Recently in Current legislation Category

Tomorrow I will be in Nashville, TN, to promote the universal right to civil jury trials, standing alongside the Tennessee Association for Justice and Susan Saladoff, producer of the documentary movie, Hot Coffee, which tells the truth about the famous McDonald's "hot coffee" case. As I mentioned in an interview with the Tennessee Public News Service, the "tort reform" side has mythologized that case, completely distorting the facts. Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, rebutted those myths with actual facts in a December WorldNetDaily piece on the unconsitutionality of federal tort reform. I'm very pleased that Judson will join us tomorrow in Nashville.

It's critical that Americans learn of the importance that the Founding Fathers gave to the right to civil jury trials for all causes and in all courts, state and federal. Historian Pauline Maier's book, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788, has drawn rave reviews from a number of conservative legal scholars. Randy Barnett called it "marvelous" and described it as "the first comprehensive narrative of the ratification of the U.S Constitution, from the Philadelphia convention, through each of the states (in order of deliberation) and the drafting and adoption of the first 10 amendments." So I downloaded it on Kindle and searched for references to the right to a civil jury trial. And the book refers to a number of instances in which the states discussed and debated the need to protect that right in explicitly in the Bill of Rights after the delegates to the Constitutional Convention rejected motions to do so in the Constitution.

The benefit of the right to civil jury trials and the need to protect that right was a part of numerous state ratification conventions. For instance, the delegates to the Pennsylvania ratification delegation entered into a heated argument over whether Sweden had utilized, and then eliminated, civil jury trials and the impact on civil justice, which was resolved only when a commentary by the English jurist William Blackstone proved that civil jury trials had been commonplace thoughout Europe. The book documents similar debates in Connecticut and Virginia, the latter resolved by reference to the same Blackstone commentary that determined the debate in Pennsylvania. No less a patriot than Patrick Henry argued that the lack of explicit protection of jury trials for civil and criminal cases would lead to the loss of all rights. It was these debates that eventually led James Madison to propose the inclusion of what became the Seventh Amendment in the package of constitutional amendments proposed during the first Congress. And as I've documented in posts here, most state constitutions explicitly protect the right to civil jury trials.

I hope tomorrow's events in Nashville will be a springboard to a nationwide discussion on the meaning of the Seventh Amendment and the need to protect the God-given right to civil jury trials in state and federal courts. It's clear from the documentation of the state ratification conventions that the Founders did not intend to see this precious right limited or eliminated in state courts.

The Founding Fathers built a civil justice system designed to protect the God-given, unalienable right of all Americans to present their claims before a local jury. That right was enunciated centuries ago by Moses, when he decreed that a man whose property is damaged by a neighbor's actions is entitled to punitive damages. That right to civil justice was protected by Article 39 of the Magna Carta, sealed in 1215, when English peasants forced King john to recognize God-given rights to self-government. That right was protected by our Founders in the 7th Amendment to the Constitution, introduced by James Madison during the first Congress, along with the other amendments in the Bill of Rights.

The Founders didn't limit the exercise of that God-given right to certain causes or to one group of citizens over another group of citizens. As the shackles of racism and sexism were removed, all Americans were eventually afforded that right to seek justice before a jury for their claims. So trespass cases, medical malpractice claims, property rights claims, and lawsuits to protect religious liberty under the First Amendment are equal under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, just as each so if is equal in the eyes of God.

Today on the nationally syndicated What's Up broadcast on Sirius Channel 131 and 12 radio stations, I discussed the fight for religious liberty brewing over the Obama Administration's "compromise" on the mandate for insurers to provide contraceptives, some of which act as abortifacients. Those of us who own a business and are faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church, and non-Catholic business owners whose religious convictions oppose abortion, will find it impossible to reconcile that mandate with our religious convictions. Eventually, we might have to seek justice, and prevent the imposition of that mandate, by filing suit in federal court. In so doing, we would follow in the footsteps of our forefathers who sought protection from excessive power wielded by the sovereign, through an appeal in the halls of civil justice. Regardless of anyone's views on the underlying issues, all Americans should respect the conscientious objections to certain types of medical services, and all Americans should respect the constitutionally protected right to defend such objections in a court of law.

You can download my audio interview from the What's Up program:
Segment 1
Segment 2

I've written often about the interviews conducted by Terry Lowry on his radio show, the What's Up show, broadcast on 12 radio stations from Houston to Chattanooga to Pittsburgh. I'm pleased to announce that this pro-7th Amendment broadcast, by a noted social conservative and Christian broadcaster, is now also heard on Sirius satellite radio on Channel 131, Family Talk Radio. Now the entire nation can hear periodic reports on civil justice issues and a defense of the Founding Fathers' plan for open courtrooms for all types of cases, from medical malpractice and defective products to religious liberty, property rights and other personal rights. The interviews are also available for downloading from the What's Up home page.

Terry interviewed me for today's broadcast, and we discussed recent congressional action to assist property rights owners, victims of forced abortions, and American victims of Iranian terrorism by enabling their lawsuits. I noted the inconsistency between the protection by many Congressmen of those groups' 7th Amendment rights and the attacks by some of the same Congressmen on medical malpractice lawsuits. As I noted, the Founders built a civil justice system to enable Americans to have their civil suits heard before juries in all types of cases. The Founders didn't differentiate between lawsuits to protect property rights and medmal claims, and neither should Congress. See my post of January 25 on the reasons for Republicans and Tea Partiers to support open courtrooms for all.

You can download listen to the first interview segment here and to the second interview segment here.

This week, the House Judiciary Committee approved H.R. 3541, the "Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act," which prohibits an abortion based on the sex, gender, color or race of the child, or the race of a parent of the child, as well as certain acts which facilitate the performance of a sex-selection or race-selection based abortion.

Articles from the pro- and anti-abortion commentators have focused on the criminal side of the bill and its potential impact on abortion rights. But I want to focus on another section of the bill, one which enables civil suits by the woman whose baby could be forcibly aborted, or by certain family members. That's a remarkable development for the Republicans serving on the Judiciary Committee, considering where they stand on other types of lawsuits.

Most of the House Republicans on that committee have been openly hostile to victims of medical malpractice, and last year approved H.R. 5, a bill designed to impose national limits on awards in medmal suits and impose wage limits on the attorneys who try such cases in court. So House Republican Judiciary Committee members are simultaneously opposing lawsuits filed in cases of personal injury or death, but creating a private right of action when race or sex is used as an excuse for abortion. Moreover, the committee Republicans backing H.R. 3541 have also backed H.R. 1433, titled "The Private Property Rights Protection Act," which enables civil suits by property owners against abusive eminent domain actions by local governments. There's no logical basis for the inconsistent treatment between medmal lawsuits on one hand, and certain abortion or property rights cases on the other.

I'm not against either of the two bills creating new private rights of action. As a pro-life conservative, I'm all for new legal tools to limit abortion on demand. But let's be consistent, just as the Founding Fathers were, when it comes to the civil justice system. They protected open courtrooms for all causes and cases, and so should Congress. Medical malpractice victims, victims of forced abortions, and property owners are equal under the law and have an equally unalienable right to bring their cases before a local jury.

The Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) is the method enacted in 1997 to control spending by Medicare on physician services, and ensure that the yearly increase in the expense per Medicare beneficiary does not exceed the growth in GDP. Every year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission advise Congress on the previous year's total expenditures and the needed adjustment in Medicare payments to doctors. For years, the calculation has resulted in a planned cut in payments, but Congress has repeatedly delayed the cuts. Congress and President Obama have delayed the implementation of the payment cuts several times, most recently until the end of February. On that date, it is estimated that the SGR will be a cut of at least 20% in payments. Physician groups, especially the American Medical Association, are lobbying for a permanent change to the SGR methodology, called the "doc fix" inside the Beltway, to prevent annual cuts.

I can understand the desire of the doctors' groups to rationalize the process and avoid painful SGR cuts, which could result in an actual reduction in medical services for those who most need them. But already we've seen political allies of the AMA recommend that Congress pay for the "doc fix" by crushing the constitutional rights of all Americans and instituting sweeping nationwide limits on medical malpractice and health care-related lawsuits. Numerous conservatives and Tea Party-side legal experts have condemned any such federal tort reform law as an unconstitutional infringement on states' and individual rights. That's reason alone to not pursue that option.

But there's another reason why Congress shouldn't try to pay for the "doc fix" with medmal limits: the CBO's estimates of revenues resulting from the institution of federal limits on medmal lawsuits are fatally flawed. The AMA and its allies continuously promote a CBO estimate, released during the ObamaCare debate, that medmal limits would save close to $60 billion over ten years. Here are the flaws in that estimate:

First, CBO not only has a lousy record of estimating ten-year budget deficits and projections of policy impacts, but it's missed often on just year-to-year projections. It's no wonder that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor accused the CBO of outright "budget gimmickry" in its calculations last year on the supposed "savings" that would result from enactment of the Affordable Care Act, or that Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner criticized CBO for predicting that repealing ObamaCare would cost $145 billion.

Second, CBO admitted in 2010 that it did not "consider the effect of tort reform on patient health and medical outcomes." Remarkably, the CBO determined that "many studies of malpractice costs do not examine health outcomes." In fact, implementing CBO's projection of "savings" could actually result in more deaths and injuries. CBO admitted in its estimate that limits on medmal lawsuits could "an additional 4,853 Americans killed every year by medical malpractice, or 48,250 Americans over the ten-year period CBO examines." And another 400,000 or more patients could be injured during the same 10 years. That's not a cost that CBO can estimate, but it's one we don't want to bear.

Third, the CBO can't estimate the impact that sweeping limits on medmal lawsuits would have on federal health care costs paid for by Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration. If someone is brain-damaged, mutilated or rendered paraplegic as a result of medical negligence, but cannot obtain compensation from the culpable party through the tort system, he or she may be forced to turn to those programs for compensation. None of these increased Medicaid or VA hospital costs are considered in the CBO estimate.

Whenever there is a successful medical malpractice lawsuit involving an elderly or poor person, Medicare and Medicaid can claim either an interest in whatever the patient recovers, so the victim reimburses the government for some of the health care expenditures. Without the lawsuit, Medicare and Medicaid will lose funds that the government would otherwise be able to recoup. And none of these lost funds are considered by the CBO. In fact, Congressmen and Senators of both parties are sponsoring legislation to improve that process and return even more revenue to the Treasury, but CBO still can't count that money properly.

Fourth, CBO guesstimated that imposing federal lawsuit limits would result in a reduction in a drop in liability insurance premiums, but provided no raw data, explanations, or sources to back up its estimate. Numerous states have already imposed caps on medmal lawsuit damages, with no impact on personal health insurance premiums. In fact, a study by the Commonwealth Fund shows health insurance premiums rising rapidly in California since 2003, despite the state's very tough limits on awards in health care-related lawsuits. CBO makes the assumption that Uncle Sam can wave a wand and magically force health insurance premiums to drop. How's that one working out in California?

In conclusion: Anyone betting on federal lawsuit limits to pay for the "doc fix" is wasting their time. Not only is it unconstitutional, but it won't raise real money and solve our budget problems. Congress should reject any proposal to impose federal limits on health care-related lawsuits, and instead spend its valuable time designing a constitutional and mathematically reliable "doc fix" solution.

UPDATE: The committee approved the special language assisting the families by a unanimous voice vote on February 2. The language was changed last night to limit its application to Iran, and not to the other designated state sponsors, in order to more easily enact and implement the change in banking law.

In 1983, an Iranian suicide agent exploded a massive truck bomb, destroying a U.S military barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The blast killed 241 American Marines, soldiers and sailors and injured hundreds more. The mass murder was a brutal, unprovoked attack on American servicemen. It also was a terrorist assault on the United States by the most active sponsor of State terrorism in the world, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Over 1000 family members of the victims exercised their constitutional right to hold Iran accountable and sued in U.S. courts for that vicious attack. In 2007, the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia found Iran liable for the Beirut bombing. He ordered it to pay $2.65 billion to the surviving victims and families. The families' attorneys identified an account of Iranian funds, laundered through Europe into the U.S. and stashed in an account at a bank in New York City, and the judge froze that account in order to satisfy the judgment.

But central banks of countries are granted immunity from attachment, even if the central bank is of a state sponsor of terrorism. The Iranian central bank has already notified a federal court in NYC of its intent to file a motion to lift the attachment. Absent special legislation, the order freezing the account could be lifted, and Iran could regain the funds in the account for use in its nuclear proliferation and terrorism activities.

