[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 73 (Tuesday, June 9, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5737-S5754]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        NATIONAL TOBACCO POLICY AND YOUTH SMOKING REDUCTION ACT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report S. 1415.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1415) to reform and restructure the processes by 
     which tobacco products are manufactured, marketed, and 
     distributed, to prevent the use of tobacco products by 
     minors, to redress the adverse health effects of tobacco use, 
     and for other purposes.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
  Pending:

       Gregg/Leahy amendment No. 2433 (to amendment No. 2420), to 
     modify the provisions relating to civil liability for tobacco 
     manufacturers.
       Gregg/Leahy amendment No. 2434 (to amendment No. 2433), in 
     the nature of a substitute.
       Gramm motion to recommit the bill to the Committee on 
     Finance with instructions to report back forthwith, with 
     amendment No. 2436, to modify the provisions relating to 
     civil liability for tobacco manufacturers, and to eliminate 
     the marriage penalty reflected in the standard deduction and 
     to ensure the earned income credit takes into account the 
     elimination of such penalty.
       Daschle (for Durbin) amendment No. 2437 (to amendment No. 
     2436), relating to reductions in underage tobacco usage.
       Lott (for Coverdell) modified amendment No. 2451 (to 
     amendment No. 2437), to stop illegal drugs from entering the 
     United States, to provide additional resources to combat 
     illegal drugs, and to establish disincentives for teenagers 
     to use illegal drugs.

  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.

[[Page S5738]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I understand that the order of business 
is the amendment that I and Senator Craig and Senator Abraham have made 
to the tobacco legislation; is that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.


                           Amendment No. 2451

  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, in the closing hours of debate last 
week, I was somewhat----
  Mr. KENNEDY. Parliamentary inquiry. I thought I was recognized and 
was asked to yield so that the clerk could report. Do I understand that 
I lost the floor and the Chair recognized another Senator?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The regular order was the reporting of the 
bill, at which point recognition was then available. It was at that 
point I recognized the Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Further parliamentary inquiry. Since I was recognized by 
the Chair, could I retain my right to continue to address the Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The regular order was to report the bill, and 
at that time recognition was sought by the Senator from Georgia, and he 
was recognized.
  The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, as I was saying, when the debate was 
closing, several Senators acknowledged the importance of drug abuse, 
teenage drug addiction, but thought that, we are suggesting, this was 
not necessarily the appropriate time to do it, which I take great 
exception to.
  I think this is exactly the time to do it. I think that it sends the 
wrong message for us to be talking about teenage addiction and wrap our 
arms around it like it is only involved in tobacco.
  About 14,000 teenagers die from drug addiction every year. And, as I 
will enumerate in a bit, teenagers, parents, our society in general 
view the No. 1 teenage addiction problem as drugs.
  Tobacco is a problem and tobacco use among teenagers has increased by 
40 percent. Drug abuse among teenagers has increased by 135 percent in 
the last 6 years. The figures used last week were that 400,000 people, 
according to CDC, die each year of smoking-related illnesses. We are 
dissecting those numbers. I do not dispute them. But the point I make, 
Mr. President, is that of course this is of the entire population. You 
can't just measure the effects of teenage drug abuse by measuring the 
deaths. Fourteen thousand young people die each year, but the societal 
cost of drugs to our society are just staggering.
  Illegal drugs, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 
represents $67 billion in an annual drain on the United States. 
According to the University of Southern California, it is $76 billion. 
And 80 percent of all prisoners, whether they are in a local jail or 
Federal prison, today are there on drug-related charges--direct or 
indirect.
  When you look at the scope of the prison population in the United 
States today, you might as well look at it and say, well, there is the 
drug-related causes. It is a staggering sum of money. And it produces--
remembering that those folks who finally find their way to prison are 
but a dot on the map as compared to the incidents related to this--
these are the handful that the system finally ensnares and gets in 
prison and is not even a measure of all which has occurred and who have 
not been apprehended or somehow interacted with the system and never 
ended up in prison.
  We have had a lot of discussions in here of late about violence among 
teenagers. Our young society is becoming more violent. It is directly 
related to an increasing consumption and use of drugs by our younger 
population. It is an epidemic of enormous proportions, and the reach of 
it is stunning and staggering.
  I guess where the other side was headed was that the cost of 
confronting teenage drug addiction would somehow interfere with the 
attack on the teenage smoke addiction. First of all, over 25 years, if 
fully appropriated, this amendment would use 14 percent of the funds 
raised through the tax hike the other side envisions. Over 10 years, 
this amendment would consume 23 percent and, over 5 years, 23 percent, 
in rounded off figures; over 25 years, 14 percent; over 10 years and 5 
years, about 23 percent.
  If we are using 23 percent of the funds--and by anyone's measure, it 
is the No. 1 problem--if you want to reduce it to financial 
measurements, it is an equal problem. The cost to American society is 
as great on the drug side as it is on the tobacco side. The perception 
of parents, families, and teenagers is that it is a far greater 
problem, and in the data we have before us, it is an equal financial 
problem. So, why in the world would we ever come down here and talk 
about teenage addiction and not talk about the No. 1 problem--a problem 
causing massive violence, total disruption, and a financial partner to 
the costs of tobacco?
  This is how public schoolteachers rate the top disciplinary problems: 
No. 1, drug abuse; No. 2, alcohol abuse; No. 3, pregnancy; No. 4, 
suicide; No. 5, rape; No. 6, robbery; and No. 9, addiction. I point out 
that the No. 1 problem is probably driving all the others--robbery, 
assault, and the others.
  A national survey of American attitudes in substance abuse: What is 
the most important problem facing people your age?--that is, the thing 
which concerns you the most. That was the question raised for 1996 and 
1995. No. 1, 31 percent--one out of three--drugs; No. 2, social 
pressures; No. 3, crime and violence in school. Not that it is 
relevant, but after you go through 10 or 12 different items, teenage 
smoking is never raised at all. That is among students. That is what 
students say.
  What do the parents say when asked the same question? No. 1, drugs; 
No. 2, social pressure; No. 3, crime and violence in school. It goes 
all the way down to getting a job, problems at home. At no time do the 
teenagers or the parents raise the question of smoking as a serious 
problem for teenagers.
  I don't agree with them. I think teenage smoking is a serious 
problem, a very serious problem. The point is that the most important 
problem is drug abuse, teenage drug addiction.
  Let me read from the startling results of the 1995 CASA survey of 
teens. Illegal drugs were cited as the most serious problem teens face, 
far above any other concern, well ahead of the 14 percent who cite 
social pressures. This question was open ended, meaning respondents 
were not provided with a list of possible responses, and it was asked 
early in the interview before any other question raised, the issue of 
illegal drugs.
  While responses to this question do not strongly correlate with the 
teen risk score, those who cite drugs as their biggest concern are no 
less at risk than the average teen. Some interesting patterns do 
emerge. Teens who cite doing well in school as their biggest concern 
are less at risk than other kids. They are more concerned with doing 
well in school, and it keeps their minds attending to other things.

  As I said a moment ago, according to the Robert Wood Johnson 
Foundation, the total economic cost of drug abuse is valued at $67 
billion annually in 1990, up $23 billion from 1985. Research at the 
University of Southern California using the same methodology estimated 
the economic costs of drug abuse at $76 billion, up more than $30 
billion from 1985.
  I don't know the final disposition of this tobacco legislation. I 
kind of divide the debate into two camps; there is a health-related 
camp and a revenue-related camp. I am very concerned with the revenue-
related camp, but it is my intention and I think the intention of 
several other members, we are not going to debate the tobacco addiction 
without including a strong and forceful statement on the issue of 
teenage drug addiction, the reason being, again, that teenage drug 
addiction is the No. 1 problem being faced by teenagers. It is an equal 
partner, in the context of social costs to our society, as tobacco. 
Parents, teenagers, science-based institutions, law enforcement 
officers--you can go anywhere in the country, any community, and ask 
them what the No. 1 problem going on here is, and they will say it is 
drugs, it is drugs.
  I had an Atlanta city traffic judge call on me a couple weeks ago. I 
didn't know exactly why he wanted to visit. He came into the office. 
The first words out of his mouth were, ``Senator, drugs are burning the 
heart out of America.'' He said, ``I see it every day, and it is 
getting worse by the second, and we're not fighting it, we're not 
taking it on. If we don't, it will ruin our country.''
  Mr. President, this is the time and the exact moment, and appropriate 
in

[[Page S5739]]

every other way, to bring to the forefront what drugs are doing to 
America's teenagers, what drugs are doing to America. As we make a 
conscious decision to deal with the health issues affecting America's 
teenagers, it is absolutely appropriate we talk about tobacco. We need 
to get at it. It is a very unhealthy habit, and it can be exceedingly 
costly. Teenage drug abuse has the same effect, and I might add that 
smoking marijuana as compared to smoking cigarettes is five times more 
deadly, five times more deadly.
  With that opening statement, I yield the floor.
  Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I regret enormously not just the amendment 
of the Senator from Georgia, which I know is well-intentioned, and I 
know his efforts on narcotics are sincere, but the entire panoply of 
amendments that are coming forward on the Republican side are--at least 
in my judgment, and I think in the judgment of many other Senators--
calculated not to fundamentally improve the bill but to kill this bill. 
And there are provisions in here which have very little to do with drug 
fighting--a voucher provision to allow any Federal education funds to 
pay the tuition of victims for a religious school or for a private 
school. Boy, there is one we have spent a lot of time on under the 
banner of education in the U.S. Senate, which we know to be 
fundamentally controversial in the Senate. That is here in this bill 
for the purpose of reducing the number of kids smoking.
  What really disturbs me about it--and I think I have been involved in 
the drug fight as long as anybody in the Senate, since I first came 
here. I led the effort to try to expose what was happening with our 
loose borders during all of the efforts to fund the Contras, the 
narcotics that were flowing through Central America. I have led efforts 
to put 100,000 cops on the streets of America. We now have that 
happening. Everybody who fought against it was the first to go out and 
campaign in their districts, saluting the virtues of community 
policing. Senator Biden and others helped design and fight the 1986 and 
1988 drug bills that we passed. There have been many efforts here. 
There is a sincere effort in the Senate to try to deal with drugs.
  But to suggest that we now ought to make the drug effort competitive 
with the drug effort is rather remarkable to me. What do I mean by 
that? Well, to stop kids from smoking is part of the drug effort. There 
isn't anybody who doesn't say that smoking isn't sort of the gateway to 
marijuana and other drugs, and marijuana a gateway to cocaine, and so 
forth. If you treat--as we want to in this legislation--tobacco as the 
addictive substance that it is, that kills people, and recognize that 
this legislation seeks to give broad authority to the FDA in order to 
be able to regulate tobacco, then the question ought to be asked: Why 
are we setting it up so that we have this competition between the 
effort to stop kids from smoking and the effort to fight drugs? Let's 
go to the violent crime trust fund. Let's go to a host of other arenas 
and do some of the things that the Senator from Georgia is talking 
about.
  But that is not really what is going on here. What is really going on 
here is the piling on of amendments that are calculated to kill the 
bill to stop kids from smoking. What is going on here is a group of 
people who are doing the bidding of the billions of dollars that are 
being spent on all of the advertising in the country, to somehow 
suggest to people that this bill is overweighted or that this bill is a 
tax bill--all the things that this bill is not.
  The tobacco companies agreed to raise the price of cigarettes. The 
tobacco companies are settling in State after State; they are agreeing, 
and they agreed originally in the national settlement, that the price 
of cigarettes ought to be raised. The tobacco companies agreed to do 
that. But the great fear-mongering that is going on, to the tune of 
millions of dollars being spent on all of these radio advertisements 
and television advertisements around the country, is to try to scare 
the American people, because people want to help the tobacco companies 
and do the bidding of the tobacco companies.

  The tobacco companies contribute an awful lot of money to campaigns. 
The tobacco companies are a powerful lobby in this country, and the 
tobacco companies are working their will hard to try to convince people 
that this bill is somehow against the public interest. What is against 
the public interest, Mr. President, is an effort to stall this bill in 
the U.S. Senate. What is against the public interest is a willingness 
to somehow see this bill die and forget about the fact that 400,000 of 
our fellow citizens die every year as a result of smoking.
  The cost to America of smoking is far, far greater than any cost in 
this bill. I heard the majority leader say over the weekend that this 
bill is going to die under the weight of amendments. Well, they are not 
Democrat amendments, they are Republican amendments--amendment after 
amendment--that are coming, trying to weigh this bill down. Everybody 
knows that some of the amendments that may have passed are going to be 
fixed in conference--if we can ever have a conference. Everyone 
understands that if this bill is given an opportunity to breathe, if it 
goes out of the Senate and ultimately the House passes a bill, there is 
going to be a very significant negotiation and a very significant 
rewrite of whatever is to leave the U.S. Senate.
  The effort here is to prevent something from leaving the U.S. Senate, 
and it is to prevent it from leaving the Senate by doing everything 
except paying attention to kids who are smoking. I have heard 
Republicans come to the floor and criticize the amount of money that is 
in this bill and the pot that is being used in order to stop kids from 
smoking. They say, isn't it terrible, here is this big pot of money, 
and all the Democrats want to do is spend it on some program. Well, the 
program happens to be counteradvertising to stop kids from smoking; it 
happens to be a cessation program, proven to work, which involves young 
people directly in the effort to try to make better choices other than 
smoking. What do they want to do? They want to come and spend the money 
on something that has nothing to do with trying to stop kids from 
smoking--nothing at all.
  Their alternative is to fix the marriage penalty. Many of us on this 
side of the aisle want to fix that, Mr. President. The question is, 
What is an appropriate amount of money to take out of this bill, and 
what is the impact on a whole lot of other things that matter? The 
funding of this bill that the Coverdell amendment would strip away 
reaches 5 million smokers who would receive cessation services. And 90 
percent of young people, age 12 to 17--more than 20 million people--
would be exposed to effective counteradvertising that would discourage 
them from taking up cigarette smoking. And 50 million children would 
take part in school-based prevention programs, and all 50 States would 
implement comprehensive State-based prevention programs in order to 
stop underage smoking and support laws that prohibit the sale of 
tobacco products to minors and develop culturally sensitive preventive 
programs.
  All of those would be threatened if the Coverdell amendment passed. 
They would be threatened because the Coverdell amendment wants to take 
more than half of the money allocated to those efforts and put it into 
the drug war, the Coast Guard, and into vouchers, into a set of things 
that, as worthy as some may be, would wind up totally negating the 
purpose of the health portion of this legislation.
  Mr. President, this legislation has traveled, obviously, a very 
difficult road. But it is clear that the intent of a number of these 
amendments coming from the Republican side is calculated not to 
legitimately improve the bill, not to figure out, OK, which one of 
these cessation programs works the best? Do some States have a better 
model than others? If so, why don't we try to support those models 
more? Why don't we get more specific about diverting some of this money 
into a very specific set of counteradvertising efforts that we know 
work better? Some of those kinds of things might be very legitimate 
approaches to improving the bill. But to come in and say, no, we are 
going to take more than half of the money and just give it to the 
marriage penalty, and we are going to take some more money and give it 
to the Coast Guard and other antidrug efforts. Worthy as those may be, 
as I say, you wind

