is no.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, this is simply the amendment we had on previous product liability bills. It was actually proposed by the distinguished colleague, Senator Rockefeller from West Virginia. It has to do with product liability insurance reporting. Not to delay the Senator from Washington or the Senator from Connecticut, both of whom I thank very much for yielding, I will debate it later on. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, let me commend our distinguished senior Senator, former leader and President pro tempore of the body. Senator Byrd's words are music to this Senator's ears, because in all of the almost 5 months now of the so-called ``contract,'' not one word has been stated until Senator Byrd has spoken about competitive trade policy. That is exactly what we need. Right to the point, as the distinguished Senator has pointed out, the Japanese are subsidizing their sales--what we call ``loss leaders,'' in the retail business. They subsidize and sell automobiles there for less than it costs them back in Japan. I could not get the updated figures right now to be accurate, but I remember over a year ago a Toyota Cressida that sells for $21,800 in Washington, DC, sells for $31,800 back in Tokyo. We had other comparable prices, and I would be glad to bring us up to date. The point is, in the year 1994 just passed, Business Week reported that, once again, Japan had taken over a larger share of the American domestic automobile market. Specifically, they had inched up another 1.2 percent in spite of the competitiveness and quality production of the American automobile industry. We have all been bragging. Detroit is finally putting out real cars, quality production, and we are now demanding, instead of foreign cars, American cars for a change. But with it all, Japan has still taken over more of the market. Five years ago, I had the vice presidents of Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors orchestrated almost to bring an antidumping case against Japan. While I had the agreement of Chrysler tentatively and Ford tentatively, General Motors bugged out. They said it was not good for business. They better wake up and understand what is good for business. Yes, our leader here is making a very cogent observation, but we will have to go back to another colleague of ours who adopted the expression, ``Where's the beef?'' Our Vice President. We have been talking for years--years on end. I testified 35 years ago with similar language about the textile industry. In 1980, 15 years ago, the deficit in the balance of textile trade of the entire European market with Japan was some $4 billion--not with just Japan but with the Pacific rim. We had a deficit, also, in the balance of textile trade of $4 billion. In the ensuing 15 years now the Europeans have shown they know how to deal with Japan. They do not have this weeping and wailing about fair trade and level the playing field and whining and crying and moaning and groaning--business is business. Through the enforcement of their antidumping laws, they have reduced it to less than $1 billion. And our deficit in the balance of textile trade has gone from $4 billion to $32 billion. Add in that $28 billion in textile manufacture, and we have millions of jobs. Politicians are running all over the Hill talking about jobs, jobs, create jobs, jobs, jobs. We are exporting them as fast as we possibly can. A fundamental is involved, Madam President. They use the Friedrich List or German model, which Alexander Hamilton initiated in the founding days of this Republic whereby the wealth of a nation is measured not by what it can buy but by what it can produce. The decisions are made on the basis of whether or not it strengthens the Japanese economy or weakens the Japanese economy. The Japanese use sector to take over--in this instance, market share. That is why year upon year, end upon end, we send over our trade representatives. They moan, they groan, they whine, they cry. We continue to keep our markets open. The only time anybody made any progress at all was under the voluntary restraints agreement, and we slowed it down somewhat. However, we still have not really denied them access to our market. Adam Smith, free trade is strictly passe in the global competition. Forget it. Forget it. We have little Boy Scouts, and the Golden Rule, do unto others as they do unto you. That does not apply in global competition. I can say here and now we have to protect the economic backbone, the manufacturing capacity and capability of our Nation or, as Akio Morita said years ago, that power that loses its manufacturing power ceases to be a world power. That is the road that we are on in this country of ours. I am glad the distinguished Senator from West Virginia is emphasizing this. It is well stated, and I hope we can get an administration that will answer the question of our former Vice President Mondale, ``Where's the beef?" If they begin to put in some beef like they did with China, then we can get an agreement like we did with China. If we put some beef behind the words of the distinguished leader from West Virginia, we will get a result. Business is business and it is not politics, and we have got to begin to understand that. One other item, and then I will yield, Madam President. It is a very, some might say, splendored thing, but the question of telecommunications, the information superhighway, is one of the most complex subjects or issues that we can possibly deal with. The problem is that everyone wants to deregulate and let market forces control. Certainly this Senator does, and all the Senators that I know of with respect to our Commerce Committee holding the particular hearings. The problem is we have a monopoly on the one hand and a responsibility for universal service on the other hand. With respect to universal service, Madam President, we do not want to make the same mistake we did with airlines whereas today, now, 85 percent of the medium- and small-sized towns and communities of America are subsidizing the 50 percent long hauls, and all the airlines have gone broke. Universal service is splendid, outstanding, wonderful communications from our seven Bell companies. The local service operators, we want to continue that universal service and require, thereby, on the one hand, everybody coming in to contribute to a universal service fund, and on the other, not allow our Bell companies to be cherrypicked and take off the good business, high-concentrated service, so to speak, and leave the rural and less populated areas for others to serve. That is one of the tasks in regulating service. Otherwise, we have to regulate the unbundling of the monopoly. The monopoly is there, and we know twofold: No. 1, that monopoly gets a 46 percent return on their guaranteed cash flow. Now, man, oh man, oh man. It did not come to my attention until just now. Later in the Record I will insert whereby the return of all investment to the leading industrial sectors of the United States of America--and now we will take long distance--the return they receive is 19 percent. The average is less than the 19 percent return on their investment. The highest of any in the United States of America are seven Southern Bell. They get a 46 percent return. Now, if I am president of a Bell company, why should I be pursuing the Congress to get over the business where I am getting a 46-percent return into a business that gets, say, 19 percent or lesser return? Business is business. I do not want my stockholders to lynch me and throw me out. So necessarily, I am not, although I talk pretty-like on the one hand about the superhighway and everything else like that, let the competition begin, I really do not care if we never pass a bill because I have a guaranteed cash flow of 5.6 billion bucks. I keep Wall Street happy with that. I spend about $2.7 billion in upgrading the system. And I have $1.7 billion in my back pocket here-- cash. I can go to any bank, not only in the United States, but into Tokyo or wherever, and with $1.7 billion cash in my back pocket, I can finance anything. So what I am saying in essence is that what we have to do is break up that monopoly. These monopolistic Bell companies, we intended for them to be monopolies. The law required it. But having given it to them, we know now, under the modified final judgment, they know how to get past every rule and every regulation. I found it out all during the 1960's and 1970's when, on the Communications Subcommittee, I worked with them. We tried our dead-level best to, by gosh, deregulate and open up AT&T and the Bell companies, and we could not do it. We had to finally do it with the Department of Justice, the Antitrust Division, and a consent decree. That modified final judgment is what finally did the trick, because we had 12 rulings and findings by the Federal Communications Commission and they kept appealing them. And even though we would find against them, nothing was enforced. This crowd knows how to use every word we write in the law and how to get around it and how to appeal it. And therein is another complexity. Now we have an astounding development. The astounding development is that with all the hearings and everything we have had, and how they have stonewalled us, we finally had, just about 3 weeks ago, Ameritech, a Bell company, along with the Justice Department, along with AT&T, the long distance carrier, along with the Consumer Federation of America, agreed to a consent order to open up competition up in the mid-Northern section of the United States of America. I could hardly believe my ears, but they agreed to it. In fact, the Bell companies have jumped all over their friend, Ameritech, and said, ``Oh, no, no; this is not a precedent. This cannot be done. It is terrible. What did you do? You are a traitor,'' and everything else. They have really been giving poor Ameritech a fit. Be that as it may, I have in my hand a memorandum of the U.S. Department of Justice ``In Support of its Motion for a Modification of the Decree to Permit a Limited Trial of Interexchange Service by Ameritech.'' This explains the complexities of all the requirements necessary in doing those two things, bringing about competition in the main; but the two things: Maintaining the universal service on the one hand, and unbundling a monopoly on the other. That is why some of these Senators can run around and say I want to build more deregulatory policy. That is political cover for saying I want you to give me a day certain. If they get a day certain and the monopoly is not broken up, then no one will enter the particular local exchange. The local exchange monopoly will be used to take over all the other competitive services and satellites, long distance, PCS, and all the rest of the communications, and you are going to end up with monopolistic conduct and not open competition. It is very, very complex. The best document I could possibly find is the one by our Assistant Attorney General, the Honorable Anne Bingaman, and her colleagues here, on behalf of the United States of America. I ask unanimous consent that this explanation of these complexities of this issue of deregulating communications and bringing about competition be printed in the Record at this particular point.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the pages show that punitive damage awards in product liability cases since 1965 come to a fraction of $3 billion. To be exact, they come to $1,337,832,211. Why does this Senator say ``a fraction'' of $3 billion? If we go to the Pennzoil versus Texaco case, of businesses suing businesses, what do we get? We get almost a $12 billion verdict that included what? It included a finding of punitive damages in the amount of 3 billion bucks. In other words, of all the product liability punitive damage findings in the last 30 years amounting to $1.3 billion, we have one business- against-business case of $3 billion. Or another one, since they are picking out cases, I will pick the Exxon Valdez case, a case where Exxon was sued and they came in with a verdict of what in punitive damages? Mr. President, $3 billion. I cannot find out the amount for businesses, there are so many of them. But it is up into the billions and billions of dollars. If this Congress was really interested in lowering the verdicts in tort cases, they would go right to the businesses suing businesses. They would go right to the automobile accident cases. They would go to all the other kinds of tort cases. The fact is that, of all the civil findings in the United States of America, tort filings only amount to 9 percent of the total amount of civil findings; and of the 9 percent, product liability amounts to 4 percent of the 9 percent or .36 of 1 percent. Another problem solved by the States. The Supreme Court Justices and legislatures say we handle it, and I will go right, for example, to my own State of South Carolina with respect to punitive damages. In a recent case of the State versus Rush, but the heading would be Gamble versus Stevenson, an appeal of the Southern Bell Telephone Telegraph. Now, I read from the opinion of the Supreme Court as follows: ``In South Carolina punitive damages are allowed in the interest of society.'' Listen to that. We would think punitive damages was the most heinous offense that ever occurred without any relation in the world to the good it has done. Why do we fine motorists for speeding and disobeying our motor vehicle laws in America? We fine them. Why do we fine the others for their various crimes? To make certain they do not commit them again. Similarly, with manufacturers. Punitive damages--fine them, to make absolutely sure that they do not repeat their wrong. They would say we cannot lose, we are making money. So why has Chrysler recalled 4 million cars to fix the back latch on the door? Not on account of the cost. They could get by with that. They would leave it there, but they know that there are chances now brought to the attention of the public that they are not only going to be verdicts against them in compensatory damages but in punitive damages. No longer can they factor it in the cost of product because of punitive damages. This is the very element that is bringing about the safety--not taking care of the parties involved but taking care of society, generally--that is the point to be made here. The first sentence: In South Carolina, punitive damages are allowed in the interest of society in the nature of punishment and as a warning and example to deter the wrongdoer and others Moreover, they serve as an indication of private rights when it is proved that such have been wantonly, willfully, or maliciously violated. Lastly, punitive damages may be awarded only upon a finding of actual damage. In the instant case the trial judge's jury charge concluded the degree of recklessness requisite to punitive damage award, that such an award was to punish a defendant or deter and stop