[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 71 (Thursday, June 4, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5604-S5617]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        NATIONAL TOBACCO POLICY AND YOUTH SMOKING REDUCTION ACT

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I don't know how many days it is that we 
have been on the tobacco bill now, but it is clear that we are not 
making any progress. I am increasingly frustrated by the degree to 
which many of our Republican colleagues, in the name of amending the 
bill, have stalled, obfuscated and, in many ways, attempted to defeat 
the legislation without any real sign of progress, without any real 
sign of coming to closure, without any real effort to find some 
resolution.
  I have expressed my continued patience, my continued desire to find 
ways in which to move this legislation along. I give great credit to 
the manager of the bill, the chairman of the Commerce Committee, 
Senator McCain, for his tireless efforts to move both sides along.
  This has not worked. We have continued to be thwarted in the name of 
compromise, and in the name of negotiation, and in the name of 
consultation. Frankly, I don't know what other options there are but to 
file cloture on the bill. We may not win. I am prepared to acknowledge 
that unless we get many of our Republican colleagues to join us, we 
will not win. But I also understand that if we don't move this 
legislation forward, we will continue to be in a position of having to 
say no to other bills the majority leader may wish to bring up until we 
resolve this matter. We have said, as late as Tuesday, that we are not 
in a position to move to any other legislation until we finish this 
bill. I don't know how we can say it more clearly than that.
  We want to finish this legislation so we can move on to other bills. 
There are a number of other pieces of legislation that ought to be 
addressed, and we recognize that. We are prepared to enter into time 
agreements on amendments. We are prepared to come to some time limit on 
the bill itself. But we have now virtually wasted the better part of a 
week waiting for colleagues to offer amendments, waiting for some 
resolution to the Gramm amendment, waiting, procedurally, to find some 
solution to the impasse that we now are experiencing.
  So, Mr. President, I really have no choice but to offer a cloture 
motion, with some frustration, and with the realization that it may 
take more than one. We may have to file several cloture motions. But, 
beginning today, I will take whatever action is necessary to expedite 
the consideration and ultimately the solution and the conclusion to 
this legislation.
  We have a lot of people who have invested a good deal of effort into 
this legislation; three of them are on the floor right now. I thank 
them for all they have done to bring us to this point. But unless we 
take it to its final conclusion, all of the thousands of hours spent by 
the Senators who are on the floor already, invested in time and good-
faith efforts to move us to this point, will be for naught. I don't 
want to see that happen. I don't want to see this necessarily as a 
Republican versus Democratic debate. But, frankly, it becomes more and 
more apparent that we are not getting the help--with the one stellar 
exception of my friend and colleague from Arizona--in getting this 
legislation passed. So we are very hopeful that we can move this 
legislation and find some way to resolve the matter.
  I understand that I can't file until 2:15 under a previous agreement. 
I will certainly wait until then.
  Let me just make sure that our colleagues understand where things 
stand. Right now, we are discussing the motion to recommit offered by 
the Senator from Texas, Senator Gramm, with amendments pending to that 
motion. The Gramm amendment would cost $52 billion. It would rob the 
bill of any real opportunity to address research in health care, to 
address the targeted approach that we are attempting to make on 
advertising and reducing teenage smoking. It would reduce every option 
that we have available to us to reverse the trend and reduce teenage 
smoking in this country. Why? Because the Senator from Texas believes 
that we ought to address the marriage penalty.
  Unfortunately, Senator Gramm's amendment doesn't address the marriage 
penalty alone. In fact, one could argue that it has little to do with 
the marriage penalty. It has everything to do with spending the tobacco 
revenue raised in the health fee. We are presented with an option that 
is a Hobson's choice for many: reduce taxes for those who are under 
$50,000, or reduce teenage smoking, reduce the number of children who 
are dying from smoking. That is the choice. While we debate this 
choice, 3,000 kids a day choose to smoke for the first time. A large 
percentage of those--some say 40 percent--are people who ultimately 
will die from the habit at some point in their life. They get cancer 
and ultimately succumb to cancer because they started smoking too 
early, without knowing the facts, without being able to quit once they 
had started. That is the issue here.
  Can we prevent young people from acquiring this terrible habit and 
from dying because of it? Can we target advertising and research, and 
can we find ways in which to ensure that we can turn the trend around 
for the first time? Or are we going to spend that money for something 
else? Mr. President, Democrats have come up with an alternative.
  Mr. McCAIN. Will the distinguished minority leader yield for one 
question?
  Mr. DASCHLE. Without losing my right to the floor, I yield to the 
Senator from Arizona for a question.
  Mr. McCAIN. I appreciate the Senator's frustration, and to a large 
degree I share it. I wonder if, with the knowledge that the Senator 
from Texas and I are continuing negotiations in the next few minutes, 
the distinguished Democratic leader would agree to withhold that until, 
say, an extra additional 15 minutes just so I can make one final 
attempt to get an agreement with the Senator from Texas on his 
amendment. Then I think we may be able to move forward.
  Mr. DASCHLE. I will agree to withholding filing of the motion so long 
as I don't lose my right to file the motion. If that takes retaining 
the floor, I intend to do so. But I will certainly allow the Senator 
from Arizona whatever time he may require to talk to the Senator from 
Texas.
  Mr. President, let me just say that is really the essence of this 
argument. Can we stop kids from smoking? Can we turn this around, or 
not? And can we find a way with which to address the concerns expressed 
to us by many of our colleagues?
  We believe we can address the marriage penalty for a whole lot less 
than $52 billion. But our objective is not to gut the bill. Our 
objective isn't to say we are going to use up all that money because we 
don't want to spend it on stopping kids from smoking; we don't want to 
spend it on research; we don't want to spend it on tobacco farmers; we 
don't want to recognize what has already been achieved in the State-by-
State negotiations on this issue and the tremendous effort put forth by 
attorneys general all over the country in an effort to resolve this at 
the State level. The Federal Government didn't do that. For whatever 
reason, we didn't go to court. The States did. Now that the States have 
racked up their victories, and now that they are expecting some way to 
resolve this matter, we are saying: We are going to use that money, 
too; we are going to take the money that you have already won in court 
fairly and squarely against the tobacco companies, and we are going to 
spend it; we are going to spend it on a tax cut.
  So this gets interesting as we go on. We are saying we ought to 
respect the decisions made by the attorneys general, we ought to 
respect the decisions made by the committees of the Congress, and the 
Senate in particular, in recognition of the fact that we have to find 
new ways to target those who are most vulnerable to campaigns by 
tobacco companies today to get them to smoke. We think that is worth an 
American investment. We think it is worth an American investment to put 
some real effort into research on how we cure diseases that have been 
connected to smoking. We think it is important that we find ways with 
which to rid this country of the production of tobacco products and to 
encourage tobacco farmers to find other ways to make a living. That is 
what this is about.

[[Page S5605]]

  Mr. President, there is no choice. We can continue to talk. We can 
continue to find ways with which to obfuscate. But it really comes down 
to this: Do you want to pass a tobacco bill or not? We are getting a 
resounding ``no'' on the other side of the aisle. We are getting an 
absolute, emphatic ``no,'' exclamation point, ``we don't want a tobacco 
bill.''
  We have come to a point that we do not have any choice. We must move 
this legislation forward and use the parliamentary and procedural 
methods available to any Senator to begin to curtail debate, 
recognizing that every Senator who still has a germane amendment would 
have the right to offer an amendment.
  But having been on this bill now for 2 weeks, and now recognizing the 
majority leader's frustration and impatience with our slow progress, 
his desire to move on to other bills, I, frankly, wish that we could do 
this together. I wish he and I could file this cloture motion. He has 
filed cloture a lot faster on virtually every other bill that has come 
to the floor than on this one. But I understand the difference in the 
initial position with regard to where we are on this legislation. So I 
wouldn't expect him necessarily to be enthusiastic about doing it. But 
we have to move on. We have to find a way with which to address this 
bill in a more consequential and productive way. That, in essence, is 
what it is we are attempting to do.

  We have a series of amendments. The Durbin amendment, which, in my 
view, is one of the final and very important pieces of legislation that 
we want to address on this side, a piece of legislation that would be 
designed to strengthen the so-called look-back, or the targets that we 
set out, to reduce teenage smoking--I don't think that is necessarily 
anything anybody ought to have trouble considering, or ultimately 
debating. We haven't even been able to debate that. We have had to 
wait.
  Mr. President, I say with all sincerity--I don't see the Senator from 
Arizona on the floor. He had asked that I postpone the filing of the 
cloture motion, and I have agreed to do so. But I am prepared to file 
it assuming that there is no other reason for him to ask for additional 
delay.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, at this time I send a cloture motion to 
the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:


                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on the modified 
     committee substitute for S. 1415, the tobacco legislation.
         Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts, Robert Kerrey of 
           Nebraska, Kent Conrad, Harry Reid of Nevada, Paul 
           Wellstone, Richard Durbin, Patty Murray, Richard Bryan, 
           Tom Harkin, Carl Levin, Joe Biden, Joseph Lieberman, 
           John Glenn, Jeff Bingaman, Ron Wyden, and Max Baucus.

  Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I must say that I think it is unfortunate 
that this process has been adopted by the Democratic leader. I had 
indicated all along that at some point, if it was necessary, I would be 
prepared to consider cloture but not until we had an opportunity to 
debate and vote on some amendments that clearly are important to 
Senators and until we had time to have debate on this bill in general.
  There are still some very important amendments pending: The Durbin 
amendment, the Gramm amendment, and we have the drug amendments. We 
have at least two substitutes that would be cut off from being offered: 
The Hatch substitute, which I know a number of Senators would support, 
and it is something much closer to the original settlement agreement 
that was entered into than anything else that is pending around here 
now; plus the Domenici-Gramm substitute.
  I think most Senators would acknowledge very readily that those two 
Senators are very thoughtful Senators and have given a lot of thought 
to an alternative approach. Yet there is a choice here. The choice is: 
Do you want a bill or not? If you want a bill, this is a good step 
toward having nothing happen, because this further sours the well. Yes; 
I would like to see things move along on this bill and on to other 
bills and other issues that I know Senators on both sides want to 
address, but you have to also allow Senators to be able to work through 
the problems and come to an agreement.
  If we stay on this bill, we are going to have a vote on the Gramm 
marriage penalty tax elimination. We will have it this year in some 
other form or another. It seems to me like this is one way to help 
address some of the concerns about the excessive amount of money that 
is in this bill. It is clearly way beyond what is necessary to fight 
teenage smoking, or even teenage smoking and drug abuse, address some 
of the health care problems, and address the needs of the farmers. It 
goes way beyond all of that. That is the problem.
  As I have said in other forums, this has become a problem of greed. 
Everybody who touches this bill adds to it. It grows like Topsy. What 
is our goal here? To have a whole, big, new Federal program outside the 
regular budget process, or to address the problem of smoking, and 
teenage smoking, in this country?
  I had been working on and had kind of sent word to the Democratic 
leader informally--and I did try to call him, and we were both going 
back and forth to our luncheons--I had a unanimous consent agreement 
here that I was working on, and was prepared to work with him on, that 
would set up a process for us to have a vote on Durbin, although I 
think Durbin is a very bad amendment. It is another jump, more cost, 
another hit on actually getting something done. That is one of the 
problems here. I am still trying to figure out, do Senators, and do the 
health care community people, and the attorneys general want a bill?
  Do you want an issue? Do you want to do something about this problem 
or do you want to play games? It is not clear to me because everybody 
keeps adding to it, adding to it, and it is just going to collapse out 
here in a great, humongous pile of nothingness.
  But I was going to suggest we have a vote on Durbin at 5:30 today, 
and that we have a time agreement on the Gramm amendment and a vote on 
it, and a vote on the drug amendment, and that--I assumed at some point 
the Democratic leadership might have a tax amendment of their own, and 
we would start going on down the trail. I don't like it when we 
basically--people say we have to make progress; we have to get this 
bill done. Where is the progress? This week, we can't blame each other 
for yesterday; we had a funeral for a former Senator. We had to go to 
that. We have problems with Senators being here on Monday. We have 
problems with Senators--I won't get into all that.
  But you cannot make progress until you make progress, until you are 
here and you have Senators prepared to vote. And that is one of the 
unique features of this creature, the Senate. Things move very slowly, 
they look like they are not moving at all, and it looks hopeless, and 
then all of a sudden you get ready to vote. I thought we were close to 
getting ready to vote.
  So I think this is not a positive thing to happen, and I will urge 
every Republican Senator to vote against cloture. If we don't get 
cloture, then what? Then what? I thought at some point next week after 
we voted on Durbin and Gramm and the drug amendment and Hatch and the 
Domenici-Gramm substitute, maybe a couple other Democrat amendments, at 
that point we could have sort of a bipartisan effort to see if the 
Senate was ready to go to cloture and get to a vote.
  This undermines that. I understand why it is being done, but I think 
it is counterproductive, and I hope the Senate would defeat this 
overwhelmingly. I view it as another blow to our chances of actually 
addressing this issue in a responsible way and getting on to other 
important issues.
  I must say I thought that Senator Gramm and Senator McCain and others 
who were interested in how you deal with the marriage penalty tax were 
very close to an agreement--maybe not exactly the way Democrats would 
like it or the White House would like it, but something that would have 
been fair for both of us to have and we could

[[Page S5606]]

make progress on other things. But c'est la vie, this is it. You filed 
a cloture motion. And also, by the way, that cloture would ripen on 
Monday, and I think that is going to be a problem for the leadership 
and a number of Senators, and we will have to discuss when and how that 
vote would occur.
  I hope all concerned would reconsider their thinking on how we bring 
this to a point where we could get some votes and make progress. I 
really believe, I said publicly, that if we had a tax cut provision 
added and we had a drug provision added, then the prospects for the 
bill would be helped substantially; we might actually get a bill 
through the Senate. Without that, we are going to be sitting around 
here. If you want to sit around and shout to your feet for the rest of 
this month and all summer long and try to make out this is a totally 
partisan thing, that is OK, too. That is OK. I am relaxed. We can just 
waffle along here and look pathetic if everybody wants to do that. Or 
we can decide how we are going to get together and make something 
responsible happen.
  I yield the floor, Mr. President.
  Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, let me just respond to a couple points 
made by the distinguished majority leader. First of all, I only wish I 
had had his text in front of me when we took up the Coverdell bill, 
when we took up a number of other pieces of legislation earlier this 
year, because I can recall his passionate determination to get time 
agreements, to stack votes, to find a way to come to closure in a 
matter of a couple of days, a couple of days, and were it not for the 
fact that we had the votes to hold off on cloture, I don't know where 
that would have gone. We finally came to a resolution on the Coverdell 
legislation because we were able to come to some agreement on how we 
would proceed on amendments.

  Now, I am perfectly willing to ask unanimous consent to withdraw the 
cloture motion if we can get an agreement on the process and some time 
agreements by which we can have these amendments considered.
  Now, I don't know why, but I have been told--and I will admit I 
haven't talked directly to the majority leader--that the Republicans 
are refusing to allow the Democratic tax amendment to either precede or 
immediately succeed the consideration of the Gramm amendment. They 
don't want them back to back. I don't know why. And if that is not 
accurate, I hope somebody will tell me.
  We have offered to have a limited amount of debate on the Gramm 
amendment, a limited amount of time on the Democratic amendment, and 
then let's have two votes back to back. We can do that this afternoon. 
I am prepared to have a vote, I would suggest, at 5 o'clock today. 
Let's have the debate on the Gramm amendment, the debate on the 
Democratic amendment, and then two votes, and we are out of here on 
taxes for a while. Then let's go to the drug amendment, let's go to the 
Durbin amendment. We can stack those votes. We can have all four of 
those votes tonight. But I bet you I won't hear that offer made by the 
other side. For some reason that isn't good enough. It was good enough 
for the Coverdell bill, but it is not good enough for the tobacco bill.
  Mr. LOTT. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DASCHLE. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. LOTT. I heard through the news media that the Senator was 
proposing a process to have those votes back to back, and, oh, by the 
way, they are going to be king of the hill; that the last one who wins, 
you know, wins. That's it.
  I did not have that proposal come to me in any form, and I would not 
agree to that. I am prepared to say we are going to get a vote on 
Gramm, and in some logical order, I assume, we have a deal here where 
we are alternating back and forth--we offer an amendment; you offer an 
amendment. And the Democrats could offer an amendment at some point on 
taxes in the regular order. We could not prevent you from doing that.
  But that was not the way it came to me. And it did come to me through 
the media in a way that certainly would not be acceptable.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, since I retain the floor, let me just 
respond to my colleague. First of all, we are not going back to back. 
The last amendment prior to the Gramm amendment was a Gregg amendment. 
So instead of going Republican-Democratic, we went Republican-
Republican. So that pattern was lost already.
  Mr. LOTT. Will the Senator yield on that point?
  Mr. DASCHLE. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. LOTT. Because he is right, and I think that was a mistake. And I 
objected to that at the time. I think everybody who was on the floor 
knows that. I did not appreciate the fact that the going back and forth 
was interrupted. The Senator from Texas knows that, and he has 
indicated, to his credit, that he was not really intending to break up 
that sequence. We did break up the sequence, but I do not think we 
should let that block us from proceeding in that way in the future, a 
fair way where we offer our amendment, you offer your amendment, and we 
go back and forth.
  But you are right about that. The order was broken, and I certainly 
did not like it.
  Mr. DASCHLE. While the majority leader is still standing, let me 
retain the floor and ask him the question. Would he agree with me to a 
2- or 3-hour time agreement to be divided equally on the two amendments 
relating to tax, the Gramm amendment and the Democratic amendment, and 
that two votes be cast at the end of that time in sequence of his 
choosing? Would the majority leader agree to that proposal?
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I would not agree with that at this point. I 
am not saying that at some point we might come to some sort of 
understanding of how this would be handled. The first thing is, I 
think, the Senator from Texas and Senator McCain have got to come to an 
agreement on the content. That is one of the reasons why we can't go on 
procedure--until you get something that is worked out, hopefully that 
everybody can support, because when we get a vote on the Gramm 
amendment, on the marriage penalty tax, it is going to pass 
overwhelmingly. A great majority of the Democrats are not going to be 
able to vote against that. They are going to vote for it. So it is 
going to pass.
  But what I would say is I have a unanimous consent agreement right 
here that would allow us to set up a process to move forward with 
consent to get a vote on the Durbin amendment at 5:30, and that 
following disposition of the Gramm amendment Senator Coverdell be 
recognized to offer a first-degree amendment relative to drugs, there 
be 2 hours of debate on that--and that there then would be debate on 
the Coverdell amendment and a vote on that after 2 hours.
  We have a unanimous consent request here that we would be willing to 
offer, and then we could go back to your amendment, we go to a tax 
amendment, if you want to do that.
  But here is the other side of it. You have to get unanimous consent. 
And our people are not going to agree to an arrangement at this time 
where you get some vote on a subsequent tax proposal that would be the 
king of the tree. I think when the thing is done, when we get an 
agreement, you are going to vote for the Gramm amendment and that is 
what will prevail, and we will move on. But we have to try to come to 
an agreement on that or we are not going to go anywhere. If that is the 
way it is going to be, that is the way it is going to be. I have been 
trying to help make this thing move from a procedural standpoint, but 
if we want to let it collapse on this line, OK with me.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, the majority leader has just made my 
point probably better than I can. What he has said is that this offer 
to have two amendments, one Republican and one Democrat, both dealing 
with tax, under a time agreement, is objectionable to them.
  My point originally was the reason it is objectionable is because 
they don't want to get this legislation passed. They do not want to see 
closure to it. That is really what is behind all of this. This is not 
some concern about a tax amendment. This is concern about ultimately 
moving this legislation to a point where we can get completion.

[[Page S5607]]

 The reason the majority leader cannot get unanimous consent is not 
because it is not fair. It is because there are colleagues on his side 
who want to drag this out past the Fourth of July. They want to start 
using the clock. That is what this is about. You want a blow-by-blow 
account of the play-by-play action here? It is that. We are simply 
playing the clock. Because if you play it long enough, we run out of 
time and then, guess what, we do not pass a tobacco bill.
  We can play that. We can stay on this bill through June, if we want 
to. But I am telling you, this legislation ought to pass. It is about 
saving kids' lives. It is about making them healthy. It is about coming 
up with new tobacco policy, and we are prepared to stick to whatever it 
takes to see that we get that done.
  I don't understand why that would not be a fair proposal. I am 
disappointed that our Republican colleagues object to what is a 
reasonable proposal. When I used the reference ``king of the hill,'' I 
was simply saying you have two proposals, both pending, both being 
debated, and Republicans and Democrats both roll the dice. Let's see 
what the majority of Democrats and Republicans support with regard to 
the options presented to them.
  We have an amendment. They have an amendment. Maybe the leader is 
right. Maybe both amendments will pass or both amendments could fail. 
He thinks there is a majority support for the marriage penalty 
amendment. I think he is probably right. The question is, What is the 
amendment? The Gramm amendment goes way beyond marriage penalty. It 
goes way beyond it. Don't anyone be confused about that. This is not a 
marriage penalty amendment. You can find marriage penalty in it, but it 
goes beyond that, and he is prepared to spend $52 billion going beyond 
that.
  Now I understand he wants to pull it back some, but there is no 
question the majority of what the Gramm amendment would eat up would go 
to research, would go to kids, and would go to farmers. We know that. 
So we will have to wait until another day to have our debate and have a 
good opportunity to consider competing proposals. But we are prepared 
to do that. We will do it Monday next week, Tuesday, whenever. But we 
will be here. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I want to point out we could have had a vote 
on the Gramm amendment last week. I was perfectly willing to do that, I 
believe it was last Thursday. We were ready, I thought, to go to a vote 
on Durbin and Gramm last week. As I recall, there was objection to that 
from the Democrats. So if you talk about delay or time being consumed, 
it was because we could not get an agreement worked out on Thursday how 
we could go ahead and vote on the two of them.
  What I am proposing here, or have been prepared to propose, is we 
have a vote on the Gramm penalty tax amendment, the Durbin look-back 
provision, the Coverdell drugs provision, and a Daschle or others 
marriage penalty provision. That is Republican-Democrat, Republican-
Democrat; it is a way to deal with this thing.
  But let's set that aside. You know, there is concern that has been 
expressed about the cost of the marriage penalty. How about the 
American people who are paying that tax? A penalty for getting married? 
They cannot help it, if it is so unfair a tax, that young couples all 
over America are getting hit with this tax just because they got 
married? So what we are saying is, ``Oh, well, to eliminate this 
unbelievable tax that is in the Tax Code it costs too much money, so we 
want to squeeze down what Senator Gramm is proposing to less and less 
and less.'' What we ought to do is eliminate the marriage penalty tax 
altogether. Right away. Flat out. Whatever the cost is.

