Capital Scene: Bread & Circuses

YOU have to hand it to Senate Republicans. It doesn’t seem possible that anyone could take on high-priced trial lawyers in a political fight and lose, but they managed it.

The political fight in question is over tort reform, and the frustration is that a popular conservative reform can find no support. Michael J. Horowitz is a veteran of Washington’s wars—he served as President Reagan’s first-term OMB General Counsel and also co-chaired his Cabinet Council’s working group on legal reform. Now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, he has a plan that delivers on a key plank of the Contract with America; it would cut the income of Bill Clinton’s favorite trial-lawyer constituency by 50 per cent and slash auto-insurance premiums by $26 billion. It’s intelligent, populist conservatism, and it’s even bipartisan. Horowitz’s tireless promotion of “Consumer Payoff Tort Reform” has led to endorsements ranging from Robert Bork to former ACLU President Norman Dorsen, from the Wall Street Journal to Anthony Lewis. Big-city mayors, consumer groups, and the NFIB all support it. Unfortunately, not enough Republicans in Congress do.

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Kate O'Beirne

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YOU have to hand it to Senate Republicans. It doesn’t seem possible that anyone could take on high-priced trial lawyers in a political fight and lose, but they managed it.

The political fight in question is over tort reform, and the frustration is that a popular conservative reform can find no support. Michael J. Horowitz is a veteran of Washington’s wars—he served as President Reagan’s first-term OMB General Counsel and also co-chaired his Cabinet Council’s working group on legal reform. Now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, he has a plan that delivers on a key plank of the Contract with America; it would cut the income of Bill Clinton’s favorite trial-lawyer constituency by 50 per cent and slash auto-insurance premiums by $26 billion. It’s intelligent, populist conservatism, and it’s even bipartisan. Horowitz’s tireless promotion of “Consumer Payoff Tort Reform” has led to endorsements ranging from Robert Bork to former ACLU President Norman Dorsen, from the Wall Street Journal to Anthony Lewis. Big-city mayors, consumer groups, and the NFIB all support it. Unfortunately, not enough Republicans in Congress do.