So the families have turned to Congress to ask for legislation that would
clarify that state central banks of terrorist states (Iran, Cuba, Sudan and North Korea) forfeit the immunity when their assets are surreptitiously laundered into the United States through money laundering jurisdictions. The bill language would affect only the central banks of the four state sponsors of terrorism, when they are caught surreptitiously laundering assets through the U.S. financial system.

On Thursday, the Senate Banking Committee will act on S. 1048, the Senate version of a bill designed to impose new sanctions on Iran. The House approved their version of this bill in December. The families are asking the Banking Committee to add the special language described above to the bill prior to action by the full Senate. I have been working with the families as a paid consultant as they seek justice through the enactment of this special legislation.

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is opposed to the families' effort, apparently concerned that other countries might refuse to invest their funds in the U.S. or treat the Federal Reserve similarly. The families responded in a press release on Monday. Spokesperson Lynn Derbyshire, whose brother was killed in the attacks, said, "Everyone agrees that the most effective way to hold Iran accountable, short of war, is to deliver a blow to its government finances. The Obama Administration has been encouraging other nations to impose economic sanctions on Iran. Incredibly, however, it is opposing a clear and effective way to take $2.65 billion out of the Iranian financial system and directly punish Iran for a specific act of terrorism Iran would like America to forget."

The families deserve some measure of justice and the Congress must act to prevent Iran from accessing the $2+ billion in frozen funds. Hopefully the Senate Banking Committee will ignore the Obama Administration and add the special language to the Iran sanctions bill.

There's a great article in The Washingtonian magazine today titled, "Minor Mistakes, Deadly Results," about the thousands of deadly medical errors occurring annually and the measures taken by Washington-are hospitals to prevent them. Here's the beginning of the article, with a story that illustrates the cases and should break your heart:

When Frances Barnes had a stroke in August 2008, she was taken by ambulance to Howard University Hospital. The 80-year-old grandmother was there for about two weeks when she began complaining about pain in her legs. Her daughter Althea Hart pulled back her mother's blankets and noticed a strange odor. Hart thought the smell was coming from the compression stockings wrapped around Barnes's legs to help with circulation, so she took them off. She found that her mother's left foot had turned black.

Hospital staff had failed to follow physician orders, which required taking off the compression stockings after each shift for at least 30 minutes, according to a DC Department of Health investigation.

"We called a nurse right away, and they tried to heal her infection," says Patricia Moss, another of Barnes's daughters. "But they couldn't."

Barnes's family moved her to Providence Hospital in Northeast DC, where she had to have her lower leg amputated. Barnes moved to a nursing home, where she continued to get infections; she died at Providence in February 2009, five months after her foot turned black. Barnes left behind eight children, 15 grandchildren, and 16 great-grandchildren.

The facts are startling. Medical malpractice appears to be worsening. "In 2010, the federal government estimated that faulty medical care contributed to the death of about 15,000 Medicare patients per month. By these measures, faulty hospital care is one of the leading causes of death, behind heart disease and cancer." And surgery on the wrong location in body happens "as often as 40 times a week in US hospitals and clinics," according to the Joint Commission, which accredits American hospitals. All this despite the use of a universal protocol in accredited hospitals as a way to eliminate wrong-site surgeries.

On March 23 of last year, I wrote about surveys of operating room and critical care nurses that revealed shocking instances of medical malpractice. For instance, 85% of 2,383 nurses surveyed said they'd been in a situation where measures such as checklists and protocols warned them of a problem that would have otherwise harmed a patient. But 58% of the nurses said they'd been in situations where it was either unsafe to speak up or they were unable to get others to listen.

Tort reformers screaming for an unconstitutional federal takeover of state courtrooms and tort law should think a little more logically. The most important and successful way to institute valuable reforms in the medmal area is to institute cost-effective prevention mechanisms. State legislatures and Medicare should concentrate on requiring such protocols, not trying to limit the damage on the back end through limits on medical malpractice lawsuits. As the libertarian Cato Institute demonstrated last year, caps on medmal awards only hurt consumers, they don't reduce deadly medical errors.

Fix the problem at its source and you'll see real reductions in the number of medical malpractice lawsuits.

The chairman of the top health subcommittee in the House, Rep. Joe Pitts, announced this week that the House GOP would offer a "replace Obamacare" bill that be a "free-market alternative." But he added that the proposal would mandate a federal cap on awards in medical malpractice lawsuits filed anywhere in the U.S. There's nothing "free-market" about using federal law to give orders to juries and judges sitting in state courtrooms. The Founding Fathers trusted local juries to make the decisions on claims before them, including the level of damages. That's why so many Republican Members of Congress, conservative legal scholars, and states' rights advocates have criticized legislative proposals to federally mandate awards in medmal lawsuits, tell local judges which cases they can and cannot handle, and impose federal wage controls on attorneys. Did Rep. Pitts pay any attention when Ken Cuccinelli, Attorney General of Virginia, promised that he would sue to stop such a law more quickly than he sued to stop Obamacare? Or when Randy Barnett, co-counsel for the NFIB in the lawsuit to kill Obamacare, wrote that tort law belongs exclusively to the states and called out Republicans like Pitts as "fair-weather federalists?" Or when his fellow Republicans in Congress such as Senators Tom Coburn and Mike Lee, and Reps. Lee Terry, Morgan Griffith, Ted Poe and Louis Gohmert stood up for the Founding Fathers' vision of liberty, trusted local juries and opposed federal medmal limits? Or when Rob Natelson of the conservative Independence Institute documented the writings of the Founding Fathers, in which they clearly insisted on protecting the right to a civil jury trial in state courts from federal interference? Or when the Cato Institute reported that medmal caps hurt consumers, or when the non-partisan National Conference of State Legislators objected to federal medmal limits in a letter to Congress? What do the 7th Amendment and 10th Amendment mean to Rep. Pitts?

Why doesn't he realize that his beloved federal cap on medmal lawsuit awards shares the same basis in constitutional theory as the Obamacare he wishes so hard to replace? Both are fundamentally based on the expansion of the Commerce Clause initiated after the Supreme Court's decision in Wickard v. Filburn. The Obama Justice Department cited that case in its briefs in Obamacare cases (page 18), and the American Tort Reform Association cited it in a paper supporting federal medmal limits (page 2). Or does Rep. Pitts recognize only those limits on federal power with which he agrees?

And why - WHY - does Rep. Pitts want to reward the pro-Obamacare and pro-abortion AMA and their buddies among medical groups, who shoved the individual mandate down our throats? Why does he want to give them partial civil immunity from deadly medical errors when they're pursuing the federal takeover of all health care?

Maybe most importantly, is Rep. Pitts speaking just for himself or for most or all of the House GOP? If he took off on his own to propose an unconstitutional and hypocritical bill, then it's easy to predict the bill won't enjoy even the support of too many Republicans. Let's hope so.

Lawmakers who voted last year for an unconstitutional bill to crush states' and individual rights, by sharply limiting medical malpractice lawsuits, did a 180-degree turn on Tuesday, approving a federal bill to enable lawsuits against abusive eminent domain actions by local governments.

The House Judiciary Committee voted to approve H.R. 1433, titled The Private Property Rights Protection Act. Co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of Representatives including many Republicans the bill is aimed at stopping municipalities from condemning private property for private land development. The bill was inspired in part by the case of a group of homeowners in Long Beach, New Jersey, who successfully fought the city's efforts to take their homes and allow developers to make millions building upscale condos. Section 4 of the bill creates a private right of action to fight local eminent domain actions.

It's too bad the committee Republicans aren't as committed to protecing our lives from the impact of deadly medical errors by negligent health care personnel. Many of the Republicans voting for H.R. 1433 also voted last year to crush most medical malpractice lawsuits, as provided for in H.R. 5. That bill imposes caps on noneconomic damages, which would eliminate an incentive for lawsuits filed by the elderly and infirm. That bill would tell states how to manage their courtrooms and mandate a wage scale for the attoneys filing the cases, the only federally imposed wage scale approved by any set of Republicans.

It's ridiculously inconsistent for the Republican co-sponsors of H.R. 1433 to also co-sponsor H.R. 5. The two bills couldn't be more contradictory in intent, spirit, and basis in American Constitutional law. House Judciary Republicans should think twice before placing a higher value on property rights than on human life.

I posted the following eleven months ago to prove that Ronald Reagan never believed that the federal government should run state civil justice systems through federal tort reform or caps on damages awarded in state courts. With President Obama poised to deliver another State of the Union and the Republican Presidential race raging at full tilt, I thought it would be instructive to repost what I wrote in February 2011.
-------------------------
During the recent 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, we read many tributes to him and re-read many of his greatest speeches. I worked for the 1980 Reagan campaign during law school, was a political appointee in the Commerce Department during the Reagan Administration, and my wife worked for the President in the West Wing, so I joined in all the attention paid to my favorite President.

I thought it was time to go back and research President Reagan's personal stance on federal tort reform. I knew a number of senior officials in the Reagan Administration who were for some federal interference with the right to a jury trial for civil suits and states' rights, notably then-Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, for whom it became a personal crusade. But when reviewing President Reagan's major speeches, from before the 1980 election to the end of his Presidency in 1989, I found the following:

1. Ronald Reagan never proposed any tort reform measure during any of his eight State of the Union speeches, and never criticized trial lawyers in them either. I've searched every word of his SOTUs. It's a strange fact that President Obama proposed more tort reform in this year's SOTU than Ronald Reagan did in eight SOTUs (I wonder if Republicans are comfortable with that).

2. Reagan didn't criticize trial lawyers or propose tort reform in his major address to Congress on April 28, 1981, in which he proposed his economic plan. This was his first speech since the assassination attempt on his life, and it set up the entire Reagan Revolution.

3. Reagan didn't criticize trial lawyers or propose tort reform in either of his Inaugural Addresses in 1981 and 1985. Neither did he in either of his speeches accepting the Republican nomination for President in 1980 and 1984.

4. I can find no mention of this topic in any of his major speeches prior to his election: not in his famous "Time For Choosing" speech in 1964; not in his speech to the first CPAC conference in 1974; not in a speech at Hillsdale College in 1977 titled, "Whatever Happened to Free Enterprise" - none of them. It's obvious that Ronald Reagan wasn't interested in limiting civil suits.

In 1986, President Reagan gave a speech at the Chamber of Commerce, in which he backed the findings of a "Tort Reform Working Group" (TRWG) inside the Administration. To backtrack: The Reagan White House created a number of "Working Groups" to address a variety of topics. For instance, I worked on a "Consulting Services Working Group" that changed the procurement of outside consultants and saved the Commerce Department several million dollars. The TRWG proposed a group of sweeping tort reform proposals, many of which are also included in H.R. 5, the bill reported last week by the House Judiciary Committee to impose federal limits on health care lawsuits.

Here's what Reagan said about the TRWG proposals in his 1986 speech, and note the emphasis on protecting states' rights:

Earlier this year I endorsed the report of my Domestic Policy Council's Tort Policy Working Group. This report contains a number of recommendations, recommendations that include fixed-dollar limitations for certain kinds of awards and the establishment of assurances that liability judgments go to those actually wronged or injured and not to the lining of their attorney's pockets. Now, one of the report's most important recommendations urged our administration to submit reform legislation to the Congress.

This legislation, carefully drafted, has now been introduced in the Congress by Senator Robert Kasten and Congressman Hamilton Fish. It restores the fault standard, which requires that actual fault or wrongdoing must be established in most cases before liability can be assessed. It limits pain-and-suffering and punitive damage awards, awards the amount contingency-fee lawyers could earn, and restricts the joint and several liability doctrine that can force a single defendant to pay all damages even if he is only partly to blame. To be sure, much tort law would remain to be reformed by the 50 States, not the Federal Government. And in our Federal system of government this is only right. Many of the Tort Policy Working Group recommendations, for example, would have to be implemented at the State level to be fully effective. This administration's bill represents a much-needed overhaul of Federal laws governing interstate commerce -- one of the fields of authority the Federal Government is specifically granted by the Constitution -- and sets an example of common sense for the rest of the Nation to follow.

To my knowledge, and with the limitations that come with Internet research, this is the only speech in Ronald Reagan's long political career that comes close to proposing specific federal tort reform measures. And he recognized that states are the proper venue for the debate over tort reform, under "our Federal system of government," not the federal government. And he said it ONCE. He didn't follow up that speech with any other, not at the 1987 CPAC conference, not at the 1988 Republican convention, nowhere. You can do your own research and try to prove me wrong (I suggest you start at this website and at this website, where I found links to every speech cited in this post).