[[Page S5740]]

up stripping away completely the capacity to do what a lot of States 
are struggling to do and what the health community of this country has 
advised us again and again is critical that we do if we are going to 
stop kids from smoking. That is what this bill is about. Somehow, a lot 
of colleagues seem prepared to simply trample on that. No one disputes 
the notion that somewhere in the vicinity of 3,000 kids, every single 
day, start smoking.
  No one has come to the floor and been able to dispute the testimony 
of the tobacco companies themselves who acknowledge that raising the 
price is a critical component of reducing the accessibility of 
cigarettes to teenagers. Nobody has any counterevidence to that. But 
they simply come down and try to pile on the notion that this bill is 
somehow too big.
  Mr. President, in the tobacco bill we have an expert designed 
approach to try to provide smoking cessation programs for 5 million 
Americans. That is an effort to try to give a second chance to some 5 
million Americans. There are 45- to 50 million Americans who are hooked 
on cigarettes. How can you come down here and suggest you are going to 
take half the money that is directed towards 5 million of the 45- to 50 
million Americans and say you are improving things with respect to the 
health of the country or with respect to young people's introduction to 
an addictive substance that kills them?
  There is a total contradiction here in coming down and saying what we 
have to do is stop cocaine and stop heroin, whatever substance you are 
trying to stop from coming in with interdiction by beefing up the Coast 
Guard or beefing up Customs, all of which we ought to do, but doing it 
at the expense of stopping kids already in this country from smoking 
cigarettes which are already in this country when we know we have the 
ability to stop them from doing that.
  I don't doubt the urgency the Senator from Georgia applies to the 
drug war. I have been the first to say we haven't been fighting it 
adequately, but I am not going to suggest that we ought to be robbing 
Peter to pay Paul, that we ought to be stealing from these kids in 
order to somehow beef up the Coast Guard. That doesn't make sense, 
particularly since cigarettes are the entryway to the very drugs that 
the Senator from Georgia wants to stop coming in.
  So let's find that money. But let's find it in an appropriate place 
without gutting the cessation, counter advertising and other kinds of 
efforts that are contained in here to try to stop our own children from 
smoking in our own country and from getting hold of the cigarettes that 
are manufactured here that are already here and that kill them here. 
What is the common sense in coming down here and stripping away all of 
that to suggest somehow--Do you know what this is? This is, ``Let's 
give the Senate a tough vote. Let's make it hard for people to vote 
against drug control, and we can strip away a little bit of the bill 
and strip away a little more.'' And indeed it will be overweighted in 
precisely the way the majority leader suggests because the entire guts 
of the bill will have been ripped out. That is what we are really 
talking about.
  Mr. President, it seems to me that hopefully colleagues will 
recognize that the crunch time is coming on whether or not we are going 
to try to find the bipartisan collegiality to try to legitimately 
improve this bill or whether people are just determined to kill it. If 
they kill it, it will be clear to every American why and how it 
happened and who did it.
  That is the choice here. If we want to legitimately restrain what 
some people on the other side think might be an aberration in terms of 
a particular choice of spending as to how you stop kids from smoking, 
then surely we can find a better way to help stop those kids from 
smoking.
  There is a clear distinction between the legitimate effort to try to 
do that and the efforts that we are seeing on the floor, which are to 
strip away all the funds altogether and put them into things that have 
nothing to do with stopping kids from smoking, nothing to do with 
helping kids to be able to build the character and the value system 
necessary to empower them to be able to say no to cigarettes. If you 
can't say no to cigarettes, you are going to have a real hard time 
saying no to the marijuana, or to the cocaine, or to whatever it is 
that might flow at a later date. These are directly related.

  My hope is that we will recognize the real choices of what lies in 
this legislation.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coats). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DASCHLE. 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. DASCHLE. Mr. President, for the last several days we have 
attempted to find a way to get around the impasse we have experienced. 
I am disappointed that we haven't made more progress, and it was only 
with the frustration which I had experienced that we were led to file 
cloture on two occasions last week.
  Our desire to come to some closure on this bill and on the amendments 
that are pending could not be greater. We have no reservations and no 
objections to having a vote on the amendment offered by the Senator 
from Texas, Senator Gramm, or the amendment offered by the Senator from 
Georgia, Senator Coverdell. What we would like, however, is the 
opportunity to offer similar amendments that deal with the same issue 
at approximately the same time. Let's have an amendment offered by our 
Republican colleagues. Then let's have an amendment by our Democratic 
colleagues. Let's go back and forth as we had been doing now for some 
time. But I really do not think it is the amendments or the procedure 
relating to the amendments that is keeping us from getting this job 
done. I think the opponents of the bill will never let a fair process 
unfold.
  It is every Senator's right to hold up legislation. That is the 
prerogative of the U.S. Senate. So we all understand this is a 
filibuster. The only way to break a filibuster is to invoke cloture.
  The bill, as everyone knows, is designed really to stop 3,000 kids a 
day from smoking. That is really what this is all about. Since we have 
been on this bill, 60,000 kids have become smokers. I think everybody 
needs to understand what has happened; 60,000 new smokers have begun 
smoking since we started this legislation, 60,000 of them. About one-
third of them will die of smoking-related diseases. So 20,000 of those 
kids at some point, because they started smoking since we have become 
involved in this legislation, will die.
  From votes taken on those issues, it is clear that there is a 
bipartisan majority for reaching conclusion here. Some of the Senate 
wants votes on other issues like taxes, drugs, and lawyers. We are 
prepared, as we have already expressed, to have votes on those issues. 
Our position is as clear as it can be. Let's have the votes. We voted 
on lawyers' fees. We have already voted on an array of other issues. 
Some I voted for, and many I voted against. We are ready to vote on the 
marriage penalty. We are ready to vote on drug abuse. We are ready to 
keep voting, just like we started alternating back and forth. We are 
ready to sit down and work out a way to process the rest of the 
amendments, and to finish the bill. But we have now spent more time on 
this bill than any other bill this Congress.

  The time for talking is over. Now is the time to act. Now is the time 
to vote. Now is the time to stand up and be counted. How many more 
thousands of kids will start smoking before we finish? Another 60,000? 
600,000? And, if it is, indeed, one-third of those who will die from 
smoking, how many kids can we prevent from acquiring the habit and from 
dying? That is what this bill is about. That is why it is so important 
to come to closure.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I now send a cloture motion signed by 16 
of my colleagues 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 the debate on the modified 
     committee substitute for S. 1415, the tobacco legislation:

[[Page S5741]]

         Thomas A. Daschle, Carl Levin, Jeff Bingaman, Daniel K. 
           Akaka, John Glenn, Tim Johnson, Daniel K. Inouye, Dale 
           Bumpers, Ron Wyden, Mary L. Landrieu, John D. 
           Rockefeller IV, Paul S. Sarbanes, Harry Reid, Richard 
           H. Bryan, Kent Conrad, J. Robert Kerrey.

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. SESSIONS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.


                           Amendment No. 2451

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, this is an important bill, legislation 
that I hope that this body can reach an accord on. The Coverdell-Craig 
amendment on drugs is not a way to undermine the bill but a way to 
improve the bill.
  Drug use among young people is the No. 1 concern of parents, 
according to authoritative polling data. We have a bill that has gone 
from $360 billion to, some say, $750 billion in income to the U.S. 
Treasury. It would be a tragedy were we not to take this opportunity to 
do something about the drug abuse problem that continues to increase at 
extraordinary rates, particularly among young people in America today.
  I serve as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Juvenile 
Crime. I have had the occasion to deal with the drug abuse problem in 
that capacity. I also had the occasion, for 15 years, to be a Federal 
prosecutor and 12 years as U.S. attorney in the Southern District of 
Alabama. During that time, I was actively involved in the Mobile Bay 
Area Partnership For Youth, the primary drug-fighting organization 
which was later added to the Coalition for a Drug-Free Mobile. We 
worked on a monthly basis with the leadership in our community to do 
what we could do, as citizens within that community, to reduce drug 
abuse in our schools and among young people.
  I learned some things during that process. I learned that what you do 
makes a difference. I was proud to have served under the Reagan-Bush 
administration as a Federal prosecutor. During that time, I observed a 
continual decline in drug use, according to the University of Michigan 
study that tested high school seniors, among others, every year for 20 
years. It is probably the most authoritative and respected study in 
America. It showed that, for the 12 years under Presidents Reagan and 
Bush, drug use went down every single year, something I was 
extraordinarily proud to have been a part of. President Reagan and Mrs. 
Reagan sent a message down to every federal agency to cooperate in 
efforts to reduce drug abuse, because we cared about young people; we 
did not want them to be hooked on drugs. And it worked. Those who said 
the drug fight was a failure were wrong; we were making progress.
  When President Clinton was elected, I sensed, and told my friends and 
professional acquaintances who were involved in this area, that he was 
making some very serious mistakes. When you go on MTV and you joke 
about whether or not you inhaled, saying, ``Maybe I wish I had,'' that 
sends a message to young America that something has changed, that the 
moral-based unacceptability of drug use message that had gone out 
consistently for over a decade was now changed; there was going to be a 
new day. I recognized it then, and so did professionals. This was bad. 
The drug czar's office, the office that Bill Bennett used so 
effectively to continue to drive down drug use, was gutted. It is only 
recently that we have shown the need for the drug czar's office to be 
strengthened again and for General McCaffrey to begin to stand up to 
some of the inertia and bureaucracy in this Government to make a 
clearer point about the problem of drug use.
  So, I just say that this is an important matter. It would be 
unfortunate, indeed, if, in our concern here, as part of this tobacco 
bill, which is to help the youth and health of children, we didn't also 
focus on drugs. It is the No. 1 concern of parents, and well it should 
be.
  I would just say this. In general, there are a number of other 
amendments we need to talk about with regard to this tobacco bill. I 
have been intimately involved in the attorneys' fees matter. We need to 
vote on that again. As far as I am concerned, I will not support a bill 
that does not limit the incredible fees that attorneys stand to gain. 
So we need to have a discussion about that. We have an attorney in 
Miami, FL, according to John Stossel on ``20/20,'' who hits golf balls 
out into the ocean from his beach-front mansion when he practices his 
driving. That is just indicative of how wealthy they have become from 
this litigation. He expects not millions, not tens of millions, not 
hundreds of millions of dollars, but billions of dollars. They want 
$2.8 billion in attorneys' fees in Florida.

  They say, ``A judge can decide this.'' A judge has already approved 
$2.3 billion in attorneys' fees to the firms in Texas. This is 
extraordinary--a billion dollars. To give an indication, the general 
fund budget of the State of Alabama is less than a billion dollars. 
This is the kind of fees we are talking about paying.
  So I think we are going to have to talk about that some more. There 
is a provision in this bill that allows for $8 billion to be paid out 
``to victims who win lawsuits, smokers who win lawsuits.'' They can go 
to this fund, run by the tobacco companies, and they can get money up 
to $8 billion, and then they are cut off. That is a terrible plan, 
because some States are going to have laws, traditional laws, that will 
probably not allow smokers to win at all. Other States may allow them 
to win. One jury may give $10 million, another nothing--``You smoked; 
it warned you on the package when you smoked; you should not recover.'' 
We are going to have aberrational justice of the most extraordinary 
nature. It is going to be like the asbestos litigation, in which there 
are 200,000 pending asbestos cases today--200,000--and no more than 40 
percent of the money paid by the asbestos companies actually got to the 
victims of asbestos. We are creating the exact same process with this 
legislation.
  So I have an amendment, Senator Jeffords and I do; we will be 
introducing it--to create a compensation fund and let the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services, under certain guidelines, distribute the 
money promptly to people who are in need. If you have lung cancer from 
smoking, your life expectancy is a matter of months. You don't need to 
have 2 years of litigation before you get any compensation. If you are 
entitled to it, you ought to get it promptly. We would have awards 
within 90 days and without attorneys' fees. We don't even need 
attorneys under those circumstances.
  So there are a lot of things we can deal with. We have a huge tax 
increase, and how we are going to reduce some taxes in the course of 
this will be important also.
  So there are a lot things we need to talk about. We have 17 programs, 
$500 billion, $600 billion, $700 billion in new income to the 
Government. We ought not to pass this lightly. It is just going to take 
some time to go through it. I am chagrined that the Democratic leader 
would feel we ought to cut off the opportunities to debate and improve 
this bill.
  As I said, I have spent some time wrestling with the drug issue over 
the years. It is a matter about which I feel very deeply. I gave a lot 
of my personal time to it. I have worked with civic leaders. I have 
worked with juvenile judges. I have worked with mental health 
officials. I have worked with treatment officials and other people. I 
brought in national experts to my district. I have met with them and 
talked with them. When I was U.S. Attorney, I chaired a national 
antidrug committee for the Department of Justice and had a lot of 
concern about it.
  Let me share with you a few thoughts about what we ought to do.
  We have--and Senator Coverdell has done an outstanding job on this 
legislation--agreed to a particular amendment that I suggested, the 
parental consent drug testing provision. It is a provision that 
allocates $10 million to be available to schools. A school will have to 
ask for it. It will be voluntary for the school. They will establish a 
program to drug test within that school. Parents will have to consent 
for their children to be drug tested. If they do not want them tested, 
they do not have to allow them to be tested.
  I will talk about that for a few minutes and explain why, if we 
really care about children, this is a tool which I believe has a 
potential to do more than any single other thing I know of to reduce 
drug abuse in America.
  We have talked about it a lot. We tell our children we do not want 
them to

