Dems paying off the trial lawyers goes hand in hand with Dems paying of the public worker unions.
The Dems insistence on making airport security workers public employees (and therefore Dem constituents) has already put airline passengers at risk. If the Republican plan had been passed the incentives on private sector security companies to keep their contracts and/or to avoid fines, along with the greater flexibility and creativity of the private sector, would have already brought airport security largely into compliance with the necessary standards (at substantially lower cost to the taxpayer, I might add). The Dem plan we have been stuck with is already well on track miss it's one year deadline, and at that I don't think it's too cynical to suspect that the system may be even worse when the public employees are finally in place.
Now the Dems want to sacrifice the safety of Americans again by denying the proposed Home Land Security Agency the ability to hire and fire at will, or even to award bonuses based on competence. Their consituents (public employees) must be afforded special protections unavialable to ordinary American workers no matter how much it costs in taxpayer dollar, or lives.
Oh, yeah, and don't forget, for all their whining about the poor victims of the bubble (stock) market collapse, Dems killed legislation that would have given ordinary workers in private sectors unions the same protections share holders now have. No auditing requirements are in place for Union books, even though pension funds are regularly raided by corrupt bosses, nor is there any requirement for union leaders to sign off on the accuracy of their financial statements. Ordinary workers must pay for the corruption that allows Dems to use the unions for money laundering, signing dead people to the voter roles, etc.