Anyone asserting that "Ronald Reagan was for tort reform" is mistating the Reagan record. It wasn't a priority for him, he didn't see civil litigation as a major problem, and it appears that he gave only one speech on it. That's certainly no basis for sweeping away states' rights in a new federal tort reform law.

In August, I asked here whether we would see Presidential candidate Rick Perry as the hardcore states' rights advocate, or Rick Perry the hardcore advocate of limiting the 7th Amendment right to a civil jury trial through limitations on plaintiffs' rights. He couldn't logically be both, since federal tort reform is completely incompatible with the concept of states' rights under the Constitution and Tenth Amendment. But Perry tried to be both, with no success. Perry suffered from the same malady as Michelle Bachmann, who falsely promoted herself as a "Constitutional conservative" while proposing federal medical malpractice laws (which would benefit the medical device industry located in her district). Republican primary voters were smart enough to see the blatant inconsistencies of the Perry and Bachmann campaigns, simultaneously calling to protect states' rights while they urge closing state courtroom doors under federal law. To his credit, Gov. Perry seemed to back off of federal tort reform in the fall and winter; it wasn't included in his "Cut, Balance and Grow" economic plan, and he stopped mentioning it in debates.

Gov. Perry ended his campaign today by endorsing Newt Gingrich. It's time to ask the same question about Newt Gingrich, still one of the frontrunners for the GOP nomination. Will we see a states' rights champion or an advocate for closing courtrooms and crushing constitutional rights?

I see Gingrich as evolving in his position during the past year or two. The "Old Newt" was a hardcore tort reformer with no respect for the right to a civil jury trial or states' rights. "Old Newt" developed a "Contract With America" in 1994 which propelled Republicans into a House majority and Gingrich into the Speaker's chair. It was blatantly pro-federal tort reform and didn't protect state authority for any purpose whatsoever. And an early version of a new "Contract," posted in early 2010 on the conservative Newsmax website, included a call for "Litigation Reform." But Gingrich has championed his support for states' rights in recent years, most notably in the books such as "Fed Up" (ironically co-authored with Rick Perry). As his Presidential campaign revived, he proposed enforcing the 10th Amendment "to return power back home" to the states, as part of the new "Contract With America."

So, you might ask, where is Newt now on this issue? Interestingly, Gingrich hasn't mentioned federal tort reform at all in the Presidential debates. When Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli called out Bachmann over her disrespect for state civil justice systems, Gingrich didn't respond either way. Although his campaign website proposes in one sentence to "Stop junk lawsuits that drive up the cost of medicine with medical malpractice reform," I'm not aware of any forum in which he's proposed it. When Rick Santorum, an unrepentant non-states'-righter, slammed Ron Paul over Paul's principled criticism of a national tort law, once again Gingrich didn't take the bait and didn't jump in on either side. It's fair to say that with the exception of that one sentence, Gingrich can claim that he's not for federal tort reform. Does he stand by that sentence or was it just an addition by a campaign staffer to make some contributors happy? If reports on the Internet about Gingrich and Perry building a pro-10th Amendment platform are true, we'll have a real means of judging Gingrich's fidelity to constitutional principle.

Will he recognize that the Founding Fathers unreservedly left authority over tort law out of the hands of the national government when they drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights? Does he agree with conservatives such as VA AG Ken Cuccinelli, Sens. Tom Coburn and Mike Lee, Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips, Tea Party Patriots leader Mark Meckler, and top anti-Obamacare legal experts such as Randy Barnett and Walter Olson, all of whom said last year that federal tort reform is an unconstitutional abridgment of states' rights and that tort law isn't an enumerated power for Uncle Sam under the Constitution? Will he see the folly of rewarding the AMA and their associated medical groups, who want to use an unlimited Commerce Clause to justify national healthcare as well as special immunity from liability for harmful medical errors? Does he now realize that trial lawyers and civil suits had nothing to do with the Wall Street crash, the housing bubble and its collapse, the BP oilspill, and that those actors in those types of scandals need to be held accountable before local juries as the Founders intended?

Let's hope we see the "New Newt" standing for open courtrooms and state sovereignty, not the "Old Newt" who sought unconstitutional legal protection for selected sections of American business.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has taken another opportunity to expand the use of forced arbitration clauses in consumer contracts, denying us the right to negotiate such clauses out and take our claims to a jury. On the heels of the landmark ATT Mobility v. Concepcion decision, the Court held in CompuCredit v. Greenwood, that companies that promise to repair an individual's credit can force customers into arbitration, instead of to a judge or jury trial, under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), even though the 1996 the Credit Repair Organizations Act gives consumers "the right to sue," because the latter act doesn't explicitly overrule the FAA. The impact of this decision extends the scope of the FAA and represents another in a string of decisions approving of forced arbitration clauses in consumer contracts.

A 1965 Supreme Court decision included a powerful summary of the detriments of arbitration: "Arbitration differs from judicial proceedings in many ways: arbitration carries no right to a jury trial as guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment; arbitrators need not be instructed in the law; they are not bound by rules of evidence; they need not give reasons for their awards; witnesses need not be sworn; the record of proceedings need not be complete; and judicial review, it has been held, is extremely limited."

Forced arbitration clauses are never negotiable by the consumer, and the proceedings are heavily biased towards the business. The FAA might now be the most powerful anti-jury trial federal law on the books, with consumers trapped.

On September 23, I posted about H.R. 1063, a bill introduced in the House titled the Strengthening Medicare And Repaying Taxpayers Act of 2011, or "SMART Act." This bill helps to replenish the Medicare Trust Fund, make Medicare work for seniors instead of the other way around, and reduces paperwork burdens for businesses. To reiterate: Under federal law, Medicare pays the medical bills while a recipient is injured and sues the other party, acting as the "secondary payer" for the bills pending the outcome of any legal action. Federal law requires the injured person's attorney to repay Medicare upon a judgment or settlement, before any funds are given to the injured senior. But the federal agency running Medicare hinders the repayment process, so it can take years to finally pay off even the smallest claim, and the senior doesn't see a dime of the settlement until that payoff. Moreover, the feds impose ridiculous reporting burdens and penalties on businesses under the same secondary payer law. The SMART Act streamlines the process, establishes real deadlines for the federal agency, and enables businesses to meet CMS reporting requirements while maintaining data security.

The leading sponsor in the House is Rep. Tim Murphy, a Republican representing the 18th District in Pennsylvania. Rep. Murphy serves on the key Energy & Commerce Committee in the House. I first met and worked with him while he was on the House Financial Services Committee, where I was the senior Republican oversight counsel from 2001 through 2003. He's a career psychologist, which can come in pretty handy when dealing with House Members and staff of both parties. I've seen that Rep. Murphy strives to work with Members on both sides of the aisle, while maintaining core conservative principles of limiting the size and scope of the federal government. So it's no surprise to me to see him leading the most bipartisan Medicare bill in Congress, with co-sponsors from Reps. Ron Paul and Allen West on the right to Reps. Diana DeGette and Tammy Baldwin on the left.

Rep. Murphy discussed H.R. 1063 and other issues on January 10 in an interview on the nationally syndicated What's Up radio program, hosted by Terry Lowry. In part 2 of the interview (download here), he noted, "Now it's interesting: defense lawyers, plaintiffs' lawyers,, retailers, stores, restaurants, everybody wants to fix this problem, except Medicare. And so there are hundreds of millions of dollars that sit out there that take forever for the bureaucracy to try and claim, and some of the sad news about this is that sometimes what Medicare does, they will sue some elderly person or ask for the money to come back from the elderly person, and say that if you don't pay us back, we're going to take it out of your Social Security... So we're trying to correct this..."

As Terry Lowry noted, Rep. Murphy has "a boatload of common sense," especially on this issue. This bill corrects the inefficiencies of a huge government bureaucracy affecting millions of Americans and the business community. The SMART Act and Rep. Murphy deserve strong support from all 7th Amendment advocates.

Within the last week, two conservatives who have previously opposed federal tort reform on constitutional grounds did so again. Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, wrote Tort Reform? It's Unconstitutional on World Net Daily on December 13. He began by reiterating the Founding Fathers' support for the right to a civil jury trial:

First, there is no authority in the Constitution for the federal government to take over an area of law that has always been governed by the states. There is also no provision in the Constitution that allows the federal government to impose price controls on one industry or even one segment of an industry.

Perhaps more importantly, it flies in the face of what the founders undoubtedly considered the most important of the constitutional rights, the right to a jury trial.

The Founding Fathers considered the jury trial to be so important that it is the only right in the Bill of Rights that is specifically enumerated in two amendments.

Then Judson recounted the story of the McDonald's "Hot Coffee" case to show how the real facts of that case differ markedly from the mythology surrounding it, and how the jury decision in the case led to a change in corporate behavior:

In the end, the jury decided that Ms. Liebeck was partially at fault for the accident, so the damages award was reduced by 20 percent to $16,000. Ms. Liebeck asked for punitive damages, and the jury, after considering the evidence, awarded punitive damages of $2.7 million, or the equivalent of two days of profit McDonald's receives from its coffee sales.

In post-trial motions, the judge reduced the punitive damages to $480,000. In the end, McDonald's settled the case, and the details were kept confidential.

The free-market system is a wonderful system. It promotes good behavior and punishes bad behavior. McDonald's chose to sell its coffee at a temperature that caused injuries to people so it would make more money. The jury sent McDonald's a message, and today McDonald's does not sell its coffee at 190 degrees.

Rob Natelson, longtime law professor and constitutional scholar at the Independence Institute in Colorado, also reiterated his opposition to federal tort reform last week in an interview on the nationally syndicated What's Up radio program, hosted by Terry Lowry. On November 21, I posted about his new study, The Roots of American Judicial Federalism, in which he quoted from the numerous writings of the Founding Fathers. They clearly opposed any federal intervention in state judicial systems, including in civil justice issues. Rob's interview on December 12 was broadcast in four parts, with the third segment and the fourth segment (podcasts) the most pertinent, discussing the separation between federal and state powers as developed during the Founding Era. Proponents of federal tort reform ignore the sizable body of evidence presented by Rob Natelson and real Constitutional conservatives, but have lost the intellectual and political battle in Washington during 2011.

During the Huckabee Presidential Forum on Friday night, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli challenged Rep. Michelle Bachmann on the constitutionality of federal tort reform legislation. Cuccinelli promised weeks ago that he would sue the federal government if the Senate version of a federal medmal limits bill was ever enacted. Bachmann refused to recognize each state's right to run local and state courtrooms. Afterwards, in referring to Bachmann's performance, Cuccinelli said on the Fox News Channel, "On tort reform, I was really surprised she departed from the 10th Amendment position. And I went back and gave her a chance to clean that up. She stuck to it. It was more important to her to have tort reform across the country than to leave it to the states." It's clear that Ken Cuccinelli represents the real pro-10th Amendment position.

You can see the short exchange starting at 4:44 on this clip:

On November 16, I posted here about the opposition to federal tort reform by Judson Phillips, the founder of the influential Tea Party Nation group, who defended the 7th Amendment right to a civil jury trial. Mr. Phillips repeated his defense of the 7th Amendment, as well as the 10th Amendment, in a new letter to the Speaker and Majority Leader of the House. He advised the House leaders to avoid adding limits on awards in health care and medmal lawsuits to any bill preventing cuts in Medicare payments to doctors (the ''doc fix'' bill). Mr. Phillips generously agreed to allow me to post the entire text of the letter below. I urge 7th and 10th Amendment advocates to send this letter to the local Congressman and Senator.

The Honorable John Boehner
Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Eric Cantor
Majority Leader
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor,

The Doc Fix bill, to prevent cuts in Medicare payments to doctors, will soon make its way through the Congress. One of the things that some medical groups, such as the American Medical Association, want to include in it is federal tort reform.

I strongly urge you, on behalf of myself and many others in the Tea Party movement, to keep that provision out of the Doc Fix bill.

The Tea Party strongly supports the Constitution and the Constitution is very clear on this. Not only does the Tenth Amendment reserve these kind of issues for the States, the Seventh Amendment protects the rights of Americans to a civil jury trial. The right to a jury trial was so important to our founding fathers, it was included in the Bill of Rights, not once, but twice.