it and others from similar conduct in the future, that is, to make an example of the defendant. That is an affirmative action program, to make an example. Everybody is interested in affirmative action. Here it is. Make an example of the defendant, the wrongdoer. ``That it must find actual damages before awarding punitive damages and that in calculating the amount of such damages, it may consider the defendant's ability to pay.'' Now, Mr. President, to ensure that a punitive damages award is proper, the trial court shall conduct a post trial review and consider the following: one, the defendant's degree of culpability; two, duration of the conduct. Mind you me, Mr. President, this is not the jury, the runaway juries, the same people that elected Members in Congress, all of a sudden impanelled and with a sworn oath, to find unanimously by a preponderance of the evidence, willful misconduct. And all 12 having found such, that same crowd that elects and sends Members, all of a sudden, they have lost their minds, their judgment. They are runaway and now have to be restricted by national restrictions. For what? For manufacturers, that is for what, and for less safety in America. Let me read that again: To ensure that punitive damages award is proper, the trial court shall conduct a posttrial review that may consider the following: 1, defendant's degree of culpability; 2, the duration of the conduct; 3, the defendant's awareness or concealment; 4, the existence of similar past conduct; 5, likelihood the award will deter the defendant or others from like conduct; 6, whether the award is reasonably related to the harm likely to result from such conduct; 7, defendant's ability to pay; 8, as noted in Haslip case, ``other factors'' deemed appropriate. That is, the court, not only the 12 impaneled jurors, but the court itself, shall review and study. Now, generally, this is a law that applies in 45 of the 50 States but, of course, due to the Conference Board, due to the Business Advisory Roundtable, due to the National Association of Manufacturers' lobbyists that have been going on for years and they come and report at every election time, ``Now, Senator, we have to do something about tort reform or product liability reform.'' The average Senator or candidate, not aware of the ramifications, not having attended any of the hearings or otherwise, might say, ``Oh? I am trying to get votes. Reform?'' They get caught. Words do mean things in our society. And they say, ``Heavens, I can get the support of this strong crowd. I can even get financial contributions if all I have to say is yes, yes, I am for reform. Product liability? Put me down.'' They put them down. Then they come here and they get embarrassed because they finally hear the truth of the matter here. And I sort of get embarrassed for them. The reason I get embarrassed for them is just this. I got a letter today from my distinguished colleague and friend, Drew Lewis, the chairman of Union Pacific Corp., dated April 27. He is a former Secretary of Transportation. He did an outstanding job. I do not speak in criticism or derision. Rather, I speak--and this is the factual dismay that I have--because I know he knows better. It is a short letter and I know why he is writing it. Union Pacific urges your support for S. 565, the Product Liability Fairness Act legislation. The U.S. legal system is out of control. The high cost of litigation and large damage awards translate into higher prices for consumers. Typically less than half the money awarded in product liability cases goes to compensate the claimant. The winner is the trial attorney, not the American consumer. If American business is going to succeed in the global marketplace and American jobs are to grow, your vote is critical. Please vote for cloture and final passage of S. 565. Sincerely, Drew. Let us take that little letter here and see it exactly. I know this gentleman knows better. He is the most sophisticated of former public servants and corporate executives and he has been around. I know his entities. The Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers and all got him to write this thing and it was ground out. He calls it the ``Fairness Act.'' He picked up the title. That is not what they called it over on the House side. It started off--if you get the title of the bill itself on the desk here, you will find out--``To establish legal standards and procedures for product liability litigation.'' At least it was straightforward in the House. Applesauce in the U.S. Senate. Fairness? Fair to whom? Not consumers. This crowd does not represent consumers. I have; they have not. When I asked the distinguished Chair where was the record here whereby trial lawyers had done in their clients, under the Abraham amendment, he had one letter from a constituent in Michigan. I knew that there were not a big wave of clients being done in. In fact, had it not been for the trial lawyers, they would not have received anything. After all, these manufacturers do have a team of attorneys, investigators, adjusters, local attorneys and otherwise, and they readily, on any kind of claim or letter they get, immediately zoom in and, generally speaking, settle the case or claim. It is good business judgment that they do; it is good business judgment they do. They do not want to be claimed to have unsafe products. It is only when they deny an obvious claim that should be compensated that it comes to the trial lawyers. We do not scare up cases--except, of course, in these class action suits, like asbestosis. But that is what had to be done. That is exactly what was done with respect to the example of the Senator from Michigan in his letter with the Senator from Kentucky relative to the airlines. They had to go and get all the airlines together, get law firms all over the country, and assemble 2.1 million clients. In the letter to the colleagues, under the Abraham-McConnell letter, it appeared that, heavens above, quoting the Washington Post, the lawyers got $16.1 million in fees and the client got a $25 gift certificate for travel. I knew that the client just getting $25 and the lawyer getting $16 million would not be approved by any court. So we went back to the record. Yes, in a class action of that kind, what was the number of clients? It was 2.1 million. What was the amount of the verdict? It was $438 million. How many law firms? They had 37 law firms all over the country, and the average fee was not a third, or 33\1/3\ percent, or 25 percent, or 20 percent, or 10 percent, or 5 percent, or 1 percent. The average fee of the attorneys involved was less--less than 1 percent. Had they not correlated all that, it would not look so garish and enormous to us unstudied witnesses here. But this is the Fairness Act, they say. Then the next sentence, ``The United States legal system is out of control.'' That is sheer nonsense. If it is out of control, it is on account of businesses suing businesses. It certainly is not a litigation explosion. We have proved that. We have proved time and again that product liability cases, as the Senator from West Virginia, the principal sponsor of the measure, says--when we engaged in looking at product liability cases, we find the entity in the testimony before the Commerce Committee, unquestioned--no one has proved otherwise-- unquestioned, that there are less filings and less verdicts and less plaintiffs' victories all the way across the board. So if the legal system is out of control, it is out of control for other reasons but not product liability. ``The high cost of litigation and large damage awards translate into higher prices for consumers.'' I just reread that my way: The high cost of litigation and large damage awards translate into higher safety for the consuming public of America. That is what it translates into. And it ought to go into the costs. It is a minimal cost to them to put out safe products. And the best of manufacturers want to do that and they brag about the quality now of their particular manufacture. They brag about their quality of manufacture. So it is not high cost translating into high prices but, let us say, a higher degree of safety. product liability cases goes to compensate * * *'' We find that is incorrect. There was a study by the National Insurance Foundation to the effect that, yes, the claimant did not get the majority of the money, but the majority of the money was going to the defendants' attorneys. You ought to see these billable hours. That is why the Senator from South Carolina wanted to limit billable hours around this town to $50 an hour. I could catch the thrust of the movement earlier last week, when they came in, about the money going to the claimant as compared to the money going to attorneys. And the thrust was that they had given up on Girl Scout cookies and they have given up now on Little League baseball and all these other things they tried to raise, competitiveness and otherwise. Now they say, ``Well, let us kill all the lawyers.'' I say, if you want to get rid of half the 60,000 lawyers in this town, if you want to get rid of 30,000 lawyers, just put not a minimum wage but put a maximum wage, a maximum wage of $50 an hour which will give them the salary of a U.S. Senator. If they worked any overtime, like we do work overtime as Senators, they could easily make $200,000 a year. But that is where the compensation is going. It is just like the situation, if you had a $100 finding, you would find that $40 would go to the defendant's attorneys, $20 would go to the plaintiff's attorneys, and $40 to the claimant. (Mr. THOMPSON assumed the Chair).

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the rationale of this simple statement is get rid of or kill all of the lawyers; get rid of the trial lawyers because--the next sentence is--``The winner is the trial attorney, not the American consumer.'' If you think this crowd is interested in consumers, just get all the consumer legislation and look at their votes on that. But going right back to the report, in the 103d Congress, I knew we had this when we had the hearings. In a 1977 survey conducted by the Insurance Services Office, for every dollar paid to claimants, insurers paid an average of an additional 42 cents in defense costs; while for every dollar awarded to a plaintiff, the plaintiff pays an average contingent fee of 33 cents of that dollar. Thus, in cases in which the plaintiffs prevail, out of each $1.42 spent on litigation, half of that goes to attorney fees, with the defendants' attorneys on average paid better than the plaintiffs' attorneys. That is the national insurance consumer organization finding that the attorney for the insurance companies received on the average close to one-third more than the average attorney's fee paid to plaintiffs' attorneys. I am glad I quoted that for the record, but that is not the way this letter reads. ``The winner is the trial attorney.'' We are not winners or losers. But if you are going to characterize, as my distinguished friend, Mr. Drew Lewis, does here in the letter about the winner, he says, ``The winner is the trial attorney, not the American consumer.'' Absolutely false. We have all the facts and all the hearings proving otherwise. Going now to the final two sentences, ``If American business is going to succeed in the global marketplace, and American jobs are to grow, your vote is critical.'' What is the inference there? The inference regarding the global marketplace is that product liability costs and the burden on American production is a cost and a burden not suffered by foreign production. We will go right to the heart of that matter. In addition, working over the years--and I have had a delightful experience, I have to immodestly acknowledge, with respect to the attraction of industry to my own State, and I will be glad to meet with anybody and we will compare the records. We will compare the endeavor, and we will compare the results. I have had the experience of working at the local level on the attraction not only of the American blue chip corporations, but those in the global marketplace. Admittedly, of course, many of the blue chips are in the global marketplace. But let us go directly to the ones we know. Let us say German industries and Japanese industries. In our great State of South Carolina, we have over 100 German industries. I made the first trip over there with the Governors, to the various communities in Germany, with an industrial group to attract investment in South Carolina in 1960. So that is 35 years ago. We just got, of course, BMW. BMW, by the way, in Spartanburg, stands not for Bavarian Motor Works, but BMW stands for ``Bubba Makes Wheels.'' We have a wonderful system down there. I was with the Vice President this last Friday at a luncheon. We put out 20,000 and some BMW automobiles this year from Spartanburg, SC. Do they have a problem with product liability? Not at all. I went to Bosch not long ago. They came in making fuel injectors for all automobile manufacturers, and more particularly now have become expert in antilock brake manufacture. They have a 10-year contract with General Motors for all the antilock brakes on their cars. They have the contract for Toyota and Mercedes Benz. I turned to that manufacturer. I said, ``What about product liability? How many product liability claims?'' He said, ``What is that?'' I said, ``Product liability? You know, where you have a defective antilock?'' ``Oh, no, no, no,'' he said, ``We will not have that.'' He went right over on the line and he picked up one of the antilock brake devices. He said, ``See. See that serial number.'' He said, ``We have a serial number on every antilock brake that comes out of this factory. We would know immediately by that number if there was a defect where it occurred. But we haven't had any of that occur down here, and we are not going to have any of that occur.'' And he was proud--proud--not whining and crying through political representation up here in the national Congress about saving consumers money. He was proud of putting out an absolutely safe product. Can you imagine one of those antilock brakes not working and the other three working on an automobile? It would turn it over into a tailspin in a minute. They know it. So they are super careful in their manufacture. That goes into the cost of the product. And, yes, it costs consumers, and consumers welcome paying that higher price for the antilock brake and safety. Mr. President, it goes to the safety, not the cost. But what happens in Germany? In Germany, they come with Mercedes Benz down in Alabama where, incidentally, both Alabama Senators are opposed to this bill. Both Alabama Senators are opposed to this bill. Mercedes Benz says, ``We love Alabama, and we are putting our new manufacturer down there.'' BMW says, ``We love South Carolina and its product liability law,'' just like Mercedes Benz likes Alabama's product liability law, and they put a factory there. I have over 100 