The public has finally had a chance to see the handouts and special-interest gravy in House Democrats’ trillion-dollar-plus, Thanksgiving-eve, Build Back Better bonanza. The giveaways are plentiful (this is Congress, after all), but one is particularly brazen: a $2.5 billion tax-dollar giveaway to trial lawyers. This giveaway deserves special attention because it would bring the Shady Trial Lawyer Pipeline to Capitol Hill, a notorious system that politicians and trial lawyers use to funnel money from government coffers into left-wing political campaigns and committees.

The House Democrats’ plan is to funnel tax dollars to trial lawyers with a change in how the IRS treats expenses in contingency-fee cases. Trial lawyers typically front fees, costs, and expenses for their cases before getting paid back — and then some — with a huge chunk of the eventual settlement or judgment (often 33 percent or more). The IRS has generally barred lawyers working on contingency like this from deducting expenses until a case ends (and only if the expenses aren’t reimbursed). But House Democrats want to flip the IRS position and let trial lawyers use their costs to lower their tax bills immediately, no matter if they get paid back at the end or not.

The audacity of this is hard to overstate. Usually, D.C. liberals find more indirect means of helping trial lawyers — think of Senate Democrats blocking virus-related lawsuit limits in Covid-relief negotiations, or Biden-appointed SEC chairman Gary Gensler pushing for mandatory climate-change and other environmental, social, and corporate-governance (ESG) disclosures for public companies, the most obvious outcome of which will be the thump of lawsuits hitting court dockets and the jingle of shareholder money flowing into the pockets of trial lawyers. And the Shady Trial Lawyer Pipeline usually runs at the state and local level under the guise of consumer protection, with progressive law firms funneling millions from governmental consumer lawsuits into liberal political endeavors. But House Democrats didn’t restrain themselves when they brought the Shady Trial Lawyer Pipeline to Capitol Hill: According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, their attempted giveaway would cost $2.5 billion in tax dollars over a decade, and this money would land directly in the pockets of trial lawyers.

This isn’t happening because trial lawyers tug at the heartstrings (consider the prodigious Joe Rice of Motley Rice LLC, who owns a 100-foot yacht and built a private golf course). No, politicians such as Nancy Pelosi look out for trial lawyers because they funnel money to liberal campaigns and committees and are loyal foot soldiers for liberal causes.

Trial lawyers cut serious political checks for liberal politicians. Just look at John Morgan of the mega-firm Morgan & Morgan — their billboards tout that “size matters” — whose lawyers have donated millions to liberal politicians and who personally sent a $355,000 check to Biden Victory, flew presidential brother Frank Biden to the inauguration on the Morgan & Morgan jet, and sent a $100,000 donation to Terry McAuliffe during his run for governor of Virginia.

The lopsided nature of trial-lawyer political donations is detailed in new research from University of Iowa law professor Derek Muller, which analyzes political donations out of the nation’s leading law firms (including 40 top trial-lawyer shops) between 2017 and 2020 to the chief political committees for each party. Professor Muller found that while almost all the law firms in his data set showed a leftward lean, the donations out of all but five of the trial-lawyer firms went 90 percent or more to the Left, while “nine of these firms had $0 in contributions to major Republican outlets in this four-year period; another 6 had less than $100.” Don’t let that last part slip by you — multiple firms had zero or nearly zero going to any of the major Republican outlets.

And trial lawyers do more than just cut a stream of checks to liberals; they also serve on the front lines for liberal battles. Remember that the trial lawyers at Seattle-based Hagens Berman were the ones who partnered with local governments in places such as Oakland and Seattle on a public-nuisance-based legal campaign to cripple the nation’s energy companies and impose radical climate policy through the courts. And don’t forget the central role that the trial lawyers at D.C.-based Cohen Milstein have played as anti-Trump provocateurs, partnering with liberal attorneys general on long-running Emoluments Clause litigation against President Trump over his hotels, working with the ACLU to challenge Trump-administration housing regulations, and representing liberal members of Congress in a legal effort to impose personal liability on former President Trump over his actions on January 6.

It is incredibly disheartening to see Nancy Pelosi and her allies try to bring the Shady Trial Lawyer Pipeline to Capitol Hill to the tune of $2.5 billion. The pipeline already does immense damage to consumers at the state and local levels by diverting money away from consumers and into political activism by trial lawyers. Pumping another $2.5 billion in federal money will not help. Only Washington insiders looking out for their own interests could think otherwise.