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June 20, 2002
Tort v. Terror
WSJ's editorial today accuses the Democrats of being in the pockets of the trial lawyer lobby, and it's hard to disagree with them. Their recommendation at the end that Bush needs to give a tort reform speech is right on--since it is America's number one domestic problem. Excerpts:
Either he's a good actor or Mitch McConnell was genuinely amazed by the way the trial-lawyer lobby dictated terms to Senate Democrats on this week's terrorism insurance vote."I've been here 18 years and I can say with total confidence that there's no special interest that completely owns, lock stock, the Republican conference," the GOP Senator told us yesterday. "But, by golly, I think the Democrats in the Senate are a wholly owned subsidiary of ATLA [the Association of Trial Lawyers of America]. They ought to be embarrassed."
These ruminations on the increasingly weird captivity of the Daschle Democrats by the lawsuit industry come after a party-line vote on an amendment to impose modest limits on trial lawyers after a terrorist attack. Naturally, it was defeated thanks to manic arm-twisting by Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Senator John Edwards (himself a trial lawyer with White House aspirations). ...If this continues, the pain is going to be felt in the wallets of workers as new buildings don't get built and downtowns empty out for lack of insurance. And all because Democrats see a higher priority in keeping the lawyers happy than in meeting what all grown-ups realize is the government's residual responsibility for terrorism disasters that the insurance industry simply doesn't have and can't raise the capital to cover.
The stakes here go beyond insurance to whether our two-party system is turning into the trial lawyers vs. everybody else. Mr. Bush owes the country a speech on tort reform anyway. He ought to connect the dots to homeland defense and the importance of adjusting the economy to live with the risks of an extended war against terrorism.
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