[[Page S5742]]

use drugs and it is dangerous, but we do not do the things that allow 
us to know whether or not they are using drugs. Dr. Laura tells us we 
need to confront our children and be honest with them and find out 
whether or not they are using drugs. Sometimes you can't always take 
what they say at face value. Drug testing is a tool for parents, it is 
a tool for teachers, and it is a tool for people who love children, who 
care about them. If you love them, if you care about them, you want to 
know whether or not they are undertaking bad habits.
  It is disclosure. It is truth. It is confrontation. It is what the 
psychologists and psychiatrists call intervention. They will not use a 
positive drug test to prosecute somebody or to otherwise send them to 
jail or invoke the criminal law. That is prohibited by this 
legislation. What it will do is allow that parent, that teacher, that 
principal to know that this child has a problem and it could get worse. 
If we intervene early before addiction occurs, we have a much better 
chance of changing those life habits.
  I don't know if this program will work--maybe it won't work--but my 
experience, and it has been over a number of years, tells me that it 
will. Let me tell you why.
  A number of years ago in the early 1980s, the captain of a Navy 
aircraft carrier spoke before a civic organization of which I am a 
member. He told us that less than 2 years before, over 60 percent of 
the sailors on that ship, in his opinion, had tried an illegal drug 
within the past few months--60 percent on that naval ship. He said 
since they began a rigorous program, ``Just Say No. No Drugs in Our 
Navy,'' and drug testing, that was down to 2 or 3 percent, in his 
opinion, in a matter of 2 years.
  Some people were kicked out of the Navy, true, but not that many. 
Most of them who had a clear message of what they were expected to do, 
what kind of standards they were expected to meet and that those 
standards were going to be enforced, met those standards. Were their 
lives better? Was the quality of life on a naval ship better when 
people were not using drugs than when they were? I submit it is much 
better. And, in fact, I believe if you go back and study what has 
happened in our military, you will find the great upsurgence in quality 
and strength of our military coincides with the time we took a strong 
stand on drugs and removed drugs from the military. In fact, the 
military has some of the lowest drug use statistics of any group in the 
country. That was progress. That was good. That is the kind of thing 
that makes life better. It makes better soldiers, it makes those 
soldiers better family leaders, better parents, better with their lives 
and community activity. I say that is important.

  I talked to a man who ran a work release center in my hometown of 
Mobile. He told me this story. They had 16 members on a work release 
gang, and they received approval to do a blind testing of those members 
for drugs. They had not been doing it that much. They checked them. 
Fifteen of the 16 had used drugs, they tested positive for drugs on a 
criminal prison work release program.
  When they began to test regularly, drug use went down dramatically. 
They had discipline--not harsh discipline--but they had discipline for 
those who did not stay drug free, and it worked. Are those work release 
people better off because somebody cared enough to test them, to stay 
on them, to discipline them when they failed? Yes, they are.
  Jay Carver, who we brought to my hometown of Mobile, ran the drug 
testing program in the District of Columbia for many, many years. It 
was the largest, most effective and efficient drug testing program in 
the world, I suppose, certainly in America. He said he had people who 
were testing positive, who had drug problems, tell him they wanted to 
stay on the program even after their time on it was off. Why? Because 
it helped them stay off drugs, and they wanted to stay off drugs. That 
discipline, that testing and reporting, helped them stay drug free.
  Prison guards--we have had problems with drugs in prisons, and there 
has been a small number of prison guards over the years who, it has 
been discovered, were using drugs and also bringing drugs into the 
prisons. Drug testing among prison guards has caused a big step forward 
in reducing drug use in prisons.
  Police departments, fire departments, transportation personnel, 
private companies and businesses all testify to the great increase in 
productivity that occurs when you eliminate drugs in those departments. 
I say to you that drug testing has proven to be effective in reducing 
drug use.
  A lot of people have discussed whether or not it can be done in 
schools and whether or not it is constitutional. I personally believe 
it is. Certainly it is if parents agree, and if schools voluntarily 
attempt to offer it as a program, I think we will find perhaps that 
because certain schools are showing dramatic improvement in reducing 
drug use, others may want to do it in the future. And if the program 
doesn't work, well, we will have learned that, too. I suspect if it is 
properly run, we will have significant drug use reduction, and maybe as 
the years go by other schools may want to try it and we can develop a 
more comprehensive program that will improve the fight against drugs.
  Mr. President, let me mention a few things that are important. Why do 
we want to talk about drugs when we are talking about tobacco? Why? 
Well, this is all about children and their health. Let me share with 
you some statistics.
  Some say, ``Well, you are just being political; you are just talking 
about Presidents Reagan-Bush versus President Clinton,'' but we ought 
to know these factors. I predicted to the people I dealt with that the 
policies of this administration were going to undermine the successes 
of President Reagan and Mrs. Reagan's ``Just Say No to Drugs'' program. 
I see it happening. Let me show you what has happened according to 
unchallenged statistics throughout this country.
  For eighth graders, the portion using any illegal drug in the prior 
12 months has increased 71 percent since the election of President 
Clinton. It has increased 89 percent among 10th graders; 57 percent 
among 12th graders. That is use of any illicit drug. It has increased 
that much in this period of time, following a time when it had been 
going down.
  Marijuana use has accounted for much of this increase, and its strong 
resurgence among eighth graders is obvious. Use of marijuana in the 
prior 12 months by eighth graders has increased 146 percent since 1992. 
Yes, tobacco is important, but now we have an indication of why parents 
say drugs are their No. 1 concern.
  Since the year President Clinton was first elected to office, among 
10th graders the annual prevalence increased 129 percent, and among 
12th graders, 76 percent since 1992.
  This is something we ought to have talked more about in this country. 
I do not think the American people fully understand that policies do 
have impact, that leadership does count. If you are sounding an 
uncertain trumpet, then you have a real problem.
  I remember the first drug adviser to President Reagan before you had 
a drug czar. Dr. Carlton Turner was from the small county in Alabama 
where my mother is from. I got to know him and watched him. He came to 
our community and he talked about the drug issue at a civic club, my 
Lions Club.
  While he was there, somebody raised their hand and mentioned a rural 
county. He said the No. 1 cash crop in that county is marijuana, ``ha, 
ha, ha.'' Dr. Turner jumped down that person's throat. He said, ``I 
don't want you ever laughing about drugs. This is very, very 
dangerous.'' He had a Ph.D. and had studied marijuana. That was his 
field of study. He said, ``We should never be laughing about it. This 
is a serious matter. We, as a nation, need to send a clear, unequivocal 
message of intolerance to drugs, and we need to stand by it. And you, 
as leaders in your community, need to do the same.''
  I thought that was a very good message. I never forgot that. That was 
in the early 1980s.
  We started joking about, ``I wish I'd inhaled.'' We have more drug 
use references in rock music, more drug use references on television 
and in movies than we had before. That is bad. It is one of the things 
I think is driving this increased use.
  Daily use of marijuana, according to the survey, continues to rise by 
even younger and younger people. More than

[[Page S5743]]

1 in every 25 of today's high school seniors is a current daily 
marijuana user, according to the PRIDE study, which is a good study--
that is an astounding statistic--with an 18.4 percent increase since 
only last year.
  While only 1.1 percent of 8th graders used marijuana daily in 1997--1 
percent is a lot of 8th graders using drugs. That is 1 out of every 100 
that are daily users. That still represents an increase of 50 percent 
since 1992.
  LSD has increased. That is Dr. Leary's ``get high'' drug. It has 
increased over 52 percent. It has increased 50 percent among 8th 
graders since 1992.
  More than 1 in 20 seniors in the class of 1997 used cocaine this 
year, a 12.2 percent increase over last year. That is cocaine, a highly 
addictive drug. Crack-cocaine use has continued its gradual climb among 
10th and 12th graders.
  Since 1992, annual cocaine use is up 87 percent for 8th graders, 147 
percent for 10th graders, and up 77 percent for 12th graders. Those are 
big increases. That is a real societal problem. That is why parents 
listed it as such a high priority with them.
  So I want to say to those who express their concern about tobacco and 
its damaging health impact on children, they are correct. But as you 
know, marijuana, Mr. President, is, I think, 40 times more carcinogenic 
than tobacco. It is a highly carcinogenic drug, in addition to the 
adverse effects such as habituation and other problems.
  We know, for example, learning skills go down when marijuana is used. 
Kids grades drop, and they lose their motivation to work. That is a 
characteristic of marijuana use that ought not be dismissed lightly. It 
is a very serious drug.
  So I just say this, Mr. President--I see the Senator from Arizona has 
returned to the floor, and I know he has many things he would like to 
say--but I salute Senator Coverdell for his outstanding effort to 
improve this bill with a tough antidrug initiative. It will be 
effective. I believe the one part of it that I have discussed mostly 
today, the part that allows drug testing for those high school 
students, whose parents agree to it, could be a turning point in our 
effort to reduce drugs among teenagers, to make their lives healthier 
and richer as time goes by.

  My experience, as a Federal prosecutor and as chairman of the Youth 
Juvenile Crime Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, convinces me 
this is the right course for us to take. I hope that we will continue 
to pursue it. I hope this amendment will be made a part of the bill, 
and I know it will strengthen it.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, before the Senator from Alabama leaves the 
floor, I want to thank him for not only the great, important remarks he 
has made about the pending amendment concerning the problem of drugs in 
America, but I want to also thank him for his efforts to resolve 
another very contentious aspect of this legislation, and that is the 
issue of lawyers' fees.
  There was an amendment that the Senator from Alabama proposed which 
was defeated, perhaps because the amount of money involved in 
compensation for the plaintiffs' lawyers was too low. But I know that 
he and the Senator from Washington, Senator Gorton, and others are 
working on another amendment I hope we could add to this bill before we 
vote on final passage that would properly compensate the legal 
profession who has been involved in this issue, but at the same time 
not deprive the victims from the compensation they deserve, deprive the 
programs from the funding that is absolutely critical and needed if we 
are going to address this issue. The reality is we cannot divert as 
much money as being contemplated in the State settlements as well as in 
other areas that would go to the legal profession.
  I thank the Senator from Alabama for his work on that. As we all 
know, in his previous incarnation he served as attorney general of the 
State of Alabama, and I appreciate his efforts in that direction. I 
also appreciate the comments he made, his opening comments, and that 
is, he believes we need to pass this legislation. I believe that still 
reflects the majority view here in the Senate. And I am eager for the 
Senate to complete its work on the bill.
  Mr. President, we are, I know, in the third week now of contemplation 
of this legislation and amendments and debate and discussion. 
Unfortunately, last week's activities were truncated, to some degree, 
by a requirement for a large number of us to attend the funeral of my 
predecessor, Barry Goldwater. I think it is clear we are reaching a 
point in this legislation where we either come to closure or then we 
have to move on to other issues.
  I believe at the right time that cloture should be invoked, if that 
is what it takes to complete our work in a timely fashion. I hope that 
rather than cloture we could agree to time agreements on the 
amendments. I hope we could agree to narrow the amendments even 
further, and we could dispose of the issues at hand. I think it is 
important to point out that we have pending amendments which have to do 
with drugs, we have tax cut alternatives, and we have substitute 
measures as well as I mentioned earlier an additional amendment on the 
attorneys' fees issue.
  Very frankly, Mr. President, there are not any other significant 
issues or amendments that would affect this legislation. So I think 
they could be disposed of in short order if we can enter into time 
agreements. That will be my effort this morning as we enter into 
discussions with other Members who have an interest in the bill.
  I would not vote for cloture at this time until it is clear to me 
that we have exhausted our efforts to come to time agreements and 
dispose of pending amendments. I think that is a far better way of 
proceeding as, frankly, we do on most pieces of legislation that come 
before the body.
  Mr. President, I also point out that there are interests that want to 
see this legislation fail.
  I think we should acknowledge that. It is interesting, which parts of 
the political spectrum these efforts come from.
  I do not question the motives of any opponent of this legislation, 
and they may succeed. I remind opponents of this legislation that if it 
does not move forward and we have to move to other issues, the issue is 
not going away. No matter what is done on the other side of the aisle, 
or if nothing is done on the other side of the aisle, there will be, in 
the words of one well known plaintiff's lawyer in the America, ``a rush 
to the courthouse.'' There will be 37 States who will proceed with 
their suits. There will be settlements. If the past four have been any 
guideline, those judgments are substantial. And, by the way, they have 
entailed substantial plaintiff fees--in the case of the State of 
Florida, I believe over $2 billion, if my memory serves me correctly. 
So the issue of children and tobacco is not going to go away.
  I hope that when colleagues of mine on both sides of the aisle who 
would rather see this bill die, for whatever reason--whether it be a 
philosophical problem they have with a ``big government solution'' or 
whether it be, in all candor, perhaps, the use of this issue in the 
November elections to some political advantage, or whatever reason--the 
issue isn't going away.
  Every day that we do delay, there are 3,000 children who start to 
smoke, and 1,000 of them will die early. I appeal to the better angels 
of our natures here in this body and ask for a lowering of the 
rhetoric. I am not sure it does any real good to attack someone else's 
position on an issue. I don't think it does any good to even question 
anyone's motives, whether they agree or disagree with this legislation. 
For the first couple of weeks, or at least the first week or 10 days as 
we addressed this issue, it was characterized by respect for one 
another's views and, I think, was very helpful as an educational 
debate.
  Beginning the end of last week, obviously that atmosphere of comity 
was dramatically reduced, if not disappearing. I hope my colleagues 
will not get too partisan on this issue. It is not one that should be 
partisan. It is one that should be, indeed, nonpartisan rather than 
bipartisan, because it is a problem that transcends party lines.
  I intend, as I said, to work this morning in trying to get some time 
agreements on pending legislation. We clearly have debated the drug 
amendment to a significant degree, and I think we could vote on that 
very soon. We continue to talk with Senator Gramm

[[Page S5744]]

about his tax cut amendment. There may be another one besides that, and 
then substitute measures, and attorneys' fees. I have to say, in all 
candor, Mr. President, there is no reason to delay any more after we 
have resolved those issues.
  Let me just make a couple comments about the drug amendment. 
Obviously, illegal drugs are a terrible problem in America. It 
continues to pose a serious threat to our youth, and I strongly support 
many aspects of the pending amendment to attack the problem.
  I am compelled, however, to mention that one of the criticisms that 
has been leveled at the pending legislation is the ``new 
bureaucracies'' issue: There are new bureaucracies and new programs, 
and this is a big-government solution. Let me just list some of the new 
programs and bureaucracies that are in this amendment: Drug Testing 
Demonstration Program, Driving Work Grant Program, Student Safety and 
Family Choice Program, Victim and Witness Assistance Program, Victim/
Witness Assistance Grants, Report Card Grants, Random Drug Testing 
Grants, Parental Consent Drug Testing Demonstration Projects, Drug-Free 
Workplace Grants, Small Business Development Centers, Convicted Drug 
Dealers Grants, on and on.