  Mr. KERRY. Let's do it.
  Mr. LOTT. This is one way to help deal with the problem that this 
tobacco bill costs somebody money. It doesn't come from heaven. 
Somebody is going to pay for this. This is one way, and it is targeted, 
by the way, to couples earning under $50,000, as I understand it, to 
help the people at the lower end of the tax structure by getting rid of 
this tax penalty.
  You are talking about these other people. Yes, we ought to have a 
campaign to fight teenage smoking and drug abuse, but we don't need all 
these hundreds of billions of dollars to do that. This is a way--and 
everybody involved understands it, really--this is a way to help make 
it possible for this legislation to get through the Senate and maybe, 
eventually, get to a conclusion.
  Does the Senator from Massachusetts want me to yield?
  Mr. KERRY. I do not want to interrupt the leader.
  Mr. President, I wanted to ask the Senator, the majority leader: It 
seems to me I recall a conversation that the minority leader, the 
majority leader, Senator Gramm and Senator McCain and I had together at 
the desk right behind Senator Gramm just about 2 days ago, in which we 
had originally broached to the majority leader the notion that there 
would be two votes, almost simultaneously. So the majority leader was, 
in fact, aware that was what we sought.
  Mr. LOTT. If I can reclaim my time, I remember that meeting, and I 
was there for part of it and went to take a phone call. When I was 
listening to that discussion, it was a discussion about how and when we 
were going to vote on Durbin and Gramm. Maybe at some subsequent point 
the discussion turned to, really, some alternative to Gramm. But, you 
know, this is something that has evolved, as far as I can tell, since 
we met. We were having that discussion, whenever that was--Tuesday, I 
guess it was.
  Mr. KERRY. Again, if the leader will yield for a question, isn't it a 
fact, though, the unanimous consent request that the leader is 
proposing, while it ostensibly sets up a Democrat-Republican 
alternative, it is not, in fact, allowing for the Democrat alternative 
on the marriage penalty to be voted on at the time that the minority 
leader has requested?
  Mr. LOTT. There would be one intervening amendment. What is the 
problem?
  Mr. KERRY. Would they be the same day? Same time? Could they be this 
afternoon?
  Mr. LOTT. They could be. I don't see any problem. I would like for us 
to have it in the same day, because it means we would be making 
progress. I would like us to have the opportunity, on the tax issue and 
tobacco bill, to have more than one vote in a day. Maybe we could get 
two or three votes. That would be healthy. I would like to see us make 
progress on that. I think we could work that out. We don't want a 
separation of days.
  I just object to the ``king of the hill'' type approach which goes--
that is a throwback to the House. But having it the same day, that 
would be fine with me. We are not interested in getting a day's or a 
week's separation. If we are ever going to find a logical way to 
conclude this thing, you have to make progress and have more than one 
or two votes in a day.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, let me just say, my offer stands. We are 
prepared to negotiate some time agreement, some way with which to deal 
with these amendments. And if we can do so satisfactorily to both 
sides, I am prepared to ask unanimous consent to revoke the cloture 
motion for now. I will talk with the majority leader and we will see if 
we cannot resolve it. Perhaps this discussion, if nothing else, has 
moved us closer to that point.
  He did make a point, though, that I think has to be responded to, and 
that has to do with money which is being allocated here. He said, What 
is wrong with dealing with the marriage penalty? Shouldn't we address 
the inequity there? Let there be no mistake. We are prepared to address 
the inequity in the marriage penalty. Our amendment would do that. We 
are simply saying we don't want to do it at the expense of revoking the 
commitment made to the attorneys general, made to the States, made to 
tobacco farmers, made to children, made to the researchers--made in all 
of those ways that has set up this comprehensive tobacco policy which 
we hope to address over the course of the next 10 years. We don't have 
to do that. We don't have to destroy that.
  So there is nothing wrong with dealing with the marriage penalty. But 
to

[[Page S5608]]

say we are going to do it at the expense of everything else is the 
problem Democrats find with the Gramm amendment. It also begs the 
question, what about the cost to Medicare and Medicaid from smoking-
related illnesses? Should that not be addressed? Isn't that an 
inequity? The American taxpayers are paying huge--billions and billions 
of dollars, huge amounts of money to pay for the programs that we have 
set up to deal with health care; Medicare and Medicaid, the two most 
consequential. More and more billions of dollars are spent every year 
dealing with smoking-related illnesses. Isn't it important for us as a 
Nation and this Senate to recognize that and deal with it?
  What the Gramm amendment says is, ``No, it isn't. No, we are going to 
spend it on a tax cut. We think that is more important than anything 
else, over and above the commitment to the attorneys general, over and 
above the commitment to the farmers, over and above the commitment to 
the children, over and above the commitment to the Medicare and 
Medicaid.'' That is the problem we have. That is why there hasn't been 
an ability to find some common ground. So long as that becomes the only 
way with which to spend resources, we think there is a better way, a 
more prudent way, a more balanced way, and that is what this debate is 
about today. I yield the floor.
  Mr. CONRAD. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. DASCHLE. I will be happy to yield to the Senator from North 
Dakota for a question.
  Mr. CONRAD. I ask the Senator from South Dakota, isn't it the case 
that the amendment of the Senator from Texas, Senator Gramm, doesn't 
just deal with the marriage penalty and give benefits to people who are 
hurt by the marriage penalty, his amendment goes way beyond that? It 
actually gives benefits to people who benefit by being married; isn't 
that the case?
  Mr. DASCHLE. That is the case. Those who benefit by being married are 
benefited even more by the Gramm amendment. The Senator from 
Mississippi, the majority leader, was saying how important it was that 
we not overextend the reach here. His admonition to the Senate was, 
``Let's take a look, let's step back and make sure we are not just 
overreaching.'' Well, if there was a definition of overreaching, I 
don't know that I could find a better example than the Gramm amendment 
because of exactly what the Senator from North Dakota has noted.
  Mr. CONRAD. Will the Senator further yield?
  Mr. DASCHLE. I will be happy to yield to the Senator from North 
Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. Isn't it the case that the amendment that we would like 
to offer on our side would actually target those affected by the 
marriage penalty? So if the rhetoric from the other side is, if you 
want to deal which those hurt by the marriage penalty, we are prepared 
to do that. The amendment on the other side goes way beyond those hurt 
by the marriage penalty and actually gives benefits to people who are 
benefited by marriage in the Tax Code.
  So wouldn't it be the case that what we are prepared to offer will 
address directly the marriage penalty, and why then is the majority 
leader resistant to the very fair notion that if he says he endorses 
again going back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, that he 
would allow the Democrats to decide which amendment is offered on their 
side? Isn't that a fair result?
  Mr. DASCHLE. That seems to me to be a fair result. I don't know if 
they would stand for us telling them what their Republican amendment is 
going to be. But that is, in essence, what they are asking us to 
accept. We will tell you what Democratic amendment we will allow you to 
offer, and if you don't agree, you are the ones holding up progress. We 
can't accept that. Obviously, we can't accept that.
  Mr. CONRAD. I have been in the Senate 12 years. I must say I don't 
recall a time when the majority leader said to the minority, ``We will 
not only decide what amendments are offered on our side, but we'll 
decide what amendments are offered on your side.'' Is this something 
the Senator from South Dakota has seen before?
  Mr. DASCHLE. Like the Senator from North Dakota, I have been around 
here a while, too, and this has been a first for me as well. It doesn't 
come often. To have the quarterbacks all on that side deciding the 
amendments to be offered is an interesting set of circumstances.
  The point the Senator from North Dakota makes is right on the mark. 
We are giving benefits to, in the name of the marriage penalty, married 
people who have no tax penalty, who actually benefit from being 
married. But the real irony, the real sad aspect of this, Mr. 
President, is we are doing it at the expense of those smoking-related 
illnesses in Medicare and Medicaid. We are doing it at the expense of 
tobacco farmers; we are doing it at the expense of children; we are 
doing it at the expense of research; we are doing it at the expense of 
a comprehensive attack on teenage smoking.
  That is the real irony here, and that is why a lot of us feel very 
mystified by this proposal and by the approach the Republicans are 
insisting on and troubled by the inequity, not only procedurally but in 
substance, with the amendments they are demanding that we consider.
  Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, just one brief response to the Senator from 
North Dakota. If he has been here 12 years, then surely he remembers 
Senator Byrd and Senator Mitchell doing just that. I remember many 
occasions in my time here that they dictated and filled up the tree. I 
learned the way of doing business around here from them.
  I might also note, to make every taxpayer punished by the marriage 
penalty even with unmarried people costs $38 billion. If we are serious 
about really eliminating this penalty, that is the cost. I believe the 
Senator from Texas has a proposal that unfortunately is below that. It 
is less than that. He would like to completely eliminate it.
  In the interest of trying to come to some accommodation so we can get 
a vote and still leave money for legitimate programs, like the teenage 
smoking cessation program and the Medicaid programs in the States, he 
has been prepared to negotiate below that level. I am not sure he 
should have gone down as far as he has.
  Does the Senator from Texas wish to get into this debate?
  Mr. McCAIN. Can I just make one comment?
  Mr. LOTT. He has been waiting.
  Mr. GRAMM. I would like to respond to the minority leader, if I may.
  Mr. LOTT. Let me go ahead and yield to the Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. What is happening now is what I feared would happen to 
this bill. It is starting to get very partisan. A lot of things are 
being said which are not necessarily helpful to the process. I hope 
that we can end this dialog, now that we have all made our points, and 
try and sit down and move forward or agree to just move on to other 
things. I don't think it helps anybody for us to start accusing each 
other of bad faith or parliamentary maneuvering. I hope that we can 
move at least----
  Mr. LOTT. I say to the Senator from Arizona, I think that is exactly 
what is happening. And I do think the well is being poisoned 
tremendously by what has been going on here in the last few minutes. I 
yield to the Senator from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.
  Mr. GRAMM. I don't want to get into a long argument with the minority 
leader, but I have to explain what this is about, in case somebody 
tuned in the middle of all this.
  For several weeks our Democratic colleagues have stood on the floor 
of the Senate and denounced the tobacco companies, with great 
justification. But they have proposed a bill that imposes taxes 
principally on blue-collar Americans, and they have in their bill an 
incredible provision that mandates tobacco companies to pass the tax 
through to the consumer.
  Despite the fact that it sounds like we have come to a lynching of 
tobacco companies, the reality is we have a confiscatory tax on their 
victims, the people who smoke. As my 85-year-old mother has observed, 
``You are saying to me I have been victimized, and then instead of 
taxing the tobacco companies, you are taxing me.''
  The tax in this bill is imposed on very moderate income people: 34 
percent of it is imposed on those who

