Prospects for passage of legislation this year creating a trust fund to handle asbestos claims grew even dimmer last month, while lobbyists and congressional staffers say that negotiations aimed at creating a medical criteria bill–seen as the best alternative to the trust fund proposal–are also stalled.
Regarding floor action, lobbyists representing insurance interests said that Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., several weeks ago privately outlined to lobbyists criteria for putting the trust fund bill on the Senate floor that seemed to the lobbyists to be unrealistic.
According to several lobbyists representing insurers and trade groups monitoring the bill, Sen. McConnell said at a small fundraiser that the Senate Republican leadership will not allow the trust fund legislation to come back to the Senate floor unless there are 60 public votes for it and the leadership is assured that the debate won't consume more than three days.
The 60 votes are needed to overcome a budget point of order that derailed the bill in late February. Since Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.., the primary supporter of the trust fund approach, is seen as having only 57 supporters, overcoming that barrier is considered unlikely.
Moreover, limiting debate to three days is also seen as unrealistic, since both supporters and detractors of the bill anticipate a huge number of amendments being offered, even if the 60-vote point of order threshold can be attained.
The industry lobbyists also said that the next opportunity to bring the bill back to the Senate floor will be when Congress returns from a two-week recess on April 24 because the Senate is focused on immigration reform and hoped to complete action on a pension reform bill before the April recess.
However, the lobbyists pointed out there's been little progress on the pension bill, and most industry lobbyists and staffers for the conferees say it is more likely work won't be completed until Memorial Day.
Regarding setting medical criteria for asbestos claims, the effort to fashion an alternative to the trust fund approach is being led by staffers for Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Richard Durbin, D-Ill.
Staffers for Sens. Cornyn, Durbin and other members of the Senate interested in the bill met for five hours on the issue recently with lobbyists for the insurance industry, defendants and trial lawyers, and made little progress, according to a lobbyist familiar with the talks who asked not to be named.
However, no agreements on remaining issues were reached, and the staffers and lobbyists indicated afterward that they felt the talks would heat up only if Sen. Specter appeared close to winning the 60 votes needed to overcome the budget point of order that is now stalling action on the bill.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.