Repugs on a roll: gunmaker protection, cheeseburger bill, min-wage $5, and refuge drilling

Congress gives gun industry lawsuit shield
President Bush expected to sign bill following approval by House
BREAKING NEWS
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:22 p.m. ET Oct. 20, 2005

WASHINGTON - Congress gave the gun lobby its top legislative priority Thursday, passing a bill that would protect the firearms industry from massive lawsuits brought by crime victims. The White House says President Bush will sign it into law.

The House voted 283-144 to send the bill to the president after supporters, led by the National Rifle Association, proclaimed it vital to protect the industry from being bankrupted by huge jury awards. Opponents, waging a tough battle against growing public support for the legislation, called it proof of the gun lobby’s power over the Republican-controlled Congress.

Under the measure, about 20 pending lawsuits by local governments against the industry would be dismissed. The Senate passed the bill in July.

The bill’s passage was the NRA’s top legislative priority and would give Bush and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill a rare victory at a time when some top GOP leaders are under indictment or investigation.

“Lawsuits seeking to hold the firearms industry responsible for the criminal and unlawful use of its products are brazen attempts to accomplish through litigation what has not been achieved by legislation and the democratic process,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told his colleagues.

Katrina momentum
Propelled by GOP election gains and the incidents of lawlessness associated with the passing of Hurricane Katrina, support for the bill has grown since a similar measure passed the House last year and was killed in the Senate.

Horrific images of people without the protection of public safety in New Orleans made a particular impression on viewers who had never before felt unsafe, according to the gun lobby.

“Americans saw a complete collapse of the government’s ability to protect them,” said Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president.

“That burnt in, those pictures of people standing there defending their lives and defending their property and their family,” he added, “where the one source of comfort was a firearm.”

With support from new Republicans who arrived for this session of Congress, the bill passed the Senate for the first time in July. House passage never was in doubt because it had 257 co-sponsors, far more than the 218 needed to pass.

The bill’s authors say the bill still allows civil suits against individual parties who have been found guilty of criminal wrongdoing by the courts.

Critics cite D.C. sniper
Opponents say the strength of the bill’s support is testament to the influence of the gun lobby. If the bill had been law when the relatives of six victims of convicted Washington-area snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo sued the gun dealer from which they obtained their rifle, the dealer would not have agreed to pay the families and victims $2.5 million, they said.

“It is shameful that Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation that guarantees their gun-dealing cronies receive special treatment and are above the law,” said Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Calif.

Bush has said he supports the bill, which would prohibit lawsuits against the firearms industry for damages resulting from the unlawful use of a firearm or ammunition. Gun makers and dealers still would be subject to product liability, negligence or breach of contract suits, the bill’s authors say.

Democrats and Republicans alike court the NRA at election time, and the bill has garnered bipartisan support. But the firearms industry still gave 88 percent of its campaign contributions, or $1.2 million, to Republicans in the 2004 election cycle.

Gun control advocates, meanwhile, gave 98 percent of their contributions, or $93,700, to Democrats that cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9762564/

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House vote favors fast food industry
Obesity lawsuits against firms barred
- Judy Holland, Hearst Newspapers
Thursday, October 20, 2005

Washington -- Makers and sellers of fast food won a weighty victory when the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to approve the so-called cheeseburger bill, which would bar lawsuits from obese Americans who accuse the industry of making them fat.

The House voted 306-120 to prohibit most obesity claims as a basis for legal action after two hours of debate over who is to blame for bulging waistlines and overweight kids.

But the sponsor of the Personal Responsibility and Food Consumption Act, Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., a portly man who admits a passion for junk food, was not on the House floor for the vote. He was hospitalized Wednesday so doctors could install a heart-monitoring device.

Keller spokesman Bryan Malenius said that Keller has cardiac arrhythmia and that the congressman's medical condition is "not cheeseburger-related -- but I do see the irony."