I wrote about this on my blog on the Tea Party Nation website a few days ago. I said:

"The civil jury system is a part of the free market. Our founding fathers thought enough of it to make it the 7th Amendment to the Constitution. Jury awards are a part of the free market. They do not exist in a vacuum. They not only compensate someone for an injury but like so many other parts of the free market, they act to deter bad behavior. If I am injured by a bad doctor or suffer some other type of injury or loss, I do not want the Federal Government telling me what my pain is worth. I want twelve citizens deciding justice for me. The right to a jury trial has a long and storied history in America and even further back in Britain."

Our founding fathers understood how well the free market worked. The free market is a fundamental part of liberty and freedom. To encroach on them through "tort reform" is an abuse of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution and clearly runs afoul of both the 7th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution.

"Tort reform" is simply a gift to a special interest group. The American Medical Association, which has been pushing tort reform, is not interested in the Constitution. They want to protect doctors. Of course, the AMA also supported Obamacare, which should tell us almost everything we need to know right there.

Health care in America is expensive, not because of Americans exercising their constitutional right to seek redress for injuries in court, but due to the destruction of the free market in the health care sector of the economy.

The AMA and the insurance companies have destroyed the free market. There is no competition among doctors. Without that competition, there is no market efficiency created. Just as you have in any other sector where there is no competition, prices are inflated and there is no pressure to bring them down. So after destroying the free market in health care, now they want us to listen to them on an issue that will have the net effect of stripping Americans of one of the constitutional rights our founding fathers thought were important enough to include in the Bill of Rights.

Americans are looking to the Republicans in Congress for leadership, not for capitulation to special interests.

Federal tort reform is a bad idea and it should not be included in the Doc Fix bill. It is unconstitutional and it is a bad idea. As with so many bad ideas brought up by liberal groups, it will not achieve its goal.

Sincerely,

Judson Phillips,
Founder, Tea Party Nation

During a speech on November 11 at the national convention of the Federalist Society, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah discussed why he could not vote for the jobs bill proposed by Senate Republican leadership (he voted "present"), even though it included many economic growth proposals with which he agreed. The Senator made it clear that he would have trouble voting for any federal tort reform bill, because most such bills inherently override states' rights. Here is a transcript of the pertinent section of that speech:

I had a situation just yesterday in which members of my party put forward a proposal consisting of a lot of bills rolled together. I agreed with almost all of them. Almost all of them achieved some favorable policy objective. But there was one with which I fundamentally disagreed; not because it was bad policy, but because it was utterly reconcilable with principles of federalism to which I took an oath. There was one portion of this Republican jobs package that would have told state courts, applying state law, reviewing state causes of action, that they were subject to certain limits, all in the name of interstate commerce; all because these things, like everything else, have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. I wanted to vote for the bill. Were I a member of the state legislature in the State of Utah, I would have voted for that kind of tort reform. But I couldn't do it, because it's not within my power. It was painful not to be able to vote in favor of that bill, but sometimes we have to do painful things, even when they undercut our underlying policy interests. In other words, just as textualism and originalism need to be protected and preserved, they need to be followed religiously so that they don't come under fire, and correctly as I believe, as simple tools to bring about a conservative philosophical revolution of sorts, we in the political branches of government who are dyed-in-the-wool advocates of federalism need to stick to federalism. Federalism is the answer, not just because it leads to right results, but because it is the right result, and it is the law. (Emphasis mine.)

Senator Lee's comments were met with applause by the audience, who obviously recognized and approved of his steadfast allegiance to constitutional principles.

During questioning by the audience, Senator Lee conceded that Congress could enact "some medical malpractice reforms" for federal suits brought in federal courts under federal law, or if such a bill is tied to "the provision of medical services with federal funds." But the federal tort reform bills being pushed by the AMA and other medical groups are straightforward, head-on, bills to crush states' and individual rights in health care-related lawsuits. Personally, I don't foresee Republicans proposing a bill to limit Medicare or Medicaid recipients' right to civil litigation, because of the political backlash it would generate.

Senator Lee's courageous vote on that bill and his statement in his speech place him squarely among the many Republicans and Tea Party-side conservatives who have come to recognize the unconstitutionality of federal tort reform bills. That growing list includes Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli; constitutional law expert Rob Natelson of the Independence Institute; Professor Randy Barnett; Tea Party movement leaders Judson Phillips and Mark Meckler; and many others, including critics of the plaintiffs' bar, all of whom insist on upholding the Constitution and Bill of Rights over political objectives. They've found, as Rob Natelson has detailed in his new study, that the Founding Fathers clearly and specifically did not want state tort law and state courts pre-empted or overruled by Congress through federal tort reform.

You can watch Senator Lee's entire speech below; scroll to the 20-minute mark to hear him discuss this issue.

In their zeal to adopt a federal malpractice reform bill to dictate procedures to state courts, many Republicans in Congress are doing precisely what they rightly accuse Democrats of doing: blithely disregarding the Constitution's clear limits on federal power.

Their proposals, once encapsulated in H.R. 5 and then slipped into the Senate Republican "jobs bill," not only violate the true meaning of the Constitution, but also likely run afoul of such modern Supreme Court cases as New York v. United States and Printz v. United States, which voided efforts to impose unfunded federal mandates on state officials. The same Virginia attorney general who brought the first suit against Obamacare has threatened to challenge this measure in court as well.

The effort to impose federal control over state courts and state civil justice violates one of the core principles of our federal system: That most judicial matters are local. Keeping courts and procedures local is, in fact, a crucial protection for individual liberty.

As I show in my new paper, "The Roots of American Judicial Federalism," one of the chief causes of the American Revolution was the British effort to undercut local courts by centralizing the administration of justice. As I also explain, after the Revolution Americans deliberately enshrined the local-control principle in our Constitution.

In other words, medical malpractice reform, like most other aspects of civil justice, is a matter for state, not federal, law. (Emphasis added.)

So wrote Rob Natelson, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Independence Institute in Colorado, in a post titled, "Congress, Butt Out! The Constitution Reserves Malpractice Reform for the States" to introduce his newest research study, The Roots of American Judicial Federalism. Rob Natelson is one of the most respected constitutional scholars in America; was Montana's best known political activist -- leading, among other campaigns, the most successful petition-referendum drive in Montana history -- and in June 2000, was the runner-up among five candidates in the party primaries for Governor of Montana.

The Roots of American Judicial Federalism is not Rob Natelson's first foray into the federal medical malpractice debate. In April, he became the first of a long line of conservative and Tea Party-side activists and scholars who oppose federal medmal laws on federalism grounds. In his letter to Congress, he spelled out the constitutionally based objections to H.R. 5, the primary bill desired by the medical groups to limit all health care lawsuits, including those filed for medical malpractice. "H.R. 5 flagrantly contravenes the limitations the Constitution places places upon Congress, and therefore violates both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. H.R. 5 is purportedly an exercise of the Constitution's Commerce Power. Yet as I shall explain, its subject-matter--civil actions in federal and state courts--is not within the Constitution's meaning of 'Commerce.' Nor can H.R. 5 be justified under the Necessary and Proper Clause as incidental to the regulation of interstate Commerce."

In the opening page of Roots, Natelson explains that the Founding Fathers were committed to reserving tort law for the states, even years before the drafting of the Constitution.

In drafting the Constitution, the Framers provided for additional federal judicial authority. Like the post-1768 pre-Revolutionary pamphleteers, however, they rejected proposals for a central government with power over all activities with inter-jurisdictional impact. Instead, they limited federal authority to items specifically enumerated. Reserved to the states would be nearly all the authority they had exercised previously, including power over state court procedures and over existing areas of substantive jurisdiction. With a few exceptions, therefore, the states were left in exclusive possession of the law of torts, contracts, inheritance, property, and criminal law.

When the Constitution became public in September, 1787, opponents argued that the Constitution could be construed to permit Congress or the federal courts to exceed prescribed limits. They contended that the new government might interfere with criminal and civil justice within the states. The Constitution, they said, should be rewritten to prevent manipulation of its terms by legal "sophistry."

To quiet such apprehensions, the Constitution's proponents explained to the ratifying public that the Constitution, if adopted, would grant only restricted authority to the new government. The Constitution's proponents listed for the ratifying public numerous areas in which the federal government would have no power and the states would enjoy exclusive power. Among the areas listed were several pertaining to state judicial systems.

The remainder of the study reveals the detailed writings of the Founding Fathers in support of judicial federalism. Professor Natelson quotes them time and again, including in letters and pamphlets that many Americans have probably never read before:

Like earlier authors, the writers of the 1774 pamphlets emphasized that judicial matters should be administered locally. In his Novanglus, (John) Adams pointed out that the dispute between colonists and the British government was not limited to taxes:

"Is the threepence upon tea our only grievance? Are we not in this province deprived of the privilege of paying our governors, judges, &c.? Are not trials by jury taken from us? Are we not sent to England for trial? Is not a military government put over us? Is not our constitution demolished to the foundation?"

Alexander Hamilton, in A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, agreed:

"Give me the right to be tried by a jury of my own neighbors, and to be taxed by my own representatives only. What will become of the law and courts of justice without this? The shadow may remain, but the substance will be gone. I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation; but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed."

Professor Natelson discusses the assurances that delegates to the Constitutional Convention gave to the public that the right to a civil jury trial would not be abridged:

At the New york convention, Hamilton underscored exclusive state jurisprudence over internal state administration, arguing that state powers are "civil and domestic--to support the legislative establishment, and to provide for the administration of the laws." He added that:

"Were the laws of the Union to new-model [reform] the internal police of any state; were they to alter, or abrogate at a blow, the whole of its civil and criminal institutions; were they to penetrate the recesses of domestic life, and control, in all respects, the private conduct of individuals,--there might be more force in the objection; and the same Constitution, which was happily calculated for one state, might sacrifice the welfare of another."

Chancellor Robert R. Livingston assured the convention that state power over traditional areas of judicial power was exclusive:

"They tell us that the state governments will be destroyed, because they will have no powers left them. This is new. Is the power over property nothing? Is the power over life and death no power? . . .In one word, can [Congress] make a single law for the individual, exclusive purpose of any one state?"

Natelson concludes by discussing the fight to recognize the right to a civil jury trial and the states' right to run their own civil justice systems through a Bill of Rights.

Federalists had to go beyond representing the meaning of disputed provisions. They also had to promise that they would support a bill of rights once the Constitution was ratified. Five of the 11 ratifying state ratifying conventions had accompanied their approval with suggested amendments. The two states that thus far had refused to ratify, North Carolina and Rhode Island, determined to stay out of the union until a bill of rights was proposed.

Among the restrictive amendments were some restraining the federal judiciary. Thus, the Fourth Amendment regulated judicially-issued warrants, the Fifth barred double jeopardy, the Seventh prescribed jury trial in civil cases, and so on. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments were the declaratory amendments. They highlighted the limited scope of federal powers, including federal powers over judicial matters.

Although the Ninth Amendment is widely misunderstood today, its principal role was as a protection for federalism, including judicial federalism. It affirmed that Congress was no more able to impair the independence of the state judiciaries after adoption of the Bill of Rights than had been true before adoption.

The Tenth Amendment, based on the most popular proposal from the states, reinforced that whatever was not given was reserved. It may have been targeted specifically against claims raised during the Confederation period that, despite the Articles' limits on congressional power, Congress enjoyed additional "inherent" authority merely by virtue of being a sovereign.

In other words, both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments rendered explicit the Constitution's implicit restraints on Congress and the federal judiciary, as explained by Federalist essayists during the ratification debates. Both amendments protected the exclusive sphere of the states, including the integrity of the state courts.

Rob Natelson's study is a enormously revealing and powerful paper that will assist real constitutional conservatives in their fight against the federal takeover of state courts. The tort reform movement finds itself without intellectual ammo, and cannot cite any writing from the Founding Fathers in support of their positions (I've offered free dinner on that). I will post quotes from this outstanding paper throughout the coming weeks.

Over a year ago, I first posted an open bet with an offer to buy the winner the best dinner in Washington, DC. I've re-posted that twice, and want to renew the bet now, because no one has even tried to win the bet. Here it is:

If anyone shows me ONE, just ONE quote from any of the Founding Fathers that is pro-"tort reform," I'll buy you the best dinner in Washington, DC, with your choice of appetizer, entree, wine (2 glasses only, $50/bottle max) and dessert. After researching the Founders' quotes on the subject for months (see the links in the right sidebar on the home page), I'm supremely confident that I have nothing to fear. For purposes of this offer, I'm defining the term "Founding Fathers" based on a list at this website, which includes signers of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and other notable figures from the founding of the United States.

