[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 81 (Thursday, June 23, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
              THE HARKIN/LAUTENBERG TOBACCO LIABILITY BILL

  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, today my colleagues from New Jersey and Iowa 
introduced legislation allowing lawsuits to be filed to recover 
Medicare and Medicaid costs from illnesses associated with smoking.
  I believe the precedent this legislation sets is extremely alarming, 
but even more troubling are the ramifications this will have on other 
issues, like health care reform.
  My question to them is: What taxes are you going to raise to pay for 
health care reform, if you are going to kill this industry?
  Some of the pending health care reform proposals which rely on 
punitive levels of tobacco excise taxes for funding are like oversized 
houses built on cracked foundations. Financing health care reform on a 
declining revenue base is fundamentally dishonest in the first place. 
It only delays the inevitable for a few years at most--revising the 
issue to find additional tax increases or dramatically scaling back the 
health care package.
  The Harkin-Lautenberg proposal being announced today would only 
accelerate this return for new taxes. The Congressional Budget Office 
will probably have a difficult time projecting the impact of these new 
attacks on an already declining source of revenues. But one thing is 
clear: they accelerate the decline.
  It is ironic that some who are the most zealous in seeking punitive 
tobacco taxes to fund health care also are the most eager to find ways 
to destroy the very industry which is supposed to provide the revenue. 
But it is not surprising. The campaign for back door Prohibition is 
alive and well in Washington. As many of my State fear, Big Brother is 
very hungry these days.
  Every member of the business community should shudder at the proposal 
being unveiled today, and should be asking ``Who's next?'' If we are 
going to start down the road of financing Federal programs through 
lawsuits, as their legislation would do, everyone should be on notice, 
from potato chip makers to automobile manufacturers to dairy farmers: 
You are all at risk.
  And if we are going to start down this road, I will do all I can to 
make sure that the principles of this new proposal, however, flawed, 
are applied consistently and across the board.

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