  So, Mr. President, I hope that those of my colleagues who are 
supportive of this legislation, as I am, will perhaps better understand 
why there is money spent for specific reasons in the overall tobacco 
bill for basically the same reason money is spent for ``bureaucracies'' 
in the drug bill--because we have to have some kind of vehicle within 
existing bureaucracies to attack the problem. None of us should want to 
say OK, Federal Government, here is the money, do whatever you want to 
attack either the drug problem or the tobacco problem. We have to 
specify as to how this body, in its wisdom, with the advice of the 
experts, can best dispense those funds in programs that will attack the 
problem.
  I think a Driving Grant Program is probably important. I think a 
Student Safety and Family Choice Program is important. I think Report 
Card Grants are important. And on and on and on. So those who support 
this amendment--and I know it is a majority of my colleagues certainly 
on this side of the aisle--I hope they will understand better why the 
arguments about ``new bureaucracies'' is not necessarily valid when we 
are attempting to address a specific issue with specific programs.
  Finally, on the issue of the money, I believe the tobacco trust fund 
should pay a fair share in taking action that will defend efforts to 
prevent and cease drug use in America. But I also hope we can take some 
of the money from the violent crime trust fund and other sources of 
revenue and ensure that funding for tobacco, for drug enforcement 
purposes, does not undermine the basic purposes for which the fund was 
established.
  As I said before, I do not support a cloture vote at this time. I am 
hopeful that we can, as we go through this morning and early afternoon, 
agree on time agreements on amendments. I do believe that if we can't 
do that, then we either vote for cloture or we move on to other issues 
that are important. I believe we can move forward. I believe the 
majority of the American people want us to move forward, and I am still 
confident that we can complete this legislation in a timely fashion.
  I note the presence of my colleague from Massachusetts on the floor, 
and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to express strong support for what 
my friend and colleague from Arizona has commented to the Senate and 
thank him for this long and continuing battle. He has been a leader in 
terms of trying to have a responsible position on this tobacco issue. 
As all of us understand, this has been an issue where there has been a 
great deal of diversity in this body, but there has been an enormously 
admirable, noble, and I think commendable effort on his part to try to 
move this legislation in a responsible way that tries to find a common 
ground. I want to just commend him for his continued efforts to move 
this process forward.
  We may have some differences on some particular issues as we address 
them, but I think every Member of this body who believes in the 
importance of developing a responsible position has to recognize his 
very, very strong and positive leadership. I join with others who have 
expressed that previously but, again, take note based upon his 
continuing efforts and upon his very reasoned statements that he made 
here earlier today.
  Now, I want to just join in welcoming many of our colleagues' focus 
and attention on the problems that this Nation is facing in terms of 
substance abuse. I am so delighted that many of our colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle have brought forth their strong support for 
this Nation to be addressing this particular problem in a more 
aggressive way. And I welcome that, because many of us stood on the 
floor of the U.S. Senate in the period of the past 3 years when we saw 
the Drug-Free School Program, which is the one program that has been 
developed that had bipartisan support, that is focused on the high 
schools of this country, that is focused on dealing with the problems 
of substance abuse, alcohol abuse, and conflict resolution. It doesn't 
provide a lot of resources--maybe $12 or $14 per school. Nonetheless, 
there have been a number of very impressive and important programs that 
have been developed on that. We have seen in recent times many of those 
who have spoken in favor of this particular amendment voting in favor 
of cutting the program back in a significant way that would bring 
targeted help and assistance in terms of the at-risk youth. We have 
seen that program, which includes the young people who are attempting 
to try to acquire some kind of treatment and attention and have been 
afflicted by this horrific kind of addiction in terms of substance 
abuse, significantly cut back and cut back again.

  We have seen the important success, I believe, of adding police 
officers to the streets across this country. The neighborhood policing 
concept reaches far beyond the total number of 100,000 police officers. 
I can tell you that in my city of Boston, where they have had the 
additional kinds of police officers that are community policing, that 
are involved in the community policing network and are out in schools 
setting up local kinds of police departments in these schools, in 
recreational areas, working virtually around the clock and doing a lot 
of work with community groups, nonprofit agencies, outreaching in terms 
of trying to deal with some of the problems of gangs. They have had a 
very important success.
  In my State of Massachusetts--particularly in Boston--up to just 2 
months ago we went close to 2 years without a youth homicide. There are 
a lot of factors included in the efforts in Boston. Paul Evans, our 
commissioner, deserves great credit. The neighborhood policing support 
that was received as a result of some of these programs played an 
important part, and, again, that program was opposed.
  So I am not going to take much time here this morning to go through 
the opposition that many of us faced as we were looking for drug courts 
which have, I think, demonstrated to be very important and very 
effective in dealing with the more violent aspects of those that are 
involved in substance abuse, and the battle we have had in terms of 
support for those kinds of programs that have been developing to try to 
demonstrate their success in different regions and communities across 
the country.
  So over the period of these past years, many of us have been trying 
to give additional life to the problems of substance abuse in our 
society and we haven't been able to get very much support. So whatever 
the circumstances, we are glad that at least we are hearing on the 
floor of the U.S. Senate an increasing priority for this Nation in 
terms of focusing resources. We are not saying that necessarily just 
adding dollars to a particular program is going to solve the issue, but 
we do say that the allocations of resources--in this case, the 
commitment of appropriations, is at least the Nation's priorities in 
terms of allocating these resources. For many of those, I might say, in 
watching this debate on the problems of substance abuse and the so-
called drug amendment, we have not heard their voices, we have not seen 
their support, we have not had their votes in the very recent times as 
all of

[[Page S5745]]

us are trying to find ways of dealing with a problem that affects too 
many communities and families in this Nation.
  So if nothing comes out--and hopefully something will--of the debate, 
at least we will have additional kinds of focus and attention and, 
hopefully, support to try to help families, schools, and communities 
deal with the problems of substance abuse.

  Let's go back again to what we have here on the floor of the U.S. 
Senate. What we will find out, Mr. President, if you bring the experts 
in, in terms of substance abuse, is that virtually without exception 
the gateway drug to substance abuse is smoking. It is smoking. They 
will say that is the predominant one, and access to beer is a secondary 
aspect. But they will say smoking is the gateway drug to substance 
abuse. We won't take the time this morning--perhaps later in the 
debate--to show the correlation of smokers to those who get into the 
use of marijuana, or young smokers that start at 12, 13, and 14 years 
old that begin to use substances like heroin. The correlation is 
powerful, it is compelling, and it is convincing. If we are trying to 
come back to the problems in terms of substance abuse, the first place 
and the best place to start is with the issue of smoking. The younger 
the better. The younger the better.
  That is why I think it is important, as we are coming to this time in 
the debate and discussion, to keep our focus on what the underlying 
legislation is all about, which is the public health of young people in 
this country, to discourage them from smoking with the increase in 
price and a vigorous antismoking campaign on the back end to try to 
help provide both information and assistance, cessation programs, and 
others, in dealing with the challenge that this Nation is facing, and 
which other countries are facing as well.
  So, Mr. President, this is why it is so important that we get on with 
the business that is before the Senate, which is getting, I think, 
action in terms of voting rather than talking on the issue of tobacco 
legislation. We have all been through these various battles and we have 
legislation on the floor of the Senate, where there are strong 
differences of opinion, and the ability to delay action is readily 
available by Members on this issue. It seems that the debate has moved 
along. The issues before us are imperative and we ought to go ahead in 
having the cloture vote, and we can then deal with those amendments 
that are relevant at that time.
  The first vote we are going to be facing this afternoon on the motion 
to invoke cloture on the tobacco legislation is a key vote. For more 
than 3 weeks, opponents of the legislation have used every 
parliamentary trick in the book to prevent the Senate from passing this 
bill, even though a clear majority are for it. In the 3 weeks since the 
Senate started this debate, 66,000 more children have started to smoke, 
and 3,000 more will start each day until the legislation is enacted and 
implemented. While the Senate fiddles, the cigarettes burn.
  The opponents have attempted to create a smokescreen to divert 
attention from the real purpose of this legislation, which is to 
prevent children from beginning to smoke and becoming addicted to 
tobacco and help current smokers stop smoking. The opponents are 
desperate to have the Senate focus on anything else--limiting 
attorneys' fees, reducing the marriage penalty in the tax laws, 
prohibiting illegal drug use, school vouchers--any issue but the real 
issue. They would prefer to ignore the fact that tobacco use is 
responsible for 20 percent of all premature deaths in the United 
States.
  Tobacco is the Nation's leading cause of preventable death and 
disability. It accounts for 400,000 deaths a year--more deaths than 
from alcohol, more deaths than from car accidents, more deaths than 
from suicides, more deaths than from AIDS, more deaths than from 
homicides, more deaths than from illegal drugs, more deaths than from 
fires, more deaths than from all of these combined.
  Yet, the opponents of this legislation are not interested in 
protecting the public health and saving lives from tobacco use. They 
are interested in protecting big tobacco and blocking any effective 
action that would reduce tobacco use and therefore reduce tobacco 
profits.
  The American people understand what is going on here. Today's vote 
will lift the smokescreen and demonstrate where each Senator stands on 
this fundamental issue. Do they stand for further delay and 
obstruction, or do they have the courage to act against the will of the 
tobacco lobbyists?
  Parents are watching to see if the Senate will continue to allow 
tobacco companies to blatantly market their products to children, or 
will we force the Marlboro Man into the sunset?
  People are watching to see if the Senate will continue to allow 
nonsmokers to be exposed to secondhand smoke, which causes 3,000 to 
5,000 lung cancer deaths each year in the United States and up to 60 
percent of all cases of asthma and bronchitis in young children.
  Are we willing to stand up against the tobacco industry, and stand 
for the smoking cessation programs and the counter-advertising 
campaigns and the law enforcement efforts that are needed to prevent 
tobacco sales to minors?
  There is no valid reason why the Senate cannot vote on final passage 
this week. If the majority leader was willing to permit the fair and 
timely scheduling of amendments from both sides of the aisle, we could 
complete action on them within a few days. We have filed for cloture 
because it is the only way to break the parliamentary logjam created by 
a small group of willful defenders of the tobacco industry. It will 
provide an irrefutable public record of who is ready to vote for strong 
legislation to prevent youth smoking and who is attempting to talk the 
legislation to death.
  The opponents of the McCain bill are engaging in filibuster by 
amendment--amendments which do not even deal with the subject of 
smoking prevention. These amendments are transparent attempts to 
scuttle the legislation, not improve it. The Coverdell amendment would 
divert more than 80 percent of the funds currently directed to anti-
smoking prevention and cessation programs.
  According to the analysis, the Coverdell-Craig amendment will slash, 
as I mentioned, funding for the smoking prevention programs by 82 
percent over 5 years. This will be $13 billion, down to the $2.4 
billion that will match reduction for these programs that have been 
demonstrated to be effective. We have gone through that in the course 
of the debate, including my own State of Massachusetts, California, and 
other various communities, and neighboring countries such as Canada. 
The list goes on.
  Effectively what we are saying is the Office of Management and Budget 
says this amendment would drain $10 billion from the $13 billion set 
aside by the bill each year for the antismoking programs. Effectively 
it guts the program.
  These anti-smoking initiatives are at the very heart of the 
legislation. If the Senate is serious about stopping children from 
beginning to smoke and saving lives from tobacco-induced diseases, we 
have to invest in these important public health measures.
  If the Coverdell amendment is enacted, there will be less funding for 
smoking cessation programs, for counter-advertising programs, and for 
school and community-based education initiatives, all of which have an 
excellent track record of preventing smoking by children and helping 
adults to stop smoking.
  Clearly, we need greater enforcement efforts to prevent the illegal 
sale of tobacco products to minors. Each year, American youths spend 
over $1 billion to purchase tobacco products, despite laws in all 50 
states that prohibit underage sales. According to Professor Joseph 
DiFranza of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, ``if $1 
billion in illegal sales were spread out evenly over an estimated 1 
million tobacco retailers nationwide, it would indicate that the 
average tobacco retailer breaks the law about 500 times a year.''
  We shouldn't weaken these important law enforcement efforts by 
reducing their funding, when they could have such a significant effect 
in reducing teenage smoking.
  The federal government currently spends $520 million a year on 
tobacco control efforts. That sum is dwarfed by the amount spent to 
fight illegal drugs, which will total $16 billion this year--thirty 
times as much.