German factories liking the product liability law in my State. I have over 50 Japanese industries liking the product liability law in my State. But they are not a member of the Business Roundtable. So what you have here is this mailing out of absolutely unfounded conclusions, which is an embarrassment to this Senator. Specifically, you look at what they put out in their advertisements when it comes to punitive damages and product liability. Here is the ad they are running in newspapers. This is an easy one to carry. It is entitled, ``Let's Put an End to the Lawsuit Lottery.'' You know, my conservative friends, when they get this rap music, say, ``You have to cut out that rap music. It teaches violence.'' There was one that I remember even President Clinton as a candidate took to task, about ``kill all the cops,'' the ``cop-killer'' one. He complained then. The American public went along with him and voted for candidate Clinton to become President because those words mean something. They want to cut all of that out. Now that they are blowing up buildings in America, and some people say, ``Oh, no. Words don't mean anything.'' The truth of the matter is, Mr. President, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have a school where they teach them to use words. I think this is a good time, since this is the thrust of the measure here, if I have it here in one of these files. With respect to the words, they come in and they hold a school. I know they attend a school, these newcomers to public office. I will see if I cannot find that, generally speaking, so that the colleagues can be educated about what is really going on. But this is a school that the distinguished Speaker has been running for know when a new Republican is elected from South Carolina, he has to attend a school to find out how to talk. And, in fact, if they can get them ahead of time, they tell them how to campaign and how to use words that inflame, words that stir up. It was put into the Record some time ago; I think back in 1990, if I am not mistaken. But we had the meaningful words. I certainly would like to be able to refer to that, because what happens is that they call this--that is, the Government here in Washington, and this is reported in the David Broder column. They reported that the Government in Washington is the ``corrupt, liberal, welfare state.'' These are the handouts in the schools that they give to my Republican colleagues and say you ought to all join in. And they list the word ``corrupt.'' They list the word ``liberal.'' They list the word ``welfare.'' So the revolution, according to Speaker Gingrich in his courses, is against the corrupt, liberal welfare State. And that is the way they refer to it. Mr. President, let us go to the words here about the lawsuit lottery. There is not any lottery, I can tell you that right now. All you have to do, if you defend a product liability case, is convince one juror. That is all you have to do, raise a doubt in one juror's mind because it has to be a unanimous verdict by the greater weight of the preponderance of the evidence. But here is the mailout that they put in the advertisements that they have going now for the past several weeks. ``Let's Put an End to the Lawsuit Lottery. It's sad,'' this article says, the advertisement, ``but the civil justice system in America has become nothing more than a legal lottery.'' That is outrageous nonsense. It is embarrassing to see things being sponsored by responsible business entities that have buddied up together here in what they call the Product Liability Coordinating Committee. It goes on to read, ``With juries returning one outrageous award after another, it's not surprising that the number of product liability suits is skyrocketing.'' Absolutely false. We have had hearings upon hearings upon hearings, and the filings and the suits themselves are less and less each year. The awards given are less and less and the number of plaintiff victories are less and less. But this ad says they have skyrocketed--no basis in fact. ``There are 51 separate laws, one for each State and the District of Columbia, governing product liability.'' There are 51 separate laws, Mr. President, governing insurance companies. Do you see them up here complaining? They have to file every one of their policies they want to sell in any one of the States. Get these casualty companies together and ask them when are they going to complain about filing all of these policies here, 50 to 60 different policies that they have now, in each one of the 50 States. They are not complaining about that. In fact, they want the McCarran-Ferguson antitrust exemption so they can get together. They want to continue. I have suggested maybe we ought to federalize it because they are in interstate commerce. ``Oh, no, no, no, we don't want that. We don't want you to see our records.'' We have had hearings upon hearings upon hearings. We never, in the 15-year period of handling this problem, have been able to get from the casualty insurance companies their costs and profits, their records. Even the Senator from West Virginia has put on an amendment, which I am constrained to submit later on when we get to the actual bill itself, to say that they file these reports. They never have. They do not want to. The reason we asked for these facts way back almost 15 years ago, they said it was impossible to obtain insurance, impossible to obtain. They have plenty of insurance. It is easily obtainable. And we wanted to find out, as was later found out in other hearings, if they, like the S&L's and all, had made bad investments in real estate and where their losses came from--not from a product liability litigation explosion but, rather, sorry investments in real estate and supermarket and shopping center developments. They made the same mistake that all of these banks and insurance companies and savings and loan institutions had made. But this says 51 separate laws. If you did not know what you were reading, you would say, ``Good golly, Moses; let's get uniformity.'' They do not want uniformity even under this. If they wanted uniformity, they would give you a Federal cause of action. That is why, one of the big reasons, the American Bar Association says this adds complexity; this is not uniformity. You have words of art: requirements, findings, measures of evidence, exemptions of evidence, all to be interpreted by 50 separate supreme courts and the circuit court of appeals here in the District of Columbia. Now, try that on for a lawyers' full employment act. Come on. Everyone knows that if they really wanted uniformity, they would have required a Federal cause of action and they would have uniformity and that would have at least cut down on some of the multiplicities--the appeals, the interpretations, the motions and everything else of that kind in the 51 separate laws and separate jurisdictions governing product liability. ``But today the outcome of a lawsuit can depend more on geography than the merits of the case.'' They know that. Their commercial code, the Uniform Commercial Code, is anything but uniform. You can sit up there in New York. You can sell a product made in Canada and solicit down in Alabama and deliver it, by gosh, to the factory site in North Carolina, and you can say, ``Under my interpretation of this particular contract, I select the New York law.'' You have got what they talk about, forum shopping. The manufacturers do just that. They know about that. But unless you have diversity of jurisdiction--and I do not go over to Alabama, I never have heard of a South Carolina lawyer going over and suing in Alabama. They act like all we have to do is go over there and file the case in Alabama. ``The current product liability system with its patchwork of local laws''--patchwork. Who has given us patchwork? Read this bill. ``* * * with its patchwork of local laws got its start at the turn of the century when businesses were all so local, but times have changed.'' They are trying to give a sense of history to this. This is absolutely false. During my 20 years of law practice before I came to the Senate, I never heard of any of this, ever. And they continue to do business under different laws in the 50 different States under the interstate commerce clause and it is not about times have changed. ``American-made products now travel across State lines''--well, they have always traveled across State lines. I will never forget Henry Grady and the funeral in the days just after the Civil War. The Senator from Tennessee would remember it. I think they said that he was a poor man, buried, let us say, in South Carolina. He was buried with a New Jersey frock and some New York shoes, and the buttons were made in Minnesota, the wood for the shovel had come from New Hampshire, the steel had come from Pennsylvania, and they went on and on down there about the caskets and all. They said the only thing South Carolina furnished was the hole in the ground. Now, tell me about traveling in the different States. That is Henry Grady 100 years ago. They say no, times have changed now and all products travel across State lines. ``Unfortunately, so do plaintiffs and their lawyers seeking the most favorable State for their claim.'' Unless you have diversity, you do not run around and seek anything of that kind. And you have the client in the community where the client is injured. I can tell you now, having tried these cases, that you go try it in the vicinity of the client where they can understand and know the injury and we might get a friend on the jury or an acquaintance or whatever it is. Sometimes the blind hog picks up an acorn. You might get a break. If I go to another State, that immediately cuts me down to next to nothing with respect to the fee, if I have to go and get the lawyers who know the local law there, let us say, if I went to Birmingham, AL, I would have to give all the moneys to the lawyers in Birmingham. I am not a passthrough for lawyers in Birmingham. I am trying my clients' cases in my own State. ``Unfortunately, so do plaintiffs and their lawyers seeking the most favorable state for their claim. This not only hurts competitiveness, it stifles innovation, eliminates jobs and hurts all Americans. How can we stop the lawsuit lottery? We need a uniform, modern national product liability law. But it's time for Congress to act. When it comes to the lawsuit lottery no one wins. They do not say that for automobile accident cases, where there is a far, far higher number of different laws, different highway speed laws, degrees of care, comparative negligence, contributory negligence, go right on down the list, all the automobile accident cases and, in this case, automobile product liability cases. They do not say that here with respect to medical malpractice or the securities or anything else. Then they have a little thing like they are even trying to mimic Oliphant: ``Less than half of all money awarded in a lawsuit goes to the victim.'' Like they are for the victim. It is clever. But it is outrageous blasphemy, I can tell you right now, to put this kind of thing out to the unknowing public and perhaps to the unknowing Congressman and Senator. We know better. What we have is a solution looking for a problem. What we have here is trying to find justification for a lobbying effort that has been going on with the AMA, the Business Roundtable, and the Conference Board for 15 years, where they seek out the candidates and ask for a commitment and, generally speaking, get that commitment without any hearing. And certainly if they are newcomers to this particular Senate, they have not had any hearings in the Commerce Committee. We had 2 days because we were told we had to agree to it, because we had to move, we had to catch up with the Contract With America. We did not have hearings in depth. We had them by reference. I had to include other hearings that we had with respect to the law professors that oppose this measure, with respect not only to the American Bar Association now but the American Bar Association in each one of the five hearings that we had over the 15-year period, and all the other entities that went into depth on this matter. And that is what they hope to do here with this fix that is on in the U.S. Senate. And do not come up with, ``Oh, we are looking out for consumers.'' They have the audacity in the same instrument here to say they look out for consumers when they exempt the manufacturers. The unmitigated gall of that provision is just so offensive it gets me stirred up. How we ever got good, right-thinking folks on the floor of the U.S. Senate proposing this measure, saying that they are proposing it for the consumer, I do not know. Show me that consumer. What is that saying--``Let them come to Berlin.'' Well, show me that consumer. Heavens above. The Consumer Federation, Consumers Union, Public Citizen, all the consumer groups again appear in opposition to this particular measure, particularly with respect to punitive damages. One more time. On punitive damages, go ahead and cite your two or three little cases that sound outrageous. I do not have the time to run down and search out every one of the cases to find out whether the amount of the verdict was cut, whether it was changed. Just like the McDonald's coffee case. Once we searched that out, we found out, yes, there were third-degree burns over one-sixth of the injured woman's body, 3 weeks in the hospital. After 700 calls and an offer to settle for $20,000, they totally ignored it and said we put this in the cost of the product, because the hotter we make the coffee, the more coffee we produce. It is money, money that concerns these manufacturers on product liability. That is the one thing, the bottom line. It is not the safety of the citizenry in America, but it is the money that they are interested in. But of all the product liability cases, what we have found, as they sum up over the last 30 years, is some $1.333 billion. One verdict in business suing business, Pennzoil versus Texaco, a $3 billion punitive damages finding in just one case, is twice the number of the consummate sum total of all product liability punitive findings in the last 30 years. Or take Exxon Valdez, another $3 billion in punitive damages. At the court level, I do not think the courts of this land have gone crazy. They have been all the way up to the Supreme Court to question the constitutionality of punitive damages. And each State either avoided it or it is measured or it is rescinded and sent back with a cut or total elimination. Look under the steps that I have read here with respect to the South Carolina law. I can go down some other States laws if they are interested. As a matter of punishment, we spank the baby when the baby misbehaves, that crowd that wants the family bill. What we are trying to do is spank the manufacturer when the manufacturer misbehaves and tell them, ``Don't repeat this. Don't you do this again.'' And when you tell that manufacturer, you have to look at his size, you have to look at his income, you have to look at his culpability, you have to look at his willfulness, whether it was mere neglect or whether it was a willful act, whether they had any warnings or disregarded or heeded the particular warnings, whether it was a mistake or exactly what. And you have to prove all that by the greater weight of the preponderance of the evidence to all 12 jurors and to the trial judge. I yield the floor. