Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act

POSTAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND ENHANCEMENT ACT -- (Senate - February 09, 2006)

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Cornyn substitute amendment to S. 852. I thank the Senator from Texas for his work on this issue. He is someone who comes to this debate with great knowledge of the subject matter and has modeled his legislation after what has been a very successful model in the State of Texas.

As the Senator from Texas has noted, this is a problem that needs to be addressed. Out-of-control asbestos litigation has become a disease in our economy. It threatens to drive scores of companies into bankruptcy. It diverts compensation away from legitimate victims of asbestos. It discourages investment in companies under suit and drives stock values down and diverts funds away from expansion and growth and results in job loss. In short, it has become an obstacle to economic recovery.

Few of us in this Chamber can disagree with those very basic facts. However, I am not persuaded that creating a new Federal program, yet another entitlement program, one more compensation program, is the right solution. We need to seriously assess the wisdom of Congress's growing inclination to create more of what are virtually uncapped entitlement funds. The problem is in the courts. That is where the solution should be. We cannot continue to have the Government take every litigation quagmire out of the court system and put the problem on the back of the Federal Government and ultimately on the backs of the taxpayers. We cannot continue to do so.

I voted to proceed to debate on this bill because this is a problem. It needs to be solved. Indeed, Congress must act. But what is the best solution? Should we create yet another entitlement trust fund or should we reform the tort system by imposing reasonable medical criteria standards in the courts?

We need to find a solution that protects both the economy and the legal rights of those truly injured by asbestos or who will develop asbestos-related injuries in the future. It is my belief that it would be a mistake to establish an asbestos trust fund. I know this fund relies on private financing. Unfortunately, this may turn out to be only the seed money and unable, over time, to sustain the fund for very long, creating a high risk that Congress, at some point in the future may have to step in to keep it operating. The last thing we need is another uncapped Government entitlement, especially with our existing deficits.

The major problem with the trust fund is that the private funding is capped but the potential liability is not. We have to face reality. This fund will go insolvent. I don't believe it is a question of if; it is a question of when. The underlying bill supposedly answered that by putting in a sunset provision that, when the fund goes insolvent, sends all unpaid claimants back to the tort system, the same broken tort system that we have today. Does anybody really believe that will happen? This Senator certainly does not.

With hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of unpaid claimants, would those claimants be happy about going back into a court system to spend 3 or more years litigating a case for an award that probably would be less than they could have received under this trust fund bill? I don't think they will do that.

Political pressure on Congress from union and victims groups to bail out the trust fund and sustain it would be immense. These liability trust funds typically do not go back to the tort system. Trust funds in general rarely ever go away, not after creating an entirely new class of entitled people. So let's not delude ourselves.

President Reagan once said that the closest thing to immortality on this planet is a government program. Once we create a whole new class of entitled people, it will be very difficult to go back or in any way sunset this program. The result would be the taxpayers being left on the hook. That is why I support the Cornyn substitute amendment.

I ask my colleagues to seriously consider where Congress is going if it creates such a fund. What kind of precedent is this creating and where will this end?

There has been a dangerous inclination by Congress to rescue segments of our economy from out-of-control litigation by simply taking claims out of the courts and creating a Government-administered liability trust fund. The solution should be commonsense tort reform, not to have the Government become some gigantic claims processing and payment agency.

The best solution, one that has no cost to the Treasury, that does not require the creation of new Government agencies or battalions of Government administrators and one that will have immediate positive effect for both business and victims is a simple solution that, one, establishes reliable and verifiable medical criteria standards in the courts; two, tolls the statute of limitations to protect future victims; and, three, prohibits abusive venue shopping. That is it. It is simple. It is not loaded up with tort reform that our friends on the other side of the aisle often object to. And importantly, many trial lawyers who represent malignant claims of asbestos exposure have in the past endorsed this approach.

It is time to consider a more modest solution. It may not provide the grand, comprehensive solution that many have wished for, but it takes a substantial bite out of the problem and is certainly better than nothing, which is what all parties will have if we continue to pursue the impossible.

I ask my colleagues to vote against the motion to table and to support the Cornyn substitute amendment.

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