When I was about 10 years old, my teacher caught me talking in class — a common malady
among incipient politicians.  I complained that “Joey made me do it.” My nemesis being —
Joey Labenson. My teacher asked, “If Joey told you to jump off the Empire State Building
(then the world’s tallest) would you do it?”

So now it’s time to ask the Republican members of the House and Senate: If  Bush and Cheney
asked you to jump off the Empire State Building, would you do it? If your answer is “no,” then you
also have the answer as to whether you should back his attempts to get you to vote to limit a patient’s
right to sue HMOs (health maintenance organizations) in state court and for punitive damages.

Unless you want to watch negative ads about some poor constituent whose life was ruined by a
medical mistake but who cannot sue for more than a pittance and can’t sue at all to punish the
doctors who screwed up, don’t walk the plank on this issue.

Bush has been sold a bill of goods by the HMOs and insurance companies and erred badly in
threatening a veto over this issue. Just because Bush is out of his mind to have threatened a veto,
doesn’t mean you need to risk your seat to pull him back from the ledge onto which he has sauntered out.

As I have pleaded before in this space, there is a way to have your cake and eat it too on this issue
by voting to limit contingency fees for lawyers in medical malpractice cases brought under the patients’
bill of rights legislation. If the legislation is amended to cap lawyer fees at 10 or 15 percent, frivolous
lawsuits will not be filed because there is insufficient profit for the trial lawyers to take the case.
Serious actions, which should be brought, will be litigated anyway since the recovery will be big
enough to warrant the time and effort involved in suing.

Plus, I guarantee that you won’t get any negative ads in your district complaining that you are
short changing lawyers or that a fee of 10 or 15 percent of the award is too low.

But Bush and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) seem determined to drive their marginal
members over the cliff on this issue by asking them to vote outright against punitive damages,
no matter how grievous or careless the malpractice, and to vote to limit recovery to $500,000
no matter how devastating the illness. Do we really believe that it is fair to limit a baby’s award
to $7,000 per year — assuming a 70-year life — for malpractice that might have left him blind or unable to walk?

The list of unpopular votes that President Bush is asking Republicans to cast is getting quite long.
Perhaps he prides himself on not reading polls, but does he have to ruin it for everyone else?

Count them up: permitting arsenic in drinking water, supporting off-shore oil drilling, rejecting the
global warming treaty, not ratifying the biological warfare ban, limiting the right to sue HMOs,
backsliding on clean air enforcement and a number of equally depressing positions.

And more is yet to come. He’s soon going to ask you to OK the recommendations of his stacked
commission to cut Social Security benefits and to permit limited privatization of the system.

George W. Bush may not care if he follows the example of John Quincy Adams and joins his father
in the ranks of one-term presidents, but don’t let him take you with him.