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Washington. I mention once again the Girl Scouts, because I want to try to clean up the Record here. What I will read here is the Associated Press report: When advocates of tort reform went looking for sympathetic symbols, they thought they had found a winner--the Girl Scouts of America. The story spread quickly among tort reform lobbyists and their supporters on Capitol Hill, and it was compelling. Girl Scouts in the Nation's Capitol have to sell 87,000 boxes of cookies each year just to cover the cost of their liability insurance. The lobbying and public relations machinery went into high gear. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce produced a radio ad using the information, and a business coalition began planning a television spot showing a Girl Scout trudging door to door with a basket of Thin Mints and S'Mores. But when the Girl Scouts got wind of it, they called a halt. The 87,000-box statistic was undocumented, they said. The Girl Scouts do not consider damage suits much of a problem. The local council in Washington has never been sued, and the National Accounting Organization takes no position on tort reform legislation. ``They found an easy and emotional issue that they could get hold of,'' said Sandra Jordan, spokeswoman for the Washington Area Girl Scouts. People will take a sound bite on easy image over hard information. Therein, Mr. President, is my position in referring not only to Girl Scouts, but to the sound bites here with respect to ``Let's put an end to the lawsuit lottery.'' Now, we are not talking about product liability reform or uniformity or, more correctly, any kind of abuses of the law. They immediately call it a lottery and skyrocket, and all these words that have been used; ``The lottery wins, and the consumer loses,'' and that kind of thing. I referred a moment ago to the matters of words with respect to these words being used here. I know some in this Congress are very sensitive about it. However, it has had its effect. A former colleague here had introduced this, and we had it received otherwise back in 1990, because I am referring to the one who is disassociating himself from his GOPAC movement, because here is a GOPAC movement that I will read out, and I will say how it has had an effect in my State with respect to the Government being the enemy. This is a GOPAC letter, signed by Newt Gingrich, and it is addressed: Dear friend: The enclosed tape is another in the regular series of GOPAC audio cassettes, but is more than just another tape. This is a special lecture I delivered just a few weeks ago on August 22, 1990, to the third-generation group at the Heritage Foundation. I am sending you this tape in the belief that it contains a timely and extraordinary message that could be of help to you in the coming months. While most activists and legislative candidates are not asked to give your views on Iraq, the Mideast crisis, the budget conference, and the state of the economy, it is critical that you have the tools available that will help you take the offensive and define the agenda of the campaign based on our values rather than falling into the trap of merely answering the news releases. I have also included a new document entitled ``Language, a Key Mechanism of Control,'' drafted by GOPAC political director Tom Morgan. The words in that paper attest to language from a recent series of focus groups where we actually tested ideas and language. I hope this proves useful in writing speeches and other campaign communications. My personal wish for the best of luck in your campaign and everything else. Then, the GOPAC language is here, ``A Key Mechanism of Control.'' As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that language matters. I will repeat that sentence. Here is the Speaker himself now saying back 5 years ago, practically: As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that language matters. In the video ``We Are a Majority,'' language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party along with gender, rules, attitude, and learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates, we have heard a plaintive plea: ``I wish I could speak like Newt.'' That takes years of practice, but we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign in the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases. This list is prepared that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that, like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used. While the list could be the size of the latest college edition dictionary, we have attempted to keep it small enough to be readily useful yet large enough to be broadly functional. The list is divided into two sections, the optimistic governing words to help describe your vision, contrasting words to help you clearly define the policies and record of your opponent in the Democratic Party. Then, ``Please let us know of your suggestions.'' Now, Mr. President, listen to these words amongst others. We will put them all in the Record: Sick, lie, liberal, betray, traitors, devour, corrupt, corruption, cheat, steal, criminal rights. I ran into this in my campaign for reelection in 1992. I never heard such expressions before, and I wondered where in the world my opponent was getting all these blase references and words that really, in my judgment, were out of order. Now let us bring it up to date in two instances. The Speaker himself uses these words. You look in David Broder's column here just about 10 days ago and you will see where Speaker Gingrich, talking of his revolution, says we have a revolution against the Washington Government. But he does not call it the Washington Government. He calls it--and he has the buzz words, the key words, ``the corrupt, liberal welfare state.'' If these are not inflammatory, I do not know what are. They have had that effect in my State of South Carolina. I went home to a 600-member State Chamber of Commerce seminar where they bring in the congressional delegation and we answer these questions as they go along. It so happened the distinguished colleague from the 4th district in Greenville, SC, Bob Inglis, had answered a question and ended up by saying: Yes, abolish the Departments of Commerce, Education, Energy and Housing. My turn came immediately afterwards and I said: Wait a minute. You don't mean to say that the Chamber of Commerce wants to do away with the Department of Commerce? Yes. Yes. A good number of them, I would say, a fifth of them, started smiling and putting their hands together. And I said to Dick Riley, the former Governor, popular Governor, Secretary of Education--he was there and I said: Dick Reilly, do you want to do away with the Department of Education? Yes, yes, yes. And HUD and Energy both? All four of them? Yes. Half of them clapping and all, standing up. That is what is happening about this ``corrupt, liberal welfare state.'' They feel, irrespective of the functions and the need for these various departments, that the dickens with it. ``The Government is the enemy,'' they say. ``Get rid of the Government. That is the only way. Tear it down, rip it out. Abandon it, abolish it. And then let us start all over again and to be sure none,'' as they say, ``get corrupted. Be sure nobody serves over 6 years, or 12 years in this body.'' That is what you have going on in this land. I can tell you here and now, words do count. And they count with respect to this, which is a total mislead as to the actual hearings, the facts that we had loses, and about the rights of consumers and everything else. It is entirely different. It is the safety of consumers. It is the defendants' lawyers on billable hours that are winning, sitting up there just grinding out, trying their own case. It is a matter not of a lottery but a sworn jury to listen to the facts, reviewed by the trial judge and reviewed by the appellate court. And all back to the issue at hand, punitive damages, a sum total of $1.333 billion, the whole sum total of all punitive damage findings in the last 30 years, which is less than half of one business verdict against another business verdict in punitive damages, in two cases, not only the Pennzoil case but in the Exxon case. I yield the floor. Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I turned on the TV in the office and was amused to see a series of whining and moaning and groaning with respect to punitive damages. This contract crowd is going in two different directions. Under the contract now, the welfare recipient is to show more responsibility. Under the contract, we have a family. They do not want Government in anything, but they want it in everything. They want it in the family. I would think that would be the last thing, to get into the family. But the contract crowd wants a family bill. And, of course, fundamental to the family is that we punish the child when it misbehaves. We spank the baby and teach it some discipline when it misbehaves and teach it how to do right as opposed to doing wrong. But when it comes to large corporate America and manufacturers, there should be no spanking. All of a sudden, it costs consumers. Mr. President, whoever thought for a second that this bill is in the interests of consumers? It is the biggest fraud that ever tried to be perpetrated on this august body. Every consumer organization in the United States of any size, care, or responsibility is absolutely opposed to the bill. And with regard to the better legal minds of the American Bar Association, the State supreme court justices and their Conference of Chief Justices of the several State supreme courts, the Conference of State legislatures, the attorneys general, oh, yes, they are going to look out for them? Uh-uh, no, they are looking out for manufacturers. Look at the section in here that exempts the manufacturer. They have all of these great provisions in here because they say they are so concerned about consumers, except when you mention manufacturers. They say, by the way, manufacturers should be exempt from this bill. Now, come on. I will read several things about punitive damages, and I will go right to the heart of the issue. It is not saving consumers' pocketbooks and costs. This crowd knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. The truth of the matter is on account of product liability in this country of ours, we have the safest products and we are saving our citizenry from injury, from maiming, from blindness, from being killed over and over again by the millions. Why do you think there were over 19 million car recalls in the last 10 years? We went to the Department of Transportation and we summed up all these automobile recalls. And if you think the big automobile companies--not only in the United States, but Toyota in Japan, and others--are recalling defective automobiles to save consumers money--they are doing it to save themselves money on account of product liability, because they are going to get nailed. And so to save themselves money, they save lives and injury to the consuming public. It is not the pocketbook that we are involved with here. On the contrary, it is the safety of products and the safety of our citizenry. So let us quit bringing all of these cases, one by one, out here, and say, oh, what a terrible punitive damage verdict this is and thereby we have a national problem. Not so. The States have handled this. And rather than going into this case or that case--I do not countenance for a second that there are not some mistakes. There are mistakes everywhere in the administration of the law. That does not call for national legislation. But, in a general sense, if you take all the product liability verdicts in the last 30 years--and this is what we asked when we saw the witness take the stand in the Commerce Committee. We asked Jonathan S. Massey, an expert who had defended punitive damages before the U.S. Supreme Court, allegedly the most experienced attorney. I said, yes, but I still get these anecdotal incidents of what we would call outrageous punitive damage findings. I said, ``Could you please go and get into the record exactly all the punitive damage verdicts for the last 30 years, since 1965, and find out just exactly how many there were, and what were the amendments and then add them all up?'' With respect to that, I ask unanimous consent to have this material printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I want to join in the comments of our distinguished colleague from North Dakota along the line of the difficulty with respect to the budget, and then let me also address Medicare and some of the comments made recently. I ask unanimous consent that a document released last January on the realities of truth in budgeting be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, in this particular document, I went as seriously in purpose as I possibly could to try my dead-level best to do what the contract said. As you well know, Mr. President, I have voted for and supported a balanced budget. I voted for one in 1968 and 1969. As chairman of the Budget Committee, we cut the deficit materially. I opposed the tax cuts of President Reagan and favored the spending cuts, which was very costly to me politically. But I knew we had to do it. I knew what the problem was. I, thereupon, recommended a freeze when our friend, Senator Howard Baker, was the majority leader, and we worked on that. I later worked, of course, with Senator Gramm and Senator Rudman on Gramm-Rudman- Hollings, where we sequestered, cut right straight across the board, reduced the deficit for awhile, and fought like a tiger at 12:41 a.m., October 19, 1990, when they repealed Gramm-Rudman-Hollings on that point of order, with Senator Gramm voting to repeal it. And I have been disillusioned by that. But I had tried the freeze; I tried the cuts. And then, under President Bush, talking with his OMB Director, Dick Darman, I said to Dick, ``If you can get President Bush to go along now, we will have to have not only the spending cuts, the spending freezes, the elimination of tax loopholes, but we need revenues to get on top of this.'' Because I will show in later debate where President Reagan got us the first $100 billion deficit and the first $200 billion. President Bush got us the first $300 billion deficit and the first $400 billion deficit. And I will show that by actual record. As I have said, we have to get on top of this monster. I testified before the Finance Committee for a