Martin Hoke: “I personally sat in a meeting in which the executive director of the Girl Scouts of America for Washington, DC, told an…”

“I personally sat in a meeting in which the executive director of the Girl Scouts of America for Washington, DC, told an entire group of people in a public place that they had to sell 87,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies just to pay their insurance premiums; that they no longer can use diving boards in their pools, they can no longer rent cars, they no longer can have horses in the summertime in their camps, because of their problems with liability insurance. The other thing I would say is, what I really want to talk about is exactly what they are concerned about, and that is special interests, because the fact is that there are Democrats in this House that are working overtime to defeat these reforms to end lawsuit abuse. And it is an ugly side of American politics that is rarely talked about. But you have got to follow the money if you want to figure out what is really going on. What you find out when you follow the money is that in the 1993-94 cycle, 341 Democrats were given money by the American Trial Lawyers Association. Ninety-four percent of all of the contributions that that PAC, that special interest political action committee gave were to Democrats.”