The Examiner newspaper editorializes today on the tort reform records of the presidential and vice presidential candidates, asking a question of great interest to the business community: “Will either party’s presidential ticket keep a lid on the lawyers’ greed?”

The editorial uses NAM’s “Key Vote” voting records to assess Sens. Obama, McCain and Biden, taking special note of the most striking record — Biden’s. Of the 13 votes on tort reform and legal issues rated by the National Association of Manufacturers over the last four Congresses, Sen. Biden voted with the trial lawyers all 13 times. For business and the consumers, in other words, an 0-for-13 record.

And for the top of the ticket? From the editorial:

Obama’s Senate voting record is briefer but no less worrisome. The only time he voted right was on the Class Action Fairness Act, which makes it harder to move suits from state to state in search of a particularly lenient judge. That bill passed the Senate with a 72-26 bipartisan majority, so Obama’s vote made no difference. Before the final vote, however, he voted three times for “poison pill” amendments that would have eviscerated the bill’s effectiveness.

John McCain voted with the reformers nine of the 13 times cited by NAM, but occasionally sided with the trial lawyers on “patients’ rights.” His record gives evidence of a more balanced, case-by-case approach. Sarah Palin, meanwhile, comes from the state that the Pacific Research Institute ranks as having the second most favorable legal climate in the country. That’s one reason businesses like locating in Alaska — much as they will more frequently choose to come to the United States if we elect a president who understands the need to stop class-action lawsuit abuses while the rest of the world goes the other way.

You can see the NAM voting records legal reform here:

• Obama
• Biden
• McCain

The American Enterprise Institute’s Ted Frank has also written on the subject of Sen. Obama as a tort reformer, examining his votes on the Class Action Fairness Act. From the Examiner, “How bipartisan is Obama?”

From the liberal The New Republic’s well-done blog, The Plank, a post from Robert Gordon and James Kvaal, “Impossible to Pigeonhole“:

The speech once again demonstrated why Obama is so hard to pigeonhole ideologically.  He forcefully pressed classic Clintonian themes of government reform and personal responsibility, far more effectively than John Kerry ever did.  And he also dipped down to “second-tier issues” like family leave and bankruptcy (especially nice to hear after Joe Biden — who supported bankruptcy reform — joined the ticket), issues where “small” fixes can make a big difference.

But at the same time, Obama also made clear that “now is not the time for small plans.”  He offered a sophisticated defense of government, arguing that “what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves.”  And he went on to outline an agenda for health care and energy more ambitious and activist than Democrats have heard from their nominee in years.

The speech also had a serious populist edge.  Based on a quick count, Obama mentioned “companies” and “corporations” eight times – all but once (helping auto companies retool) in a critical tone.  In contrast, Bill Clinton mentioned them only four times in two speeches in 1992 and 1996.

The striking shift over time, not surprisingly, is that energy has replaced education as a top-tier issue.  Education and schools were mentioned 27 times in 1996 and 20 times in 2000, but only eight times in 2004 and 10 times tonight.  At the same time, the words “energy,” “oil,” and “gas” were not mentioned at all in the 1990s and only once in 2000, but they were used six times in 2004 and nine times tonight.

The anti-employer rhetoric has been a consistent and troubling theme throughout the Democratic presidential primaries. So much of the motivation for the raise-taxes rhetoric seems almost punitive, the desire to stick it to jobs-creators because of profits. What’s next? Defining some companies as patriotic, others as unpatriotic? It’s been suggested — more than suggested, endorsed.

With oil prices at record high levels Americans are more eager than ever to find affordable, alternative fuels. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), a guest on this week’s edition of “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” radio program, says nuclear power will be an important part of our nation’s future energy supply.

Clyburn’s state is already pro-nuclear. More than half of South Carolina’s electricity came from nuclear power plants in 2004, according to the Energy Information Administration. “I do believe that if we are going to…ever wean ourselves off of foreign oil we’re going to have to do it with nuclear in the mix,” Clyburn says.

Commerce Undersecretary Chris Padilla is responsible for helping formulate America’s international trade policy. He will appear on America’s Business to talk about why a pending trade agreement with Colombia is important to the U.S. economy and job creation and why lawmakers are wrong to block passage of that deal.

Our radio program will also host one of the biggest supporters of free trade in Congress – Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT). The National Association of Manufacturers recently honored Matheson for his unwavering support of free trade. Like Padilla, Matheson says Congress should approve the Colombia deal. The agreement will open that market to American goods and services and help support an important South American ally, he says.

“We should be rewarding Colombia for the progress it has made – the move to democracy, the move to a secure situation in that country, the move to respect human rights,” he says. “It’s been such a great success story.”

