Sen. Frists request for a delay undermined Sen. Specters efforts to build momentum for his bill by adding language acceptable to committee Democratsespecially Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, the ranking minority member. It was the provisions that Sen. Specter supported at the request of Sen. Leahy that forced defendant and industry groups to ask Sen. Frist and other Republican members of the panel to push Sen. Specter to delay his bill.

Specifically, these provisions included calls for a $140 billion trust to be seeded over 27.5 years by industry and insurers, as well as language that said all claims accepted by the alternative claims-processing system established by the bill would revert to the tort system at any point the fund couldnt pay claims for six months. The insurance industry also opposed changes by Sen. Specter to a bill drafted last year that would have front-loaded the industrys contributions to the trust fund.

The AFL-CIO letter said the labor group is “deeply disturbed by the statements of some senators and some business and insurance groups calling for reopening agreements reached in the last Congress or returning to the terms of [a prior bill] as the legislative vehicle for consideration.”

The AFL-CIO said it would “strongly oppose any attempt to push through, on a partisan basis, legislation whose main purpose is to bail out companies at the expense of victims.”

At the same time, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texasthe Judiciary Committee member who has been most receptive to arguments from defendants and insurerstold Congress Daily he is reaching out to Democrats and Republicans to fashion a bill.
“We're trying to get everything side by side and let people understand what the options are,” he
said. “We're trying to narrow the issues.”

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, February 18, 2005. Copyright 2005 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.