[[Page S5609]]

make less than $15,000 a year; 47 percent is imposed on those who make 
less than $22,000 a year; 59.1 percent is imposed on those who make 
less than $30,000 a year.
  Our colleagues say this is not about money. It is not money they 
want. It is just coincidental that they get $700 billion from blue-
collar workers in higher taxes. What they want is to raise the price of 
cigarettes. My amendment simply says raise the price of cigarettes, but 
rather than impoverishing the victims, the people who have been induced 
to smoke, let's take a portion of the money, in this case roughly a 
third of it, and let s give it back to moderate-income families by 
eliminating the marriage penalty for families that make $50,000 a year 
or less.
  I basically view this as a rebate of part of this tax. I am trying to 
take our colleagues at face value as to what they say they want to do. 
They say their objective is to raise the price of cigarettes not to 
pass one of the largest tax increases in American history.
  When I offered the amendment that would give a third of the money 
back to blue-collar workers, suddenly our colleagues were all up in 
arms, and we find ourselves in this situation.
  Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. GRAMM. I do not yield. I listened to everybody else talk. I 
simply want my turn.
  Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield for a question of fact?
  Mr. GRAMM. I do not intend to yield until I am through. We hear the 
minority leader say that we can't afford to give a third of the money 
back to blue-collar workers who, if they smoke one pack of cigarettes a 
day, will pay $1,015 of new Federal taxes. People making less than 
$10,000 a year will see their Federal tax burden go up by 41.2 percent 
because of this bill. They say we don't have a nickel in this bill that 
we could give back to blue-collar workers who have been victimized by 
the very tobacco companies that they denounce. But it is interesting 
that while they do not have a penny to give back to working people, 
they have $28 billion to give to tobacco farmers.

  Let me try to set this in perspective. Under a provision in this 
bill, tobacco farmers would be paid $21,351.35 an acre. We would make a 
payment to tobacco farmers of over $21,000 an acre, and then they could 
continue to grow tobacco under the same program they grow tobacco under 
now.
  I can go out today and buy a quota to grow tobacco for $3,500 an 
acre, but yet we are proposing in this bill to pay $21,351.35 for what 
can be bought for $3,500 today? Why? Basically because this bill is not 
about teenage smoking, except for about 10 pages of it. And 743 pages 
of this bill are about the most egregious kind of spending that has 
ever been observed anywhere in the history of this Government.
  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, would the Senator from Texas yield?
  Mr. GRAMM. I will not yield.
  Mr. FORD. You keep talking about the farmers and misrepresenting it. 
I just want to correct you.
  Mr. GRAMM. I always stand ready to be corrected.
  Mr. FORD. You will be.
  Mr. GRAMM. I am simply reading numbers out of the bill. Basically, we 
have 743 pages of mandated spending on everything from maternal and 
child care health services, funding child care, mandating funding under 
child welfare, title IV, section (B), and mandating that the funds in 
this bill be spent by the States be spent on the Department of 
Education, Dwight D. Eisenhower Professional Development Program, under 
title II of the Elementary and Secondary Act.
  We have in this bill what some estimate is the ratification of a 
settlement that will pay attorneys $100,000 an hour. Yet we do not have 
enough money to prevent the impoverishment of blue-collar workers who 
have been victimized by the very tobacco companies that we assail.
  This bill gives all this money--endless billions--to all these groups 
in the grossest giveaway that I have ever observed in my political 
career. Groups that would have been happy with hundreds of dollars, in 
this bill we give them billions of dollars, because the mentality is, 
as one office seeker called it: ``We won the lottery.'' Well, 
unfortunately, this is a lottery that is paid for with taxes imposed on 
blue-collar workers.
  What I have proposed to do is to simply take a third of the money so 
that we still get the full impact of raising the price of cigarettes. 
However since our colleagues claim this is not about money, I would 
like to give part of the money back to blue-collar workers by repealing 
the marriage penalty on moderate-income families who make below $50,000 
a year so that we do not end up impoverishing the victims of the whole 
effort to induce people not to smoke.
  Also, let me say that it is not possible to effectively spend the 
amount of money that is allocated in this bill. It is not possible to 
spend the billions and billions and billions of dollars in this bill, 
nor is it wise public policy. So I think if you really wanted to have a 
bill and you wanted to raise the price of cigarettes, that you would 
raise the price of cigarettes and you would take the bulk of the money 
and cut taxes on moderate-income people who are going to pay the costs. 
So you discourage people from smoking but you do not pound them into 
the ground economically. That is what I am proposing to do.
  What is this deal about suddenly the Democrats want to cut taxes? 
What is all that about? Well, what it is about is, they think that if 
they can guarantee their Members that they will immediately get the 
vote on a figleaf amendment right after we have the real vote, that 
they can get every Democrat Member to vote against repealing the 
marriage penalty.
  Basically, let me tell you what will happen. I just want to ask 
people who might watch this vote to watch it happen. When my amendment 
is voted on, because if anything is voted on, this amendment is going 
to be voted on, when we reach 51 votes on my amendment, you are going 
to see about 20 or 30 Members rush down and vote for it right at the 
last minute. It will pass with 65, 70, 75 votes. But if it only gets 49 
votes, none of them will rush down, because what the minority leader is 
trying to guarantee them is that if they vote against the amendment to 
repeal the marriage penalty, that they are going to get a vote later 
on. Their amendment will be a much smaller tax cut, but when they get 
asked back home, ``Well, weren't you willing to repeal the marriage 
penalty on working families?'' They are going to say, ``Oh, yeah, I was 
for it. I just wasn't for that provision. I was for another provision, 
but I wasn't for that provision.''

  So I do not know if anybody is going to be fooled.
  Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. GRAMM. But the issue really boils down to this: You can denounce 
the tobacco companies all you want to and rejoice in it. I would join 
you if I thought it would do any good. But I think we are doing it so 
much, I am not sure it is achieving its stated objective. In the end, 
you are not taxing tobacco companies. In the end, you are taxing blue-
collar workers in this country, who are going to be brutally punished 
by this tax if they are addicted to cigarettes and they cannot quit 
smoking.
  In my State, we have 3.1 million people who smoke cigarettes. If they 
smoke one pack a day, they are going to pay $1,015 in new Federal taxes 
as a result of this bill. For somebody who is making $10,000 or $20,000 
or $30,000 a year, that is a brutal, punishing tax.
  All I am saying is, quite frankly, Americans believe this bill is 
about the $700 billion. They believe that this has long ago stopped 
being about teenage smoking, that this is really more of the old tax 
and spend, getting $700 billion of easy tax money and then spending it. 
It is easy because people believe that we are taxing tobacco companies. 
When they understand that we are taxing the people who smoke, and who 
in many cases are addicted and who can't quit, or at least are going to 
take time to quit, I do not think they are going to be sympathetic to 
what we have done.
  No one can argue that in the endless billions of dollars of money 
spent in this bill, that we could not give a third of this money back 
to blue-collar workers by repealing the marriage penalty.
  So my goal is to offer the amendment. I hope it will be adopted. I 
think it is the right thing to do. I think it would marginally help 
this bill. But my objective is to see that if, in fact, we raise taxes 
on working people, that we raise the tax to change the price of 
cigarettes and therefore encourage people to quit smoking. I do not 
want to

[[Page S5610]]

simply raise the tax to spend money on endless Government programs, 
many of which have nothing to do with smoking. And the ones that have 
anything to do with smoking, we have endless redundancy in setting up 
community action programs and international smoking cessation programs 
and the worst kind of duplicative bureaucracy. The net result will be 
to hire tens or hundreds of thousands of people, spend hundreds of 
billions of dollars, every penny of which will come out of the wallets 
and purses of blue-collar working Americans.
  Finally, let me say that someone suggested that if we repeal the 
marriage penalty, it might help couples where the wife stays at home 
and works in the home. If that is a criticism, please note me down as 
having been criticized. I do not have any apologies to make.
  I think the people who do the work and pay the taxes and pull the 
wagon in this country pay too much in taxes. I am not happy that we are 
getting ready to sock them with another $700 billion of taxes. If I 
can, through my modest involvement, see that they get a third of the 
money back, so that we get the impact on smoking without impoverishing 
blue-collar workers, I want to do it. And that is what I am trying to 
achieve.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, all that the Senator from Texas has said 
sure sounds good when it gets a one-sided airing. But, fortunately, the 
Senate has an ability to look for the truth here. And the truth is that 
this is not a Democrat bill, this came out of the Commerce Committee 
19-1--19-1--in a bipartisan vote.
  And the fact is that the Senator from Texas talks about wanting to 
take only one-third of the money. But he doesn't just take one-third. 
No, he just doesn't tell the full story. The Senator from Texas is not 
prepared to let the Senate and the American people know what his 
amendment really does.

  So we will show you what it really does. It cleverly, in the first 4 
or 5 years, takes one-third, but then it builds up, and over the course 
of the next 20 years it takes 53 percent over 5 years, 80 percent over 
5 years, 79 percent over another 5 years, and 73 percent over the next 
5 years. So consistently for a period of 20 years it takes more than 50 
percent, and for 15 of those years more than 75 percent. That is 
extraordinary.
  He stands here and says to the Members of the Senate, ``All I want 
is''--what? 33 percent, one-third. That is just not the truth. The 
truth is that this amendment of the Senator from Texas not only goes to 
the people he talks about, those working Americans who will get so 
brutally attacked, but he is going to give money back to people who, 
under the aberrations of the marriage penalty, actually get a bonus. 
Fifty-two percent of the people who get married actually get a bonus 
because of the way the Tax Code works on the earnings of individuals 
versus joint filings. He gives the bonus recipients back money, too.
  If we are really concerned about restoring and repairing the notion 
of fairness for people who are hurt by their wage level and the fact 
that they buy cigarettes, and you will try and fix the marriage penalty 
at the same time, then we believe the Democrat alternative is a better 
alternative. The reason the Republicans don't want to let us have the 
right to vote on it right away is because it is a better alternative 
and they are afraid what they really need is some time in between them 
so that the vote which is hanging out there--the only vote that people 
will see--the public might get mad and telephone Members and say, why 
didn't you vote for this, because they won't know there is an 
alternative. That is the game that is going on here.
  Under the other alternative, the Democrat alternative, because we 
make an effort not to wind up taking money from kids that we are trying 
to stop smoking, not to take money from a cessation program, not to 
take money from the counteradvertising, and we regard people who, when 
they got married got rewarded by getting more money under the Tax 
Code--how can you justify that under these circumstances if this is the 
tradeoff?
  The fact is that under the amendment the Democrats are prepared to 
offer we give almost double the amount of money that you get under the 
amendment from the Senator from Texas. For a couple with a split 
income, say they are earning $35,000. One is earning $20,000 and the 
other is earning $15,000. Under the Democrat alternative they would get 
$3,000 back; under the Republican alternative they would get back 
$1,650. Similarly, for a couple earning $50,000, if it was split 
$25,000 and $25,000 of income for each partner, in our alternative they 
would get $5,000 back; under the Gramm alternative they would get the 
same $1,650 as they would have gotten for the lesser amount.
  So we ask Americans to look carefully. Here is a legitimate proposal 
to change the penalty of the marriage tax, to fix it for the people who 
are most penalized and to benefit people who are, in fact, most 
injured. That is the difference between the two. That is what people 
will have an option of voting on if we are permitted to vote on it in 
some simultaneous form. Obviously, our hope is we will still be 
permitted to do that.

