Ideology, Self-Interest Stand in the Way of Political Compromise on Asbestos Claims
WASHINGTON — It is a quest that challenges Congress to its very core.
For almost three decades, a political answer to the barrage of claims arising from exposure to cancer-causing asbestos has eluded lawmakers. Meanwhile, the longest-running legal brawl over a workplace hazard in U.S. history grinds on with no end in sight.
In the latest chapter, the Senate last month rejected a plan to create a $140-billion trust fund to compensate asbestos victims. Compromise has proved elusive because the issue pits Republican allies of big business against Democratic allies of trial lawyers -- central constituencies to each party that have vastly different ideas about the conflict.
But asbestos has also pitted Republican against Republican and divided Democrats as well. And it has set loose an army of lobbyists whose corporate clients are equally polarized over the best way to end the fight.
"This vote is about more than asbestos," Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) recently told colleagues during debate on the plan. "It may well signal the last chance that this body will have to be productive, to break free of our respective orthodoxies and legislate for the public good."
Even discounting for hyperbole, Hatch was pointing to a stubborn reality of asbestos politics: Over and over, issues of ideology and self-interest have combined to make compromise impossible and preserve the status quo.
Just getting the bill through the Senate Judiciary Committee was like "steering a ship through a minefield during a hurricane," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).
The latest push would be to settle asbestos claims through a no-fault process administered by the Labor Department. The idea is to shift the means of redress out of the crowded and unpredictable courts to a more orderly procedure that would compensate victims with set amounts based on their illnesses. Companies and their insurers would pay for the fund.
"Is it not possible to protect victims and not bankrupt companies and have a no-fault system whereby medical people can make the judgments and people can be paid a fair sum?" asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). "That is what this legislation is all about."
Opponents, however, worried that the fund would prove too restrictive, freezing out some claimants altogether.