value-added tax. So I put this particular item that I have referred to in the Record just once again to justify my capacity and sincerity to talk on this particular point. Because I listed the very, very difficult task that was confronting us whereby, in a line, you are not going to save that much in entitlements and welfare reform and health reform or Social Security or defense, but rather you are going to have to look for domestic discretionary spending. And to put us on a glidepath that first year, you had to cut $37 billion in domestic discretionary spending and even then, you would not accomplish it because interest costs grows this year by $43 billion. So like ``Alice in Wonderland,'' in order to stay where you are, you have to run as fast as you can; in order to get ahead, you have to run even faster. So it is a far, far more serious problem. And the talk about tax cuts, that is out of the whole cloth. Everybody likes tax cuts. I joined with Senator Feingold from Wisconsin earlier this year in saying forget about cutting the revenues. The problem is you need revenues, because we have spending on automatic pilot. I can tell you here and now, irrespective of what they are saying, as we talk this particular day, May 2, 1995, we have spent another $1 billion. And tomorrow, we will spend another $1 billion; Thursday, another $1 billion; and Friday another $1 billion; and Saturday, another $1 billion; and Sunday, another $1 billion, just in interest costs, on automatic pilot. How do you get on top of this monster? Well, you have to do all the above going to take politics. I want to make reference now to the statement just made by the Senator from North Dakota about Medicare, because we hear a lot of whooping and wailing about Medicare and, above all, about the President of the United States. Now, heavens above, if there is one thing--and I think President William Jefferson Clinton has been blamed for everything up here--but if there is one thing that President Clinton cannot be blamed for, that is any deficit in Medicare-Medicaid. He was back home in Little Rock, AR, when we were up here creating these deficits. So let us not blame the President. Moreover, let us not blame him since he has come to town. He put this as the No. 1 issue. They are talking about AWOL now. I am going to get to this point. Here is the gentleman they talk about being AWOL. He came to town with health care reform as his No. 1 interest and issue. Along with that, he submitted a cut of $125 billion. And the then- chairman of our Finance Committee was the distinguished Senator from New York, Senator Moynihan. He described that as fantasy. And Senator Packwood, the ranking member, joined in with him--a $125 billion cut was fantasy. It just could not be done. But we worked on it. And we worked on spending cuts. We worked on controlling entitlements, and we worked on tax increases. And, yes, we came up, finally, with a plan that year with all three of them, without a single, single, single Republican vote in either the Senate or the U. S. House of Representatives. We reduced the deficit some $500 billion. We eliminated over 100,000 Government jobs. We increased taxes on gasoline, liquor, and cigarettes. We increased taxes even on Social Security. And, finally, we did get an agreement, after hard work, of a $56 billion cut in Medicare. Now, remember, in the last 24 hours, we have heard AWOL: The President is AWOL; took a walk; waved the flag of surrender; AWOL. Here was a President who led and got his Vice President over and all to get the necessary votes so we could get those cuts in Medicare. Thereupon, the President came last year with another $80 billion in cuts, along with health care reform, and what did they do? They rebuffed him and beat up on him and ridiculed the First Lady. But she worked, and, agree or disagree, you could not say that Hillary Rodham Clinton was AWOL or that William Jefferson Clinton was AWOL. Now what they want to do, Mr. President--and this is the interesting thing and I am going to include this in the Record--they wanted the President of the United States to do all the dirty work, all the cuts. I want to show you the Dole-Domenici alternative entitled ``Because Government, Not People, Should Be the First to Sacrifice.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Dole-Domenici alternative be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, this is the Dole-Domenici alternative budget they put up in March 1993. The language is: ``Accept all proposed mandatory and discretionary cuts, $241 billion.'' They not only accepted the President's cuts but on top of that they capped non- Social Security mandatory spending--a cap on Medicare and Medicaid. So they could go to the 1994 election and say, ``Look at what they have done. The President wants to cut your Medicare.'' And in 1994, here is what they had. This one is entitled ``GOP Alternative Deficit Reduction and Tax Relief, Slashing the Deficit, Cutting Middle-Class Taxes.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print the GOP alternative in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, now we have in March of last year: ``Accept the President's proposed reduction in the Medicare program, and index the Part B deductible. Total Medicare savings would reach $80 billion over the next 5 years.'' So there is a conscious awareness in the distinguished majority leader when he talks of the President being AWOL on Medicare. Rather than being AWOL, he has been wounded in the front lines while these others have been all back in the barracks and not even attending the battle. In fact, back in the barracks, the cattle call was what we needed was portability so you can carry your coverage from job to job-- a little bit of this, that and the other, just some minor adjustments-- why is there all this problem, there is no real problem in medical coverage in America. Now it is a crisis. When? In 2002. I am trying to get by tomorrow. I am trying to stop spending a billion dollars a day today, tomorrow, and the next day. If I can stop doing that, I can get on top of the problems in the year 2002. But to come forward at this particular time and run all over the national TV talking about taking a walk and going AWOL when the poor fellow has been ground into the ground, he has been totally rebuffed. He has tried and fought the good fight. So now they come with all of this ``Let's have bipartisanship.'' They would not give us a single vote, and now they want to get bipartisan, now they want to get commissions, now we are AWOL because we are ready to try to put the truth to their so-called contract. The rubber is now meeting the road, and if you look at that contract, Mr. President, talking about Medicare and AWOL, who shoots the troops out there on the front line, the Medicare troops? The contract does, for the simple reason that we in raising Social Security taxes--and this Senator voted to raise Social Security taxes--we raised 25 billion bucks and allocated it to Medicare. And what does the contract call for? Abolish that tax and not give the $25 billion, rather let us shoot the Medicare troops and add to the Medicare deficit. Do not come with your contract and tell me how serious you are about this deficit and all the costs of Medicare. Then you say, oh, by the way, that problem that the President said for 2 years was the principal cause of the deficit and you shot him down, the President is AWOL. You know it. It was adopted momentarily by the distinguished majority leader, because one of these alternatives says ``the GOP alternative,'' and I take it the majority of the GOP certainly was for it in March of last year. It is in the Record. Read it. And now you say that the President is AWOL, he does not even know the problem and he will not come front and center. He has used good common sense, as they call it, commonsense budgets, or whatever is supposed to be common sense around here. He used common sense on this one. He has tried and fought the good fight. But to be accused, of all things, of being AWOL when they come with a contract trying to increase the Medicare deficit some 25 billion bucks and saying those who have led the fight since they have been in office and never caused any of it are AWOL. The President has been in the front lines leading the battle and fighting the fight. My suggestion is they get out of the barracks and get out there on the line themselves and put out the full meaning of their so-called deficit reduction package. On that score, I have been the chairman of the Budget Committee, and I have been the ranking member of the Budget Committee. I have worked on it since 1974, the only remaining Member of either the House or the Senate who has been on it all that time. And I can tell you here and now, in trying to get prompt consideration so the authorizing committees would know what to do and how to do it, we finally put into law that you had the budget out of the committee by April 1 and passed the Senate and passed both Houses by April 15 the concurrent resolution. As of this minute, we have not met to discuss--we had some cursory hearings the first of the year--but we have not met in 2 months on this budget. They do not even call a meeting. They do not call a discussion. And yet they have the audacity to run around here as leaders and talk about people being AWOL on Medicare and Medicaid. We have done our best, and we will continue to do our best. But if they want to get any kind of following, they are not going to get any following out of this Senator as long as they continue these political shenanigans. They know it and everybody else knows it. I hope the press will report it, because that is all they do now. They treat it like a spectator sport up here and just avoid dealing with the real issue. I have pointed out the virtual impossibility of attaining--what Chairman Kasich says on the other side--a balanced budget by the year 2002 without taxes. They can be put on notice, now that I am speaking, that I will join with them on any plan they have so long as it includes revenue. The reason I say that is because I have tried it every other way--and I am not dumb enough now, having struggled with this thing for 20 years on the Budget Committee with half a haircut. I do not want a little bit here in cuts and a little bit here and a halfway going there and saying, oh, we are going to save $170 billion in interest costs by 2002 and give $170 billion over to the Finance Committee so they can give a middle class tax cut, and beginning to play politics that way. We do not have the money. We are borrowing every day to keep this Government going. They put a bunch of numbers down on paper, then they all wink at each other and say, ``Well, who is going to be here in 2002?'' We can project it just as economists have projected it. We can put it down in black and white when we all know differently. If you are going for a real budget deficit reduction, by having the Government operating in the black by the year 2002, you have my vote. We will give, and take, all the way around because I am committed to the spending cuts and what have you, but not overall, unless you are going to agree to have the revenues. I put in a 5 percent value added tax because it is needed. But you have to have substantial revenues and not tax cuts for middle class and capital gains and family cuts and all these other kinds of things that they have in, just to buy the 1996 election. No half a haircut for me. If you want to have truth in budgeting, then you have my cooperation and vote. But if you are going to have a half truth, which is worse than any at all, a half a haircut, keep it yourself and get it passed by yourself. Now, Mr. President, I have quite a bit to say with respect to punitive damages, because there have been more than enough articles written on this particular score. Let me ask at this point that we have printed in the Record an article by Thomas Lambert with respect to punitive damages, outlining, if you please, the various cases that are brought about safety in America. It is an article of some years ago. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I think the point of the article, Mr. President, is that we really should be focusing on the issue of safety. We have a magnificent record here in the United States of America with respect to the safety of products, and one of the best articles I have ever seen on this is the one just printed in the Record entitled ``Suing For Safety'' by Thomas F. Lambert. He goes down the various cases up until that particular point some years ago. He says: Tort law also has a secondary, auxiliary and supportive function-- In addition to compensation for the injured party. sometimes called the deterrent or admonitory function. He cites then the various cases that come to mind. ``Accident Prevention Through Successful Suits in the Products Liability Field.'' Case of the charcoal briquets causing death from carbon monoxide. Liability was imposed on the manufacturer of charcoal briquets for the carbon monoxide death and injury of a young who used the briquets indoors . . . They produce these in my backyard in South Carolina. The warning is: Do not use for indoor heating or cooking unless ventilation is provided for exhausting fumes to outside. Toxic fumes may accumulate and cause death. That is exactly what happened in that case. So we have hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands, of individuals that have been saved from death by this one particular case. Specifically, the Moore versus Jewel Tea Co., where ``a 48-year-old housewife suffered total blindness from a Drano can * * *'' They had an imperfect screw on top of the can and, of course, it came under tremendous pressure and the Drano exploded and caused her blindness. We also have the case of the Liquid-Plumber, where in almost the same way injuries were reported to defendant. They reformulated its design to produce a safer product. ``After some 59 Liquid-Plumber injuries were reported to defendant, it finally reformulated its design to produce a safer product.'' Then you have the Tip-over Steam Vaporizor. A tip-over steam vaporizer scalded a young kid who was walking and tripped and pulled the particular electrical cord, turning it over. The insurance carrier finally balked after hundred claims, and went to the manufacturer and said, ``Look, we are not going to continue coverage on your company unless you have recall and redesign.'' thereafter, the company proudly proclaimed Cover-lock top protects against sudden spillage if accidentally tipped. Once again, the tort law had to play professor and policeman and teach another manufacturer that safety does not cost, it pays. All this about consumer cost, I am rather embarrassed to hear some of the arguments. A companion case goes to the Remington Mohawk 600 Rifle case, where when a young lad was trying to put the safety on to the off position, it discharged and shot the boy's father in