[[Page S5746]]

  Deaths caused by tobacco, 400,000; the amount that is actually spent 
on Federal spending, $520 million; deaths caused by substance and 
illegal drugs is 20,000. We spend close to $16 billion. Of course, we 
are all concerned about the problems of substance abuse. But we are 
talking about now dealing with the issue of tobacco because it is the 
gateway to the substance abuse problem that we are facing in this 
country. If we don't understand that interconnection, we don't really 
understand this problem in a very important way.
  This disparity is especially significant, since tobacco use causes 
400,000 deaths a year, while illegal drugs are responsible for 20,000 
deaths.
  Clearly, we can do more to reduce illegal drug use, but those efforts 
should not come at the expense of needed anti-smoking initiatives. 
President Clinton has already asked Congress to act this year on a $17 
billion counter-drug budget--the largest anti-drug budget in our 
history.
  The National Drug Control Strategy increases funds for drug 
intervention programs for youth and for treatment programs. It adds 
1,000 officers to the Border Patrol and 540 new DEA positions. Two 
hundred counter-narcotics agents will be assigned to initiatives to 
combat heroin and other drug smuggling. In fact, some of the components 
of the Coverdell amendment duplicate anti-drug strategies set in motion 
months ago.
  The Coverdell amendment contains another provision--private school 
vouchers--which are poison pills for the tobacco legislation. I 
strongly oppose these provisions, and the Senate should reject them.
  The private school voucher provisions are a blatant attempt to force 
the Republican anti-public school agenda on the tobacco bill. The 
Senate has already debated this issue at length earlier this year. We 
all know that it is a highly contentious issue. We should not revisit 
it in the context of the tobacco legislation, since private school 
vouchers are totally unrelated to reducing youth smoking. The only 
reason it was included in this amendment is to serve as an anchor to 
weigh down this important bill.
  Our goal is to improve the public schools, not abandon them. Instead 
of draining much-needed resources from public schools, we need to take 
steps to help all schools, not just a few schools--and to help all 
students, not just a few students.
  The Coverdell amendment would undermine these efforts by diverting 
federal funds to help private schools.
  Supporters of this legislation are certainly prepared to allocate 
part of the funds to the anti-drug measures in the Coverdell amendment, 
but it makes no sense to allocate the vast majority of the funds to 
those programs.
  It is time for Republicans in Congress to stop holding the tobacco 
bill hostage. We should free the prisoner, and do what's needed to 
reduce smoking.
  Cloture should be invoked now to prevent any more delaying tactics. I 
urge my colleagues to vote to end this pro-tobacco filibuster and pass 
this needed legislation.
  Mr. President, just to reiterate, we welcome the new voices that are 
speaking in terms of support for the substance abuse programs. We could 
have used both their voice and their vote in recent years when those 
programs were under attack and assault here in the appropriations 
committees as we were trying to deal with those issues. But now that we 
find new interest in these programs, we welcome their effort. But you 
can't get away from the fact that even in dealing with the illegal 
problems of substance abuse and illegal drugs that the gateway to all 
of this is tobacco. That is what we are focused on. That is the core 
issue. We take meaningful steps in terms of tobacco by discouraging 
young people from purchasing as a matter of price, and by taking the 
antismoking kinds of programs that have been included in this effort, 
we are going to have a meaningful impact on the number of young people 
that are going to smoke, and we are going to have a meaningful impact 
on the problem of substance abuse.
  Mr. President, I hope we can come back this afternoon and move 
towards cloture and get on with the business before the Senate. The 
American people have been listening to this debate for some 3 weeks. 
Families are entitled to have a vote to protect their children in this 
country. We ought to be able to take a stand. We should be willing to 
take such a stand and be held accountable for that. We will have the 
first opportunity to do so this afternoon. I hope all of our colleagues 
will give support for that program so we can move this legislation, so 
the House will move it, eventually the President will sign it, and we 
will make meaningful progress in reducing the problems of youth smoking 
in this country.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). The Senator from 
Missouri.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I am pleased to have this opportunity to 
speak in regard to the effort to restrict debate on this bill.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a unanimous 
consent request?
  Mr. ASHCROFT. I will be happy to.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that, following the 
remarks of the Senator from Missouri, the Senator from Iowa be 
recognized for 5 minutes, and following those remarks, I be recognized 
for 20 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I am pleased to have this opportunity to 
speak briefly against restraining the debate by invoking cloture here. 
There are too many outstanding issues to invoke cloture and to amend or 
stop the debate and amendment process. I rise today to oppose invoking 
cloture on the tobacco bill. A vote to invoke cloture, a vote to cut 
off debate on this massive legislation, is a vote in favor of a massive 
tax increase. It is a vote against tax relief, a vote against fighting 
illegal drug use in this country. I doubt whether those who are not 
keenly familiar with the procedures of the Senate would understand that 
when you invoke cloture, you limit amendments, and if you invoke 
cloture at this time--if we were to vote to invoke cloture today, we 
would basically be saying that we could not include in this bill any 
antidrug measures, we could not include in this bill any tax relief.
  I think it is clear that the American people are beginning to learn 
what this bill is about. The American people are beginning to 
understand what $868 billion in new taxes really means. They are 
beginning to understand that there are boards and commissions and new 
iterations of the Federal Government, of the National Government, 
dictating activity in this bill, and it is time for us to continue the 
debate. The American people are beginning to learn that there is 
foreign aid in this bill, that there is $350 million a year in foreign 
aid just to provide for studies in foreign countries of the impact of 
smoking in those countries.
  This legislation is almost 500 pages long. It is quite possibly an 
attempt at the largest expansion of government since the ill-fated 
Health Security Act, President Clinton's attempt to take over one-
seventh of the U.S. economy in the health care measure. And, while we 
have spent several weeks on this bill, we have not begun to scratch the 
surface of this 480-page bill.
  As I believe others who will be coming to the floor will show, you 
will find a bill like this is very complex. As I mentioned, the kinds 
of foreign aid measures, the kinds of things virtually unrelated to any 
benefit people in this United States could expect to receive from this 
bill are tucked into the nooks and crannies of this bill. It is no 
wonder people do not want further amendments. It is no wonder they want 
to curtail debate. But I think it is time we continue to have debate. 
We have spent several weeks on this bill. We have not begun to scratch 
the surface. There are issues that we have discussed but haven't voted 
on and issues that have yet to have a full and fair debate. On Friday, 
over 100 amendments were filed to this bill. More than 30 Members of 
this body have filed amendments to this bill. We should not curtail the 
discussion of this bill by invoking cloture.
  Many important issues will not be addressed if cloture is invoked. If 
cloture is invoked, many of those amendments--the antidrug amendment 
and the tax cut amendments--would be ruled nongermane and would not be 
allowed to be considered. Some say this is legislation that is dead or 
dying and cloture is needed to salvage this legislation. That is the 
mindset of people who are afraid that the details of the

[[Page S5747]]

legislation will be exposed to the American people and, as a result, 
the American people will no longer support the measure. That is the 
mindset of people who are afraid the American people will learn that 
this bill in fact contains a massive tax increase, $868 billion, and it 
is focused, 60 percent of it, on people who earn less than $30,000 a 
year.

  The American people have a right to know what is in this bill, and we 
have only begun educating the American people about the bill and 
debating the important issues. We have had only 5 votes on amendments 
to this legislation, 3 motions to table that were agreed to and 2 that 
were not--a bill of almost 500 pages and only 5 votes so far. We have 
not even begun to discuss the controversial provisions regarding 
tobacco farmers. We have just begun to talk more about the serious 
problem of illegal drug use by teenagers and the fact that most parents 
are far more concerned about that than they are about smoking.
  We have yet to vote on any amendment to provide relief from the 
discriminatory marriage penalty. I know there are several Senators who 
have amendments to address this tax penalty, including the minority 
leader, who has expressed that. Of course, I have a measure in this 
respect, as does the Senator from Texas and the Senator from New 
Mexico. But this cloture motion would put an end to these discussions. 
I ask my friends who filed this motion, what are they afraid of? Why 
won't they allow full and fair debate on this bill? What are they 
afraid of, that the American people will find out that is included in 
this legislation?
  I believe if we are going to raise the kind of taxes that are 
included in this bill, we need to have a complete and open debate. 
Unfortunately, some from the beginning have tried to hide the tax 
increase. The Commerce Committee--I was a member of the committee, but 
I was the only one to vote against this bill--simply refused to call 
this a tax; instead, they called it a penalty on the tobacco companies, 
but put in the bill a requirement that the tobacco companies would pass 
it on to the American people. Thankfully, what we call something will 
not change its real character. If it is a tax, it is a tax, whether we 
call it that or not. The Finance Committee at least had the integrity 
to say it was a tax and that this is a massive tax increase on the 
American people.
  The fact that the bill requires this to be paid by the American 
people, by consumers, not the tobacco companies, is something the 
American people deserve to know. This is a bill that is designed, at 
least in the minds of many people, to somehow punish the tobacco 
companies. But there is a mandate in the legislation that requires that 
the tax be passed through to the consumer. Tobacco companies will be 
fined if they don't pass the price increase on to the addicted 
consumers, and of course this tax does fall most heavily on those who 
are least able to pay it, those earning less than $30,000 a year.
  Using data provided by the Centers for Disease Control, this tobacco 
legislation will be an annual $382 million tax increase on individuals 
in my home State--a $382 million tax increase on Missourians. That is 
more than $3 million per county in my State. Roughly $227 million of 
that amount would be paid by individuals in households of less than 
$30,000.
  It is clear we should not invoke cloture. Invoking cloture would 
curtail the availability of amendments relating to drug use. It would 
curtail the availability of amendments relating to tax relief. In the 
face of a tax measure which potentially would add $860-plus billion to 
the tax responsibilities of the people of this country, I believe we 
should maintain our ability to talk about tax relief in the same 
legislation.
  With that in mind, I oppose the invoking of cloture here. I think it 
is bad judgment. It curtails discussion unnecessarily and unduly. It 
would provide for the masking of the real character of this legislation 
from the American people when the American people have every right to 
know and learn about the full nature of this measure.
  I thank the Chair for this opportunity to speak, and I yield the 
floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Coverdell 
amendment. I sincerely hope that the Senate will adopt this important 
amendment. I think the main concern on this side of the aisle is not 
about the importance of an antitobacco campaign and an education 
program so teenagers will not smoke in the first place. This is very 
important, and it should be well funded. But money above and beyond 
that ought to go into fully funding existing programs rather than 
creating a whole new scheme of programs. Creating new Federal programs 
is a goal of this administration. It is important that we not just 
create the programs for their sake, but that we make sure that it is 
used wisely. There will be a lot of new revenue generated by this bill 
and we must not use it all to create new Federal programs.
  We cannot put an obligation on the people of this country to support 
programs that we do not know, down the line, how much they are going to 
cost, just because there is a big new bonanza of money available.
  The purpose of this legislation is to keep teenagers from starting to 
smoke in the first place. This must remain our focal point. This is one 
important reason that I support the Coverdell amendment, because it 
will put excess money into existing programs and not create a whole new 
list of programs. Another is that this amendment will combat illegal 
drug use--which also kills our children. We should not address one 
without addressing the other. If we say that we are going to help our 
children, then we simply cannot walk away from an opportunity to help 
them fight against illegal drugs. This is not one against the other--
either we fight youth tobacco smoking or we fight illegal drug use. 
Quite the contrary, this amendment means that we do both.
  We are in the process of considering monumental legislation. We are 
engaged in a major debate about what to do about tobacco. Many of the 
arguments in favor of this bill focus on keeping kids from starting to 
smoke. I believe this is a very important objective. But there is more 
we can do with this bill to help our kids. When you talk to young 
people about what concerns them, when you look at what they tell 
pollsters, you learn what most concerns them. If we are going to engage 
in all of this talk of what to do for young people, it might be a good 
idea to listen to what they have to say.
  Young people today are very concerned about the availability of 
illegal drugs and of the violence that is all too common in our 
schools. Whatever else we might say about tobacco, it is not the source 
of the violence that threatens so many young people. While it has 
serious health consequences, those are not immediate. Smoking tobacco 
may give you heart disease or cancer in the future. The use of illegal 
drugs and the bad things that they do are not a problem of tomorrow, 
those are problems this very day, they are immediate problems, and the 
availability of these drugs is what most concerns kids.
  We hear very little of this in this debate. I think we make a mistake 
in not consulting what our young people are telling us. They are 
telling us that we must also address the use and availability of 
illegal drugs if we are to protect their health. That is why I am 
supporting amendments to the tobacco bill that will bring the issue of 
illegal drugs into the discussion. I wish every time the President took 
time to discuss tobacco and kids, he would bring the issue of illegal 
drugs into the discussion. And I wish that the President of the United 
States would never be seen with a cigar in his mouth if his campaign 
against tobacco is to be credible.
  Seeing that he is not likely to do that, I believe that we in the 
Congress must talk about illegal drugs. I therefore draw to my 
colleagues' attention these amendments and ask them to join me in 
voting for them. That includes the Coverdell-Craig amendment on drug-
free neighborhoods and others that strengthen our efforts to deal with 
illegal drug trafficking and use. These amendments put drugs back into 
the debate, and they should be there. They should be there every time 
he talks about tobacco. They should be there every time he talks about 
children s health. The President should also talk about not only drugs 
being illegal and not that they are bad because they are illegal--but 
they are illegal because they are bad. These amendments give

