congress weren t giving protection to the law firm, giving the bailout in your terms, is that there would be 500 million to a billion dollars that the drug company would have lost which would have been savings to the consumer. consumer would probably have gotten less expensive drugs. and the commerce department president bush opposed the legislation. they wrote a letter us to explaining those kind of costs. i guess the basic principle of the statute of limitations. to me, as a lawyer, that s just basic. you miss the statute, you are out. an argument was made this is unfair. there s a special mechanism in the congress to deal with these special unfairnesses that if they exist, but you can t do that if the matter is still in litigation. this matter was still in litigation when congress passed the special act. greta: you have jones and nader who agree with you. no special bailout for a rich
the first vote it failed by one vote. the bill greta: same day? same day. it was brought out of committee without this language in it. chairman smith did not support this language. they got a second vote through some mechanism. it passed by a few votes the second time. it came with that language in it. i moved to take the language out. had a lot of supporters, but it want enough. people said well if we don t pass it the bill would have to be revoted in the house of the but it would have passed the house again. there was no problem with that in my opinion. that became the basis for some people not to support the ledge the amendment. greta: a lot of americans are unhappy with these special deals. the firm would have been on the hook for 214 million dollars. but the other side of the issue is, had this not happened the if the congress weren t giving