I would value this dinner at roughly $200 but I'm not limiting the offer to that amount. Go ahead, make my day!

A second leader of a national and influential Tea Party group has joined the chorus of conservatives against any federal tort reform law. Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, posted on the website yesterday that the jury system is part of the free market, and to interfere with the jury system violates the 7th Amendment to the Constitution. The website requires registration to read the post, but Judson generously allowed me to post a segment of his article.

"The free market is a wonderful system. It produces amazing efficiencies and amazing wealth. The free market system has delivered more prosperity to more people than any other system. There is another beauty to the free market system that many people do not think about. The free market system punishes bad behavior. If I open a business and decide to sell something that is a really bad product, people do not come to my business. I have the incentive to produce a really good product because that way people will want to come to my business.

The civil jury system is a part of the free market. Our founding fathers thought enough of it to make it the 7 th Amendment to the Constitution. Jury awards are a part of the free market. They do not exist in a vacuum. They not only compensate someone for an injury but like so many other parts of the free market, they act to deter bad behavior.

If I am injured by a bad doctor or suffer some other type of injury or loss, I do not want the Federal Government telling me what my pain is worth. I want twelve citizens deciding justice for me.

The right to a jury trial has a long and storied history in America and even further back in Britain.

Much as the Federal Government is overstepping its bounds by ordering Americans to buy health insurance, the government is also overstepping its bounds by telling citizens and states how much they can award in law suites and also telling lawyers how much they can be paid. (sic)

The free market is an amazing thing. It needs almost no intervention to achieve the right result, and the civil jury trial is an important part of the free market.

Take a moment to tell your Senators and Congressmen we do not need the federal government telling states what to do and trampling on another one of our constitutional rights."

This spring, Tea Party Patriots co-founder and national coordinator Mark Meckler voiced his opposition to federal tort reform on the grounds that it violates states' rights. "Most folks in the tea party movement would say those things should be dealt with at the state level," Meckler said. "It's not for the federal government to be adjusting the legal system of individual states."

It's great to see these two leaders of the popular movement to restore the primacy of our Constitutional rights forcefully reject the attempt to override state and individual rights. We need to bring these statements to the attention of every Member of Congress, especially the Republicans under pressure to enact federal tort reform.

Tomorrow, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing titled, "Righting the Enduring Wrongs of the Holocaust: Insurance Accountability and Rail Justice," to examine the facts and circumstances underlying two bills. First, H.R. 890, the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act, would allow Holocaust survivors to rely upon state laws so they can have their day in court. It also requires the European insurance companies to disclose Nazi-era insurance policy information, and establishes a federal right of action to recover proceeds due under the covered policies. Second, H.R. 1193, the Holocaust Rail Justice Act, would prevent the French national rail company SCNF from claiming foreign sovereign immunity in a class action law suit brought against them by Holocaust survivors. SNCF trains transported 76,000 individuals to concentration camps during the Holocaust.

A group of Holocaust survivors sued SNCF in 2001, arguing that the company knew of and should be liable for the horrid conditions Jews were forced to endure on their way to Nazi death camps. The company has argued in court that it is an arm of the French government and therefore immune from suit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, but the plaintiffs claim that it is a separate entity. The Supreme Court sided with SCNF and dismissed the lawsuit under the FSIA; H.R. 1193 would strip SCNF of any FSIA immunity and enable the plaintiffs to reinstate the case.

Both bills have broad bipartisan support. The committee chairman, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), is the original sponsor of H.R. 890 and a co-sponsor of H.R. 1193, and has always supported the 7th Amendment rights of Holocaust survivors. In 2010, while supporting the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen said, "Holocaust survivors, just like anyone else, should have the right to have their day in court to recover under their policies... It is not in the interests of the United States to deny survivors their legal rights." That's the kind of pro-7th Amendment sentiment we need more of in Congress.

I've written often here about the unconstitutional bill to crush states' and individual rights that Senate Republican leadership slipped as a special section into S. 1720, the "Jobs Through Growth Act." The section would impose a federal limit on awards in health care-related lawsuits (not just medical malpractice awards), and would establish a federal wage scale for just one set of American workers, the attorneys who litigate such cases for victims. Republican leaders added that section into the jobs bill without the knowledge of many Republican Senators, and a number of them told me personally that they oppose federal encroachment on state civil justice systems. Nevertheless, it appears that leaders are demanding that their members walk the plank for that section. Yesterday, the jobs bill was introduced as an amendment to another bill currently under Senate consideration, and the unconstitutional tort reform section is included in the amendment. We might see a vote on this bill as soon as tomorrow. They're doing so despite the principled opposition of conservatives, such as Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli; the Cato Institute; anti-ObamaCare Professor Randy Barnett, Rob Natelson, John Baker; the National Conference of State Legislators; numerous House Republicans; and other conservative legal experts. Senate Republican leadership seems all too ready to sacrifice constitutional principles to reward the AMA and other medical groups, even though they stabbed Republicans in the back by backing ObamaCare - that seems to me to violate one of the first rules of practical politics about punishing enemies.

Seventh and Tenth Amendment advocates need to immediately tell Senate Republicans to pull that section out of the bill before any votes on the bill.

On October 31, I posted about the promise by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to veto a federal tort reform bill that is now included in the Senate GOP jobs bill. Attorney General Cuccinelli joined a long line of conservative legal experts in opposing federal tort reform as a violation of states' rights. In addition to violating states' rights, the Senate GOP jobs bill establishes federal wage controls on attorneys. Sec. 3206 of the bill, S. 1720, states:

"(B) LIMITATION- The total of all contingent fees for representing all claimants in a health care lawsuit shall not exceed the following limits:

(i) Forty percent of the first $50,000 recovered by the claimant(s).

(ii) Thirty-three and one-third percent of the next $50,000 recovered by the claimant(s).

(iii) Twenty-five percent of the next $500,000 recovered by the claimant(s).

(iv) Fifteen percent of any amount by which the recovery by the claimant(s) is in excess of $600,000."

Is this really the precedent that the Senate GOP wants to set while it complains about the unconstitutionality of ObamaCare, the excessive regulation of American industry by EPA, and the high tax burden faced by our corporations? Who wants to see the headline, "Senate GOP Talks Free Markets, Votes For Communism?" Were Democrats right after all when they wanted to enact laws against excessive compensation for Wall Street executives?

By the way, why would the Senate GOP reward "Big Medicine," which pushed ObamaCare and continues to back it against the GOP's efforts to repeal it? Whatever you think of the trial lawyers, they didn't work to enact the individual mandate - the AMA, AHIP, and PhRMA did. Why reward them with special federal immunity?

The Senate GOP should delete the entire tort reform section from their jobs bill before any floor vote.

In a Washington Post op-ed posted October 28, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli promised to file suit in federal court against a federal tort reform bill should it become law. "And if it were ever signed into law -- by a Republican or Democratic president -- I would file suit against it just as fast as I filed suit when the federal health-care bill was signed into law in March 2010 (15 minutes later)."

Attorney General Cuccinelli strongly objected to S. 197, a bill sponsored in the U.S. Senate by eight Republicans, which would impose caps on awards in health care-related lawsuits and install a federal wage scale for contingent fee attorneys involved in such suits. The bill was slipped into a Senate Republican "jobs bill" in October by Republican leadership without the knowledge or approval of numerous Republican Senators, just to appease the AMA and other medical groups clamoring for special federal protection from civil liability. Attorney General Cuccinelli, a rising star in the conservative community for his lawsuit against ObamaCare and assertive defense of conservative legal positions, emphasized the constitutional right of each state to protect and run its local civil justice system:

"With Senate Bill 197 -- legislation that would have the federal government dictate how state judges are to try medical malpractice cases and cap what state courts may award -- several Republican senators have reminded us that federal impositions on states that run contrary to the U.S. Constitution and to the spirit of federalism have never been the sole prerogative of just Democrats. As a state attorney general struggling to hold back a flood of impositions by the Obama administration that violate federal law, the Constitution or both, it is disappointing to see so many Republicans making the same types of mistakes that President Obama and his allies have made...

Senate Bill 197 takes an approach that implies "Washington knows best" while trampling states' authority and the 10th Amendment. The legislation is breathtakingly broad in its assumptions about federal power, particularly the same power to regulate commerce that lies at the heart of all the lawsuits (including Virginia's) against the individual mandate of the 2010 federal health-care law. I have little doubt that the senators who brought us S. 197 oppose the use of the commerce clause to compel individuals to buy health insurance. Yet they have no qualms about dictating to state court judges how they are to conduct trials in state lawsuits. How does this sort of constitutional disconnect happen?"

Attorney General Cuccinelli's promise to sue is the most forceful of a series of conservative and Tea Party-side condemnations of the Senate bill and of federal tort reform legislation in general. The libertarian Cato Institute recently announced that caps on medical malpractice lawsuit awards would endanger patients and wouldn't reduce health care costs. The attorney who wrote the Senate Republicans' court brief against ObamaCare, Carrie Severino, publicly urged Republicans to remove S. 197 from the jobs bill before introduction, but they ignored her. Professor Randy Barnett, one of the counsels arguing the key anti-ObamaCare lawsuit in federal court, accused S. 197 backers of being "FINOs" ("Federalists in Name Only"). In May, Professor Barnett accused House Republicans who backed a bill similar to S. 197 of being "fair-weather federalists." Six conservative legal experts, including two who regularly criticize trial lawyers, joined Professor Barnett at that time in characterizing bills to federalize medical malpractice lawsuits as an unconstitutional violation of states' rights. The non-partisan National Conference of State Legislators joined them in a letter to House Republicans against the House bill.

The AMA and its allies in the medical profession have pushed the federal tort reform bills, just as they have backed ObamaCare with its equally unconstitutional individual mandate. For 30 years, they've used their political muscle inside the Beltway, and millions of dollars in political contributions across America, as the way to persuade Congress, especially Republicans, to enact special immunity from civil liability, regardless of the constitutional implications. Republicans will have to ignore the medical profession's misshapen view of Washington as the center of political power in order to protect our constitutional rights. Attorney General Cuccinelli's forceful warning might be the nail in the coffin of the AMA's dreams.

I've written often about the scores of American victims of Libyan-sponsored terrorism who have not received the compensation promised them by the United States government in law. The Libyan Claims Resolution Act of 2008 promised compensation from Libyan funds for those injured or killed in terrorist attacks sponsored in some way under the Qaddafi regime. Up to 200 of the victims' claims have been unpaid, over three years after the law was signed, even though the claims have been certified by the Justice Department. The claimants have received an insulting letter from the Treasury Department, informing them that they will receive 20 percent of the amount due to them, but with no mention of a timetable for the payment of the remaining 80 percent.

CNN ran a story this week, which you can see on CNN's YouTube channel, with interviews of several of the victims, including Jonathan Pollack, with whom I've communicated this year. A State Department spokesperson told CNN that "It is premature to determine that there will be a shortage of settlement funds," but the group of attorneys working on these cases, including my clients at Motley Rice LLC and the Perles Law Firm, know full well that the LCRA fund is short several hundred million dollars. Jonathan and the victims are seeking Congressional intervention, and I am finally beginning to see some movement in Congress towards a legislative solution if the State Department can't or won't fix it administratively. I cannot believe that the Obama Administration would callously ignore the property rights established in favor of the American claimants in law and administrative procedure, but so far it has refused all entreaties by the victims and Congress to ensure full payment of the claims. With Qaddafi dead and the new government apparently unwilling to volunteer any of Qaddafi's stolen funds now frozen around the world, it may take an act of Congress to ensure that the promises made in 2008 to Americans are actually kept.

This afternoon, the House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on ''The State of Religious Liberty in America.'' Among the witnesses will be Colby May, Director and Senior Counsel of the Washington office of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), one of the premier pro-religious liberty groups in America. Colby May goes to court all the time to protect religious liberty, taking advantage of the 7th Amendment rights protected by the Founding Fathers to enable Americans to exercise our faith without infringement by the federal or state governments. His testimony recognizes that, ''The courts and the judges that preside over them will largely determine the strength of America's religious liberties.'' And he is testifying about the recent instances in which courts have failed to protect our rights against a college administrator, such as has happened at the University of California in the Christian Legal Society v. Martinez case.