[[Page S5748]]

support to increasing our prevention, treatment, and interdiction 
programs for the issues that most concern our young people.
  I also call to mind an important point. In the years that we made 
``Just Say No'' a critical element of our counterdrug efforts, we saw a 
significant decline in illegal drug use among our young people. And we 
also saw something else. ``Just Say No'' had a halo effect. Kids not 
only stopped using illegal drugs, but they also stopped using tobacco 
and alcohol in impressive numbers.
  In the last several years, in the absence of a coherent antidrug 
message, drug use is on the rise--use of all drugs--especially among 
young people. Tobacco use is also on the rise. We must address these 
threats to the health and well-being of our children. And the situation 
is worse than we think.
  As the most recent national drug strategy hints at and other studies 
confirm, we have been under reporting drug use for years. That means 
there are more addicts than we thought; there are more users than we 
thought. We need to keep this in mind as we talk about teen smoking. We 
cannot afford to leave a problem that kids say concerns them most out 
of our discussions. We cannot look young people in the face and tell 
them that we are doing all this on tobacco for their sake and ignore 
illegal drugs. This is a landmark opportunity to do both, and we owe it 
to our kids to do as much as we can.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sessions). The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I wanted to come over this morning to say a 
few words about the bill and about cloture. I am strongly supportive of 
the amendment by Senator Coverdell, and what I would like to try to do 
in my brief remarks is to put this whole debate in proper context. I 
know literally dozens of our colleagues who support the bill have come 
over and spoken. It is awfully easy on these kinds of issues for people 
to get confused. So what I would like to do, very briefly, is to go 
back and put the focus of attention on where the money is coming from 
that comes into the bill, where the money is going, and what both--
where the money is coming from and where it is going--say about the 
bill. Then I would like to talk very briefly about the Coverdell 
amendment and conclude by making a remark on the cloture vote.
  First of all, for endless hours our colleagues who support this bill 
have damned the tobacco companies. They have indicted--convicted on 
many occasions--the tobacco companies for their activities over the 
last 25 years. And let me say that it seems to me, based on the 
evidence they have presented, that if one were sitting on a jury, one 
would have to find the tobacco companies guilty.
  While our colleagues hold the tobacco companies in contempt, seeking 
to draw our eye to the tobacco companies, the problem is that the money 
coming into this bill comes not from the tobacco companies but it comes 
from working Americans who are relatively-modest-income people.
  The reality of the bill is, interestingly enough, that while our 
colleagues who support the bill go on and on about the tobacco 
companies, damning them for their activities--and justifiably so--the 
reality of their bill is that the tobacco companies not only do not pay 
these taxes but they are mandated to pass the taxes through to the 
consumer.
  I hope when people listen to this debate about the terrible 
activities of tobacco companies, they will realize that what we have in 
this bill is one of the giant legislative bait and switches in the 
history of American Government. The bait is tobacco companies--savage 
the tobacco companies--but the switch is that we are taxing blue-collar 
Americans, and, in fact, with an incredible pass-through provision in 
the bill, we are requiring the tobacco companies to work in concert to 
see that working Americans pay every penny of these taxes. That is the 
bait and switch of this bill.
  The proponents of the bill hold up tobacco companies to revile, but 
they reach into the pockets of blue-collar working Americans and take 
untold billions of dollars in one of the largest tax increases in 
American history and certainly the most regressive tax increase of any 
size in the history of this country.
  And I would like to remind my colleagues that 34 percent of the over 
$600 billion of taxes collected in this bill will come from Americans 
in families that make $15,000 or less; 47.1 percent will come from 
Americans in families that make $22,000 or less, and 59.1 percent of 
the taxes in this bill will come from families that make less than 
$30,000 a year.
  So while our colleagues hold up tobacco companies as this source of 
evil and the focus of the debate, the reality is that the tobacco 
companies are paying no taxes and that Americans who make $30,000 or 
less are paying 59.1 percent of the taxes in this bill.
  This is a tax on blue-collar workers, and it is a massive tax. Let me 
just give you an example. The Presiding Officer is from Alabama. And 
24.9 percent of the people in Alabama, who are adults, smoke. That is 
762,857 smokers. If this bill is implemented and, as is predicted by 
most sources, the price of a pack of cigarettes rises by $2.78 a pack, 
that means that a blue-collar worker in Alabama, a truck driver, a 
waitress, will pay $1,015 in additional taxes to the Federal Government 
if they smoke one pack of cigarettes a day.
  We can say, well, they ought not to be smoking cigarettes. And, 
obviously, we all hope they will quit smoking cigarettes. But the point 
is, this bill clearly assumes they will continue to smoke in vast 
numbers, because how else then would the bill get over $600 billion to 
spend?
  So the question we have to ask ourselves is, in the name of punishing 
the tobacco companies, why are we imposing a tax of $1,015 per year on 
blue-collar workers in Texas and in Alabama and all over the country? 
It is interesting to note that if this bill goes into effect, the 
Federal tax burden on people making less than $10,000 a year will rise 
by 44.6 percent. So this is a massive confiscatory tax on blue-collar 
workers.
  The amazing thing is, by the logic of this bill, they are the 
victims. These are the people the tobacco companies conspired to induce 
to smoke, targeted with their advertising, many of them when they were 
less than 21 years of age. They now are addicted to nicotine. While the 
bill dubs them as ``victims,'' and promises them that they will be 
helped, the reality is the victims are being taxed by a massive amount 
to fund this bill. That is a point we must never forget.
  I have an amendment pending to give some of this money back to blue-
collar workers. I have read it written up in many newspapers and being 
covered in the media. Obviously, I must be doing a poor job of 
explaining what the objective of this amendment is, or else you would 
have to conclude that maybe the point is not being portrayed 
accurately. I would never assert that.
  Basically, what I am trying to do here is to say to blue-collar 
workers all over America who smoke: Look, this bill wants to raise the 
price of cigarettes to discourage teenagers and to discourage you from 
smoking. But rather than impoverishing you, our objective is to change 
the price of cigarettes and alter behavior, so we are going to take a 
portion, a substantial portion of the money and give it back to blue-
collar workers by repealing the marriage penalty for couples that make 
$50,000 a year or less.
  Now, let me make it clear. In our budget, and the tax cut that will 
flow from it, we are going to cut the marriage penalty for those who 
make over $50,000 a year. And if we do not pass this bill--and 
increasingly it looks like we may not--then we are going to repeal the 
marriage penalty for everybody. But the reason that I focused in on 
$50,000 and below in this bill, is that smoking in America today is 
predominantly a blue-collar phenomenon. Seventy-five percent of these 
taxes will be paid by people who make $50,000 or less. So the objective 
here is to give some of the money back to them, so we raise the price 
of cigarettes but we do not pound blue-collar workers literally into 
the ground with this tax.
  We have been in a period of chaos since my amendment was introduced 
because our colleagues are concerned about losing the money. If you 
listen to this debate, almost every day, at

[[Page S5749]]

least a dozen times, proponents of the bill say, ``This is not about 
money. This is about smoking. We're raising taxes not because we want 
the money.'' They say, ``But we're raising taxes because we want to 
discourage people from smoking, and studies have shown that price is 
the most effective way to do that.''

  But their bill belies what they say in two ways: No. 1, they spend 
the money; and, No. 2, they spend it in the name of getting people to 
stop smoking when, in fact, of the 60 percent reduction in teenage 
smoking they seek, 50 percent would be produced by raising price alone.
  So what I am trying to do in my amendment is to simply do this. Let 
them raise the price of cigarettes, but hold them to their word that 
this is not about money, and give a substantial amount of the money 
back to blue-collar workers who are paying this tax in the form of a 
tax cut, and the one I have chosen is to repeal the marriage penalty 
for modest income people.
  I think the debate about the marriage penalty is well understood. 
When we get to my amendment, I will talk about it in detail. But never 
in America should there be a penalty involved for people who fall in 
love and get married. The average marriage penalty in America is $1,400 
of additional taxes that people pay for the privilege of being married. 
As I have said on numerous occasions, my wife is worth $1,400, but I 
think she ought to get the money and not the Government.
  And so I am going to hold out on my amendment. This bill will not 
pass without my amendment being part of it. And it may not pass with my 
amendment being part of it.
  The argument against the tax cut which I have proposed, which is 
really a rebate to people who are bearing confiscatory taxes under this 
bill, and the argument against the Coverdell amendment, which seeks to 
broaden the protection for teenagers from smoking to smoking and drug 
use, the argument against it is we do not have enough money to do these 
things.
  We are collecting over $600 billion in this bill, but they do not 
have enough money to give some of it back to blue-collar workers and 
they do not have enough money to try to do something about illegal 
drugs even though that is the No. 1 concern of parents.
  In a recent poll, when parents were asked what things they worried 
most about in terms of things their children might do, 39 percent said 
using illegal drugs, 16 percent said joining a gang, 9 percent said 
drinking alcohol, 7 percent said having sex, 7 percent said driving 
recklessly and 3 percent said chewing or smoking tobacco.
  What the Coverdell amendment simply says is, while we are protecting 
our children, let us not just protect them from the 3 percent, let us 
protect them from the concern that 39 percent of our parents list as 
their No. 1 concern, and that is using illegal drugs. But yet our 
colleagues say, we do not have enough money to do this.
  That leads me to the next point, and that is, what are they using the 
$600 billion for? The cold reality is, not only do they have enough 
money to give some back to workers to prevent a massive tax-and-spend 
program from coming into effect, not only do we have money to improve 
our war on drugs and to promote the cessation of smoking for teenagers 
and adults, but the plain reality is this bill is awash in money. It is 
obvious from looking at how it is spent. And I want to give you three 
examples.
  The first example has to do with the tobacco farmer. Obviously, we 
are all concerned about the impact of this bill on tobacco farmers. But 
when you look at this bill it is clear in looking at the tobacco 
farmers section that no logic whatever has gone into devising this 
section. In fact, it is clear that this bill has more money than it 
knows what to do with.

  Let me just give two examples, not to belabor the point. The first 
example is that we are in the midst of a program we call Freedom to 
Farm where we literally have gone through our major commodity groups 
and given farmers transition payments to begin phasing out of the 
program. We are in the process for wheat, corn, grain sorghum, barley, 
oats, upland cotton and rice. We paid for wheat, a total over a 7-year 
period of $125.34 per acre; for corn, $220.27; for grain sorghum, 
$131.25. The highest payment was for rice, $714.09 per acre. If you add 
up all the amounts, all that we paid all seven major crops combined was 
$1,495.78. If you multiply that times the 740,000 acres we have planted 
in tobacco in America, under the Lugar provision of this bill, if you 
paid the cumulative amount of all the other programs combined, you 
would pay tobacco farmers $1,106,877,000. The Lugar provision in the 
bill pays tobacco farmers $22,297.29 an acre and they can go right on 
growing tobacco. We don't even get the land for $22,297.29 an acre.
  Now, my purpose here is not to ridicule this provision. My purpose is 
to point out how much money is squandered in this bill. Robert 
Samuelson, in his article in the Washington Post the other day, cites a 
figure of $92,000 an hour paid to attorneys in these tobacco 
settlements. Yet we have no provision of this bill setting out some 
limit. It is my understanding that we are going to try to limit that at 
$1,000 an hour or $2,000 an hour, but in a bill where supposedly we 
can't give any of the money back to working people who are bearing a 
massive tax increase, we have enough money to pay tobacco farmers 
$22,297.29 an acre. We have enough money to pay plaintiffs' attorneys 
$92,000 an hour.
  I have a new one today, and what I thought I would do is begin to do 
a new one each day that we do this bill. My new one today is on Native 
American smokers cessation. We have a provision tucked away in this 
bill, one of dozens and dozens of provisions, where we are going to 
provide up to $7.56 billion for smoker cessation programs among Native 
Americans. These bills will be targeted at the 1.4 million Native 
Americans served by the Indian Health Service. Adult Native Americans 
smoke at a higher rate than the population as a whole--39.2 percent. We 
will be spending $18,615.55 per adult Native American smoker in this 
program. If you have a family in which both adults smoke, we will be 
spending on their smoker cessation programs under this bill--now, hold 
your hat on this--$37,231.10 for every Native American family who 
smokes, $37,231.10.
  Now, we could buy people a Chevrolet Suburban. We could buy every 
smoking Native American family a Suburban for what this program will 
cost on a per capita basis for smokers.
  Now, does anybody believe that when we are talking about one little 
provision--and I could make this point about dozens of other programs, 
and I will as we go further along the debate--but does anybody believe 
this bill is seriously ``scrubbed'' for how we are spending money, when 
we are spending $37,231.10 per smoking Native American family on 
cessation? Does anybody view that as anything other than what a 
candidate for State office in my State called this whole process when 
he said, ``We won the lottery.''
  Well, let me remind my colleagues that to some people this money is a 
lottery, but to blue-collar working Americans who will bear the brunt 
of this tax, this is going to be a massive tax increase.
  Now, even at this late date, what could we do to salvage this bill? I 
thought I would add one final thing before I end my remarks this 
morning. What could we do that would make it possible to move ahead 
with this bill? First of all, the bulk of the money we are collecting 
ought to go back to the people paying the tax. If the objective of the 
tax is not to tax and spend, if the objective of the tax is not to fund 
more government, why not raise cigarette taxes, but give the bulk of 
the money back to the same people by repealing the marriage penalty, by 
making health insurance tax deductible for the self-employed, and 
people who don't get health insurance on their job so that Joe and 
Sarah Brown--one a waitress and one a truck driver, neither of which 
gets health insurance on their job--get the same treatment as General 
Motors.

