The Coalition for Asbestos Reform (CAR) is continuing to advocate against the creation of a federal trust fund for asbestos litigation claims, referred to as the Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act.

Citing the recent testimony of former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the Coalition said creating the fund would result in failure and could have disastrous consequences for smaller and medium-sized businesses that face asbestos liability. According to CAR, many businesses do not realize the impact of $140 billion in taxes that the legislation would require, though at press time there were pending changes to the proposed legislation that might limit these amounts.

According to a release, however, Holtz-Eakin's testimony states that both the scale of the mandatory spending and the size of the revenues are highly uncertain and will likely result in federal borrowing that would come from taxpayers. He went on to say that the most central challenge right now is to have less mandatory spending in the years to come.