I hope Members and witnesses remember that to survive, religious liberty needs open courtrooms. Any measure to restrict the ability of Americans to file a lawsuit in court compromises our ability to defend our religious liberty. So, for instance, the Judiciary Committee's original bill to toughen sanctions against attorneys under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure could have resulted in a nonprofit's or small-sized law firm's refusal to take on a religious liberty lawsuit because of potential attorney sanctions. That's why the committee added a rule of construction to exempt lawsuits over constitutional issues from application of the proposed sanctions. Similarly, the application of the Supreme Court's decisions in the Iqbal and Twombly cases could result in the dismissal of a religious liberty case that would otherwise proceed to the discovery, if the attorney can't provide the threshhold level of documentation needed to meet the stricter pleading standards enunciated by the Court in those cases. A plaintiff seeking to protect religious liberty rights against an overbearing college or business might find it difficult to meet the standards if witnesses to the behavior at issue are afraid to come forward without a subpoena.

The Founding Fathers didn't differentiate between lawsuits to protect constitutional rights and lawsuits for negligence; they designed the civil justice system for all causes. The "tort rerform" movement could continue to spark conflict with social conservatives over the access to civil justice, unless Americans tell Congress and state legislatures to keep courtroom doors opened.

I've discussed the inherent conflict between Islamic Shariah law and our Constitutional rights numerous times here. Last year, I assembled a panel on Capitol Hill of experts and a Congressman to address the threat of encroaching Shariah law in the U.S. Under strict Shariah, there are NO juries for civil or criminal law, and NO rules of criminal or civil procedure protecting the rights of the accused and allowing for pre-trial discovery. Women are relegated to an inferior status in a courtroom, as well as in all other aspects of a society governed by Shariah.

On October 17, the "What's Up" syndicated radio program, hosted by Terry Lowry and heard on 12 stations in 10 states, interviewed Karen Lugo, a nationally recognized expert on Shariah. I met Karen earlier this year and introduced her to Terry Lowry so he could better educate his audience on Shariah. In her professional career, she's Assistant Director of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, where she works on constitutional litigation, including eminent domain and city planning disputes, and the preparation of amicus briefs. She is also President of the Orange County, California, Lawyer Chapter of the Federalist Society.

Karen discussed the rapidly expanding number of Shariah enclaves in Europe, in which the Muslim residents don't want to be governed by the law of the country. This institutionalizes complete inferiority for women. and enables the growth of "shadow justice" communities, with 700 enclaves in France alone.

Under Shariah, divorce can be unilaterally pronounced by the husband, with the husband controlling asset distribution. Women cannot easily pursue marital rape or assault claims in a Shariah courtroom, which is run by an Imam under rules favoring the husband. Karen discussed the most serious dangers of Shariah: an arbitrary set of laws and regulations governing every aspect of society from domestic relations to international relations. Civil and criminal cases are decided by mullahs or clerics, not through the application of a "rule of law."

As I discussed on June 3, local judges in U.S. are accepting Shariah law in domestic relations and estate settlement cases in the name of judicial comity. Karen has participated in the effort to enact legislation in states to ensure that American law is applied in American courts, and a model act has been signed into law in four states.

You can download and listen to Terry Lowry's interview with Karen below, conducted in three segments:

Segment One
Segment Two
Segment Three

"Reducing physician liability for negligent care by capping court awards, all else equal, will reduce the resources allocated to medical professional liability underwriting and oversight and make many patients worse off. Legislators who see mandatory liability caps as a cost-containment tool should look elsewhere."

That's the conclusion of a new study released by the most respected libertarian think tank in Washington, declaring that capping medical malpractice damages is a very bad idea for consumers, and further declaring that awards in medmal lawsuits aren't excessive compared to actual damages. This study will rock the AMA's world, even as it continues to press Congress for special protection through an unconstitutional limit on awards in all health care-related cases. The study wasn't conducted by trial lawyers or a bunch of liberals, but by an academic for the Cato Institute, which has lots of fans among the new House Republican majority and among the GOP Senate minority.

Read it yourself and send it to your favorite tort reform proponents. Here are selections from the Executive Summary:

Supporters of capping court awards for medical malpractice argue that caps will make health care more affordable. It may not be that simple. First, caps on awards may result in some patients not receiving adequate compensation for injuries they suffer as a result of physician negligence. Second, because caps limit physician liability, they can also mute incentives for physicians to reduce the risk of negligent injuries...

This paper reviews an existing body of work that shows that medical malpractice awards do track actual damages. Furthermore, this paper provides evidence that medical malpractice insurance carriers use various tools to reduce the risk of patient injury, including experience rating of physicians' malpractice premiums. High-risk physicians face higher malpractice insurance premiums than their less-risky peers...

In particular, caps on damages would reduce physicians' and carriers' incentives to keep track of and reduce practice risk. Laws that shield government-employed physicians from malpractice liability eliminate insurance company oversight of physicians working for government agencies...

There's even more in the body of the study, such as:

Some observers are skeptical that medical malpractice awards are the driving force behind excessive tests and procedures, claiming that physicians deliver these services because they are risk-averse, to please patients, or to generate additional income rather than to avoid liability.

Furthermore, defensive medicine is not necessarily undesirable. A well-functioning malpractice system would not eliminate defensive medicine. Rather, it would discourage the use of inefficient defensive medicine, where the expected costs of a test or treatment exceed the expected benefits, and promote efficient defensive medicine, where expected benefits exceed expected costs.

Opponents of damage caps rightly point out that caps shift the costs of malpractice injuries from negligent providers to their victims.

The study recounts the moving story of a tort reform lobbyist who became the victim of his success in capping damages after he had suffered from medical negligence, and later wrote, "Make no mistake, damage caps... remove the only effective deterrent to negligent medical care."

It also slams state medical boards for letting bad doctors continue to practice. "State medical boards do a poor job of informing the public about high-risk physicians, often to the point of protecting those physicians from public scrutiny. Another mark against the state system is that the regulatory apparatus can be manipulated by special interest groups to limit competition through scope-of-practice restrictions."

Every Member of Congress, especially those on the deficit reduction "Supercommittee," should be forced to read this study.

Professor Randy Barnett, co-counsel in the leading lawsuit case against ObamaCare and likely to argue the case before the Supreme Court, takes aim again at federal tort reform proposals in a post on "The Volokh Conspiracy," this time at the inclusion of S. 197 the "MCAP Act' tort reform bill, in the Senate GOP jobs plan released last Thursday. "Over the summer I criticized a House Republican medical malpractice reform as "fair-weather federalism" in this op-ed in the Washington Examiner: Tort reform and the GOP's fair-weather federalism. Now Senate Republicans are emulating their colleagues in the House by including medical malpractice reform as part of their new "jobs" bill. " I've quoted from that piece often here, most recently in my letter to the deficit reduction "supercommittee" considering cuts to future federal spending.

Professor Barnett approvingly quotes from Carrie Severino's post critical of S. 197 on NRO's "Bench Memos" today, and personally criticizes the Senate Republicans: "Yes, you read that right. Senate Republicans are claiming that Congress has power over the judiciary of the states because state courts are an activity that "affect[s] commerce."

He then adds, "With friends like these, constitutional federalism does not need enemies. Can we coin a new pejorative FINO: "Federalists in Name Only"? Oh well, I guess not. But the best thing that can be said about this proposal is that it won't become law."

Let's hope not. I am actually most concerned that pro-tort reformers among the House Republican leadership will ignore the Constitution, transform the Senate GOP plan into a House bill, and force their members into an up-or-down vote as a test of allegiance. Seventh and Tenth Amendment Advocates need to contact the Senate and House and tell them to drop this idea.

Writing in National Review Online's "Bench Memos" today, conservative activist Carrie Severino criticized the Senate GOP leadership for including S. 197, the "MCAP Act," in the Senate GOP jobs plan, and urged them to drop it. "The law's own justification for its constitutional authority should be chilling to anyone committed to limited federal power... As Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett explains here, in a piece criticizing Republicans for their fair-weather federalism, 'tort law -- the body of rules by which persons seek damages for injuries to their person and property -- has always been regulated by states, not the federal government. Tort law is at the heart of what is called the 'police power' of states.'.. I hope Senate Republicans will consider replacing or removing S.197 from their jobs bill."

Severino's conservative credentials are impeccable; she's a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and appellate Judge David B. Sentelle, another conservative jurist. Her piece will have clout on Capitol Hill and reflects growing unease among Republican activists and legal experts over that section in the Senate GOP jobs plan. Hopefully the leaders will listen to her advice.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking Republican of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote to the deficit reduction "Supercommittee" last week to recommend a number of measures for inclusion in its recommendations to Congress. On page 15 of his letter, he recommended inclusion of S. 197, which would mandate caps on certain health care-related damages awarded in any court in American, and create the first federal wage scale for attorneys in the history of the U.S. That bill was included in the Senate GOP jobs plan and inexplicably endorsed by self-proclaimed "states' rights advocates," even though it would wipe out all state-based civil litigation over health care disputes. As I wrote when analyzing the jobs plan and in my letter to the Supercommittee, such a bill is inconsistent with Republican opposition to ObamaCare and violates constitutional protections for states' and individual rights.

Sen. Grassley's support for S. 197 is also hopelessly inconsistent with his previously stated support for Americans to "have their day in court" when their rights are threatened. He challenged Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor on this point during her confirmation hearing over an eminent domain case, as follows:

Let me move on to the Didden case v. the Village of Port Chester. It raised serious concerns about whether you understand the protection provided by the Constitution for individual property rights. In this case, Mr. Didden alleged that his local village government violated his Fifth Amendment rights when it took his property to build a national chain drugstore.

At the meeting with the government agency, another developer, Mr. Didden was told that he could give the developer $800,000 or a 50 percent interest in his pharmacy project. And if Mr. Didden did not accept either condition, the government would simply take his property.

Two days after Mr. Didden refused to comply with these demands, the government began proceeding to take his land. The district court denied Mr. Didden his day in court, and your panel affirmed that decision in a five-paragraph opinion. Why did you deny Mr. Didden his day in court? How can these facts, in essence, allegations of extortion at least not warrant the opportunity to call witnesses to see if Mr. Didden was telling an accurate story?

Sen. Grassley also championed the rights of African American farmers who were discriminated against to have their claims heard. When a major farm bill was enacted in 2008, Sen. Grassley issued the following statement:

Senator Chuck Grassley, the original author of the Pigford Claims Remedy Act, today praised passage of the farm bill which includes funding to help African American farmers who were denied entry into the Pigford v. Glickman settlement. The farm bill will now be sent to the President.

"This is a tremendous step forward in our efforts to give black farmers and ranchers, who were unjustly discriminated against while trying to secure farm loans, an opportunity to have their claims heard," Grassley said. "We're putting in place a process where tens of thousands of African American farmers will be able to plea their case based on the merits. Not based on bureaucratic procedure and mumbo-jumbo."

What happened to that guy? Where is he now?

I agree with Sen. Grassley that every American should have his day in court to protect private property rights. One of the points of my work is to emphasize that the Founding Fathers created our civil litigation system to protect victims of infringement upon private property rights, gun owners' rights, and free speech rights - AND - medical malpractice victims and defective product victims. The Founders loved civil suits and never limited our access to civil justice - and I'll bet anyone the best dinner in DC on that point.

So why has Sen. Grassley flip-flopped on our rights and abandoned victims of health care negligence? No part of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or the Founders' writings justify his turning his back on a medmal victim's day in court. What part of the founding documents of our democracy does Sen. Grassley not understand?

The new Senate GOP jobs plan released yesterday by Senators John McCain and Rand Paul might spur economic growth if enacted, but it has one enormous and extremely serious flaw. It explicitly includes a section titled, "Medical Malpractice Reform (S. 197 - The Medical Care Access Protection Act)," abbreviated as the "MCAP Act." That bill, introduced in January by Republican Senators, is very similar to H.R. 5, the House Republicans' bill to impose federal limits on health care-related lawsuits, about which I've written often here. That bill has been frozen in the House, thanks to the Constitutional and political objections of many House Republicans. By referring to S. 197, the Senate GOP jobs plan would enact many of the goals set forth in H.R. 5.

For starters, the introduction in the MCAP Act states that "health care and insurance industries are industries affecting interstate commerce and the health care liability litigation systems existing throughout the United States are activities that affect interstate commerce." So the Senate GOP would continue to accept the expansion of the reach of the Commerce Clause begun under Wickard v Filburn, the Supreme Court decision condemned by conservative legal experts such as Randy Barnett and Rob Natelson and by Tea Party-side politicians such as Sen. Paul. That expanded scope reached its most extreme in the enactment of ObamaCare. Professors Barnett, Natelson, and other conservative experts point out that neither "health care" nor "tort law" are among the enumerated powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, and that expansion of federal law into those areas violates the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution.

