Washington, DC, November 16, 2005--Senate Budget Committee leaders are seeking to further delay action on legislation to create a $140 billion fund to compensate asbestos victims, saying in a letter released on Tuesday that they are worried the program could run short of money.
"There are potentially serious costs to federal taxpayers from this legislation," the committee's chairman, New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, and ranking Democrat, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, said in a letter to Senate leaders.
Since the proposed asbestos compensation fund would have the authority to borrow money from the U.S. government, it could deepen the federal budget deficit if it runs short of cash, Gregg and Conrad said.
"We ask that at least until these issues are fully resolved, that the Senate not take any further action on the legislation," they said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, and Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.
Asbestos, widely used for fireproofing and insulation until the 1970s, has been linked to cancer, and hundreds of thousands of injury claims have bankrupted dozens of U.S. companies.
The Senate bill would end the lawsuits and create an asbestos victims' compensation fund. The proposal has divided the business community as well as senators in both parties, and has been struggling to gain support for months.
It was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in May but amid doubts about whether it has 60 votes needed in the 100-seat chamber to overcome procedural hurdles, Frist has not brought it to the Senate floor.
However, Sen. Arlen Specter, co-author of the bill, said recently that Frist had promised to bring it to the floor early next year.
Recently there have been new concerns raised in studies of the fund's viability, and these were cited in Gregg and Conrad's letter. There was no immediate comment from Frist or Reid's office.
But Pennsylvania Republican Specter and the bill's co-author, Vermont Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy, fired back in a letter to Frist and Reid.
They stressed that their bill would create a privately-funded trust, capitalized by private contributions from insurance and asbestos defendant companies.
"The bill does not assess a contribution from federal taxpayers," Specter and Leahy said.
They plan a hearing on Thursday to examine projections of future asbestos claims and invited Conrad and Gregg to attend.