  Under the amendment from the Senator from Texas, he would, in fact, 
according to the Centers for Disease Control, he would take money out 
of the cessation and counteradvertising and school-based prevention.
  Now, he complains this bill is somehow going to throw money at 
``government programs.'' Well, in his State of Texas, there would be 
360,000 less kids who would be eligible to have cessation services made 
available to them. There would be 3,869,000 kids between the ages of 5 
and 17 who would not get school-based prevention programs as a result 
of his own proposal to strip that money out of the revenues from the 
tobacco bill. That is what would happen. That is what we are talking 
about here. We are talking about whether or not there will be cessation 
programs, whether or not there are going to be counteradvertising 
efforts, all of which have been proven to work.
  So what you really have out here is a fundamental effort to try to 
kill the bill or stop the bill or just let it go on and on forever. The 
Senator from South Dakota, the minority leader, was absolutely correct. 
There is a whole world of difference between the way this bill is being 
shepherded versus the way every other piece of legislation that has 
come to the floor this year, where there have been time agreements, 
cloture motions filed immediately, immediately limited debate, limited 
number of amendments--move the legislation. We can tell the difference 
between those who would like to pass legislation or work on it, I 
think, in a way that will move this legislation to some kind of a final 
disposition.
  The fact is that there is a world of difference between adequately 
taking care of those efforts that will have the most impact on a proven 
basis in helping to prevent kids from smoking versus the kind of 
approach that the Senator from Texas is offering. I would like to vote 
to cut the marriage penalty. I would like to vote to do away with the 
whole thing. The question is, Are you going to do it here, when the 
choice is between reducing kids from smoking or not? That is really 
what it comes down to when you look at the large amounts of money the 
Senator from Texas is seeking to take.
  We have offered a compromise. We have offered to sit down with the 
Senator from Texas to try and arrive at a lesser amount of money and 
see if we can't come to some agreement as to what would be reasonable. 
I think most people on our side of the aisle would welcome the 
opportunity to change some part of the formula of how these moneys are 
spent and certainly envision the capacity to embrace a tax cut in an 
appropriate form and shape and size--in that context. But if there is a 
genuine effort to do this, then we ought to be able to make that 
happen. If there is simply an effort to grab so much money that this 
bill goes under of its own weight, it will be very clear whose 
intention was what, and ultimately what the impact was as a result of 
that.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page S5611]]

  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I am pleased to have an opportunity to 
participate in this debate regarding the so-called tobacco settlement. 
My understanding of this bill does not comport with the understanding 
that has been recently voiced on this floor by the Senator from 
Massachusetts. It appears to me this bill, which is a very 
comprehensive bill, the dimensions of which are so substantial that 
they deserve clear inspection--we are talking about a major piece of 
legislation, a tobacco bill which includes this kind of specificity. We 
are talking about a bill that has 17 new boards and commissions. We are 
talking about a bill that would add taxes of about $885 billion at the 
maximum over the course and life of the bill to the budgets of 
Americans. These aren't costs that go to the tobacco company. These 
will be additional costs to the people.
  I question whether or not this kind of bill deserves the full 
examination and the full discussion of this Senate; that is a serious 
question. I have a suspicion that some individuals want to curtail 
debate on this bill because the bill is finally being seen. There is a 
dawning. The light of day is beginning to shine on this bill. The 
American people are seeing that 98 percent of the people are being 
taxed, while only 2 percent of the teens smoke. The 98 percent of the 
people that are being taxed are having their costs go up 
astronomically. Not only are they having their costs go up 
astronomically, they are having their costs go up on an assumption that 
if you raise the cost of cigarettes by 10 percent, you get a 7-percent 
decrease in the amount of utilization by young people. That is an 
assumption that the studies do not bear out. As a matter of fact, the 
most recent studies indicate that an increased cost of cigarettes will 
not curtail young people from smoking. It is simply not the case. At 
best, the studies are inconclusive. At worse, they show that there is 
little correlation between a price increase and reduction in youth 
smoking.

  Let me give you some statistics about this. The Cornell study was a 
study that followed 13,000 children for 4 years. This was not something 
that was cooked up and done in response to the tobacco industry, or 
someone like that. It was done at Cornell University, and it was a 
National Cancer Institute-funded study, so that the funding for this 
study is credible funding. Here is what the study found:

       . . . little evidence that taxes reduce smoking onset 
     between 8th and 12th grade.

  So in that critical exposure period between 8th and 12th grade in 
school, there is very little evidence that increased taxes would reduce 
the kind of growth in the numbers of individuals smoking. The 
economists that conducted this study presented their results on the 
relationship between higher tobacco taxes and youth smoking to the 
American Economics Association at their annual meeting in January of 
1998. This is a current study. This studied young people and the way 
they respond in the modern culture. It concluded that higher taxes have 
little effect on whether young people start to smoke. Little effect.
  Here is what the study concluded:

       Taxes are not as salient to youth smoking decisions as are 
     individual characteristics and family background.

  In other words, whether children begin smoking doesn't relate to 
taxes near as much as it does to family background and characteristics 
of the children.
  This study, which followed 13,000 young people for 4 years, says:

       We find little evidence that taxes reduce smoking onset 
     between 8th and 12th grades.

  They estimated that a $1.50 tax increase would decrease the smoking 
onset by only about 2 percentage points, from 21.6 percent of the 12th 
graders to 19.6 percent of the 12th graders.
  When you suggest that the change in the smoking habits would be that 
small--they had to conclude as follows, and I will quote from the 
report of Cornell University, a report funded by the National Cancer 
Institute, which put it this way:

       Our data allow us to directly examine the impact of changes 
     in tax rates on youth smoking behavior . . .

  In other words, they said they had enough data to draw conclusions.

       . . . and our preliminary results indicate this impact is 
     small or nonexistent.

  So this massive tax increase--$868 billion to a new estimate of $885 
billion--on the American people, over the course of the life of this 
settlement, is supposed to produce some kind of a reduced incidence of 
youth smoking. Yet, the very best data from the latest studies, 
sponsored not by the tobacco people, but by the National Cancer 
Institute--a 4-year study--indicates that the taxes would have a small 
or nonexistent affect.
  That reveals what this bill is all about. It is about big Government. 
It is about big taxes. It is about new agencies. It is about an 
invasion of the taxpayers' pockets. It is striking to note that there 
is $350 million a year in this bill. And with the 50 States, that is $7 
million per State. That is $7 million per State, on an average, that 
goes overseas to fund studies in foreign countries about how costly 
cigarette smoking is in those cultures.
  For the life of me, I can't figure out why we want to have Government 
bureaucracy, funded by a tax on the lower income people of the United 
States of America, to make it possible for Third World countries and 
others overseas to have studies on how costly smoking is in their 
culture. A number of individuals would prefer that they have it not be 
so costly here. The truth of the matter is that 59.4 percent of all the 
individuals who will be paying this tax, according to the best 
estimates we have, will be individuals whose income is less than 
$30,000 a year.

  So we have a massive tax bill, three-quarters of a trillion dollars, 
focused on the lowest income people in America, on the presumption that 
it will curtail smoking among young people. But the best academic 
research we have indicates that young people are not sensitive to 
price. As a matter of fact, the study conducted by Cornell University, 
funded by the National Cancer Institute, indicated that there is little 
or nonexistent impact by that kind of tax in terms of curtailing 
smoking by young people. This is a study done by the folks at Cornell 
University, which is a well-respected institution. We would expect that 
the National Cancer Institute would fund a study that is fairly done. 
It studied a lot of children, and 4 years is a long period of time. We 
would not expect this study to have been done in a slipshod manner. It 
does come to the conclusion that indicates this isn't a very productive 
way to try to curtail youth smoking. The economists stated the study 
raises doubt about the claim that tax or price increases can 
substantially reduce youth smoking.
  Well, obviously, there are very serious doubts. But there is no doubt 
about what this bill is about. It is about an $885 billion increase in 
the taxes to be focused on low-income individuals in the United States.
  Let me just cite another study. Economists at the University of 
Maryland and the University of Chicago conducted a similar study that 
analyzed data concerning more than 250,000 high school seniors for the 
period from 1977 to 1992. Now, this is a longitudinal study; you get 
from 1977 to 1992, so it is a 15-year-long study. This is the largest 
sample ever used for a study on the subject. So you have a quarter of a 
million students studied over a 15-year period.
  Here is what they found. They found the relationship between price 
and youth consumption is ``substantially smaller'' than suggested by 
previous studies.
  In addition, not only do we have the Cornell study on this idea that 
you can reduce smoking by 7 percent with a 10-percent price increase, 
which says that it is nonexistent or would have little impact at all, 
but this other study was done by the University of Maryland and the 
University of Chicago over a 15-year period on a quarter of a million 
students. It says there is a substantially smaller than previously 
suggested link between taxes and smoking.
  Many of us could just look at the circumstances that we see around us 
and have an idea that price isn't the primary objective or 
consciousness on the part of young people. When we look at young people 
wearing $140 tennis shoes because they have a certain logo on

