The bill is S. 852, the Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution (FAIR) Act. It is sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, its key drafter and primary supporter. He also has the support of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, ranking minority member of the committee.

Despite the move to clear debate, the bill still faces an uphill fight to enactment. It faces opposition from most insurance industry trade groups and a number of large insurers.

The Hill, a tabloid which covers Congress, in Tuesday editions published excerpts from a memo from a lobbying group which said that members of a group calling itself the Coalition for Asbestos Reform had paid $2.8 million to a lobbying group pledged to stop the bill.

According to the publication, the memo said American International Group, Allstate, American Re (a reinsurance provider), Chubb Corp., Hartford Insurance, Liberty Mutual, Nationwide Insurance and Zurich Financial have each received bills for $134,250 to pay for operating and advertising costs in connection with efforts to defeat the bill.

But there are industry supporters of the bill, including St. Paul/Travelers, MetLife and ACE.

Other opponents include trial lawyers, the AFL-CIO and some large defendants. But many medium-sized defendants support the bill and, according to several insurance industry sources, are strongly supporting Majority Leader William Frist, R-Tenn., in his efforts to get the bill through the Senate.

A critical vote that could occur Monday involves potential budget points of order, according to a memo sent Feb. 3 to Republicans by the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee.

Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., is considering filing a procedural motion that would take 60 votes to overcome, on the grounds that the bill would affect the budget in violation of the rules. However, Sen. Specter is arguing that no taxpayer money would be used for the fund or its expenses, the memo said.

Another potential budget point of order relates to a Senate rule which provides that a committee cannot spend beyond the amount allocated to it, according to the Policy Committee paper.

According to the industry lawyer, at least 13 Republicans are considering supporting the point of order because they oppose the bill. Joined with the minimum 35 Democrats who object to it, that would kill the bill, congressional staffers and industry lobbyists said.

Because the bill is open to all amendments in a pre-cloture environment, Senate Democrats could also seek to use the bill as an opportunity to generate votes on lobbying reform, Medicare, veteran funding, minimum wage, and any number of other items, all designed to force Republicans to commit themselves on potentially embarrassing votes, the sources said.

The legislation would establish a $140 billion trust fund an administrator within the Department of Labor would use to deal with claims resulting from exposure to asbestos in the workplace.

Contributions to the fund would be from defendants and insurers over a 27.5-year period. After that, claims would revert to the tort system, a sticking point for the insurance industry as well as its supporters in Congress.

As the Property Casualty Insurers Associations of America (PCI) pointed out in a Jan. 26 letter to Sen. Frist, the insurance industry would be forced to make “disproportionately large contributions ($20.6 billion) in the first five years to fund start-up costs, with a very high likelihood that the fund would fail in its early years.”

In comments yesterday before the vote, two Republican supporters said the bill was needed.

Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said: “The crisis of asbestos exposure impacts the lives of sick and dying workers and retirees, but not just them. Also it impacts…every corner of the American economy. The litigation that these workplace injuries spawned now threatens to deprive the very workers who need compensation for their injuries of their due rewards while crushing businesses large and small in every state.”

Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, added: “[T]his bill is simply about helping victims. It's about doing the right thing, about doing the right thing for extremely sick individuals. It's about doing the right thing for very sick people, by compensating them quickly and fairly.”