Y2K Capitol Controversy
President Clinton is ready to sign into law a bill that could save American businesses billions of dollars in legal costs from Y2K-related lawsuits, but that some consumer groups see as an infringement on basic legal rights.
Following months of tinkering to make the bill acceptable first to Democrats and then to the White House, the legislation passed Thursday by sweeping margins, 404-24 in the House and 81-18 in the Senate.
The legislation would seek to delay or prevent expensive lawsuits by giving companies 90 days to fix computers that break down because of the so-called millennium bug.
It encourages mediation, caps punitive damages for small businesses, puts limits on class action lawsuits and ensures that in most cases companies will be held responsible only for the damage they cause.
It would become the second law to help businesses gird for the Y2K bug, following legislation enacted last year allowing businesses to share information on fixing the problem free from concerns of legal repercussions.
The bill, said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chief Senate sponsor with Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., will "make sure that America's prosperity does not screech to a halt when the calendar pages slip over to start a new millennium."
The bill will go off the books after three years, but opponents argued that it was a foot in the door for Republican-led efforts to change product liability laws to protect businesses from expensive lawsuits.
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| Joan Claybrook |
"We think that there ought to be some recourse for the consumer," Claybrook told CBS This Morning Co-Anchor Julie Chen.
A Democrat, Sen. Ernest Hollings, was also among the most condemning of what some critics said was the effort of both the White House and Congress to seek favor with the high-tech industry, which strongly favored the legislation and which is expected to contribute heavily to presidential candidates.
"They were going to get a bill for the vice president," Hollings, D-S.C., said, adding that the White House wanted to win Silicon Valley money for Vice President Al Gore and "they ought to be taken to task for this kind of performance."
Gore said he was generally satisfied with the legislation.
"It's a compromise outcome that overall serves the inteests of the nation," he said.
The Year 2000 problem - also called Y2K and the millennium bug - occurs because some computer programs, especially older ones, might fail when the date changes to 2000.
Because the programs were written to recognize only the last two digits of a year, such programs could read the digits "00" as 1900 instead of 2000.