  Repeal the tax penalty. What I would like to see is maybe 60 percent 
to 70 percent of the money given back in tax rebates--not tax cuts 
because their taxes are going up. The taxes of Americans making less 
than $50,000 a year as family income will go up on a massive scale in 
this bill. If we repeal the marriage penalty for them, if we make 
health insurance tax deductible for people who make less than $50,000 a 
year, their taxes will still go up as a result of this bill, but they 
won't go up as

[[Page S5750]]

much as they would under the existing bill and will raise the price of 
cigarettes without impoverishing people. Now, if my colleagues are 
serious when they say that it is not their objective to get this money 
to spend it, they just want to raise the price of cigarettes, I don't 
understand why we don't begin there.
  Second, we ought to bring drugs and tobacco on an equal level in the 
bill and use half our money for smoking cessation for teenagers and 
half our money to try to get teenagers to stop using drugs. Since 1992, 
drug use among seniors in high school has risen faster than tobacco 
use. It is a much more serious problem and ought to be treated at least 
on par in this bill.
  Now, if we had a bill that gave some of the money back to the States, 
gave some of the money back in tax rebates to the very people who will 
pay the taxes, and then took the rest of the money, throughout all of 
the massive overkill--you can't spend the money; the levels of money 
spent in this bill are virtually unspendable by any stretch of the 
imagination. Read two paragraphs in here and you can't figure out what 
they are doing, and we are giving them $10 billion to do it. Read 
another paragraph, it is not clear what they are doing, and we are 
giving them $20 billion to do it. What I am saying is throw all that 
stuff out, come up with a coherent, antismoking, antidrug program. If 
you do that, we have a bill. But if you do that, you do not have what I 
believe is driving this bill in many quarters, and that is the desire 
for a massive tax increase to fund the most rapid growth in government 
spending since Lyndon Johnson became President.

  So if this is not about tax and spend, this bill can still be saved. 
The way it can be saved is give most of the money back in tax cuts, get 
the benefit of raising the price of cigarettes, give money to the 
States, take what is left, split it between drug abatement and smoking 
abatement, and come up with a simple, coherent, practical program to 
try to abate smoking and drugs for teenagers. If we do that, we can 
still have a bill. But we are not going to have one of the largest and 
certainly the most regressive tax increases in American history to fund 
a massive growth in Government.
  I assume my colleagues will vote against cloture. If they vote for 
cloture, they are basically voting to freeze all of these programs in 
place--two different programs; I was only talking about one of the two 
programs for tobacco farmers. All of this wasteful spending, all of 
these massive tax increases, all of this tax-and-spend effort--if 
people vote for cloture, they are locking that in, because at that 
point none of these amendments--the Coverdell amendment to bring in 
drug abatement, my amendment to give a tax rebate to moderate-income 
people so we don't drive them into poverty with this tax--all these 
things will be denied. The Senate will not have an opportunity to vote 
on them if they vote for cloture. I trust that my colleagues will not 
do that.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the Senator 
from Texas. Even when I wasn't on the floor, I heard some of it on the 
television. I must say that what fascinates me about it is that the 
real bait and switch is not the bait and switch that he has described. 
He has tried to describe that somehow because this bill defines a 
problem of smoking and then raises the prices on cigarettes, which is 
what the tobacco companies have agreed to do, and the tobacco companies 
have acknowledged affects the number of people who smoke; but he tries 
to allege the switch is that we don't like the tobacco companies, so 
what do we do? We turn around and hurt the victims.
  Now, in the next breath, at the end of his speech, the Senator says 
why don't we just raise the price and give it back to people. Why don't 
we raise the price, but give it back in tax cuts. The bait and switch 
is that the Senator from Texas doesn't give the money back to the 
people who pay it. He gives it back to a whole bunch of people, many of 
whom are doing much better than the people who will pay the higher 
cigarette taxes and are also people earning much more income, and also 
people who don't smoke. The Senator is willing to say in one breath 
that here you have these victims being hurt by raising the price of 
cigarettes, but his amendment doesn't help those victims--maybe a very 
few number of them--because he is willing to give money back under a 
marriage penalty rebate, which even goes back to people who aren't even 
hurt by the marriage penalty. Talk about bait and switch. That is the 
most extraordinary bait and switch.
  In addition to that, the Senator wants to have it both ways. The 
Senator from Texas comes to the floor and says, Why, these folks have 
presented enough evidence to allow me to find the tobacco companies 
guilty. So he acknowledges the evidence is that the tobacco companies 
have targeted young people and have willfully put a narcotic substance 
into the mainstream of America and helped our children get addicted to 
it and then lied about it; he acknowledges all of that evidence. He 
says that is fine; the tobacco companies are terrible, and we ought to 
do something about it. But what does he say we should do about it? He 
complains about raising the tax on the victims, but then he agrees that 
we ought to leave the tax in place, not give the money back to the 
people who he describes as victims, and somehow we ought to punish the 
tobacco companies. But he doesn't say how. Well, how are you going to 
do that?

  I remember a few days ago the Senator from Texas came to the floor 
and said, ``Why don't we have a windfall profit tax?'' Whoever heard of 
any tax on any company for any purpose that isn't subsequently written 
into their ability to make profits by passing it on to the people who 
buy their products? The Senator from Texas is, after all, a former 
economics professor. I know he understands the notion that if it costs 
you x amount to produce your product and you are in business to make 
money, you are going to sell your product to people, you are going to 
write in the cost of doing business to the cost of your product. So if 
all of a sudden we were to sort of somehow punish the tobacco companies 
by raising taxes on them, who in America doesn't believe the consumer 
isn't going to pick up the cost? Who in America doesn't believe if you 
want a better car with more luxurious appointments in it, are they 
going to give it to you? No. You are going to pay for it. If the 
cigarette companies are charged in whatever form you want to call it--a 
windfall profit, an excess, a bad behavior tax, a deception tax, or 
whatever you want to call it, to punish the companies, you are 
absolutely going to see that passed on to the consumer in a higher cost 
of a pack of cigarettes.
  But that is not what we are doing here. The Senator from Texas and 
those who want to kill this bill and who are working so hard with all 
of these carefully crafted amendments that create tough votes for 
people in the Senate understand there is only one reason the U.S. 
Senate is presented with legislation that raises the cost of a pack of 
cigarettes, only one reason. It is because every expert in the 
country--those who have spent more years studying this issue than any 
of us in the Senate--has told us unequivocally that if you raise the 
price of cigarettes, you will reduce the number of kids who smoke. That 
is the reason the cost of cigarettes goes up.
  So the Senator and others who oppose this legislation seem to be all 
over the place. They are willing to accept the price increase. They are 
crying for the victims, but they don't want to give back the money to 
the real victims, and at the same time, they are saying this is a big 
tax bill. At the same time, they are willing to live with the price 
increase that is the ``big tax bill,'' as long as they give it back to 
the certain things they think are important. So what we are seeing is 
the greed factor played out on the floor of the Senate in the form of a 
lot of ideological grab bags that are going to try to get vouchers. I 
mean, we are going to have a voucher program here on education taken 
out of the hides of kids who we are trying to stop from smoking.
  The bottom line is that for every day this debate goes on, as our 
friends try to stop this legislation in its tracks, more American 
children begin smoking--3,000 a day. For the period of time that we 
have been on the floor of the Senate debating this, 60,000 kids have

[[Page S5751]]

started smoking, and 20,000 of those 60,000 kids will some day die 
early as a result of a tobacco-related disease. That is what this is 
about. Now, we keep hearing complaints about the amount of money that 
is somehow being spent.
  I just heard the Senator talk about $38,000 that is going to be spent 
per Native American on a cessation program. Well, here is another 
example of the kinds of distortion that we see in the debate.
  First of all, the amount of money that is made available under an 
authorization only, which has yet to conceivably be appropriated in an 
appropriate amount, is somewhere between $70 million and $196 million 
on an annual basis. Is that to go, as the Senator argued, just for 
cessation? The answer is no; that is not what it is for. If this were a 
real debate about the real issues that really deal with the facts, the 
Senator would note that it is--one of the critical components this bill 
has tried to recognize is the extraordinarily bad health status that 
exists on Indian reservations and within the Native American community, 
and it tries to deal with that by providing health care equipment, 
facilities, construction, repair of clinics themselves, and a whole 
group of inpatient and outpatient services. So the Senator from Texas 
may want to come to the floor and be cynical and/or sort of sarcastic 
about Native Americans and suggest that this bill is going to spend 
$38,000 per Native American to stop from smoking, but that is not what 
the bill says. That is not what the bill seeks to do. The bill seeks to 
rectify an enormous imbalance that for years has taken place in what is 
available in terms of health care overall, recognizing that all of that 
plays into any individual's ability to be able to be healthy and stop 
smoking and reduce other kinds of costs.

  We also heard the Senator talk at some length about this unfair tax 
burden on the average American of $1,015 that the person who smokes is 
going to pay in a household under, I think it was about $30,000 on an 
annual basis. The Senator's amendment on the marriage tax doesn't just 
deal with that $30,000-or-under individual. It goes up to about $50,000 
and, as I said earlier, rewards people. People are actually rewarded by 
the marriage tax, because there are some people, depending on how much 
money they earn and what their individual incomes are, who come out 
better under the current marriage structure in the Tax Code, not worse. 
They get rewarded, too, under the approach of the Senator from Texas.
  But far more importantly, the reality is that there are only four 
areas where funding is allocated in this legislation: Public health, 
farmers, research, and the States. Forty percent of the money that is 
raised in this legislation goes back to the States directly. That very 
conservative fundamental has been one of the things that the 
Republicans have fought for for years. It is called a block grant. 
There is a block grant of 40 percent of the money. It is interesting 
that the Senator from Texas and the Senator from Georgia don't take 
money out of the block grant. They do not take money out of the 
farmers. They don't take money out of research. They only go to the 
public health components of this bill and cut that by one-half or more. 
Here, it is actually considerably more. This is the funding 
distribution under the public health account. Under the public health 
account, which would fund cessation programs, counteradvertising, 
prevention and education, enforcement and learning, antismuggling and 
Indian health, they would actually take, I believe, 82 percent. That 
would be cut under this approach in order to go into exclusively the 
so-called drug war.
  Mr. President, if this were a fair-minded effort to try to deal with 
the problems of this legislation, you might want to try to approach 
this in a fairer distribution of how you are cutting the funds or how 
you want to fund the drug war. Some of the efforts the Senator from 
Georgia wants to make in funding I agree with completely. For years, I 
have said we don't have a real drug war in America and there is a lot 
more we could do. But to do it at the expense of those proven efforts 
that will reduce kids picking up the gateway drug, which is nicotine--
tobacco--doesn't make sense. It would be far fairer--if we are going to 
talk about all the money that is being raised and all the money that is 
being spent in this legislation, then why not grab back some of the 
money from the farmers, or from the research, or from the States? I 
think the answer to that is fairly obvious as to why it isn't 
happening. It describes the politics of precisely where we find 
ourselves today.
  Mr. President, we keep coming back to the reality. The Senator talks 
about the victims and the $1,015 they spend. Nobody is forcing them to 
do that. One should have a little sympathy, I suppose, because the 
tobacco companies so adroitly and intensely worked to get them addicted 
when they were young kids, recognizing that 86 percent of the adults in 
America who today smoke and are addicted began smoking as children.
  We ought to probably feel something about the compulsion that sends 
them to buy those cigarettes. But if, in fact, raising the price will 
reduce even some of them smoking, as the tobacco companies have 
acknowledged--the R.J. Reynolds memoranda, the Philip Morris memoranda, 
all document that adults were reduced in smoking by the price increases 
of the 1980s. So it stands to reason that they would be reduced in 
their smoking levels by this price increase in the late 1990s. But 
their price increase in the 1990s would be accompanied by very 
significant efforts to train professionals, to educate children, to 
reach into our schools, and create a climate within which the entire 
attitude about smoking and drugs and health will change.
  I would suggest respectfully to the Senator from Georgia that nothing 
would help our antidrug efforts more than some of the value-building, 
character-building efforts that are part of the counseling and 
cessation programs that build sufficient self-esteem and awareness 
among our young people that they will decide not to smoke. Quite 
clearly, if you have built up the courage and the capacity to say you 
are going to refuse a cigarette, you are most likely building the 
foundation to be the kind of person who can also say no to marijuana, 
which is a form of cigarette. So I think there is a real contradiction 
in what is happening here--that, unfortunately, to strip away the 
ability to be able to pursue these proven efforts is significant.
  In addition to that, one of the things that the Senator from Texas 
and others vilify so much is the category under counteradvertising. Mr. 
President, a number of tobacco industry documents make it clear how 
much the industry targeted young kids as young as 13 years old. While 
the Senator says, ``I accept the notion that the tobacco companies are 
evil for having done this and they would be found guilty for doing 
it,'' the fact is that it takes a certain counteradvertising effort, 
which is very expensive to counter, to contradict, and undo that 
targeting process. You can't just acknowledge it and walk away from it. 
You can't just say, ``I accept. Let's find them guilty, but we are 
going to give them probation or even less than that.'' The question is, 
Are you going to do something about undoing the consequences of it? The 
fact is that at present there is no national antitobacco public 
education campaign that counters the protobacco imagery that has been 
presented to both adults and children by the tobacco companies.
  Very few States have the resources to be able to undertake the kind 
of long-term, sustained effort necessary, I think Nancy Reagan proved 
beyond any doubt whatsoever in her steadfast and, frankly, significant 
campaign in the 1980s on the ``Just Say No'' Program. I join with my 
colleague in saying that I think there has been a retrenchment from 
that. I think we have gone backwards. I think the administration has 
dropped the ball to some degree in its efforts to help counter 
nationally the kind of efforts we want. ``Just Say No'' had a profound 
impact on at least casual use in this country, and we saw the figures 
go down. Why on Earth then, given that record, would we want to turn 
away from an effort to have the counter media effort here and have 
antitobacco advertisements?
  The 1994 Surgeon General's report indicates that the mass media are 
particularly appropriate channels for tobacco education among young 
people who are heavily exposed to and often greatly interested in the 
media. Several States, my own among them--

[[Page S5752]]