The MCAP Act crushes each state's right to manage its own civil justice system with respect to any lawsuit related to health care (i.e., providers and insurance companies). It imposes, for the first time in American history, federal limits on certain damages to be awarded in a health care-related lawsuit filed in either federal or state court. It mandates a standard for the award of punitive damages in any health care-related lawsuit filed in any court in America. It establishes, in federal law, a rule to determine the proportionate fault of each party in any federal and state court hearing a health care-related lawsuit. In doing all this, the act, included in the Senate GOP jobs plan, forces a one-size fits-all legal system for these lawsuits on the states. It also abridges our right to a civil jury trial, protected in the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution and beloved by our Founding Fathers.

The MCAP Act explicitly limits an attorney's fees to a decreasing percentage, based on the increasing value of the amount awarded. Here's the scale set in the bill:

(1) 40% of the first $50,000 recovered in the lawsuit;

(2) 1/3 of the next $50,000 recovered;

(3) 25% of the next $500,000 recovered; and

(4) 15% of the amount of the recovery in excess of $600,000.

So the bill imposes federal wage controls on just one industry, lawyers who charge contingent fees, regardless of the amounts normally charged by an attorney in the normal course of his business. And the bill lets federal judges cut the contingent fees to be paid for any reason, with no real limit on a judge's authority. No other profession in America - certainly not the medical profession - face a federal law mandating a specific wage scale. That is outright communism. And the bill changes other legal standards and mandates them across every courtroom hearing any health care-related lawsuit in America.

The House equivalent of the MCAP Act was roundly condemned by Professors Barnett, Natelson, and other conservative legal experts, including two who are highly critical of trial lawyers. All stated that a federal law limiting health care-related lawsuits violates the Constitution and subsumes states' rights. Professor Barnett, one of the co-counsels in the anti-ObamaCare lawsuit which will probably be heard by the Supreme Court, called Republican backers of H.R. 5 "fair-weather federalists." The Senate GOP intentionally ignored their warnings and endorsed a sweeping takeover of state health care and tort law and state courtrooms, relying on the same excessive interpretation of the Commerce Clause relied upon by Democrats in enacting ObamaCare.

But it gets worse. This portion of the Senate GOP jobs plan not only grants special legal protection to one industry above all others, but it benefits those medical associations which have endorsed and heavily lobbied for the enactment and implementation of ObamaCare.

That's right: the Senate GOP caucus, including Rand Paul, is explicitly rewarding the AMA and those medical associations which were the co-conspirators in the enactment of ObamaCare, with its communist individual mandate to buy health insurance. Our Republican Senators are abandoning states' rights and our right to seek a civil jury trial to protect the doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies who pushed for ObamaCare with the promise of millions of forced patients. They get special legal protection that they don't deserve and benefiting no other industry or group in America.

We should be stunned, disappointed and angry that Senate Republicans, especially those Members supposedly pledging allegiance to the Tenth Amendment, trashed our rights and the Constitution to help ObamaCare's backers. We should demand that they abandon that section of the jobs plan and pledge that it will never become law.

I've delivered a nine-page letter to the office of each of the 12 members of Congress who sit on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, known as the "Super Committee" or "supercommittee." The Super Committee was formed through the debt ceiling deal reached in early August as the vehicle to identify at least $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction measures over the next ten years. The Super Committee is supposed to propose recommendations by November 23, and Congress will have a month to hold a straight up-or-down vote on its recommendations. If the Super Committee fails to reach an agreement, then under the debt ceiling deal, we'll see $1.2 trillion in automatic, across-the-board cuts.

I wrote my letter in response to a proposal submitted to the Super Committee by the AMA and other medical groups. They've urged the Super Committee to include a federal tort reform law similar to H.R. 5, the "HEALTH Act" introduced to sharply limit lawsuits against doctors, hospitals, drug and device manufacturers, health insurance companies, and nursing homes. "Big Medicine" continues to seek partial immunity from negligence and deadly errors through federal law, just as they sought to expand their patient base by pushing for ObamaCare. As I've written here many times, ObamaCare and federal tort reform laws suffer from the same deficiency: both are an unconstitutional abridgment of states' and individual rights, based on an dangerous interpretation of the Commerce Clause that would enable Uncle Sam to run our lives. Additionally, imposing federal limits on health care-related lawsuits won't make a dent in the federal budget deficit. Here are selections from the opening paragraphs in the letter:

I want to express strong objections to any proposal to include severe limits on health care-related lawsuits in your deficit reduction recommendations. First, such a proposal is unconstitutional as an abuse of the limited powers enumerated for the federal government in the Constitution. Federally imposed lawsuit limits would violate the right of each state to run its civil litigation system. Second, estimates by the Congressional Budget Office of "savings" as a result of the imposition of such limits are highly suspect and therefore should be ignored.

This year, a clear consensus has developed against federally imposed limits on health care-related lawsuits on constitutional grounds, as expressed by respected conservative legal experts such as Professor Randy Barnett; longtime tort reform proponents Walter Olson and Ted Frank; Republican Members of Congress such as Sen. Tom Coburn and Reps. Ted Poe, John Duncan, and Ron Paul; and the largest association of state legislators in the country. A lengthy discussion of the development of this consensus is instructive.

I then discussed the writings of all of those individuals and groups, all of which I have already posted here in my posts, Conservative Legal Experts Oppose 'Federal Tort Reform' and Even Tort Reform Proponents Oppose National Texas-Style Law.

I also discussed four deficiencies in the Congressional Budget Office's estimate of the budget savings that would result from federal limits on medical malpractice and other health care-related lawsuits. I posted about those deficiencies here in my post, Debt Reduction 'Supercommittee' Should Ignore CBO's Guesswork on 'Tort Reform'. CBO estimated savings of about $60 billion over ten years, which is less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the $1.5 trillion in the intended deficit reduction. In conclusion, I wrote, "Anyone betting on federal lawsuit limits to help us to balance the budget is wasting their time. Not only is it unconstitutional, but it won't raise real money and solve our budget problems."

You can download my letter to the Super Committee here.

Nina Shea, longtime advocate for religious freedom worldwide, has an important revelation today about the nature of the new Libyan government: it's biased against Jews. That's not a surprise to anyone who's watched Libyan politics over decades and witnessed the anti-Semitism of the Qaddafi regime. But this group of Libyan "rebels" was supposed to be "different," maybe even "democratic." Uh, NOT:

"Yesterday, Libya failed a critical litmus test on freedom when it blocked exiled Libyan Jew David Gerbi in his attempt to reopen Tripoli's synagogue and forced him to flee the country... Libya's quest for freedom this Arab Spring does not apparently extend to religious freedom or even mere tolerance of Jews. The reason lies in the state-supported anti-Semitism that became a dominant national ideology in post-independence Libya and was institutionalized under Qaddafi... Virulent anti-Semitism may be the one constant in revolutionary Libya. It remains deeply entrenched even within the rebel forces."

So much for Springtime in Tripoli. Nevertheless, the Obama Administration is still apparently hellbent to turn over all $30+ billion in frozen Libyan assets to the Libyan Jew-hating terrorists, while upwards of 200 American victims of Qaddafi's decades of terrorism - people with serious, lifetime injuries - get the shaft from their own government. They were promised in law that they would receive a certain amount of compensation from Libyan assets, their claims have been officially adjudicated as valid by the Justice Department, and now they're getting letters from the Treasury Department - OUR Treasury Department - saying that they'll receive 20% and leaving the remaining 80% out there somewhere in space. Wonderful. Numerous Congressmen and Senators have written letter after letter urging the President and Secretary of State Clinton to "fix this," but no one in Foggy Bottom wants to upset the asset freeze deal with our beloved European allies, let alone open their eyes to the reality of the Libyan rebel-terrorists, over the valid claims of a few dozen of our own citizens screwed by the same people who insisted that the victims' compensation fund would solve everyone's problems.

Sooner or later Congress will have to do its normal job of putting Americans ahead of Europeans and Libyans, and enact a bill that transfers enough of the frozen Libyan assets to the fund to pay all valid claims. On July 19, I posted about the precedent for doing that in a bill enacted in 2000 , and I attached this legislative proposal for anyone in Congress who can take the ball and run with it. I hope it gets done sooner rather than later.

Conservative legal expert Rob Natelson of the Independence Institute in Colorado, author of the book, The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant, was interviewed on October 6 on the nationally syndicated "What's Up" radio program, hosted by Terry Lowry. Rob Natelson was the first conservative legal scholar to forcefully argue that federally imposed limits on medical malpractice and other health care-related lawsuits are unconstitutional, back in April and again in May. Terry Lowry interviewed him about (1) the status of the anti-ObamaCare cases and the prospects for the Supreme Court to rule against the individual mandate, and (2) the unconstitutionality of federal tort reform laws. Natelson said that he expects the Supreme Court to hear the 11th Circuit case, and he put forth various scenarios for the Court's ultimate ruling (with no prediction). He added that Congress unconstitutionally stretched the Commerce Clause beyond all previous precedent in mandating the individual purchase of health insurance.

Natelson reiterated his opposition to federal tort reform laws. He said that this is another area where "the federal government simply has no business trying to impose one-size-fits-all on the entire country," that federal tort reform proposals dictating to federal and state courts are "extremely intrusive" and "pretty clearly unconstitutional."

You can download and listen to the entire interview.

The AMA and other medical groups have advised the Joint Congressional Committee on Deficit Reduction (the "supercommittee") that federally imposed limits on lawsuits over medical malpractice could save as much as $62 billion over ten years, citing the estimate provided last year by the Congressional Budget Office. Besides the fact that such limits are unconstitutional, but there are multiple deficiencies in the CBO estimate and reasons for the supercommittee to ignore that estimate.

First, as I wrote here on January 6, "The Congressional Budget Office has a long, inglorious history of large-scale, massive errors in its scoring of budget proposals." As economist Alan Reynolds warned years ago, the CBO not only has a lousy record of estimating ten-year budget deficits and projections of policy impacts, but it's missed often on just year-to-year projections. It's no wonder that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor accused the CBO of outright "budget gimmickry" in its calculations last year on the supposed "savings" that would result from ObamaCare, or that Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner criticized CBO for predicting that repealing ObamaCare would cost $145 billion.

Second, as attorney Brett Emison points out, CBO admitted last year that it did not "consider the effect of tort reform on patient health and medical outcomes. Remarkably, the CBO determined that 'many studies of malpractice costs do not examine health outcomes.'" As I wrote on January 14, implementing CBO's projection of "savings" of $54 billion could actually result in more deaths and injuries. CBO admitted in its estimate that limits on medmal lawsuits could "an additional 4,853 Americans killed every year by medical malpractice, or 48,250 Americans over the ten-year period CBO examines." And another 400,000 or more patients could be injured during the same 10 years.

Third, the CBO can't estimate the impact that sweeping limits on medmal lawsuits would have on federal health care costs paid for by Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration. If someone is brain-damaged, mutilated or rendered paraplegic as a result of medical negligence, but cannot obtain compensation from the culpable party through the tort system, he or she may be forced to turn to those programs for compensation. None of these increased Medicaid or VA hospital costs are considered in the CBO estimate. Whenever there is a successful medical malpractice lawsuit involving an elderly or poor person, Medicare and Medicaid can claim either an interest in whatever the patient recovers, so the victim reimburses the government for some of the health care expenditures. Without the lawsuit, Medicare and Medicaid will lose funds that the government would otherwise be able to recoup. And none of these lost funds are considered by the CBO.

Fourth, CBO guesstimated that imposing federal lawsuit limits would result in a reduction in a drop in liability insurance premiums, but provided no raw data, explanations, or sources to back up its estimate. Numerous states have already imposed caps on medmal lawsuit damages, with no impact on personal health insurance premiums. CBO makes the same assumption that ObamaCare proponents made, that Uncle Sam can wave a wand and magically force health insurance premiums to drop. How's that one working out for us?

Anyone betting on federal lawsuit limits to balance the budget is wasting their time. Not only is it unconstitutional, but it won't raise real money and solve our budget problems.

