[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 67 (Friday, May 22, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5419-S5420]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE SENATE'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS


                            The Highway Bill

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I appreciate the honor of closing up today 
and sending everyone on their way back to their homes with the joyous 
news that there is highway money. I go back to Wyoming almost every 
weekend and travel 1,200 miles across Wyoming's vast open spaces, and 
we will appreciate that highway money. It truly has been a landmark 
achievement. I want to congratulate the senior Senator from Wyoming, 
Senator Thomas, for his outstanding efforts on that bill. He did some 
early drafting and formulas that have helped tremendously in this. I 
have also appreciated his guidance since I have been here. Now we are 
heading back to our respective States.


                        The Tobacco Legislation

  The other thing that we have done this week is spend some time 
debating the tobacco settlement, debating how we can get teens to quit 
smoking, debating how we can solve the problems of tobacco. I hope that 
all Senators go back to their States and talk about this landmark piece 
of legislation that is before us--landmark in that it will be the 
largest tax increase in my memory, a tax increase that will be placed 
on a separate segment of the people.
  I am going to stop right here and mention that I have not taken any 
money from the tobacco companies. When I was campaigning, I desperately 
needed some funds, but I didn't feel that it was right to do that. My 
comments are not based on that. It is concern out of what we debated 
this last week, the constitutionality of whether we have the right to 
solve this problem in this body for every person in the Nation, whether 
we can set that kind of a precedent. I am sure that if people have been 
watching, they have been a little confused about the amount of time it 
has taken to debate it. I want to assure them that it will take 
considerably more time to debate this issue. This would probably be 
more appropriate in six bills, coming from six different committees. It 
was tried that way, and it was determined that it needed to be in one 
bill. Each of those bills would require as much debate as we had this 
week.
  We are going from a premise that these companies need to be punished. 
Lately, documents have shown that they have withheld information from 
their consumers--the people using the product--that shows that nicotine 
is definitely addictive, that it does affect their health, that it is 
going to hurt them. Consequently, there is a desire across this Nation 
to punish those companies. But as several of my constituents who smoke 
have said, ``Let's see, they abused my body for years, and now you want 
to punish them by taxing me?'' And we do this in the name of reducing 
teen smoking. We all want to reduce teen smoking. We hope they realize 
that 3,000 kids a day start smoking and they are going to kill 
themselves, and 1,000 of them for sure in that day will be killed 
sooner. And we say raising the price of cigarettes will do that.

  I have been traveling Wyoming. I have been asking people about the 
price and how that would affect them. I have been going to schools when 
I am out there and asking about that price. And the general consensus 
is, yes, for a little while it will make a difference. But they refer 
me to other kinds of drug use that is expensive, more expensive, and 
increasingly expensive, and that use is going up.
  I saw a college report from the George Washington University which 
was looking at the fact that they have increased the requirements on 
smoking on campus, and yet the number of kids smoking has gone up. At a 
university, they are supposed to be more intellectual perhaps. I know 
they believe they are. But they are still smoking more. So they are not 
thinking through the problem. But they asked them why. Part of it is 
rebelliousness. Part of it is because their parents did it. There are a 
number of reasons. None of the answers suggested included that the 
price would make a difference.
  Kids today are paying outlandish amounts for a pair of tennis shoes. 
I sold shoes for 28 years. Would you believe they are paying 50 bucks 
for a pair of tennis shoes? I said that just to see if you were paying 
attention. Do you know that there are tennis shoes out there for 150 
bucks and the kids are buying them? It is the kids that have the money 
to buy them. There are more kids working today, making money, and they 
are not using that money to help support their family. It is money that 
they get to spend. They are spending it on things like $150 tennis 
shoes.
  So an increase in the price of a pack of cigarettes will bother them 
for a little while but not as a long problem.
  Who winds up with the money in this bill? We have heard some comments 
here that in the highway bill there may have been some money taken from 
veterans. That was money never passed by Congress, never budgeted by 
Congress, never funded by Congress, and wasn't even in the President's 
budget this year to have that money. I don't know why it isn't in this 
smoking bill. Everything else is. Everything else is--even things that 
are not remotely related to smoking. If you ever had an idea for a 
project, this is a bill you can put it in. We will just kick the price 
of cigarettes up just a little bit. That will solve everything. It 
started out at $368.5 billion, went to $516 billion, and perhaps now is 
at $800 billion. We could match the regular U.S. budget in the 
trillions with this, eventually. We can just add in some other 
programs.
  We are talking about compensating farmers. That will be the big 
debate when we get back. And the farmers ought to be involved in this 
debate. But we are talking about perhaps $20,000 an acre. And they get 
to keep the land? We are talking about vending machine owners. The 
machines run $1,500 to $2,500, maybe $3,500. We are talking about 
compensating them $13,000 per machine? That is where their current 
value of future lost revenue is--the amount of money they could have 
made off that machine, as though it was our fault that they bought the 
machine, as though it was our fault that smoking was bad for people.
  Those are debates we will have when we get back, and those debates 
will take awhile.
  The FDA is being given explicit authority in this. They need to 
probably

[[Page S5420]]

have some explicit authority. But their budget already under our budget 
is increased significantly. Now, under this bill, we increase it 10 
times more, $34 million to $340 million, a huge increase. We are 
expecting those people to gear up and utilize that money. It looks like 
we are forming an additional bureaucracy. I also want you to watch the 
dollars.

  In Wyoming, for years we have been talking about increasing the price 
of the tax on cigarettes by 15 cents. When I was in the State 
legislature in Wyoming, we talked about that. We usually talked about 
putting that money to health needs. Even talking about putting it to 
the health needs, it raised approximately $8 million a year. I have to 
focus on the difference here between billion and million. In the 
States, a million is a lot of money. Out here, a billion is not much. 
But that 15 cents a pack raises $8 million. We are told that $1.10 a 
pack will raise $6 million. It doesn't sound like very good math. It 
sounds like the usual Washington program where it comes back here, we 
keep a bunch of it, and we send a little bit back. If that is the case, 
the State would do it better. It would have more money for the States.
  I am going to mention two final concerns that I have on this. When we 
passed the budget bill, we talked about the need to help Medicare with 
money that came from the tobacco. That is what we were going to do with 
all of the money from the tobacco settlement--put it into Medicare, 
shore that up. It is in bad financial shape. That would give us some 
more time to work on it. There is very little provision in this bill 
for doing anything for Medicare. We should take care of Medicare. That 
would be a medical use for the money. That would be money that 
nonsmokers have been paying in to pay for smokers' problems that 
increase the cost of Medicare.
  The final need that we have to have in the bill is a provision where 
we don't spend the money until we have the money. It disturbs me a lot 
that we are talking about putting an industry out of business but 
relying on ever-increasing revenues from this business going out of 
business. Somehow the basic counting instincts here just do not 
balance. We really have to be sure that the money gets collected before 
it gets spent if we are going to decrease the revenues.
  So there are a lot of concerns there.
  I hope my colleagues will go home to their States and discuss with 
the people there the complexities of this bill. I don't know that there 
has been that complex a bill before. We are not going to probably break 
it down into six separate bills. So there will be a long debate on it 
when we get back. Share your ideas. Share your concerns. And we will 
get with that when we come back.

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