[[Page S5612]]

them, I think we can get the idea that there is something in addition 
to price here; there is status and statement, which are very important 
to young people. Price becomes irrelevant in the context of status and 
statement.
  Let's get out of the area of studies and look at what happened when 
price increases have been put into effect. In 1989, California raised 
its cigarette excise tax by 25 cents per pack, but there is no evidence 
that cigarette smoking declined. Now, this was an 11 percent increase 
of the tax. That is a major increase. If we were to see that kind of 
increase, we would expect there to be a decline. No evidence of a 
decline. As of 1994, researchers were ``unable to identify a decline in 
prevalence [among 16- to-18-year-olds] associated with the imposition 
of the excise tax.''
  In Canada--and this is the most commonly cited arena cited by those 
who want to have this massive settlement imposed on the American people 
at the cost of more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars to the 
people. In Canada, our neighbor to the north, the federal government 
increased cigarette taxes in several stages in the late 1980s and early 
1990s--from $10.75 per thousand cigarettes to $24.34 in 1986 per 
thousand cigarettes, then to $38.77 in 1989 per thousand cigarettes, 
and then to $62.90 in 1991 per thousand cigarettes.
  So you go from $10 per thousand, or about a penny a cigarette, to 6 
or 7 cents per cigarette, over the period of time. So you had an 
increase, at first, of a penny per cigarette, and then an increase of 6 
cents per cigarette. Although it has been stated on the floor by 
proponents of this legislation that smoking decreased during that 
period, they failed to talk about the years 1991 to 1994.
  Here is what happened. When the tax rates were the highest in that 
nation's history, and when the tax rates were the highest in that 
nation's history during that period, smoking rates among 15- to 19-
year-olds rose from 21 to 27 percent. That is a 25-percent increase--
more than a 25-percent increase in the number of teens smoking at the 
time when the cost of cigarettes was at the highest in history. 
Frankly, when the cost of cigarettes in Canada was at the highest in 
history, I think it is pretty clear from the testimony of others on 
this floor that the black market was operating the most aggressively at 
that time. So we are probably seriously underestimating the fact that 
the growth was about 25 percent in the number of teens who were 
smoking.
  If the argument that rising prices will reduce teen smoking, it 
stands to reason that youth smoking should increase as prices fall. If 
you are going to say that higher prices cause teens to stop smoking, 
then lower prices would probably cause teens to start smoking. However, 
a year and a half after significantly reducing tobacco taxes in Canada, 
according to the ``Survey on Smoking in Canada,'' teen smoking 
``remained stable.''
  What we really have from our experience of observing Canada is that 
teens aren't very much affected by price. That confirms what the study 
indicated at the University of Maryland and Chicago. It confirms what 
the Cornell study indicated. It confirms what happened in California. 
What happens, as a matter of fact, is that teens are not affected very 
much by price. The fact that is ignored by those who argue teen smoking 
declined in Canada due to the significant tax increases is that youth 
smoking declined in the United States by 30 percent during the same 
period--from 1977 to 1990--without a price increase.
  There are times when teen rates of smoking haven't gone up in either 
culture. If they were parallel in both cultures as a result of other 
factors, and taxes went up in one and not in another, it makes it 
pretty clear that the tax increase in one was irrelevant to whether or 
not teens smoked. Here we have a situation where we are imposing a tax 
on 98 percent of the cigarette consumers who are adults on the 
presumption that it will change the smoking habits of the 2 percent who 
are teenagers when the studies and the real world information simply do 
not bear out this as a justification for this kind of massive tax 
increase.
  In the United Kingdom, between 1988 and 1996, the per pack price of 
cigarettes was increased by 26 percent. Although cigarette volumes fell 
by 17 percent, the percentage of weekly smokers aged 11 to 16 went from 
8 percent in 1988 to 13 percent in 1996. So it turns out in the United 
Kingdom the number of youngsters who were smoking went up, even when 
the number of people smoking overall went down. It went up from 8 
percent to 13 percent in spite of the fact there was a 26-percent 
increase in the price of tobacco.
  The University of Chicago, and Maryland, Cornell University, a study 
funded by the National Cancer Institute, the experience in California, 
the experience in Canada, the experience in Great Britain--these are 
experiences which indicate to us that this is more a bill about taxes 
than about increasing the size of government. It is about sending the 
hard-earned dollars of individuals in the United States overseas to 
fund these studies in other countries, to provide a basis for a variety 
of interests in the United States being well funded; but this is not a 
bill which addresses the issue of teen smoking in a responsible way.
  The Centers for Disease Control has compiled data on brand 
preferences which support the conclusion that young people are not 
particularly price sensitive. The ``price value'' or discount segment 
of the cigarette market comprised 39 percent of the overall cigarette 
market in 1993. Yet, according to the CDC, less than 14 percent of 
adolescent smokers purchase generic or other ``value-priced'' brands. 
On the average, the people were price sensitive, but when you got to 
teenagers they weren't.
  This point was echoed by the government's lawyer defending the FDA 
tobacco rule, who told the U.S. district court, ``[P]rice, apparently 
has very little meaning to children and smoking, and, therefore, they 
don't smoke generic cigarettes. They go for those three big advertised 
brands.''

  All of a sudden, we come to this place where we are going to pile on 
the taxes, pile them on low-income individuals. Those making less than 
$30,000 a year will pay nearly 60 percent of this $885 billion tax 
burden. And we are doing it in the face of the information of these 
university studies that are current, that are recent; in the face of 
the data from California, and data in Great Britain; and in the face of 
the Federal Government's lawyer arguing in the U.S. district court in 
the FDA tobacco case where he said, ``price apparently has very little 
meaning to children and smoking.'' They aren't affected by price.
  We have a situation where we have had cloture filed on this bill. 
There are those who do not want the kind of debate about price and 
about taxes, about the fact that the price isn't really as significant 
as they would like to portray on teen smoking. And if we slow this bill 
down enough for people to look at it carefully, they might figure out 
that this bill isn't what is needed at all. Certainly, most people do 
not think we need another three-quarters of a trillion dollars in taxes 
focused on the hard-working, lower-income individuals in America.
  This is a bill about taxes. It is a bill about money. If you look 
carefully at this bill, it has everything from foreign aid in it to 
more of the child care proposals of President Clinton. It is time, if 
we are going to have taxes increased, that we do something constructive 
with the tax increase, and we give it back to the people in terms of 
respecting an institution which America has long understood to be at 
the core of the potential for a bright future for this country. We are 
talking about the institution of marriage.
  I commend Senator Gramm who brought to the floor a proposal which 
would eliminate the marriage penalty on individuals who are low-income 
individuals, to say to them that we don't think you should have to pay 
higher taxes merely because you are going to be married; you are going 
to make the durable, lasting commitments of marriage that are likely to 
be the basis for strong families that are the foundation and the future 
of America, we don't think you should pay for that in terms of higher 
taxes.
  Both Senator Gramm and Senator Domenici have indicated they would 
eliminate the marriage penalty for individuals making less than $50,000 
a year with some of the resources generated by this measure. Obviously, 
there are those who are expecting to spend those resources on more 
government programs and are terrified by the fact that we might think 
about giving

[[Page S5613]]

the money back to the people. You have to understand this is at a time 
when the U.S. Government is in surplus. It is expected--even 
conservative estimates--that there will be a $39 billion surplus this 
year, nearly $60 billion in surplus next year, and we shouldn't be here 
debating how to spend more of the taxpayers' money. We should be here 
debating how to give money back. And Senators Gramm and Domenici, the 
Senator from Texas and the Senator from New Mexico, have come forward 
with a plan to reduce taxes to the extent that you end the marriage 
penalty and to say to people, we are not going to penalize you for 
having the durable, lasting commitments of marriage that become the 
foundation.
  Frankly, I am very enchanted by the idea of eliminating the marriage 
penalty, and this will not end the debate on the marriage penalty. I 
will continue to offer amendments until it is eliminated, whether this 
passes or not. The marriage penalty is a pernicious attack on the 
values and principles of America. It is time that we aligned the policy 
of America with the principles of the people of America.
  I commend the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from Texas for 
their outstanding work, but I think this cloture motion was filed 
because people are beginning to understand. The idea is that, well, we 
filed cloture on some other matters; maybe we should file cloture on 
this. I think that has been suggested. I don't think that is the case. 
I think the people are beginning to understand this is a massive tax 
increase. And because it is, I think that cloture is inappropriate at 
this time. We have a responsibility to debate what we will do with $885 
billion in revenue. I think it should be given back to the people who 
have paid it.
  With that in mind, I urge Senators to oppose in every respect the 
motion for cloture, to vote against it. This is a measure which 
deserves the light of day. It deserves the dawning of day. The American 
people really ought to have a chance to look carefully at it, 
understand it, and to see it clearly. They ought to see it in the 
context of what it seeks to do--tax individuals, primarily low-income 
individuals, at very substantial rates--and the result will be 
substantially more Government. The studies indicate that the impact on 
teen smoking as a result of that tax is very likely to be minimal, if 
existent at all.
  It is with that in mind that I think we ought to take very seriously 
the proposals to abolish, to take the tax out of this bill. And if we 
don't do that, we ought to do what we can to give back the money which 
is collected from the hard-working people of America. The idea that we 
should somehow proliferate Government in response to this situation is 
an idea which, when exposed to the full light of understanding, will be 
rejected by the American people. Certainly Washington appears to be the 
only city in the world where a bad decision, the decision to smoke, 
made by free people, becomes the basis for taxing those free people, 
taxing them in ways that will make it very difficult for them to 
provide for their families.
  My own view is that that is inappropriate. We should reconsider the 
position that is being offered here, and I believe the kind of tax 
relief that has been offered by the Senator from Texas and the Senator 
from New Mexico is the kind of relief that ought to be considered in 
the event there are any taxes in this measure.
  With that in mind, I will do what I can to make sure that we have the 
opportunity to consider a variety of proposals which would extinguish 
and end the marriage penalty in our law, if there are resources being 
collected from the American people under the guise of a tobacco 
settlement.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I respect the views expressed by the 
Senator from Missouri. He has spoken long and eloquently on this issue 
in the Chamber. I did hear him just say that bad decisions by free 
people to smoke--bad decisions by free people to smoke--shouldn't be 
taxed.
  I am intrigued by that comment, especially since what we are talking 
about here is free children. I thought that the obligation of my party 
and Government was to care for children, was to keep them out of harm's 
way, and do what we can to lead them into better lives.
  When the Senator from Missouri said ``bad decisions by free people,'' 
I was really sort of shocked, because the Senator from Missouri should 
understand the intent of this legislation. The intent of the 
legislation is to try to stop companies that have been enticing the 
children--my children, all America's children--to take up a habit that 
is going to kill them. So it can be interpreted as a massive tax 
increase; that is what the latest media reports I see are--$60 million 
worth of attack ads calling it a tax increase. That seems to have been 
sort of accepted by the American people as fact. I guess if you spend 
enough money on an advertising campaign, it may have some significant 
effects.
  It seems to me that for Americans to believe that this is simply a 
reason to tax them, then there has been a very significant effect.
  But I think we are all aware that what we are trying to do here is 
cut taxes on the American people. You do that by stopping people from 
smoking, because right now $50 billion a year in Americans' tax dollars 
go to treatment of tobacco-related illnesses. And that $50 billion a 
year, Mr. President, is not a static number, because according to the 
Centers for Disease Control, and other sources, children smoking is 
going up in America; therefore, you are going to have more people who 
need treatment because approximately a third of those children who 
begin to smoke will die early or need treatment for tobacco-related 
illnesses. So the present $50 billion tax per year that the American 
people are paying will increase. So I don't know why it is so hard for 
some people to understand that if we do nothing and the present trend 
continues, the tax burden on all Americans--high income, low-income 
Americans--will go up, not down.
  I think it is also important to address the issue that seems to be 
talked about so much by opponents of the legislation, about the burden 
that this tax--I am beginning to do it myself--that this increase in 
the cost of a pack of cigarettes will have on low-income Americans.
  First of all, to state the obvious, as the Senator from Missouri 
said, it was a bad decision, and these people do smoke, which is their 
choice. And I certainly sympathize with those who find it nearly 
impossible or impossible to stop. It is extremely difficult, because it 
is an extremely addictive substance, but it still is a voluntary act. 
But also, we find out, and it is very disheartening, that it is the 
children of lower-income Americans whose smoking is increasing in 
America. And to somehow feel that low-income or middle-income or high-
income Americans would not do whatever is necessary not just for 
themselves but for their children I think is contradictory to what I 
know and believe about the American people.
  Mr. President, we had not the most pleasant exchange that I have 
observed in this Chamber recently, not the most unpleasant either, by 
the way, but it wasn't pleasant. Obviously, we have been on the bill 
now nearly 2 weeks. We know we have the press of other business. We 
know we have legislation that needs to be addressed--the Department of 
Defense bill, 13 appropriations bills, and others are necessary. There 
is a certain level of frustration that was manifested here. I believe 
we must come to a point where we should decide to end the debate--
which, as I say, now has been going on for nearly 2 weeks--or move 
forward with the bill. In the event of cloture, as we all know, germane 
amendments to the bill would still be in order.
  I should also like to remind my colleagues of the consequences of 
going off the bill. If we do not pass this legislation through the 
Senate and through the House and then in conference and signed by the 
President, I think some think the issue will therefore disappear from 
the American scene. Quite the contrary, Mr. President. The reality is 
that if the Congress does nothing, then there are 37, and perhaps more, 
attorneys general who are lined up to sue the tobacco companies for the 
injuries that have been inflicted on the people of their States.

