GOP Assistance

When it comes to welfare, school lunches and the Women Infants Children (WIC)nutrition program, the Gingrich party in the House wants to shift program responsibility to the states, asserting that this fits the federalist principle of the 10th Amendment and puts the policy choices in the hands of those “closest to the problems.”

When it comes to what the businesses bankrolling Gingrich’s crusades want, however, tender concern for state sensibilities suddenly disappears, to be replaced by moving the legal rules concerning personal product injury case and consumer charges of business fraud from the states-where they have been for 200 years-to Washington. One of the bills would prevent cases like those over the Dalkon Shield and dangerous breast implants.

The only real “principle” in all of this has nothing to do with the Constitution and everything to do with providing pay- backs to the business lobbies and pharmaceutical firms that bankrolled Gingrich’s GOPAC. MICHAEL D. REAGAN Riverside