by Patrick J. Buchanan – May 22, 1998

A single vote in the Senate last week told us all we need to know about the real motives behind the $516 billion tobacco bill.

An amendment was offered by Sen. Lauch Faircloth to cap the fees of trial lawyers involved in this deal at $250 an hour. The lawyers would thereby be limited to $2,000 a day, $10,000 a week, $520,000 a year. Said the conservative North Carolinian, this bill is turning into a trial lawyers’ “pot of gold.”

Faircloth’s amendment was crushed, 58-39.