the back. After pressure was brought Remington sent out this notice: Important message to owners of Remington Model 600 and 660 rifles, Mohawk 600 rifles and XP-100 pistols. Under certain unusual circumstances, the safety selector and trigger of these firearms could be manipulated in a way that could result in accidental discharge. The installation of a new trigger assembly will remedy this situation. Remington is therefore recalling all Model 600 rifles except those with serial numbers starting with an ``A''. . . Remington recommends that prior to any further usage of guns included in the recall, they be inspected and modified if necessary. [Directions are then given for obtaining name and address of the nearest Remington recommended gunsmith . . . Then of course, there was MER/29, the anti-cholesterol drug which turned out to cause cataracts. It would cause a calamity, and blatant fraud was proved on the manufacturer's part when they got into the manufacturer's record. In that particular case, they were manufacturing a dangerous drug. Who did more? Did the Federal Government or private trial lawyers do more in getting this dangerous drug off the market? The question carries its own answer. The U.S. drug industry has annual sales of $16 billion per year, while the Food and Drug Administration has an annual budget of $65 million to oversee drug manufacture safety. How can the foothills keep the Alps under surveillance. Worse, as shown by the Mer/29 experience, enforcement of the law in that situation, far from being vigorous and vigilant, was lame, limp, and lackluster. So it was the trial lawyers, product liability, all those who are talking about consumers. We are talking about consumers, manufacturers, and everybody else. The Consumer Product Safety Commission came about at that particular time. That is when we instituted it. The 1982 budget, of course, under President Reagan, cut it some 30 percent. Talking about spending cuts in the Government, in Government spending, in cut spending. Now, looking at the Dalkon shield, asbestos, DES, slip into reverse transmission, fuel tank scandals--all the way down the list--and we find we have crime in the suites as well as crime in the streets. We have the case of the infant who died drinking toxic furniture polish, while the manufacturer failed to warn the mother to keep the toxic product away and out of the reach of the children. We have warning changes as to the foreseeable misuse: ``DANGER. HARMFUL OR FATAL IF SWALLOWED. COMBUSTIBLE. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN,'' and so forth. That was done. Then we have the case holding the manufacturer of PAM liable for the death of a teenager from inhalation of the PAM concentrated vapors, in the Harless versus Boyle-Midway Division of American Home Products case. It was uncontested that prior to the lad's death the manufacturer knew of 45 inhalation deaths from the foreseeable misuse of its product, and upon remand admitted to an additional 68 from the same expectable cause. In examining the label on the can of PAM on the shelf, Mr. President, we have: ``WARNING: USE ONLY AS DIRECTED. INTENTIONAL MISUSE BY DELIBERATELY CONCENTRATING AND INHALING THE CONTENTS CAN BE HARMFUL OR FATAL.'' We go even to the language difficulties--down in the distinguished Presiding Officer's backyard, they speak Spanish fluently--the case of the poisonous insecticide, holding that warning labels must contain appropriate symbols. Where they cannot read the language, at least they see the symbol. For wrongful death, in the case of Hubbard-Hall Chemical Co. versus Silverman, Puerto Rican laborers that could not understand English had to have, thereupon, the proper symbols. The First Circuit upheld judgments entered on jury verdicts for the wrongful death of two illiterate migrant farm workers who were imported by a Massachusetts tobacco farmer and killed by contact with a highly toxic insecticide manufactured and distributed by defendant. We see here, of course, the conspicuous usefulness of the lawsuit as the weapon for ferreting out marketing defects, whether ingenious or ingenuous, in selling dangerously defective products. We have the case, Mr. President, of marketing carbon tetrachloride. That was finally taken, of course, off the market by the FDA as a result of this very disastrous case in Maize versus Atlantic Refining Co. and Tampa Drug Co. versus Wait. The court found that life and limb were too important to trade off against unmarketed inventory. We have the case, Mr. President, of the 8-year-old boy who choked to death in strangling on a quarter-inch rubber rivet, part of a Riviton toy kit given him for Christmas. The toymaker knew that the Riviton set must be so designed and accompanied by proper instructions and warnings that its parts would be reasonably safe for purposes which, in the hands of the inexperienced, impulsive and artless children, were reasonably foreseeable. So we had that decision. Parker Brothers decided to halt the sales and recall the toy. The company president, Mr. President, succinctly stated: ``Were we supposed to sit back and wait for death No. 3?'' So there is a responsible manufacturer responding to product liability, saving thousands of others that are buying these toys and games. The commendable conduct of Parker Brothers in this case is one of the most striking tributes we know to the deterrent value and efficacy of tort law. The example would make a splendid case study for the Nation's business schools. The case then, Mr. President, of the recycling washing machine that pulled out a boy's arm. He had waited for the washing machine at the laundromat for several minutes after the machine had stopped the spin cycle before opening the door to unload the clothing. As he was inserting his hand into the machine a second time to remove a second handful of clothes, the machine suddenly recycled and started spinning and tore his arm off. The reviewing court held the launderette owner strictly liable for defective design because the machine lacked the necessary safety device, and of course thereafter they installed what they call a microswitch, which gave safe operation. I could pursue this on and on, and I should. All we have heard here is a sham pose of how we are, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, sponsoring this bill to save the consumer the cost, the cost of the product, the thrust recognized with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has done outstanding work, and that is why this came about. I could go into flammable pajamas, in the textile field, in my particular backyard. I visited, Mr. President, at Penney's safety laboratory on the 14th floor on Lexington Avenue in downtown New York. I was amazed at what Penney was doing. This was years ago. I went up on that floor and they had all kinds of safety tests for all the toys and articles going into Penney stores around the country. That is responsible, corporate leadership. That is what product liability has brought about. The manufacturers and the retailers, Penney knows, under joint and several liability, they could be held liable. So they do not just take a product that appears good which they can make a profit on without looking at it themselves. So we have the large marketing operations like Penney's which have instituted a safety laboratory. This has really saved money, and consumers--I wish they could find for me the word consumer in the Constitution. That is all I hear about with the sham trade policy they have. We are supposed to be saving the manufacturers' backbone, the jobs in the country. We just referred a little while ago to manufacturing trade. Twenty- five years ago, in 1970, 10 percent of the manufactured products consumed in the United States of America was represented in imports-- just 10 percent. Today, in 1995, 25 years later, over 50 percent of manufactured products consumed in the United States is represented in imports. If we were back to 1970, with 90 percent of manufactured products consumed in the United States produced in the United States, we would automatically have 10 million more manufacturing jobs. That is middle class. Those running around here wanting to do something for the middle class: We should build it, we should expand upon it, we should employ them, let them be able to afford a home, afford sending their kids to college. We are going like the country of Great Britain, where they told them years ago, ``Do not worry.'' Instead of a nation of brawn, we will be a nation of brains; instead of producing products, we will provide services, a service economy. Instead of creating wealth, we are going to handle it and be a financial center. England has gone to hell in an economic handbasket, with two classes of society, in exactly the way we had it here in the United States of America. When we get to product liability, we have one of the finest initiatives ever to come about in law. National problem--heavens above. Manufacturers come from the world around and gladly respond to product liability, bragging about their quality and safety, production. That is what I have in my backyard. I see it. I talk to the Federal judges there. Most of them have been appointed by President Bush, President Reagan, President Nixon, President Ford --all of them. They are good appointments. I am proud of them. I joined in them in confirming. I know them intimately. They will say, about product liability--they will laugh and they say they know it is a political issue gotten up by Victor Schwartz, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Round Table, and the conference board, and they run around and ask candidates for the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, to commit. They use the buzzword reform. ``Will you help us on product liability reform?'' I would say 95 percent of those asked as candidates have never tried or were aware of a product liability case. The easy answer, running for reelection or election, be that as it may, is to solve rather than create problems. If you have large financially supportive groups like the Conference Board, the Business Round Table, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers asking you, your immediate response is, ``Well, sure, yes, I am for reform.'' That is why we have been able to hold it up. Because the merit is on our side. This is a solution looking for a problem. There is not a national problem in product liability. Of all civil claims in the United States of America, torts are 9 percent of all civil filings. Of that 9 percent, only 4 percent of the 9,--36/100 of 1 percent--is in product liability. The States, over the past 15 years, with this issue raised, have all reformed--practically all--their product liability laws. Why change on punitive damages, now the law of 45 States, at the national level? Why change that? Has anybody from the States come up and asked? Not a soul. The nearest they could get--and I remember politically when they changed it in the Governors Conference. I was waiting for the Governors because I have been a Governor. You could not find a Governor coming up and saying there is a terrible problem in my State. Because you would have to say: Wait a minute, I am a Governor. What did I propose? What did I try to do? So they sent up the executive secretary, who just rattled off some nostrums about litigation. He did not even know what he was talking about. They brought up other witnesses. It was an embarrassment. In the Alabama cases they talked of businesses suing businesses. It had nothing to do with product liability. The hearings that we had before the Commerce Committee were an embarrassment, the way they were trying to get this thing on. And that is all it is and that is what is holding us up. On the budget, we have not spent any time on the budget--serious national problems. Welfare reform--serious national problems. Crime, if they want to go back into the crime bill, or terrorism--serious national problems. Telecommunications--serious national problems. But here they come with 36/100 of 1 percent of tort claims, which habitually have been held, for over 200-and-something years under the English rule, at the State level. They are preaching, if you please, Jeffersonian government, ``That government nearest to the people is the best government'' and that is why we have to get rid of this Washington bureaucracy, what they call the ``corrupt, liberal welfare state.'' Take housing, block grants back; welfare, block grants back; crime, no policemen on the beat, block grants back--everything back in block grants, save this manufacturers bill. And by the way, as we enunciate the rules and regulations and compliance to the users and so forth, for the lawyers, let us not make them pertain or apply these to the manufacturers themselves. The unmitigated gall of presenting this in a serious fashion on the floor of the U.S. Senate is an embarrassment to this Senator. I feel very keenly about it. I know I have behind me the American Bar Association. I know I know I have behind me the States Attorneys General. I know I have behind me the Association of State Supreme Court Justices. I know I have a list of over 130 organizations that we put in there comprising, amongst others, all the leading consumer organizations in the United States. Yet they have the audacity to keep pleading here, we have to save the cost to the consumer, the cost to the consumer. I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the Senator from Michigan would amend his amendment to provide not just ``claimant'' but ``parties''--which would be both the plaintiff and the defendants. Therein, Mr. President, goes right to the reason--one of the big reasons--I put in my amendment to his. It was quite obvious to me, quickly reading on last evening the amendment of the distinguished Senator from Michigan, that here they were getting plaintiffs' lawyers. In my amendment I wanted to get at all lawyers. Now, right to the point, in this limited time, once again what we have, Mr. President, is an issue that searches for justification, or a solution looking for a problem that has been going on for some 15 years. It started, of course, back in the Ford administration whereby they said it was a national problem, and President Ford appointed a commission. The commission found it was not a national problem and recommended leaving it to the States. They were not satisfied with that, Mr. President. They came in and said insurance was impossible to obtain. We, of course, refuted this argument, and they do not even contend for it today. Otherwise, they came with the claim that there was a litigation explosion and we needed massive product liability reform in order to confront the national litigation explosion, which, of course, was decreasing not increasing. Then they came and said they were not developing certain products out of fear of litigation, this was particularly true in the drug and chemical industry. Of course when we were