[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 29, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5571-H5572]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     DEFINITION OF A TOBACCO SUCKER

  (Mr. FUNDERBURK asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. FUNDERBURK. Madam Speaker, recently a politician in North 
Carolina asked if I could describe a tobacco sucker. The answer is a 
tobacco sucker is one who believes that David Kessler of the FDA, the 
gentleman from California, Henry Waxman, and Bill Clinton are friends 
of tobacco. That is a tobacco sucker.
  Madam Speaker, caught in the middle of the assault on tobacco by the 
Clinton administration are thousands of small hardworking tobacco 
farmers

[[Page H5572]]

in the Second District of North Carolina. These farmers are not the 
giant tobacco corporations the Clinton administration, the FDA, and 
some in Congress attack regularly. These are small farmers who struggle 
from year to year just to make ends meet. These are the people who 
provide the jobs and pay the taxes.
  The end result of the Clinton crusaders will be to make tobacco 
products illegal. The White House talks about American jobs, but it 
will stop at nothing to wipe out a proud and legal American industry 
and watch its profits head offshore. The tobacco farmers in my district 
generate over $43,000 in taxes for each acre of tobacco, and tobacco 
products, provide the Treasury over $11.5 billion annually.

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