Who will presumptive presidential nominees Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain pick as running mates? National Association of Manufacturers Executive Vice President Jay Timmons, who has been deeply involved in the national political scene for years, will give us his take on who could be vice president.

In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of American Justice Partnership gives us the latest on tort reform and commentator Hank Cox recalls “The Way It Was.” And our program will close with “The Last Word” from the National Association of Manufacturers President Gov. John Engler.

For more about “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online, please click here. And for video highlights and more, check out http://www.americasbusiness.org.

From Senator Obama’s energy platform, “New Energy for America,” the section, “Diversify Our Energy Sources”:

Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology. Carbon capture and storage technologies hold enormous potential to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as we power our economy with domestically produced and secure energy. As a U.S. Senator, Obama has worked tirelessly to provide incentives to accelerate private sector investment in commercial scale zero-carbon coal facilities. In order to maximize the speed with which we advance this critical technology, Obama will instruct DOE to enter public private partnerships to develop 5 “first of a kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with carbon capture and sequestration.

These points are consistent, quite consistent, with legislation introduced last year by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), S. 2323, the Carbon Capture and Storage Techology Act of 2007. Republican Sens. Arlen Specter and Ted Stevens were the two cosponsors (not Senator Obama). Among other things, the bill would ” establish 3-5 ‘first-of-a-kind’ coal-fired demonstration plants with carbon capture.”

Senator Kerry chaired a Commerce subcommittee hearing on the bill last November:

“If the United States continues to turn a blind eye to dangerous emissions, we will be forced to climb an even steeper hill in battling global climate change,” said Senator John Kerry. “Carbon capture and storage technologies hold enormous potential to reduce our emissions as we power our economy. This legislation and today’s hearing offer a chance to embrace smart solutions the American way: by harnessing technology to help combat the climate change threat.”

Couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

And it’s not even that up-to-date.

But following the post yesterday about Sen. Obama’s support in 2005 for an amendment promoting research in coal-to-liquid technology (Fischer-Tropf), a reader points us to this L.A. Times article from June 2007, “Obama Yields to Greener Side.”

With pressure mounting on Democratic presidential candidates to adopt hard-line positions on curbing global warming, Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday backtracked from his long-held support for a controversial plan to promote the use of coal as an alternative fuel to power motor vehicles.

The Illinois Democrat made his announcement with little fanfare – in a dryly worded and technical-sounding e-mail sent late in the day from his Senate office to environmental advocacy groups – and did not mention the issue during an appearance at a Brentwood gas station designed to shore up his green bona fides with a renewed call to nationalize California’s ambitious goals for reducing carbon levels in fuel.

At issue is legislation, introduced in January, that would give the coal industry tax breaks and other incentives to harness the abundant natural resource as an alternative fuel. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Obama and Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), promoted the idea as a way to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil.

But environmentalists charged that coal would produce a dirty fuel and exacerbate global warming, putting Obama in the awkward position of balancing the desires of an industry with a strong presence in his home state against those of a key voting bloc in the Democratic presidential primaries.

No mention of coal-to-liquid in the candidate’s latest energy position paper.

Henry Payne, a keen observer of the auto industry, takes a tough look at the energy policies — and voting history — of both presidential candidates on their recent visits to Michigan.

Unmentioned in the media coverage of sparring energy plans is that both candidates are ardent supporters of federal cap-and-trade laws. Writing for the Mackinac Center, a Michigan think tank, author Deneen Borelli reports that “the economic cost of a cap-and-trade bill would hit Michigan especially hard. The increase in energy costs would compound the loss of manufacturing jobs in the state and reduce the disposable income of Michigan residents.”

Yesterday we noted Sen. Obama’s floor statement in June 2005 on H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act, which included much criticism of the legislation that he did vote for.

Today, a bit more from Sen. McCain’s statement. Sen. McCain voted no, and one reason was the bill’s failure to include provisions he and Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) proposed to control global warming through cap-and-trade.

Instead of our approach, the American public is going to be saddled entirely with the expense of this bill, which is running on empty– empty of new ideas–and further running up our deficit. The fuel we should be relying on to drive our national energy policy is American consumer demand. If we allowed consumer demand to drive our legislative actions, this bill would emphasize energy efficiency across all sectors of the economy and include a reasonable and progressive CAFE standard for SUVs and all other passenger vehicles. If it were up to American consumers, we wouldn’t be imposing a meaningless 8 billion gallon ethanol mandate, but instead would be making it possible for people to obtain and operate their automobiles using clean and abundant biofuels that actually reduce our dependence on foreign oil and not just provide subsidies to the ethanol producers. If it were to the American public, we would not be repealing the Public Utility Holding Company Act, PUHCA, without replacing it with alternative protections for utility ratepayers, investors, and pension plans. Finally, if it were up to the American public, we would pass a bill that addresses global climate change: more than 75 percent of Americans believe that we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and participate with our allies and other countries in a united effort. And in the process of reducing emissions, we would also improve the health of millions of Americans who suffer from asthma and other air quality related conditions.

