Aiming at asbestos bill

[papau]

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/020706/news1.html

Aiming at asbestos bill

By Alexander Bolton

Nearly 20 corporations have paid a total of about $3 million to defeat the asbestos trust-fund bill, which Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has designated his first priority in 2006, according to a coalition planning document obtained by The Hill.<snip>The memo was contained in a 22-page internal planning document detailing the Coalition for Asbestos Reform’s strategy. The bill is sponsored by Specter and co-sponsored by Sen. Pat Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. The document, crafted at the end of last year, is available on The Hill’s website, http://img.thehill.com/img/news/020706/asbestos.pdf …

<snip>Manufacturing and insurance companies have long sought a trust fund to pay asbestos-related medical claims and to avoid costly lawsuits. Partisan wrangling over the best way to pay asbestos-related claims and to settle a blizzard of ongoing and potential lawsuits that has dragged on for years.

<snip>The bipartisan proposal has garnered opposition from groups of labor unions, trial attorneys, midsize manufacturing companies and insurance companies. Unions have pushed for more money in the trust fund and trial attorneys oppose the concept because it curbs litigation. Midsize companies have balked at how much they must pay into the fund, and insurance companies are worried about their liability if it runs out of money.O’Brien and Fay said that the time for Congress to act was several years ago but that states such as Texas have now taken steps to deal with the slew of medical claims. They said that the Senate bill would wreck those efforts.

[Botany]

1. The Dick Cheney Bail Out Bill

I hope DeWine votes for it. However votes for it should have it hung around their
necks. Nothing more then letting the companies who are responsible off the
hook and letting the American people pick up the check.