debating NAFTA and GATT these industries proclaimed that they were world class and could compete with anybody in the world. So then they came with competitiveness. There was a buzz word that went on around here for about 5 years, that the market--by the way, which now we will leave everything to the market forces--the market was insufficient and what we needed was a Congress to pass a law to make us competitive, and that unless we legislate product liability we could not be competitive. Of course, we pointed out in our own backyard we had some 100 German industries, 50 Japanese industries, blue-chip corporations of America, who all were coming to my State and never once complaining about product liability. I have been the Governor and the Senator there now for numerous years, and the attraction of industry and we can relate industry after industry almost get a habit of asking the question. So it was not competitiveness. Then they started with various gimmickry with respect to the Little League. They said, no, they were not involved. And then they went, of course, to the matter of the Girl Scouts. The Girl Scouts said, ``Wait, wait. That is not the case at all. We do not have a problem with product liability.'' Then they had a little TV show where a former colleague, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, came on and said he went broke on account of product liability. Now they have quit running that because that is not the case at all. Still a solution searching for a problem, now they place their ace card--lawyers, aha. Any time we take a poll in America, immediately the disdain for lawyers. So they say, if we cannot get this bill passed on lawyers, it will never pass. It talks here in the amendment, as I was just reading it, of ``equity in legal fees.'' I challenged the distinguished Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from Michigan on last evening to bring me the series of product liability cases where somehow the clients had been done in by the plaintiff's lawyers. Of course, the amendment by the Senator from Michigan termed it ``claimants.'' Now I guess he would like to say, just a minute, we will change ``claimants'' to ``parties'' and get attorneys on both sides. But there is not any question that these men are very erudite and very learned and have written books in law and everything else of that kind, and they knew what they were doing until, of course, we put up our amendment, and said, wait a minute, we will bring into focus the real issue here, and that is not product liability, but lawyers. Now, if I could put in a bill to solve the lawyers problem, I would do it. However, I do not know that we are that good here in the Senate of the United States. Be that as it may, the idea is, as was said in Henry VI ``Kill all the lawyers.'' Take any poll, and if we can convince the individual Members, who are busy on so many different issues, to come now and vote whether for or against lawyers, they will vote against the lawyers, and we will get this bill passed. I think of the saying: Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? . . . I know not what course others may take, but give me liberty or give me death. Patrick Henry, the lawyer. We can see, Mr. President, that young leader sitting with his bill in hand, crafting the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, the lawyer, or the father of the Federalist papers. But what is government, save the best of reflections on human nature? If men were angels, the government would not be necessary. And if angels governed man, there would be no need for controls over the government. So the task in formulating a government to be administered by man over man is first, frame that government with the capacity to control the government and thereupon oblige that same government to control itself. James Madison, father of our Constitution. Again, going up all Presidents right on up to Abraham Lincoln. We can see him, ``equal justice under law,'' signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln, the lawyer. Or the darkest days of the Depression, people searching for hope. ``All we have to fear is fear itself.'' Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a lawyer. I can see now in December 1952, standing before the Supreme Court of the United States. But your honor, if the State-imposed policy of separation by race is removed, the young children will have the freedom to choose their school and their own classmates and play together. The beginning of the end of segregation in this land. Thurgood Marshall, of the NAACP, a lawyer. Even today, we find Ralph Nader crusading for safety and health. On last evening's TV Morris Dees down in Alabama, working around the clock--or Mississippi, I forget. I know Morris but I have forgotten. I just came back from Mississippi, but I know he has this Southern policy on poverty, Southern law center on poverty where he has been tracking that Ku Klux Klan. And terrorism, at the risk of his own life; Morris Dees, a lawyer. We begin to wonder, if these lawyers had been silenced what we would have in this land? Obviously I am very proud to be an attorney at the bar and I am not going to join in this derision, save of those who just really are fixers rather than lawyers at the bar, and Heavens knows this city of full of them--60,000 lawyers and the majority of them come now to fix us, the jury, on billable hours. Pat Choate wrote his book, ``Agents of Influence,'' how the Japanese have those attorney firms, over 100, retained at a cost of over $110 million. The country of Japan, by pay, is better represented than the people of the United States in Washington. The consummate pay of 535 House Members and Senators is only $71 million. But they are all over us, and that is the genesis of this thing that has been going on for 15 to 16 years--the power of the lobby. Because the problem does not exist. It is not a national problem. We do have product liability; 46 of the 50 States have reformed their product liability laws in the last 15 years. But now comes the ace card, if we can play this with respect to the equity of legal fees. What is the equity? That is the most amazing thing, to this particular Senator, to have the parties sponsoring this legislation and trying to amend it talking in terms of the consumer, how they are looking out for the consumer. Every consumer organization in the country is absolutely opposed to this bill. The American Bar Association, they do not have lobbyists up here. The Association of State Legislators, they do not have lobbyists up here. The Association of State Supreme Court Justices, they do not have lobbyists up here. But yes, the Business Round Table, the Conference Board, the National Association of Manufacturers, the chamber of commerce--yes, they keep big buildings full of lobbyists. So we got this legal reform movement going and it has been a faltering point. So now they will bring in equity in legal fees on last evening--of course for plaintiff and not for the defendant. Now the distinguished Senator says, ``I want to make it for both sides.'' That is what my amendment said. Billable hours--we are paid at $133,000. I figured it out. If we could have, rather than a minimum wage, have a maximum wage for these fixers, we would have a $50 a billable hour limitation. If they work 51 hours, I would give them $133,000 a year and then if they work some on the weekend they could go on up to a couple of hundred thousand dollars--pretty good. But I figure we ought to pay them as much as we pay the Senators, and that would be a goodly plenty and I think it would clear out 30,000 of the 60,000--if we want to get rid of the lawyers. If we want to get rid of the lawyers. So there is the amendment to bring into focus the absolutely empty nature of this particular initiative. And it is lobbyists moved, organized, financed, motivated, committed for in the campaigns. Yes, when I ran in 1992 I had the different groups come to me: ``Can't you help us this time on product liability?'' I said, ``They just passed the reform here in South Carolina. What is the problem? Ask the judges; go to talk to our judges. Most of them are Republicans, obviously, in South Carolina. They had been appointed by President Nixon, President Reagan, President Ford, President Bush. They will tell you in a flash it is not a problem.'' But they have to find some reason. Now they are playing the ace card, and that is why I put up this particular amendment. I do not guess I will be able to control them. I would like to. But, be that as it may, we have had our time at bat to expose the nature of this particular amendment and the nature of this particular legislation. It is absolutely not in the interests of consumers, not in the interests of good law. We have the professors, 121 professors at law have come as a group to attest against this particular measure. They do not have lobbyists up here. No, it was not considered in the Judiciary Committee where fundamental law is considered. There was a quick 2-day turn, adding on amendments in the evening, destroying any idea of uniformity. That is what they started with. At least they had the good conscience to change the title. I thought maybe it was a gimmick, but I will give them credit for conscience. You will find this bill over on the House side, ``To regulate interstate commerce by providing for a uniform product liability law.'' But when you get over to the Senate side it is some kind of fairness act they call it now. They at least got away from the uniformity, not trying to continue that particular charade. ``This act may be cited as `The Product Liability Fairness Act Of 1995.''' So we have the amendment relative to fees and instituting regulatory measures--bureaucracy at its worst. I have time to practice law but not to keep all the records. I have a simple, clear-cut contingent fee. I assume all the costs, assume all the expenses, assume all the bills for the doctors, the witnesses, assume all the printing measures for the transcript of the record, the appeal record and everything else of that kind going up to the court--I assume all of those. And when I get through, if we win then we get the third. If we lose we get nothing and I have paid all the bills. It goes right to the heart of the misunderstanding of the distinguished Senator from West Virginia, Senator Rockefeller, when he talks about delays, the trial lawyers delay. Heavens above, you get 10 or 15 of these cases you have backed up in the office thousands of dollars of cost and hours spent and never paid for. Billable hours? I never had a client with billable hours in 20 years of law practice, but you got that backed up. It is in my interests to bring that to a conclusion. I have to move on these cases. We are not trying to delay. The ones who can sit up in the ivory tower on the 32d floor with the mahogany walls and Persian rugs and all the secretaries running around and all the investigators and you press buttons and say ``Well, yes, I am having this coffee but mark it down as thinking. Give me another billable hour.'' Come on. You are worried about lawyers and their fees? Let us get to the defense counsel that is running up the majority of the costs. He is absolutely wrong. He is not for the consumers, the Senator from West Virginia. They are getting their money. They are not complaining. And they are getting the majority of it. When it comes to who gets the majority of the fees, plaintiff or the defendant, the defendants do. The national insurance study, we put it in the committee report, shows they are the ones running up the costs. We have no time or interest in running up any kind of costs whatever. It is a proud thing in America that the poor and middle class can get competent representation. It has worked. It continues to work. It is not a national problem. They never have had a hearing in any particular body about lawyers' fees. But if that is the game, then when we take up medical malpractice we will go into doctors' fees. And we will try these amendments and initiatives that they have because they cannot prove their case otherwise. I wait for the distinguished Senators from Kentucky and Michigan to show me the series of cases in product liability where there was not any, as the title says here, ``equity in legal fees.'' I retain the remainder of my time.

Mr. HOLLINGS. No objection.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, just in the minute or so that I have remaining, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the full text of this Monday edition.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished President. Mr. President, I am trying to find--I thought we had found it. After the day was over last evening, I went back to my office and I said on that airline case, several airlines really of overcharging, and the lawyers steamed up a class action, and as the distinguished Senator from Michigan reported in a letter to the colleagues, the lawyers got some $16 million and others got coupons worth $20 or $25, one of my secretaries said, ``Yes, that got lost in the mail. You had a chance to do it.'' But I said I never heard it, but I had plenty of money left on the table, I guess, because I never knew anything about the case. So a young attorney in my office said, ``Well, I denied knowing anything about the case, but I got $150 when I got notice.'' I said, ``Well, who are the lawyers?'' He said, ``I don't care. I do not know who the lawyers were and don't care. They got me some money.'' Now, no one is complaining about the lawyers and no one is inventing equity. The truth of the matter is we had some 15 years ago, I say to the Senator from Michigan, a big debate about the Federal Trade Commission coming in and regulating attorneys and attorneys' fees and everything else of that kind. And we can have the hearings again and come back and go over that thing. But in the last dozen years we have not had hearings on this. The best the Senator from Michigan refers to is a letter from Michigan about a class action and one gentleman over on the House side who testified supporting disclosure of fees. I hope he does support disclosure of fees. All of us at the bar do. Here I hold in my hand ``Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the Code of Judicial Conduct'' from the Center of Professional Responsibility of the American Bar Association. And we practice under this. And it has on page 18 rule 15 about the fees and it runs down--I do not want to spend all my time, but it has not only the time and labor required, much better than the amendment of the Senator from Michigan, the amount involved, the time limitations, the nature and length of professional relationship, the experience, whether the fee is fixed or contingent, right on down, all in writing. I never have found that client--I guess that is the nice experience of mine--complain to me about the handling of product liability. And we have had it up five times before the