An article in today's "Roll Call" newspaper, which covers Congress, discusses the extensive influence that Sen. Tom Coburn has over members of the debt reduction "supercommittee" charged with finding over $1 trillion in federal budget cuts ovr a ten-year period. It appears that Sen. Coburn's own "Back to Black" deficit reduction plan, which he released in July, is the basis for many pollicy proposals under consideration by the supercommittee.

That could be a positive development in the fight to protect each state's right under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution to run their own civil justice systems and each American's right under the 7th Amendment to seek a jury trial for civil suits, including medical malpractice lawsuits. Sen. Coburn's "Back to Black" plan doesn't call for unconstitutional federal tort reform in any way. Instead it relies on the states to manage their own legal systems, and specifically enables any injured patient to take a medical malpractice case to state court. Sen. Coburn also recognizes the terrible toll on patients as a result of deadly medical errors.

Sen. Coburn recommends that the federal government fund expert panels and health courts to resolve medical disputes, ideas implemented in some states and which do not, in practice, always protect a patient's rights. But it preserves the patient's right to access the state court system at any point; the state panels and health courts aren't a mandatory step. The Senator disagreed with federal tort reform solutions on constitutional grounds in an interview posted on June 30, and this plan is consistent with his objection. I'm not endorsing the plan, but at least it protects our constitutional rights from federal "tort reform" efforts.

In contrast, the American Medical Association and numerous medical groups are asking the supercommittee to squash our constitutional rights and grant total immunity to medical professionals from their errors. They sent a letter to the supercommittee that ignores the clear consensus against federal tort reform by respected conservative legal experts such as Professor Randy Barnett; longtime tort reform proponents Walter Olson and Ted Frank; Republican Members of Congress such as Sen. Coburn and Reps. Ted Poe, John Duncan, and Ron Paul; and the largest association of state legislators in the country. Rolling over the Constitution and Bill of Rights is nothing new for the AMA and most of their fellow medical lobbying groups, the co-conspirators in the enactment of ObamaCare, with its equally unconstitutional individual mandate to buy health insurance.

The Founding Fathers' insistence on individual liberty and state sovereignty over their legal systems means nothing to "Big Medicine." They're the walking definition of "Crony Capitalism" for continuously lobbying for national health care with total civil immunity. Limits in the Constitution on the enumerated powers for the federal government, and the 7th and 10th Amendments, are mere bumps in the road for the AMA and their cronies, which wants to interfere in local health care and tort law decisions so they can shape and manage our lives. There's nothing "constitutionally conservative" about federal "tort reform" laws which would ignore the Founding Fathers, shut down local juries, and deprive Americans of our unalienable rights. The supercommittee should reject these blatant attempts by Big Medicine, and instead seek real reductions in the federal deficit.

Two important Republican leaders sent signs in the past week that they finally recognize that federal tort reform laws are an unconstitutional abridgement of the right to a civil jury trial and each state's right to run their own civil justice systems.

Rep. Paul Ryan gave an important speech recently at the Hoover Institution on his suggestions for reforming health care. I was pleasantly surprised to see him step back from his previous proposals for federal tort reform. In his Hoover Institution speech, he didn't mention limits on medical malpractice lawsuits or tort reform at all. Contrast this to Ryan's "Path to Prosperity," the basis of the House Republican budget resolution, which included caps on noneconomic damages from health care-related incidents. That proposal, the long-time centerpiece of the federal tort reform agenda, was condemned as "fair-weather federalism" by conservative legal experts, such as top anti-ObamaCare counsel Randy Barnett, and opposed even by two proponents of lawsuit limits, Walter Olson and Ted Frank.

Then former House Speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich released his new "21st Century Contract With America," with pages of new ideas for consideration by Republican voters. Early in his discussion of his legislative proposals, he states that replacing ObamaCare requires "lawsuit reform to stop the frivolous lawsuits that drive up the cost of medicine," repeating the myths perpetrated by medical groups to hide the cost of their own deadly errors and wasteful practices. But beyond that, he has no specific proposal, such as the unconstitutional "caps on noneconomic damages" cited by so many politicians. For Gingrich, who has been a longtime advocate of federal interference in state tort law, this is progress; it reduces the mention of "lawsuit reform" to the status of a throwaway line.

Too many wise conservatives who say they value the Constitution and Bill of Rights remain ignorant of the facts that (a) neither health care nor tort law are among the enumerated powers in the Constitution and (b) the Founders added the 7th and 10th Amendments as reinforcements against unlimited federal power. Maybe the silence of Rep. Ryan and Speaker Gingrich in their recent pronouncements are evidence that the facts are finally sinking in among Republican leaders out there on the campaign trail.

Peter Orszag, President Obama's first director of the Office of Management and Budget, was one of the key figures in the enactment of ObamaCare, with its unconstitutional individual mandate and new government bureaucracy designed to order doctors to not cure us as they see fit. He must love the idea of sitting behind the Big Desk himself, signing off sweeping Executive Orders at a rapid-fire place, ordering Americans to do this and not do that. How else do you explain his bizarre penchant for writing that the panacea for the messiness of democracy is... less democracy? He wrote exactly this in an article titled, Too Much of a Good Thing for The New Republic:

To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic... But we need to confront the fact that a polarized, gridlocked government is doing real harm to our country. And we have to find some way around it.

Orszag attributes this polarization to the common, average American who has decided to not trust the mainstream media, and becomes "more radical" when meeting people "with similar opinions." And it's not the fault of "the elites," because according to some of his favorite political scientists, "polarization is not primarily an elite-driven phenomenon... Polarized politics are partly here, so to speak, by popular demand." No, the hatred for ObamaCare out there in fly-over land isn't Orszag's fault, it's just us "little people" who don't grasp the genius of all this "managed" health care.

Orszag is yet another ELITIST who blames AMERICANS for our political disagreements. He hides his hatred for Tea Partiers who revolt with his arrogant disdain for constitutional democracy behind the utterances of some equally arrogant, poli-sci psycho-babblers. During the Reagan years, we called people like this "Blame America Firsters."

And Orszag's prescription for ripping up our God-given rights and the Founding Fathers' vision of limited government? Hold on to your seat:

To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions... we need to jettison the Civics 101 fairy tale about pure representative democracy and instead begin to build a new set of rules and institutions that would make legislative inertia less detrimental to our nation's long-term health...

Yeah, take it out of our hands, and build some bureaucratic dictatorial mechanisms. He wants "automatic stabilizers," like a progressive tax system and more unemployment insurance; and "more backup rules," like automatic spending triggers" when Congress doesn't do its job and pass appropriations bills on time (and note that the GOP House has been doing its job this year). Classic high-taxing big government by fiat.

And we need more "independent institutions" - you know, independent of the PEOPLE who would be ordered to do something - like that ObamaCare bureaucracy he created to dictate our health care decisions. And what about accountability to us? He sweeps that away by quoting another poli-sci "expert" who analogizes the New Bureaucratic Order to the unaccountability of Supreme Court Justices who decided on their own to legalize abortion. And we're supposed to accept MORE of that?!

Trashing the Constitution and Bill of Rights is a regular practice for Peter Orszag. Not only does he want Uncle Sammy to decide which health care we can receive and pay form and which we cannot, he wants to dictate which medical malpractice lawsuits we can file, and thus take over entire state court systems. He wrote an op-ed last year in the New York Times in which he wrote, "Lawmakers missed an important opportunity to shield from malpractice liability any doctors who followed evidence-based guidelines in treating their patients." Tort reform proponents slobbered all over it, trumpeting the Obama Administration's "conversion" to their hope for new federal powers over local juries, local judges, and local health care decisions.

Those fans of Orszag's tort reform proposal forgot, or purposefully ignored, the common thread between his ObamaCare and his medmal lawsuit limits: It would be the ORSZAGS of America who would make all the key decisions in both cases! The Orszag Elitists sitting in Washington will decide who gets the health care through ObamaCare, and the Orszag Elitists would also decide which "evidence-based guidelines" would be imposed to immunize doctors from their deadly negligence. Both are defended in lofty legalese under the Commerce Clause of the Article I of the Constitution, but patriots should know better.

Both ObamaCare and federal medical malpractice bills are based on the lust for federal power to override our decisions, made in the course of everyday life, including the judgment of twelve common, average Americans sitting in a jury box. When those decisions are made in the marbled halls of Washington, the lobbyists for the most powerful can sway a Congress, an Executive Branch, and a bureaucracy, and the people be damned.

Our Founding Fathers knew this and designed a federal government with limited enumerated powers precisely to avoid the Orszag Elitists from running our lives through ObamaCare or federal tort reform. This year, five conservative, anti-ObamaCare legal experts and two other experts who make a living criticizing trial lawyers agree that a federal medical malpractice law lies outside constitutional boundaries and is an unconstitutional violation of states' and individual rights.

Peter Orszag hasn't considered any of that and couldn't care less. He loves to play The Man Behind the Curtain, spinning the dials and twisting the institutions of American life. Our basic rights and our authority to run our own government are "harming Washington's ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing" and should be plowed under.

Remember the common danger between Orszag's ObamaCare and Orszag's tort reform: that lust for federal power.

Republicans running for Congress next year, whether incumbents or first-timers, will face a barrage of ads charging that they'll cut or even kill Medicare. We've seen that in the two most recent special Congressional elections in NY and Nevada, and it didn't work, but in part because the Democratic candidate in each district was a very weak candidate with little to offer voters. Republicans will need every idea possible to avoid being tarred. One idea that I hope Republicans will support is included in a bill introduced into Congress this year, numbered H.R. 1063, and titled, the Strengthening Medicare And Repaying Taxpayers Act of 2011, or "SMART Act." This bill helps to replenish the Medicare Trust Fund, make Medicare work for seniors instead of the other way around, and reduces paperwork burdens for businesses. And believe it or not, it's a bipartisan Medicare bill, with the broadest swath of Congressman supporting it you'll ever see. More on that later.

Here's why we need to enact the SMART Act: When seniors on Medicare are hurt in an accident and sue the other party, they often file conditional Medicare claims to pay for treatment. Federal law requires the injured person's attorney to repay Medicare upon a judgment or settlement, before any funds are given to the injured senior. CMS, the federal agency that runs Medicare, is supposed to give the attorney a final figure for the total amount to repay, but CMS is slow and inaccurate. The attorney is barred by federal law from transferring the settlement to the senior, even if CMS takes forever to provide a final amount for repayment. As a result, it can take years to finally pay off even the smallest claim, and the senior doesn't see a dime of the settlement. At a Congressional hearing this summer, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), discussed the problems at CMS: "Businesses and injured individuals routinely negotiate a settlement, but cannot close on the settlement until CMS provides a complete list of all medical costs incurred. We have heard complaints from a variety of interested parties that CMS is not providing this information in a consistent or timely manner. CMS's delays cause lawsuits to drag on, hinders timely payments to injured individuals, and causes uncertainty and increased costs for both large and small businesses."

Here are a couple of anecdotes provided at the hearing about the problem: 1. A woman who was in a car accident suffered chest wall contusions and reported the settlement to Medicare. Years later, that woman is diagnosed with breast cancer. CMS denied her claim for treatment on the grounds that her breast cancer is related to her prior car accident, leaving the insurance company liable for the claims. 2. CMS actually sends dunning letters to seniors years after the accident that gave rise to the initial claim, for amounts as little as $1.59, $2.00, and $4.00, and regularly fails to respond in a timely fashion to phone calls and letters requesting information and assistance from either businesses or seniors. 3. CMS imposes a mandatory $1,000 per day per claim penalty on businesses for failure to properly report a MSP claim, even for small errors or technical problems that occur through no fault of the business.

The SMART Act takes care of all that. It streamlines the process, establishes real deadlines for CMS for claims processing, and enables businesses to meet CMS reporting requirements while maintaining data security. And it's cost-neutral, according to two economists' studies.

That's why the co-sponsors of the SMART Act in the House include the full spectrum of views represented in the House, such as Reps. Ron Paul and Diana DeGette; Allen West and Linda Sanchez; Peter Roskam and Tammy Baldwin. On what other bill would you find such an amazingly wide group of Congressional supporters? Rep. Roskam, one of the top House Republicans, called the bill "the only bipartisan Medicare bill in the whole world" at a dinner a couple of weeks ago. And the bill is supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and scores of companies, including Safeway, Lowes, Best Buy, Marriott International and WalMart. The SMART Act is THE Medicare bill that Republicans can discuss with seniors back home without fear of blowback by Democrats. A bipartisan Senate bill is supposed to be introduced soon. I hope all Republicans hop on board and support the SMART Act, H.R. 1063.