The cheeseburger bill, also known as "McBill," cleared the House 276-139 in March but died in the Senate.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a longtime advocate of tort reform who sponsored the bill in the Senate, said he expects it to come up in the Senate next year.

"The notion that a food seller should be held responsible for an individual's food consumption is absurd," McConnell said. "We need to nip this in the bud before it gets started."

The cheeseburger bill would not bar lawsuits that stem from negligence, such as complaints about tainted food.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, criticized the bill, arguing that the fast food industry markets fattening foods to children and saying that Congress should not protect the industry from lawsuits when 1 in 3 youths is overweight, according to recent studies.

Filner said after the vote that the House was sending a signal that "the fast food industry has license to do whatever they want with their advertising and food choices, and the problem of obesity is going to get worse."

"We will never control this rising epidemic without greater accountability from the fast food industry," Filner said.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/20/MNGJNFB3V81.DTL

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Senate Again Fails to Raise Minimum Wage
- By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, October 20, 2005

(10-20) 04:09 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

Senate proposals to raise the minimum wage were rejected Wednesday, making it unlikely that the lowest allowable wage, $5.15 an hour since 1997, will rise in the foreseeable future.

A labor-backed measure by Sen. Edward Kennedy would have raised the minimum to $6.25 over an 18-month period. A Republican counterproposal would have combined the same $1.10 increase with various breaks and exemptions for small businesses.

The Kennedy amendment to a spending bill went down 51-47, and the GOP alternative 57-42. Under a Senate agreement, they would have needed 60 votes for approval.

Kennedy, D-Mass., said Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the depth of poverty in the country and he pointed out that a single parent with two children working a minimum wage earns $10,700 a year, $4,500 below the poverty line.

He said it was "absolutely unconscionable" that in the same period that Congress has denied a minimum wage increase, lawmakers have voted themselves seven pay raises worth $28,000.

But Republican opponents, echoing the arguments of business groups, said higher minimum wages can work against the poor if they force small businesses to cut payrolls or go out of business.

"Mandated hikes in the minimum wage do not cure poverty and they clearly do not create jobs," said Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., who offered the Republican alternative.

Kennedy noted after the vote that three of the four Republicans who supported his amendment — Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island — are up for re-election next year. "Candidates that are out campaigning know the power of this issue," he said. The fourth Republican supporting Kennedy was Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, asked Wednesday about Kennedy's measure, said President Bush "believes that we should look at having a reasonable increase in the minimum wage. ... But we need to make sure that, as we do that, that it is not a step that hurts small business or prices people out of the job market."

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said minimum wage workers "deserve a pay raise — plain and simple — no strings attached."

"It is appalling that the same right-wing leaders in Congress who have given themselves seven pay raises since the last minimum wage increase have voted down the modest minimum wage increase proposed by the Kennedy amendment," he said in a statement.

Enzi's proposal would provide tax and regulatory relief for small business, permit tips to be credited in complying with minimum wage hikes and expand the small business exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act.

It also would have put into law a "flextime" system, opposed by organized labor as an assault on overtime pay, under which workers could work more in one week and take time off the next.

Both proposals, amendments to a fiscal 2006 spending bill, needed 60 votes to pass.

Kennedy, who has campaigned relentlessly for a minimum wage increase, picked up one vote from the 46 votes for a similar measure in March. On Tuesday he modified his proposal, which originally called for a $2.15 increase over 26 months, in hopes of attracting more Republicans.

The first minimum wage of 25 cents an hour was enacted under President Roosevelt in 1938. Congress has since voted eight times to increase it, including under Republican presidents Eisenhower, Ford and George H.W. Bush. Congress approved the last increase in 1996, with the second stage, boosting the rate to $5.15, taking effect in 1997.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have minimum wages higher than the national level, including Washington State at $7.35, according to the Labor Department. Twenty-six states are the same as the federal level; two — Ohio and Kansas — are below; and six do not have state laws.

Also on Wednesday, Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, proposed adding $3.1 billion to the administration's $2 billion request this year for emergency heating assistance for low income families.

