Sen. Barbara Boxer Pivots on Trial Lawyers

In my last post about Sen. Boxer and the rest of the Democratic Caucus I forgot to mentioned her shameful trial lawyers pivot in her interview with Chuck Todd yesterday morning.  In their exchange, Todd touched upon this point when the Senate Democrats failed to pass the bill stating “oh trial lawyers” you know they—they the boogeyman– trial lawyers is always a favorite boogeyman of the right. Oh trial lawyers will take advantage of this loophole and it will just be a bunch of money for them and hold back businesses.  Did you guys need to put a better way of how you would implement this law?”

Boxer responded in kind stating  Chuck, “if that was the case we would never pass a civil rights law. We would never pass any laws protecting people and protecting consumers. You have to see that when the Republicans bring up trial lawyers, it’s a way to distract from the fact that they’re doing the bidding of the wealthiest few, who are employers, who just want to pocket that money.”

In actual fact, trial lawyers are the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party and to say they don’t want anything in return is gross naïveté.  Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon wrote today, June,7, 2012, that:

In 2008, lawyers and law firms donated more than $230 million to federal political candidates and committees, 76 percent of which went to Democrats.

The industry gave $43.2 million to President Obama in 2008 and was his top source of campaign donations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The industry is also the number one source of political donations for 48 of the 53 members of the Senate Democratic caucus over the course of their careers. In total, lawyers and law firms have contributed more than $132 million to Senate Democrats—all of whom supported the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), Ben Nelson (D., Neb.), Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.), Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.), and Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) are the only Democratic caucus members for whom lawyers are not the top source of political donations. Lawyers are the second-highest contributors to all of those senators except for Sanders.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), who has been one of the most aggressive critics of Republican opposition to the Paycheck Fairness Act, has received more than $5.4 million from lawyers and law firms over the course of her career. A number of those firms specialize in the very sort of lucrative class action lawsuits likely to proliferate under the measure.

Yeah…this move isn’t political in the slightest.

(h/t Washington Free Beacon/Andrew Stiles/ Kyle Becker)