Commerce Committee, five times with hearings, five times the report and we had every ramification that you can think of on product liability, and here we come again and without ever having any testimony whatsoever or the subject raised about fees, a Senator or a couple say, well, let us go to lawyers. We cannot get them on the Girl Scouts or the Little League. We cannot get them about their former colleague going broke. There is no litigation explosion. The only explosion is businesses suing businesses. And after all, remember, we are representing consumers. Now, if anybody believes that, I happen to represent the consumers in this instance and not the manufacturers. They are trying to take advantage here, when we are talking about welfare reform, making the recipients more responsible, we are going backward and saying manufacturers be more irresponsible. We have got a long litany in this debate about the good in America for the safety of products. We can count on it. It redounds to our safety and our health; we almost take it for granted. Where there have been some adjustments, the States have taken care of it. But fees, the equity in fees, to assume that there is not any and that you need to pass a law in Congress to get it is ludicrous, really laughable. I mean any lawyer go down here, or anybody else, to my billable hours friends. They will tell you the American Bar and everything else like that. They do have an understanding with the billable hours. They like it. The phone rings. ``Wait a minute.'' ``There is another $25. I answered the phone.'' ``You got a copy of that? Twenty-five cents for every copy. Run some extra copies. We have to pay for the copy machine.'' ``Put a little fee on the computer.'' Senator Abraham and I can get computers now. Put fees on those. Little internal fees for computers, like these MRI's at the hospitals, paid for five or six times. They have bought every computer downtown 10 or 15 times with little fees on the computers. Lawyers know how to look at these. I am one trying to look out for the clients. Let us not diminish the rights of the clients. I can tell you now, yes, in Henry VI, Dick the butcher says, yes, that the first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers. That was not, in a sense, a demeaning or pejorative term. He was saying, if tyranny was to succeed, the tyrants must first kill the lawyers. And if demagoguery is going to persist and succeed, then we are going to have to get rid of all the lawyers who are going to expose the demagoguery that is going on in our Government today. I can tell you here and now, I am proud of that expression ``Kill all the lawyers,'' because it is the best of all compliments. We stand in the way of the takeover of the big business and the clients that have kept this going for 15 years, again and again and again and again, with commitments and elections and everything else working. And it is that poor, injured client in middle-class America, they cannot pay any billable hours, so they come in. And, yes, you know, no matter how thin the pancake, there are two sides to every pancake and every question. And you do not have a sure shot. You have to get all 12 jurors. You do not try a case and get a majority vote as we do in the Senate. You have to get a unanimous vote by the greater weight of the preponderance of the evidence, or for punitive, willful misconduct, by the greater weight of the preponderance of the evidence. Do not act as though there is a problem out there with respect to the trial of cases. If there is runaway verdicts, it is businesses suing businesses upon suing businesses upon suing businesses. They love to come all dressed up and go in the boardroom and say, ``Well, take them on.'' Of course, the lawyers, billable hours, ``Hot dog. That will take care of the family and send my boy through college during the next 4 years. Billable hours, whoopee. We had a board meeting today, and let me tell you who we are going to sue. I have no idea if they are going to win it, but it will take care of me.'' That is what has been going on in the courtroom and cluttering it up, and not these tort claims because, yes, they are more safe. There is less injury, and if there is less injury, there is less tortuous injury. I cannot understand the logic of the Senator from West Virginia, who uses his hands up and down, whatever it is. It is not relevant whatsoever, or not responsive. I retain the remainder of my time.

Mr. HOLLINGS. The amount of money in that case referred to by the distinguished Senator in the justification for his amendment, the airlines case, with the total verdict of $438 million, that is where the lawyers got $16 million. There were 4.2 million plaintiffs. They had law firms racing all over; 37 law firms were racing around. They have all the law firms listed. But rather than a third or 20 percent or 10 percent or 5 percent or 1 percent, it is less than 1 percent that the lawyers got. Now, you have all of those clients in there. I knew that this particular fee, even though it sounded outrageous in the news story, was based in reason by the court. The court would not approve giving the clients $25 and giving the lawyers $16 million. That is the garish nonsense that you find going on as justification for product liability reform. On that basis, if Senators want to vote on that basis not only for the amendment of the distinguished Senators from Michigan and Kentucky, but on product liability, let them do Now, here is the case. I hope everybody will read about the 37 law firms and the 4.2 million plaintiffs and the $438 million obtained, to be divided up. And the lawyers, all those 37 law firms, got $16 million. I rest my case, Mr. President. I hope you do not table our amendment. If we can get a good vote on this amendment, it will bring attention to the really fanciful nature of this entire exercise on product liability. We have welfare reform, we have the budget, we have telecommunications, we have terrorism, we have a crime bill to come up, we have more work to do that is good work of national significance, rather than manufacturing amendments through halfway stories in the Washington Post. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I wish to pay honor today to one of the great Senators of this century, John Cornelius Stennis. His roots began at the turn of the century as a young farmboy, in the fertile soil of Kemper County, MS. And while his subsequent career was to take him to far away places, and to positions of great honor in our Nation's Government, his beloved home country was never far from his mind. Second only to service to his Nation, his dedication to the State of Mississippi was legendary. He had amassed a distinguished record a public service, even before coming to the Senate in 1947. A Phi Betta Kappa law school graduate, he served as a State Representative, district attorney, and State circuit court judge. But it was here in the Senate where we shall best remember him. For more than 42 years, this Nation had the benefit of his wisdom and his guidance. He was the epitome of a Southern gentleman, and fairness and integrity were constants in his conduct. It was no mere happenstance that he was our first chairman of the Select Committee on Standards and Conduct. He was for decades the foremost guardian of our Nation's defense, forcefully and relentlessly pursuing strong defense programs throughout the Cold War years. His credentials as ``Mr. Defense'' made even more remarkable his misgivings and warnings to the Nation on involvement in combat in Vietnam, and he was a major author of our first war powers legislation. Chairman of Armed Services, chairman of Appropriations, President Pro Tem--his achievements here on this floor and in this body have been equaled by few. And who among us who knew him will ever forget his quiet courage? He quietly brushed aside the impacts of being shot and robbed while walking home. Years later, after loosing a leg to cancer, he refused to yield to adversity--always rising to address this body, exuding dignity and determination with every action. John Stennis was a patriot--a statesman--a Senator in the finest traditions of the word. He was one of the great lions of our assembly, and we will miss him. I read today where he once responded to a question about how he would like to be remembered. He said he hoped that one could say of him that ``He did his best.'' Well, that he did. And his best will serve as a reminder and a standard to all of us, for generations to come. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Georgia has touched on it when he said I wish to hoe a straight furrow right down the field, that was John Stennis. I can hear him now. He had those sayings about not swelling but growing in experience. The reverence and respect at that particular time was for Senators listening and learning and profiting from experience. Now the pledge is when you come to town you are not going to listen to anybody; you have a contract. You are going to vote for it. And by the way, do not give me any of your experience because in 6 years I am gone. It is an entirely different atmosphere. And when you see, as the Senator from Georgia has said in such eloquent terms, one of the finest, I am just deeply moved. John Stennis and I became very close amid serving on committees together, particularly the Appropriations Committee later on. But his family--the Peden clan--was from Fountain Inn, SC, where Mr. Quillen was born and other persons of eminence. Invariably he would come back to South Carolina for the annual Peden clan reunion. I figured, like the Senator from Georgia, that he was my sort of patron and leader. I listened to him many a time. I can tell you this. John Stennis was a man of this institution. We have Senator Byrd, who really reveres the Senate as an institution. John Stennis revered the U.S. Senate as an institution. And as much as we liked each other and as close friends as we were, when I was chairman of the Budget Committee, he followed it very, very closely. When I was chairman back in 1980, he would say, ``Fritz, you're right. We have to somehow pay our bills. We are eating our seed corn.'' He would make a little talk on the floor, not only with respect to military affairs, with tremendous authority, but with respect to fiscal matters. And later on, when I was not the chairman of the committee, but I talked to him and tried to get a vote with respect to that budget, he would say, ``I'm sticking with the chairman. I know how you feel about this, but we have got to stay with the chairman.'' I can hear him now. He was an institution man. And that says a lot for the stability of the body and the courtesy here and the ethics that we have. He set the highest standard of anybody I have ever known. I will never forget the afternoon he was shot. Invariably, we would get together down at the gym there at this time, 6:30 going on 7 o'clock, and get a workout. He said, ``You've got to try to keep up with Strom.'' That is my senior Senator. He said, ``You will find if you stay in good physical shape, you will be able to keep up with Strom.'' We would work out. They had this wheel that you get down on your knees and you go forward and pull it backward and forward, and everything else. if I remember correctly, about 6:15 and he was shot about 6:30 or 6:45. He later related, when I went to see him, he said: You know, I'm lucky. These fellows told me they wanted money and I did not have any money. And I said, ``Take my watch, anything else, my ring.'' And they cursed him and just fired five shots into his middle, his stomach, pancreas, and lungs--his insides. He walked up to his house and talked to Miss Coy, Mrs. Stennis, his wife. He said, ``Call an ambulance and call Walter Reed.'' The ambulance came. And as they lifted him up, he remembered well hearing the chief of police, who had reached the home at that time, saying, ``All right, take him over to George Washington Hospital.'' He raised up on that stretcher--the last he ever remembered, he said, prior to coming to some 9 hours later--and said, ``Take me to Walter Reed. They are waiting for me there.'' He said that was the real fortunate part, because when he got to Walter Reed, they had two Army surgeons who had finished a 2-week lecture course to the Army surgeons around the country on bullet wounds and shrapnel wounds and battlefield surgery and that kind of thing, particularly with respect to the loss of blood. His operation took 9 hours. I will never forget him saying that. He said, ``Had they not had that hard experience of when to stop and replenish and when to move forward * * *'' They had to sew up all his innards or he would have been long since gone. He came back and, as Senator Nunn points out, he did not slow down at all. Later, when the cancer got his legs, he did not. As Senator Cochran pointed out--who sits at the Stennis desk--he believed in this institution. He attended regularly all the sessions. He attended these debates. I think television has ruined us all. Perhaps some would listen back in their offices. But you do not have the open exchange in the most deliberative body. You are here and get quips that staff gives you. They have prepared remarks and they run out and the Record is full and it appears it is a deliberative effort. Not at all. Senator Stennis did not like that, and he said so. He attended the debates. He attended all the votes and he kept going until the very, very end. Unfortunately, he was not as conscious and alert as he could have been the last few years. I wanted to go to see him, but my staff who worked intimately with him on the Armed Services Committee and later on on the Appropriations Committee, said that, ``Poor John would not recognize you right now.'' So he has gone to his just reward after the most distinguished career in the U.S. Senate of over 41 years. He was a Senator's Senator if there ever was one in this body. He was not only, as pointed out, an outstanding authority on military affairs, but he had that fundamental feel of paying the bills and being straightforward in his treatment here with all the Senators and setting the highest standard of ethical conduct that you could possibly imagine. We need that inspiration today that, unfortunately, we do not have. We are all going to miss him very, very badly. I am sorry tomorrow I cannot be at the session relative to the continued debate on product liability. I want to attend those services. But we will be back here at 4:45. But it is good that we have those who have served with him and remember him so well that will be there and be with his family. His daughter retired first in Charleston, where her husband was the dean at the College of Charleston and later up in Greenville, SC. So I am looking forward to seeing that family. But I will never forget the inspiration he has given for all of us who have served with him to continue to serve. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.