[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 103 (Monday, August 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 1, 1994]


 
                         TALK A LITTLE HISTORY

  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, over the next few days, I am going to put 
into practice what other Senators have done on occasion, and that is, 
talk a little history. The history, I hope, will be important to my 
colleagues because of the importance of the health care bill that 
apparently will be introduced tomorrow and distributed on Wednesday, 
and the debate will start next week.
  Mr. President, during the 1960 Presidential campaign, Richard Nixon 
hired a foreign policy speech writer named William Peterson, a 
professor of economics at New York University in downtown New York 
City.
  When the ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, 
Senator Carl Mundt, heard this, he was furious. According to Peterson, 
he ranted at Nixon, ``Downtown! That means the only vegetation he ever 
gets to see is that in Central Park. He wouldn't even know the business 
end of a cow if he saw one.''
  It turned out that Peterson did know a thing or two about 
agriculture, but Senator Mundt made an important point. When we make 
policy, we must have a solid understanding of the industry affected by 
our legislation.
  Mr. President, over the past few months, it seems that everybody has 
become a tobacco expert. They claim to know all of the possible health 
effects, and which tobacco company did what and when.
  A few Congressmen and Senators would like you to believe they are 
playing David to the tobacco company's Goliath. But the real David is 
the tobacco farmer, who is being forced to fight a public relations 
Goliath.
  Colman McCarthy said this in the Washington Post a few weeks ago. He 
was a reporter who was dispatched from the Washington Post to Kentucky 
to see how real folks live.
  This is what he said in the article:

       The smooth talk and rough exchanges in Washington have 
     omitted (the Kentucky farmer), as if they have no opinions 
     worth hearing and no culture worth honoring.

  I believe those farmers have opinions worth hearing, and a culture 
worth honoring. It is the reason that I defend tobacco.
  There are over 100,000 tobacco allotment holders in Kentucky alone. 
In Kentucky, they feel the same way and are counting on me to help 
preserve this tradition--and basically this way of life.
  The State of Virginia was once described as having the ``brown stain 
of tobacco juice on every page of her history.'' The same could be said 
of Kentucky, where tobacco fields and curing barns are a regular part 
of the landscape, where much of community life is still marked by the 
rituals of planting, cutting, housing, and stripping. And where the 
fall sales mean college educations, new equipment, and the preservation 
of the family farm.
  The politics of tobacco are about more than the financial security 
the crop brings to Kentucky families. It is also about community life, 
about working together, and socializing together. A Kentucky farmer and 
writer describes it as the ``tobacco culture * * * the experience of 
growing up in a community in which everybody was passionately 
interested in the quality of a local product * * * where the rhythm of 
the farming year * * * was set by the annual drama of the tobacco 
crop.''
  Mr. President, as I have said, over the next few days, I hope to take 
a little time on the floor to introduce the farmer into this debate, 
and equally important, to share with my colleagues what I know about 
tobacco.
  In that same Washington Post article, Colman McCarthy said:

       With no way to convert to other crops--poor soil, much 
     lower prices--what are (farmers) to do? Just get lost? Sell 
     the farm? Go up in smoke? If any anti-smoking crusaders have 
     any non-simplistic answers--and are free of their own 
     addictions to press releases, finger-pointing and 
     moralizing--60,000 Kentucky farm (families) would like to 
     know.

  I could not have said it better myself, Mr. President.
  My dad used to say that when you are not invited to the table, 
sometimes you just have to set your own. Mr. President, the farm 
community deserves better than leftover table scraps, like part of a 
high tobacco tax, from the antitobacco forces public relations feast. 
So today the farm community is setting their own table.
  Not only will I be sharing my thoughts on tobacco, but I will be 
sharing with you what Kentucky farmers and their families have to say.
  I hope my colleagues will take the time to listen or to read the 
remarks that are in the Record and try looking at the tobacco issue 
through the eyes of tens of thousands of farm families for whom this is 
a way of life.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________