  I think there are several drawbacks to this course of action. One of 
them, to state the obvious, is that the amount of legal fees that will 
go, the amount of money that will go in the

[[Page S5614]]

form of legal fees, to the plaintiffs' lawyers will be dramatically 
higher than that envisioned by this bill and, frankly, will be much 
higher than what I would envision in an amendment that will be passed 
in the Senate which will place further restrictions on attorneys' fees.
  Second, of course, is that it will be a long, drawn out process. I do 
not think there is any doubt as to who would prevail. There have been 
trials in four States, all of which have not gone to a jury because the 
tobacco companies, for obvious reasons, have chosen to settle, the last 
being the State of Minnesota--$6.5 billion was the agreement by the 
industry. And along with that agreement, with that settlement, was an 
agreement by the tobacco companies to do many of the things that have 
been attacked on this floor.
  A massive tax hike? Guess what, the price of cigarettes all over 
America went up 5 cents because of the requirement to settle the 
Minnesota case. I think it is also of some interest that the $6.5 
billion that the tobacco industry agreed to is roughly double the 
amount that would have been received under the settlement that was an 
agreement entered into between the attorneys general and the tobacco 
industry. So the cost, if you go on a State-by-State basis, assuming 
that they all either settle or juries award large settlements, then the 
cost goes up. And the so-called tax, massive tax that is so concerning 
to many of my colleagues, is higher. When you extrapolate it out over 
all 40 States that are in court--and I imagine the other 10 would join 
sooner or later--then that is more money added to the cost of a pack of 
cigarettes than envisioned by this legislation.
  But let me tell you what bothers me the most about having these cases 
go to the States--which they will. I would like the Senator from 
Missouri to find me one legal expert in America who does not believe 
that the day that this legislation leaves the floor of the Senate there 
will be, in the words of a well-known plaintiff's lawyer, a ``rush to 
the courthouse,'' not only by the attorneys general but by many of the 
plaintiffs' lawyers in America.
  But what bothers me the most about this, and the reason I am saddened 
a bit to contemplate it, is the fundamental purpose of this legislation 
is to act as soon as possible to stop the children from beginning to 
smoke. The day the President signed this bill, massive amounts of money 
would be spent to begin youth smoking cessation programs. Large amounts 
of money would be spent on research, not only to find out what causes 
kids to smoke, but also to find cures for these terrible diseases, the 
largest causes of death in America--the heart disease, the lung cancer, 
the emphysema--the terrible ways that people die as a result of the use 
of tobacco. So, all that will be delayed. And the most terrible delay, 
of course, will be the effect that we could have, in a beneficial 
fashion, on children in America.
  There are some on this floor who have said raising the price of a 
pack of cigarettes will not do it, these cessation programs don't do 
it, et cetera. I think they are entitled to their opinions on that 
issue, but I depend upon the opinion of experts. I depend upon the 
opinion of every living Surgeon General since 1973--every living 
Surgeon General in America. Their letter has long ago been made part of 
the Record. They say that you have to have a comprehensive approach to 
this problem. I agree with every--literally every--public health group 
in America, whoever they are, you name them--I read the list of them 
into the Record the other day--who say you have to have a comprehensive 
settlement if you want to stop kids from smoking. I agree with Dr. 
Koop. I agree with Dr. Kessler. I agree with the eminent people in 
America who have spent their lives, literally, on this issue, who say 
don't think you can solve it by just a simple tax increase.

  I would also like to say I think the States deserve reimbursement. 
We, on this side of the aisle, at least, have always advocated a 
situation where we try to reduce the financial burden on the States. We 
are always pleased and proud when we pass things like no unfunded 
mandates and return money to the States to use however they want, 
since, after all, it is theirs that they send to Washington, DC. If we 
do not do this settlement, of course, there will be no money that goes 
back to the States; it will all just come to the Federal coffers, and 
bureaucrats will then decide, or one can make the case that the 
appropriators will decide.
  So the Senator from Missouri made an eloquent argument that we should 
continue debate on this issue and that we should not cut off debate 
because the American people need to be better informed. I would say to 
the Senator from Missouri, who I note is here on the floor, they have 
been pretty well informed by somewhere between a $60 million and a $100 
million tobacco advertising campaign by the tobacco companies. They 
have been pretty well saturated in that area. Most major pieces of 
legislation--the expansion of NATO, for example--in the 12 years that I 
have been here, almost every major piece of legislation takes about 2 
to 3 weeks. And, of course, that is only the largest legislation that 
we consider.
  I also think there are many, many organizations out there who are 
informing the American people. But, again, far more important than 
that, there are people who are suffering from very terrible diseases as 
a result of their use of tobacco, and the sooner we get money into 
research and find cures for these terrible diseases, the better off 
they will be and we will be as a nation. Every single day that we 
debate this issue and not bring it to some conclusion or the other, 
3,000 children will begin to smoke. We can debate whether this is a 
good bill or a bad bill and how it should be changed, but there is one 
fact that cannot be changed, and that is what it is doing to the young 
people of America.
  So I would argue if, at the end of today, 3,000 more children have 
started to smoke and 1,000 of them will die early, maybe we ought to 
spend more time here and get this issue resolved and maybe not go home 
this weekend. Maybe we should spend this weekend debating this issue, 
trying to reach some conclusion. Instead, either late tonight or early 
tomorrow morning we will all be gone. The majority leader just talked a 
little while ago about how hard it is to get people here on Monday.
  Perhaps--perhaps--we will go to work maybe on Tuesday. Friday, 
Saturday, Sunday, Monday--4 days; 12,000 young people will begin to 
smoke while we enjoy our extended weekend.
  I believe that we should try and keep that in mind. My argument, Mr. 
President, in a rather drawn-out fashion, is that there are compelling 
reasons why we should act on this issue either one way or another. 
Maybe in the wisdom of the Senate this is not a good piece of 
legislation, and we should drop it. But let's go ahead and drop it 
sooner rather than later so that the process will begin in the other 36 
States that have sued the Federal Government; the additional 10 that, I 
am sure, will be in line; so that the plaintiffs who have suffered 
injury and the relatives of those who have suffered deaths because of 
tobacco can begin their trip to the courthouse so that they can receive 
the compensation they feel they deserve because of what happened to 
them as a result of years of tobacco--whether they deserve that or not 
is up to a judge and jury--but especially the attorneys general 
awaiting to see what the U.S. Congress does. I hope that we can act in 
as rapid and efficient fashion as possible.
  I remind my colleagues that I was asked, as chairman of the Commerce 
Committee, to bring this bill to the floor of the Senate and to get it 
through my committee. We had a full day of markup, and I am in 
disagreement with the remarks the Senator from Missouri made the other 
day about discouraging amendments. I, in fact, encouraged amendments, 
and the Senator from Missouri had several which were voted on. They had 
to do with product liability. They didn't have anything to do with 
reduction of taxes. But that was the right of the Senator from 
Missouri.
  I don't believe he could find any of my colleagues who would argue 
that there wasn't a full addressing of that legislation during that 
day. At no time did I try to cut off anyone's right to propose an 
amendment on a piece of legislation that serious. In fact, if I 
remember, I was somewhat entertained the Senator from Missouri even 
proposed as an amendment a piece of legislation which I and Senator

[[Page S5615]]

Lieberman have cosponsored, which was his right. But I don't believe 
that anyone was shorted during that very interesting markup. In fact, 
literally every Senator on the committee was heard from and, again, in 
my 12 years on the committee, I have never seen nor been part of such 
an extensive markup as took place on this bill in the Commerce 
Committee.
  I was asked to bring this bill to the floor, and it was reported out 
of the committee by a 19-to-1 vote. Then the majority leader scheduled 
it for floor debate, which is the responsibility of the majority 
leader.
  I, along with the Senator from Massachusetts, have tried to manage 
this bill. But I say to my colleagues, there is no point in us staying 
on this bill forever. It is obvious that we won't. For example, today 
we have not had a single amendment voted on, and we seem to be hung up 
in some kind of parliamentary maneuvering which some observers might 
say is a reason to impede the progress of the bill, because we all know 
we don't stay on any piece of legislation forever.
  I hope we can work out our differences. There are pending amendments. 
There is a very important drug amendment we would have liked to have 
brought up today. I don't know if we will. It is nearly 4 o'clock now. 
But I believe it is important that we either move forward and resolve 
the issue, or we go on to other issues that are compelling issues as 
well. The Department of Defense authorization bill--and I am a member 
of the Armed Services Committee--is waiting to be debated and resolved. 
It is very important that we address the needs of the men and women in 
the military and our Nation's security. There are many other pieces of 
legislation that are awaiting action on the part of the Senate, which 
argues that we proceed with this legislation or move off it.

