WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of senators rolled out a massive bill Wednesday to settle 300,000 pending asbestos injury claims and compensate victims over the next 30 years through a $140 billion, industry-bankrolled trust fund.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the 301-page bill "fairly and equitably tackles an enormous problem in America."

Specter said estimates put the future cost of the nation's worst workplace health calamity at $117 billion, leaving a "cushion" if casualties run higher. An estimated 27.2 million American workers breathed asbestos dust, and experts predict that as many as 2 million more victims will seek compensation on top of 600,000 whose claims have been resolved.

The compromise bill would compensate thousands of disease victims who now collect little or nothing on their claims because of the bankruptcies of 74 defendant companies, he said.

A provision crafted by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would expedite compensation for terminally ill asbestos victims, allowing them to go back to court if they are not compensated within nine months. Laws in California and several other states move those victims to the top of court dockets.

The bill also would cover victims of community asbestos exposures, such as those in El Dorado Hills, where naturally occurring asbestos was unearthed by homebuilders near Oak Ridge High School, Feinstein and Specter said.

"I think there is going to be very, very broad support," said Specter, who has labored tirelessly on the complex bill while his hairline thins from chemotherapy treatments for lymphoma diagnosed earlier this year.

He was joined at a news conference by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the panel's ranking member, Feinstein and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who tried to win passage of an earlier trust fund bill while committee chairman in 2003.

"I believe we'll get it passed ... with a very comfortable margin," Leahy said.