Date: 2010-02-24
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. I thank my colleague from North Carolina for the time. Mr. Speaker. I might say this is an interesting point. I dont think Ive ever been on the floor in 16 years and have faced this kind of a rule. It is a closed rule. Ive been here before with closed rules. but the effect of the closed rule is to prohibit me from providing or from presenting my amendment. Now. that is not unusual. Usually. you come to the floor. and you present an amendment to try and amend the bill to change it from the way it was reported out of the committee that did the work on it. But in this case. I am being prohibited from offering an amendment to change the bill back to the way it was as reported out of the committee on a bipartisan basis. For whatever reason. the majority on the Rules Committee decided that an amendment that was cited by the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Mr. CONYERS. as an excellent clarifying amendment is not going to be here. When one of the chief cosponsors of the bill. or coauthors of the bill. being presented on the floor today announced the bill last week. she said publicly that this was similar to the bill that was passed out of the Judiciary Conmittee with the bipartisan support of Congressman LUNGREN from California. So. naturally. I was interested to look at the bill that they were presenting to see how it was the same as the bill we presented. I found out that theyd left out my amendment which allowed for the sharing of historical data by insurers so that they might look at the experience evidence and utilize that in making their decisions with respect to how they conducted their business going forward. I had been assured that my amendment was not necessary because committee staff on the Judiciary Committee had researched it. Nobody believed that the Justice Department of any administration going forward would find the compiling of historical data among the insurers to be noncompetitive and violative of the antitrust laws. I was further assured that they did not believe that that would be the case with any of the attorneys general of the States. Now. I had the privilege of serving as attorney general of my State for 8 years. being a member of the National Association of Attorneys Generalan organization which does support legislation of this typeand of course. attorneys general of the various States have independent authority under their State laws to enforce antitrust laws. which I did during my 8 years. Sometimes we went beyond what the Federal Government did because we understood better the unique circumstances of our State. I remember. one time. we were dealing with a merger between two large banks. They were national banks. and they had branches in the State of California. We were working in conjunction with the antitrust division of the Justice Department. and we were moving in the same direction. but I remember getting a phone call from one of the attorneys at the Justice Department in Washington. DC. who asked this question: Well. how close is San Jose to San Diego? About 400 miles. but they thought they were next to one another. Why was that relevant? That would be relevant as to whether you had competition among the bank branches that were then going to be merged. Would that then give increased and illegal concentration of power in those areas? The point I am making is that attorneys general of the States may know a little bit more about their States than attorneys working as hard as they can here in Washington. DC. So the idea that attorneys general are somehow impotent. from a legal standpoint. such that they cannot bring forward antitrust cases. is just not true. At the same time. I voted for the bill coming out of committee because I thought it had. in fact. reached an appropriate balance. Interestingly enough. the gentlelady from New York. the chairperson of the Rules Committee. stated in her support for this rule and in support for the underlying bill that this is really a tribute to Jack Brooks. who attempted to do this for years. I was privileged to serve with Jack Brooks. an interesting Texan Member. someone who was the Chair of the Judiciary Committee for some time. When the bill in the Judiciary Committee was originally introduced this time around. the distinguished chairman of the committee. Mr. CONYERS. cited Jack Brooks. and said. This was the Jack Brooks bill. So I went back. and I looked at it. I found out that my amendment. or the language that I had then put in in amendment form. was in the Jack Brooks bill but not in the bill before us. So I brought it forward. So you might say. if we are doing this in homage to Jack Brooks. you would do him further homage by allowing the language of his bill to be put into this bill. and thats all I ask for. Its all I ask for. Now. the other part of the bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee. which is not in this bill. is to remove the antitrust exemption that currently exists for medical malpractice insurance providers. but somehow that has been taken out of this bill with no explanation whatsoever. So we have cherrypicked from the bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support. and yet we acclaim the bill as being. essentially. the bipartisan bill that came out of committee. As I said before the Rules Committee yesterday. sometimes you just have to learn to take "yes" for an answer. I support the underlying bill. I support this effort. I am trying to make it better. It was accepted on a bipartisan basis. Yet. in the Rules Committee. there wasnt one. in my judgment. credible argument about why you wouldnt have it. On the one hand. Ive heard from the staff of the Judiciary Committee that it is not necessary because no single administration will have a Justice Department that finds this to be anticompetitive. On the other hand. I hear from the chairperson of the committee. Well. we dont want to give this power to the insurance companies. We want the Justice Department to investigate it. Well. if thats the case. you cant have your cake and you cant eat it. too. Its either one or the other. If it is. as I was told. unnecessary. redundant because nobody looking at it will find this to be noncompetitive because it is essential informationand by the way. the absence of this information will not hurt the big guys as much as it will hurt the little guys. Why? Because if you are a large carrier. you have a far greater experience database than if you are a small carrier. You understand the market better in terms of information that is at your fingertips. If you are a smaller provider. you need the information to understand the universe that you might be attempting to present your product to. So we have. on the one side. being told that no reasonable antitrust division of any Justice Department of any administration will find this to be anticompetitive. Then you have the chairperson of the Rules Committee saying. No. no. we have to keep this in here because we want to make sure that the Justice Department will be able to determine whether or not it is. So what does that give the market? What does it give the smaller insurers? It gives them uncertainty. So the very thing that you are saying you want to do you are prohibiting from being accomplished by not allowing this amendment to be considered. This amendment. as I might say. was described by the chairman of the committee as an excellent clarifying amendment. We are therefore removing clarification. and we are replacing it with uncertainty. Look. I can go down on the floor and bash the insurance companies as well as anybody here. Lets just knock them all around here. The point is we are making an adjustment in law. which is what is good for the people. So why not do it in an intelligent way. in a way that will actually assist in the marketplace and allow for greater competition? Outside studies have said. if. in fact. this information is not allowed to be collected together and shared among those in the industry. it mightthey said "might"-might have the impact of harming the smaller insurance carriers. So I dont know why youre doing this. I dont know if there is a political reason for it. I dont know if its because I happen to be a Republican. Ill give it up. Any Democrat who wants to put his name on it can add his name to Jack Brooks and present it on the floor. But this kind of silliness on this floor has got to stop. You ask for bipartisanship. and you throw it away. We have complete bipartisanship in the committee. and you ignore it. As one member of the committee. a Republican member who voted with me in support of this bill on a bipartisan basis. said afterwards when he found out that that bill wasnt going to be presented on the floor. Why do we need committees and subcommittees? What are we holding hearings for? Why are we having the experts testify before us if. in fact. somehow in theI dont know where it is. There are closed doors somewhere that decided that this bill was going to come out instead of the bill we worked on in committee and then give no good answer. Its such a shame you dont have TV cameras in the Rules Committee. If people could have seen the argument yesterday. if the public could have understood what we were talking about. I mean they would have shaken their heads and said. Do the peoples business. Please do the peoples business. Dont get involved in partisanship. Again. I would say I give up my name on this amendment. I will gladly dedicate it to Jack Brooks in his memory. Im glad to give it to any Member of the Democratic side. Lets do the peoples business and get rid of this silliness of unstated partisanship. without any rationale. that undercuts the impact of the bill. Once again. this is unique. Ive spent 16 years in this place. This is the first time Ive ever come to the floor and have been denied an amendment that would put back in something we voted on on a bipartisan basis in committee that has been removed at the direction of somebody. including the Rules Committee. so that we cant have the chance to work on the product that came out of a bipartisan effort in the committee.