Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 17, 1995 TAG: 9508170018
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By RAY L. GARLAND
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Seldom in American history has any group of officeholders worked so hard to do what they said they would do than Speaker Newt Gingrich & Co.
Space permitting, any number of doubts could be raised, including the very large one that most of the bills the House has passed will be watered down or defeated - either by Democratic filibusters in the Senate or President Bill Clinton's veto pen. Still, this is an appropriate time for one of our little visits with the Virginia House delegation. To refresh your memory, it contains six Democrats: Owen Pickett, Robert Scott, Norman Sisisky, L.F. Payne, James Moran and Rick Boucher, and five Republicans: Herb Bateman, Bob Goodlatte, Tom Bliley, Frank Wolf and newcomer Tom Davis.
If there are any surprises here, it is the extent to which Pickett, who has nursed a reputation as a moderate, has sided with the Democratic leadership against the Contract. From his long years in the Virginia Senate, Bateman was known as a conservative who knew his own mind and could seldom be talked out of it. Among Republicans, he has been the only frequent dissenter from the party line. While the delegation's two weather vanes, Payne and Sisisky, blow back and forth depending on how hard business leans on them, the others fall into a fairly predictable pattern.
In the first 100 days of the first Republican House in 40 years, the GOP leadership concentrated on what might be called structural change. It carried the day on every significant item except term limits, where it got a majority but not the two-thirds required for a constitutional amendment.
In the second 100 days, the leadership set its sights on fiscal and regulatory issues. While it got its way on almost everything, there was less party-line voting in the Virginia delegation. One issue that did unite all Virginia Republicans in favor and all Democrats against was the bill cutting taxes by $189 billion over five years. This allowed a $500 credit against federal income taxes due for each dependent child in households earning up to $200,000 a year. It also reduced the tax on capital gains from 28 percent to 19.8 percent and repealed the increase in taxes on Social Security benefits pushed through in Clinton's first year.
Another bill that found the delegation split along party lines was welfare overhaul. The bill consolidated dozens of federal welfare programs into five block grants to the states, which could design their own programs of public assistance, subject to a few mandates. These included no cash benefits for unwed mothers under 18 and no benefits at all to immigrants who haven't attained citizenship. The states also would be required to withdraw driver's and professional licenses from those failing to honor a judicial order to pay child support. The bill also tightened eligibility for food stamps and Supplemental Security Income.
Bills that attracted bipartisan support in the Virginia delegation dealt with regulatory activities of the federal government. On the question of imposing a ban on issuing any new regulations through the end of the year, only Scott, Boucher and Moran voted no. On the bill requiring federal agencies to perform a detailed analysis of costs vs. benefits before imposing a regulation costing the private sector more than $25 million a year, only Scott and Boucher dissented.
Even Scott supported a measure requiring federal agencies to compensate the owners of private property for regulatory actions decreasing the value of their property by 20 percent or more, leaving Boucher and Moran to vote no. But on final passage of the omnibus regulatory overhaul that combined all these bills, even Moran voted yes. That left only Boucher and Scott to express satisfaction with the existing regulatory role of the federal government.
A slightly different pattern emerges on bills dealing with legal reform. The most important of these would discourage "frivolous" lawsuits by imposing a modified "loser pays" system. Judges also would be required to impose sanctions on attorneys involved in "frivolous" suits. All Democrats except Payne voted against this bill while all Republicans except Bateman voted for it.
The House also passed a complicated products-liability bill limiting punitive damages to $250,000, and only that when the plaintiff can show a manufacturer intended harm. That's a high standard of proof, indeed. The bill also capped punitive awards in medical malpractice cases at $250,000. These would not limit the plaintiff's recovery of out-of-pocket costs or economic losses. The bill imposed a 15-year limit on all product-liability actions. That is, a person alleging an injury must do so within 15 years of using the product. All members of the delegation except Bateman, Pickett and Scott voted yes.
Another bill in this package would discourage "frivolous" suits by stockholders of public corporations. It would do so by increasing the burden of proof on those bringing suit and making them liable for legal costs when they lose. Such suits normally arise when the stock of a corporation revealing bad news drops abruptly. There are always those ready to claim that investors lost because officers of the corporations failed to be forthcoming in a timely fashion.
There's usually a degree of truth in such charges. But corporations see a pattern of lawyers specializing in the instigation of these suits, hoping for a nice settlement in return for dropping the whole thing. Even Democrats liked this bill, which passed the House 325 to 99. Among Virginians, only Scott and Boucher voted no.
Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times columnist.
by CNB