  I would feel rather badly if we do, but I also point out that, in my 
own very subjective view, I would have done whatever I could to see 
that this issue was brought to completion.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. ASHCROFT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I appreciate the fact that people want 
to make this a bill about cessation of teen smoking. I want teens not 
to smoke. It puzzles me, though, that they look past the studies: 
Cornell University, with 13,000 students showing that price doesn't 
make much difference at all to them. They look past the University of 
Chicago and University of Maryland saying that price is way overrated. 
They look past the experience of Canada when price was going up 
dramatically, smoking was going up among young people. They look past 
the United Kingdom where smoking went up among teens when price was 
going up, and they talk about teen smoking, and yet they don't make the 
possession of cigarettes by teenagers illegal or inappropriate in the 
bill.
  This Congress has authority over the District of Columbia. If we 
really were serious about saying it is wrong for youngsters to have 
cigarettes or to have tobacco or thought it inappropriate, we could 
make it illegal for them, but this bill doesn't do that.
  What does this bill do? This bill raises taxes. It creates new 
government programs. It funds the priorities of the Clinton 
administration. It is an $885 billion tax increase, and who pays the 
tax? The tax gets paid by low-income individuals. Mr. President, 59.4 
percent of the individuals who will be paying this tax will be 
individuals who earn less than $30,000 a year.
  Some have said, ``Well, we should be voting on amendments.'' I agree 
we should. There was a unanimous consent order proposed today which 
provided for votes. I agreed to it. I didn't stop it. The majority 
leader proposed it. He proposed to have votes to lay these issues in a 
context where they could be dealt with, where they could be voted on, 
where they could be disposed of, and those on the other side of the 
aisle rejected it.
  We can't have it both ways. We can't say that this is a bill which is 
going to stop people from smoking and we are going to collect $885 
billion when they do smoke. If they stop smoking, the money won't be 
there. What we all know is they are going to keep smoking; that is why 
the money will be there.
  We can't say this will help the children of poor families when we are 
going to make the poor families pay $1,200, $1,600 a year in taxes and 
take that off the table of those families and out of their budgets. We 
can't say we are going to stop teens from smoking when we don't even 
care enough to make it illegal for teens, where we have jurisdiction, 
to possess cigarettes.
  This is a tax bill. It is a massive tax bill. It is a massive 
government bill. It promotes government agencies not only in the United 
States but overseas. There is $350 million each year in this bill to 
send overseas, so that countries overseas can conduct studies about 
what it costs to smoke in other countries, not the United States of 
America.
  I think this is the kind of priority that no wonder people don't want 
this bill slowed down enough for the American public to see: Taxing 
people who make less than $30,000 a year in the United States to fund 
studies overseas so that they can conduct studies about what it costs 
to have cigarette smoking in other countries. I don't believe that is 
what Americans are interested in. That is not going to help young 
people in the United States.
  The Senator from Arizona says the States deserve reimbursement. He 
said this is hard on the States, and then he sort of bragged about how 
hard this is on tobacco companies. I am not worried about the States or 
the tobacco companies as much as I am about the people of the United 
States. They are the ones who deserve reimbursement, if anybody 
deserves reimbursement.
  And here we have an elevated taking by the Federal Government, 
another three-quarters of a trillion dollars over the life of this 
bill--taking from these people instead of giving to them. We come to do 
this at a time when the Federal Government is looking at a revenue 
surplus.
  It just seems to me that we ought to be debating how to give back the 
money to the people rather than taking these resources from the people. 
I do not object to amendments. I do not object to a UC which would 
allow further amendments. Very seldom do we have bills here where we 
get it right the first time. I think it is good to have debate on these 
issues. I think it is good that the studies be brought forward. It is 
good that the people have an opportunity to see exactly what the 
community has been able to decide when it has observed the facts, the 
reality of situations not only here but in other settings.
  It is with that in mind, I believe it is important to move forward 
with the amendments, like that of the Senator from Texas and the 
Senator from New Mexico which would abolish the marriage penalty, to 
say to those families, ``We want you to be able to have the kind of 
right to deploy your own resources rather than have Government spend 
the money. And we don't think we should penalize you because you have 
involved yourself in the durable, lasting commitments that form the 
basis of the family,'' the most important institution in our culture.
  So it is with that in mind that I have risen to criticize this bill 
and to unmask it. This bill is substantial. It has more pages than the 
average person probably reads, more pages than the average Senator 
reads. And reading this bill is important. It is in here that you find 
out about the Federal programs that are tucked away, the mandated 
spending for the States. It is in here that you find out about the kind 
of special limitations that were to be provided to the cigarette 
companies in terms of their liability. If you care so much about the 
children, why limit the amount of money in damages that tobacco 
companies would have to pay in? Why provide them with a special 
sanctuary?
  It is this bill that deserves our consideration. It is in here that 
you find the massive tax increases and the spending on new and other 
programs. I believe we ought to add to this that if we are going to 
have taxes, we will give the taxes back by way of saying, as the 
Senator from Texas and the Senator from New Mexico have said in their 
proposal, the marriage penalty ought to be abolished for individuals 
making $50,000 or less. I would abolish it for all individuals. And, 
frankly, I am going to continue offering amendments about the way to 
spend the money, not to

[[Page S5616]]

spend it through Government but to send this money back to the American 
people. They earned it. They should have the opportunity to spend it. 
The idea, ``You send it; we spend it,'' being the slogan of this place 
is a bad idea. It should be, ``You earned it; we returned it.''
  It is not wasted on me that the cloture motion was filed when the 
debate on the marriage penalty got going. A lot of people don't want to 
unmask the policy of this country that we penalize people for being 
married. A lot of people don't want to debate the issue of whether we 
should have all these new programs or whether we should give people the 
money back that they earned and we took from them merely because they 
were married.
  I do not blame people for not wanting to reveal if they are against 
wanting to give the American people their money back, that if the 
American people learn we are taking their money simply because they are 
married, that we have the opportunity to give it back but we would 
rather give it back to programs here in Washington or even overseas. 
That is an embarrassment. It is no wonder individuals want cloture 
filed and feel we should shut down debate.
  I do not want to shut down debate, but we should move forward with 
tax relief for the American people, and we should be very reluctant 
about imposing $885 billion of new taxes in the name of programs for 
which it is accordingly suggested that somehow young people will not 
begin smoking.

  The idea young people start smoking at 3,000 a day--it may be true. 
If we can believe the studies at the University of Chicago, the 
University of Maryland, Cornell University, if we can believe the 
experience of California, Canada, the United Kingdom, the kinds of 
things they have talked about in these taxes here that are involved in 
this bill will not make a difference.
  The truth of the matter is, the academic studies of thousands, tens 
of thousands, hundreds of thousands, indicate that to talk about taxes 
making a big difference in youth smoking is overstated. And these are 
not studies by interest groups; these are studies by the National 
Cancer Institute; these are studies by the University of Maryland, the 
University of Chicago, Cornell University.
  So it is time for us to understand this debate is about taxes. It is 
a debate about Government--big taxes, big Government; massive taxes, 
massive Government.
  We are not even making illegal the possession of cigarettes for 
children in the District of Columbia. If we thought that was really 
important, we could add that to this bill. No; that has not been done. 
We just simply make it possible for Government to grow. No wonder 
people are uncomfortable, especially when there is a proposal that says 
we could allow families to grow by returning the money to families and 
stop penalizing them just for having the durable commitment, the 
lasting bond that comes when people are married and are now penalized 
for that in our Tax Code. This would be an opportunity, according to 
the plan of the Senators from New Mexico and Texas, to alleviate that.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). The Chair recognizes the Senator 
from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, very briefly, the Senator from Missouri 
states that there are many studies and documents that indicate that 
increasing the price of a pack of cigarettes will not have an effect on 
kids smoking.
  Let me refer him to the people who know it best, the absolute 
ultimate experts on the cost of a pack of cigarettes in America--the 
tobacco companies. I say to the Senator from Missouri, in the documents 
revealed by the tobacco companies themselves, a Philip Morris document:

       In any event, and for whatever reason, it is clear that 
     price has a pronounced effect on the smoking prevalence of 
     teenagers. . ..

  I hope that the Senator from Missouri would read from the documents 
that the tobacco companies themselves had to disclose because of court 
order.
  Philip Morris: The following quotes are from a Philip Morris 1981 
document based on the company's review of research by the National 
Bureau of Economic Research on the impact of price on tobacco use. 
Because of the quality of the work, the prestige and objectivity of the 
National Bureau of Economic Research has not changed in 30 years. I 
think we need to take seriously their statement that, ``If future 
reductions in youth smoking are desired, an increase in Federal excise 
tax is a potent policy to accomplish this goal.''

       In any event, and for whatever reason, it is clear that 
     price has a pronounced effect on the smoking prevalence of 
     teenagers, and that the goals of reducing teenage smoking and 
     balancing the budget would both be served by increasing the 
     federal excise tax on cigarettes.

  Philip Morris, in a quote from a 1987 document: Philip Morris laments 
the teen smokers that it lost due to price increases.

       You may recall from the article I sent you that Jeffrey 
     Harris of MIT calculated . . . the 1982 and 1983 round of 
     price increases caused two million adults to quit smoking and 
     prevented 600,000 teenagers from starting to smoke. Those 
     teenagers are now 18 to 21 years old, and 35 percent of older 
     smokers smoke a PM brand. This means that 700,000 of those 
     adult quitters have been PM smokers and 420,000 of the 
     nonsmokers would have been PM smokers.

  A 1982 RJR document, on the tobacco industry's analysis that price 
increases have a significant impact on youth smoking: This analysis 
actually calculates the number of new smokers lost among kids as young 
as 13 years old, and every other age between 13 and 18, if prices are 
increased. Philip Morris--the chief financial officer for Philip 
Morris, less than a year ago, told everyone involved in the tobacco 
industry negotiations that, ``Children are three times more price 
responsive than adults.''
  That is the chief financial officer for Philip Morris.
  The National Academy of Sciences, in its 1998 report, ``Taking Action 
to Reduce Tobacco Use''--the Institute of Medicine and the National 
Academy of Sciences concluded that ``the single most direct and 
reliable method for reducing consumption is to increase the price of 
tobacco products, thus encouraging the cessation and reducing the 
level. . ..''
  This list goes on and on. I know the Senator from West Virginia was 
here a second ago and wants to talk.
  The 1994 Surgeon General's report preventing tobacco use among young 
people--now, the Surgeon General is fairly well respected--reached the 
conclusion that increases in the real price of cigarettes significantly 
reduce cigarette smoking, and that the young people are at least as 
price sensitive as adults.
  The 1998 Surgeon General's report issued within the last month agrees 
with this conclusion.
  What is important, though, really, are the tobacco companies 
themselves. I say if you can believe anybody, maybe you might believe 
the people who are in the business of enticing kids to smoke.
  Brown & Williamson:

       The studies reported on youngsters' motivation for 
     starting, their brand preferences as well as the starting 
     behavior of children as young at five years old. The studies 
     examined younger smokers' attitudes toward addiction, 
     containing multiple references as to how very young smokers 
     first believe they cannot become addicted only to later 
     discover to their regret, that they are.

  Brown & Williamson:

       . . . nicotine is addictive. We are then in the business of 
     selling nicotine, an addictive drug, effective in the release 
     of stress mechanism.

  RJR consultant:

       Happily for the tobacco industry, nicotine is both 
     habituating and unique in its variety of physiological 
     actions.

  I won't go on except to summarize again from the Philip Morris 
document:

       In any event, for whatever reason, it is clear that price 
     has a pronounced effect on the smoking preference of 
     teenagers.

  I imagine there are studies that the Senator from Missouri could 
produce to which he referred.
  The people who are the final experts on this are the people who sold 
it to the kids. And they know, and we all know, that it is price 
sensitive as far as kids smoking is concerned. To think otherwise flies 
in the face of the overwhelming body of evidence, not only in the words 
of the tobacco companies, but the Surgeon General of the United States 
of America.
  We want to call it a tax, call it a tax. Don't say it isn't going to 
affect kids

[[Page S5617]]

smoking, because the overwhelming body of evidence says that it does. 
Everybody is entitled to their opinion but not everybody is entitled to 
the facts.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed to speak for 15 minutes as if in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.

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