mr. speaker , i thank the gentleman from michigan for the time . 
sometimes during these debates i like to step in to take a perspective of someone on the committee who is not a lawyer ; but i have to tell my colleagues , the previous speaker , the gentleman from virginia , went to great lengths to talk about the lawyers fees . 
there is nothing in this bill that limits lawyers fees , and there is not anything in the bill actually that argues for his point , which is apparently that there should be a minimum amount that wrongdoers pay to each individual aggrieved person , which is a novel argument , i have not heard it made by my colleague before , saying that the plaintiffs are receiving too little now . 
let me explain very briefly why it is that we have situations like that . 
those of us who are individuals of modest means , if we have been aggrieved by a major company , if they have done something that has harmed our health or our community or our family , we as individuals frankly do not have the ability to take on a major company to stop them from doing the wrongful things , to make sure they understand that there is a cost of doing it . 
so we join together as a community and we bring these actions as a group . 
we can not , frankly , pay the lawyer up front so they are paid on contingencies , and that is the way these actions get taken . 
one thing the gentleman from virginia did not say even once through that whole wheel of rhetoric was that any of those that were held accountable by juries of their peers were not guilty of those things . 
in those cases , those parties , each and every one of them , on the wheel of rhetoric actually was found by a judge or a jury to have done substantial bad things to the community . 
the system actually worked in those cases . 
we can quibble about the person , the individual that wound up getting a payment . 
there were so many of them , millions of people who had been harmed by those companies , that when they were done divvying up what seemed like a very large judgment , tens of millions of dollars , there was only left a 35 , 40-cent coupon and the like . 
i stand perfectly ready to vote in favor of an amendment by the gentleman from virginia to have minimum payments to people who have been harmed . 
if the gentleman thinks it is not enough that they get 35 cents , i am with him . 
some of those companies did outrageous things to our community , and they should be held accountable . 
if my colleague thinks a 35-cent check is not enough , i am with him . 
let us make minimum amounts that they pay for the injuries , that they have to get , because the harm is so great . 
i want to remind my colleagues and the citizens watching this why the system is structured this way . 
imagine for a moment if someone who is making a shoddy automobile , who was not paying attention to whether sharp objects got into a cereal box , did not have to be concerned about lawsuits anymore . 
do my colleagues think they would really say let us hire that extra safety precaution , that extra employee to keep an eye out for consumers ? 
no . 
they would be less inclined to do that . 
the system works as it is intended . 
are there abuses ? 
i am sorry to say that there are some , and i wish we would address some of them in this legislation which , of course , we do not ; but frankly to stand before the wheel of rhetoric , which really is a wheel of bad doers who got caught by the justice system , which we are trying to dismantle here today , and say this is evidence that the system does not work is entirely the opposite of the truth , unless my colleagues believe that a jury of people 's peers can not make these informed decisions , that we are the only people brilliant enough to make these decisions . 
i love these small government types who believe we have better judgment on these things than 12 men and women in a community , then we have to believe that the system in those cases worked . 
i would say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that the conyers/nadler/jackson-lee substitute only puts lipstick on a fraud . 
it still leaves a very , very flawed bill ; but at least we go from being completely destructive to only being moderately destructive , and we protect ourselves from some of the worst abuses . 
mr. speaker , i urge a `` yes '' vote on the substitute , a `` no '' vote on the base bill , and i urge us to stop this drumbeat on the other side of blaming average americans for being victimized by big corporations . 