It’s almost as if he’s arguing for a complete transformation of the American economy.

But wait, that’s Senator Obama, as Daniel Henninger quotes the Illinois Democrat in today’s Journal, a piece called “Enviromania“: “Breaking our oil addiction . . . will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy.”

A top-down, government imposed complete transformation of our economy. History suggests a bad end to that sort of thing.

A flurry of reporting on the presidential candidates and their votes on energy legislation in 2005. Here’s a good summary of the disputations from U.S. News.com:

Energy week continued yesterday in the presidential race. On the Democratic side, Sen. Barack Obama asserted that Sen. John McCain’s energy policies were lifted from Vice President Dick Cheney. NBC Nightly News showed Obama saying, “When George Bush took office he had an energy policy. He turned to Dick Cheney and he told Cheney, go take care of this. So, John McCain has taken a page out of the Bush-Cheney playbook.” The AP reports Obama “told an audience in Youngstown, Ohio, that the Bush energy policy, crafted in large part by Vice President Dick Cheney, an ex-oilman, tilted to provide tax breaks and favorable treatment for Big Oil and that McCain would expand oil industry tax breaks by $4 billion.” Bloomberg News quotes Obama as saying during another stop, “Here in Ohio, you’re paying nearly $3.70 a gallon for gas — two and a half times what it cost when President Bush took office. Senator McCain not only wants oil companies to keep every dime of that money, he wants to give them more.”

The Washington Post adds that McCain, however, “noted that it was Obama, not he, who had voted for” President Bush’s “2005 energy bill, which included major subsidies for oil companies. NBC Nightly News showed McCain saying, “When the energy bill came to the floor of the Senate full of goodies and breaks for the oil companies, I voted against it. Senator Obama voted for it.”

That’s right. The NAM “key voted” the 2005 energy bill, with support for H.R. 6 being marked a vote in support of manufacturing. (Key Vote letter here.) The specific vote we highlighted was Senate passage of H.R. 6, on June 28, 2005, by a vote of 85-12. Senator Obama voted aye, the NAM’s preferred position; Senator McCain voted no.

Both Senators made floor statements on the day of passage, both which read today as…non-operational.

• Senator Obama’s statement
• Senator McCain’s statement

As far as NAM voting records go, their positions on H.R. 6 were outliers. Obama supported the NAM’s position 16 percent of the time on key votes in the 109th Congress; McCain’s support was 63 percent. (Grid here.)

UPDATE (5:07 p.m.): AP covered takes a look at the 2005 vote in this story.

 This morning on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ program former Chairman and CEO of GE, Jack Welch asked Linda Douglass, Senior Advisor on the Obama Campaign if Senator Obama supports eliminating secret ballots when workers decide whether to join a union.

VIDEO: Card Check Questions on the Campaign Trail

For the relevant transcript, please see the extended entry of this post.

(continue reading…)

Since Senator Obama has sewn up Democratic nomination for President, it seems a useful time to post his and Senator John McCain’s record on National Association of Manufacturers’ Key Votes.

The only Congress where we get a direct vote-to-vote comparison is the 109th Congress, 2005-2006. Senator Obama’s NAM vote rating was 16 percent. Sen. McCain’s was 63 percent.

Each NAM summary for the candidate’s includes a sampling of other group’s ratings.

Obama:

National Association of Manufacturers, 2006:     (16%) National Federation of Independent Business, 2006:     (12%) U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 2006:     (39%) Associated General Contractors, 2006:     (62%) BIPAC, 2006:     (10%) National Small Business Association, 2006:     (28%) AFL-CIO, 2006:     (100%) American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, 2006:     (100%) League of Conservation Voters, 2006:     (96%) Public Citizens Congress Watch, 2006:     (69%) Service Employees International Union, 2006:     (94%) United Auto Workers, 2006:     (93%)

McCain:

National Association of Manufacturers, 2006:     (63%) National Federation of Independent Business, 2006:     (100%) U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 2006:     (72%) Associated General Contractors, 2006:     (62%) BIPAC, 2006:     (80%) National Small Business Association, 2006:     (85%) AFL-CIO, 2006:     (17%) American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, 2006:     (0%) League of Conservation Voters, 2006:     (41%) Public Citizens Congress Watch, 2006:     (15%) Service Employees International Union, 2006:     (33%) United Auto Workers, 2006:     (14%)