"We're about see a second tidal surge from Katrina and Rita," with rising energy costs, Reed said.

A vote could take place Thursday, with GOP leaders saying an emergency spending bill to be taken up soon was a better venue for the heating assistance debate.

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Congress: thomas.loc.gov/
Department of Labor on minimum wage: http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/flsa/

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/10/19/national/w142804D72.DTL

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Arctic Drilling Plan Finds a Spot in Senate Budget Bill
The controversial measure and the legislation to which it is attached might not pass as Congress argues over spending cuts.
By Richard Simon
Times Staff Writer

October 20, 2005

WASHINGTON — A key Senate committee on Wednesday advanced a measure that would achieve President Bush's long-sought goal of opening a portion of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling.

"This has been a long time coming," Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said after the panel voted to include authorization of the energy exploration in a budget bill.

But the drilling initiative, which environmentalists strongly oppose, still could be thwarted by an issue unrelated to the decades-old dispute: a fight over federal spending cuts.

Drilling proponents have hoped the measure would finally become law because, by attaching it to the budget bill, it would be immune to the filibusters that have previously blocked energy exploration in the refuge.

But that was before Hurricane Katrina struck, setting off a fight in Congress over spending cuts to pay for rebuilding the Gulf Coast.

Now the fate of Arctic drilling is tied to a budget-cutting bill that has run into trouble and might not pass.

In a sign of the changed political terrain, environmental lobbyists on Wednesday were talking about threatened cuts to Medicaid and student loans almost as much as the caribou they say would be endangered by Arctic drilling.

Their goal: to present as many reasons as possible to coax lawmakers, especially moderate Republicans, to vote against the budget bill.

"It's a massive bill that's going to be really hard to pass," said Melinda Pierce, a Sierra Club lobbyist.

Domenici conceded as much. He predicted a close vote when the budget bill goes to the Senate, perhaps early next month.

The budget bill also could face trouble in the House.

Drilling supporters fear that a developing rift between the House and Senate over the size of spending cuts could doom the budget measure — and with it the Arctic drilling proposal.

In a sign of the uncertainty, House Republican leaders on Wednesday backed down from scheduling a vote today on a measure calling for $50 billion in spending cuts over the next five years, instead of the previously planned $35 billion.

The House leaders feared they lacked the votes to pass the increased spending cuts.

The Senate energy committee authorized adding the Arctic drilling to the budget bill on a 13-9 vote.

Domenici argued that exploration in the refuge was needed more than ever, citing high gasoline prices and hurricane damage to Gulf Coast oil facilities.

"We must produce more of our own oil and we must diversify the places where we produce it," he said.

Foes of the drilling proposal have contended that it would spoil a national environmental treasure and endanger wildlife while doing little to bring down gasoline prices because it would be years before the oil could reach the marketplace.

About 10 billion barrels lie beneath the refuge's tundra. The U.S. consumes about 20 million barrels of oil a day.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the committee's ranking Democrat, opposed the drilling, saying, "Not one drop of oil will come from the Arctic refuge for 10 years."

He added that government estimates showed that production from the refuge would, at its peak, reduce reliance on oil importation by only 4 percentage points, from 68% to 64% in 2025.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a committee member, also voted against the measure, saying the drilling would occur in the "ecological heart of the refuge, the center of wildlife activity, and the home to nearly 200 wildlife species, including polar bears, musk oxen and caribou."

"It is clear to me that drilling would not give us energy security and would, in fact, carry huge environmental costs," Feinstein said.

Drilling supporters said the measure would limit the production site to 2,000 acres of the 19.6-million-acre refuge and restrict drilling to the winter. They say these restrictions would significantly reduce its environmental effects.

But Peter Rafle, a spokesman for the Wilderness Society, contended that the measure would open about 1.5 million acres of the refuge to energy exploration because of loopholes in the legislation.

URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-arctic20oct20,1,7190846.story?coll=la-headlines-nation