Massachusetts, California, and Arizona--have developed programs that 
are particularly effective. They work. We have seen a reduction in 
smoking as a consequence of those efforts. But we have learned that 
they have to be sustained and they need to be of even greater impact. 
That means creating this national strategy and having the funding to do 
it. So that is in here. That is one of the efforts that is being wiped 
out by the current proposal as well as by most of the criticisms that 
we have heard.
  And the cessation programs themselves--it is just like the debate I 
remember we had on the crime bill. People came to the floor of the 
Senate, and there was such scorn and derision about midnight 
basketball, and such scorn and derision about some of these programs 
that take place in the boys and girls clubs, or the YMCA or the YWCA. 
People were able to say those are somehow tax-and-spend programs.
  But what we have learned is that they really are the lifeline for a 
lot of kids in this country who have no parents at home, whose school 
doors shut at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and who are, according to the 
Carnegie Foundation report some 7 years ago, most likely to get into 
trouble either with an unwanted teenage pregnancy or with some problem 
with drugs, introduced on the street in the afternoons when there is no 
adult supervision or structure in their lives. That is a proven fact 
all across this country. Talk to the president of the Boys and Girls 
Club. Talk to any of the people who dedicate their lifetimes trying to 
take care of kids who are stranded, alone, without sufficient parental 
support. Those people will tell you it makes a difference to have an 
adult role model, to have adult supervision, to have structure in their 
lives.
  I recently went to a middle school in Charlestown, in Boston, and 
talked to a lot of kids in the middle school aged 10 to 14 years old. I 
was dumbstruck to learn that more than 15 percent of those kids aged 10 
to 14 were going home in the afternoon, at 2 o'clock, to households 
that had no adult in them for 4 to 5 hours, for the rest of the day. 
That is the kind of program that now meets with derision on the floor 
of the Senate, where, specifically targeted with respect to children, 
we would have the ability to reduce these kids' exposure to a lot of 
the vicissitudes of life, not the least of which would be smoking and/
or drug dealing and other kinds of problems that arise in the course of 
the day, unsupervised.
  We believe what the Surgeon General and other experts have suggested, 
which is that there are some 48 million Americans out there who 
currently smoke and want to quit, who would like to quit, and they 
spend billions of dollars every year on patches, on nicotine 
alternatives, on chewing gums, on counseling, on hypnosis, and on all 
kinds of other efforts just to quit smoking. But one of the most 
successful ways to quit smoking is to help kids never start.
  In Massachusetts, we have a program underway. We wish we could reach 
more kids. If we pass this legislation, we could reach more kids. But 
right now, limited as it is, we have been able to reach about a million 
kids in the State. We have been able to reduce smoking by 30 percent. 
That is a very significant level. That saves lives, saves money, and 
ultimately provides a much healthier country.
  So that is the choice here. My hope is that a little bit more common 
sense and a little less effort to stop this legislation in its tracks 
would guide some of the amending process we are going through. I will 
join my colleagues and say I think there is a lot of money here. I 
think some of it might, indeed, be better spent. There are ways we 
could constructively arrive at that. But if all we are going to do is 
come to the floor and fight about these amendments that carve out and 
carve out, with a whole lot of issues involved in them that have 
already proven very tricky and very contentious and very divisive on 
the Senate floor in previous incarnations, if we keep revisiting them, 
one can only interpret that, unfortunately, as an effort to either 
derail or slow down or stop the fundamental legislation we are trying 
to achieve ourselves.
  There is a simple bottom line here. You cannot argue this every 
single way--certainly, I suppose you can, and be inconsistent. That 
never bothered some people around here. But it seems to me if we are 
going to try to achieve a significant piece of legislation that will 
affect kids, you can't accept one notion that you ought to raise the 
price and then cut away the capacity to put into place the significant 
cessation, counteradvertising, and other kinds of efforts that would 
most impact the level of teenage smoking, which is what this 
legislation is all about.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I note Senator Stevens is on the floor 
desiring to speak. Might I ask, is he on a short timeframe? Does he 
want to speak now?
  Mr. STEVENS. No. I thank my colleague very much.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, there are no time limits, are there, on 
speeches at this point?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are no restrictions. We are under 
consent to adjourn at 12:30.
  Mr. DOMENICI. At 12:30; I hope I don't take that long.
  Mr. President, I wish I could have been on the floor when Senator 
Gramm spoke a little earlier, because I would have risen when he stated 
what we ought to try to do and what components we ought to try to agree 
upon to get a bill. I think he is right on. For those who were not 
listening, let me see if I can repeat.
  First of all, let me suggest, in the past--I have noticed that we get 
large groups of lobbyists in a room promoting causes in only two 
circumstances. One, when there is a giant tax bill or tax reform 
measure, the halls are lined with them. That prompted Senator Dole, 
once, to speak of the ``Gucci gultch.'' The only other time I see a 
large group in a room joined together lobbying, sending notes, watching 
television, is when there is a huge amount of money to spend. I have 
not seen large groups for any other causes. Guess what. In this case, 
it is obvious. The proponents of the bill have nothing in mind for tax 
cuts. So this large group meeting, with just scores of people watching 
every speech on the Senate floor and then sending people out to all the 
offices to get things done is because this is a giant spending bill.
  There is no one more concerned about what is happening to young 
people and tobacco than I am. I was a smoker for a long time. I didn't 
start when I was a youngster, however. Fortunately, for me, I quit. It 
has been 8 or 9 years--I can't remember--and I am very lucky. I have a 
large group of wonderful children and not a single one smokes. My wife 
doesn't smoke. I can hardly imagine what a burden I was on them when I 
had these cigarettes around all the time. I even remember the chairman 
of the Budget Committee, the distinguished Senator from Florida, 
Senator Chiles, who had to sit there while I smoked through all these 
markups. He bought me one of those suction machines. I would have to 
put my cigarettes on it and then it would suck up all the smoke. At 
least, he said, I could make it through these 10- to 12-hour markups.
  But, frankly, if we knew how to make our children quit smoking with 
$150 billion, and we said that is going to really keep them off 
cigarettes, and cancer rates are going to come down and the adult 
population is going to imitate the kids and they are going to stop 
smoking--because we have not talked about adults. I mean, they are 
smoking, too.
  As a matter of fact, those in the health business of the United 
States and health care--clearly something admirable and something we 
are all concerned about--they are the lobbyists for this bill. They all 
started off with something in mind. They had their pet projects, and 
everybody would talk about them as if they were related to teenage 
smoking. Everybody would come to the floor and speak about the 
statistics on teenagers smoking and talk about ``that is what we were 
here for,'' while the provision of the bill that had to do with teenage 
smoking is about one fiftieth of the bill in terms of pages. The rest 
of it is programs, programs we are supposed to fund and money we are 
supposed to give back to the States.
  I wonder how many Senators know that of the amount we give back to 
the States, we tell them how to spend at

[[Page S5753]]

least half of it. When you look at the list, one wonders what the 
different programs the States are going to spend the money on have to 
do with teenage smoking. They have nothing to do with it. But it is 
suggested the Governors chose the programs--and they ought to have the 
right to--and we ought to comport with it and say ``that is all you can 
use it for,'' because, after all, they spent so much State tax money 
taking care of those people in their States who got lung cancer and 
were hospitalized, and had these very large treatment expenditures that 
came out of Medicaid.
  Let me tell you, it is absolutely amazing that we are so willing to 
put a huge portion--40 percent--of what we are supposed to take in 
under this bill to compensate the States for health care costs when the 
big health care costs were actually paid for by the U.S. Government 
taxpayers and the U.S. Government, because Medicare and Medicaid, in 
particular Medicare, is an Federal program, not a State program. This 
bill doesn't put a penny in it. It is still going bankrupt because of 
the enormous drag on that program of more than $25 billion a year for 
cancer-related smoking diseases.
  Medicaid, I know in my State, is paid for 75 percent by the Federal 
Government. Some States were 50; some States were 65. I think it is 
more than logical that a very large portion of anything we get here, if 
we put this together, should either go back to the taxpayers or will go 
back to the U.S. Government to help defray the expenses that we put 
into programs, like Medicare, which tax the American working men and 
women in a very, very regressive manner.
  Having said that, I believe, and I state publicly right here today, 
that I think a bill can be put together. I am not sure that it isn't 
too late for many because they are already part of the group that wants 
to spend all this money on all these different programs that are 
supposed to be directed at our children smoking, but I believe there 
ought to be a part of this program that goes back to the States. I 
don't know that there has to be 40 percent, and I don't know that it 
has to be for the programs that are dictated in this bill for the 
States.
  I also believe there ought to be a major antismoking and antidrug 
component to this bill, and it ought to be rather substantial. I 
certainly compliment the distinguished Senator from Georgia for the 
amendment that he has which brings front and center an even more 
disastrous habit which is catching on with our teenagers, more 
disastrous than smoking, and that has to do with illegal and illicit 
drugs from marijuana to the hard stuff, to cocaine. Now, the new surge 
is even something different from cocaine. We thought we were doing some 
good in that regard. Now heroin is back in vogue and use is growing. I 
compliment Senators Coverdell and Craig for offering this amendment.
  If we decided to give back to the States some but not necessarily as 
much money as this bill says, if we had a major program in illegal drug 
prevention akin to the amendment which the distinguished Senator from 
Georgia and his cosponsor, Senator Craig, have put before us, and then 
we did something for research through the NIH, or related, and gave the 
taxpayers of this country a break, especially those who are going to 
see the very onerous cost of cigarettes impinge on their lives because 
cigarettes may be as high as $3.50 to $4.50 a pack, if a bill like this 
passes, collecting a rather substantial amount of money--and I believe 
any bill ought to have a component which says let's reduce taxes, and 
since almost everybody on both sides of the aisle--maybe we quibble 
over details--but everybody knows the most antifamily, antichildren 
provision of the Tax Code is the one that punishes families who have 
two members working for a living as compared to two single people 
making the same amount--the marriage penalty. It is antifamily, it is 
antichildren, and clearly, that ought to be fixed. This is a rare 
opportunity to do that. If we can come together on a stripped-down bill 
that got rid of a lot of the things in this bill that really are not 
necessary and are not directly related to the problem at hand, we might 
make some headway.
  I also remind everyone that whenever any of us come here and say 
let's not pass a brand new major tax-and-spend bill under the 
nomenclature and title of helping our children quit smoking--Secretary 
Shalala said that if, indeed, the FDA regulations that they propose 
could be put in effect--and I will add, if they are constitutional--
that they alone have been predicted by the Administration to reduce 
smoking by 50 percent in 7 years. That is a rather significant proposal 
and a rather significant assessment by an administration about teenage 
smoking.
  Why are we in such a hurry to put this big tax on and spend it for 
all these other things under the emphasis--I think ill-placed 
emphasis--that we are helping people quit smoking, when if we just 
tried those FDA regulations, if they are constitutional, they would 
restrain it by 50 percent in 7 years? I doubt we would achieve a higher 
goal even if we enact this huge tax and spend bill. In fact, I am not 
at all sure that we will do better.
  If you look around the country, as I have in my home State, New 
Mexico recently completed, I say to my friend from Georgia, a drug, 
alcohol, and tobacco use survey of public high school students around 
the State of New Mexico. Not surprising, cigarette use has increased 
slightly. It is now 54 percent at the 12th grade level. In 1993, it was 
47.
  What is more shocking about the results of the survey is how much 
illegal drug use has increased in the past 5 years. In my State--I was 
looking at the chart which Senator Coverdell used--and in my State, 
marijuana use by 12th graders is up 38 percent; cocaine is up 144 
percent; and 51 percent of the students in New Mexico who smoke 
marijuana said they got it from friends at school. We know that drug 
use often correlates with illegal behavior. I said ``often,'' I didn't 
say ``always.''
  Sixty-three percent of the kids detained in New Mexico's juvenile 
justice system for violent behavior reported they used drugs on a 
weekly basis prior to their arrests. So nationally, the statistics are 
no more encouraging, and the Senator from Georgia, Senator Coverdell, 
has stated those in his emphasis as to why we ought to adopt his 
amendment.
  I support that amendment because it goes after illegal drug use from 
a number of fronts, and I am particularly pleased that in addition to 
promoting an anti-illegal drug use campaign, it does give some 
additional resources to those who are out there in the trenches 
fighting this war.
  I say to Senator Coverdell, I suggest that in the State of New 
Mexico, a major group of policemen--probably 40 percent of the law 
enforcement in the State is one police entity--they informed us and put 
out an article which they really believe there ought to be more money 
put into law enforcement. Particularly I will tell you what they are 
very worried about. They are worried about the fact they are going to 
get stuck with all the black market and illegal sales of tobacco, and 
they are going to be the ones to go out and enforce it. They truly 
believe at these prices it is going to be enormous in a State like 
ours; that it will come across from Mexico and all different places, 
and they are going to just be besieged.
  Obviously, I have not thought of a way to help local law enforcement 
in this bill, but it is not too far-fetched as part of that provision 
which seeks to help us with reference to the black market, that we 
ought to give some thought to our local law enforcement people.
  This afternoon or tomorrow I am going to speak on another subject, 
but I will say to Senators, I am continually amazed at what I find in 
this bill as page after page is looked at.
  I have two reports here. One is called ``Reducing the Health 
Consequences of Smoking,'' 1989. The other is called ``The Health 
Consequences of Using Smokeless Tobacco, Advisory Committee to the 
Surgeon General.'' And there is a third report referred to in a 
provision of this bill that we can't even get the report, so we have 
only the executive summary of 1986, a report to the Surgeon General.
  All I want to say about it right now is, believe it or not, there is 
a provision in this bill--I do not know who wrote it --but it says the 
burden of proof in the courts of America will be shifted to the tobacco 
companies with reference to any illness, disease, infirmity, that is

[[Page S5754]]

reported in any three of these reports--even if it is mentioned. It 
means all you have to do is go file in the future, file a cookie-cutter 
lawsuit, and the tobacco company must disprove that your ailment or 
your disease or your condition came from smoking.
  This afternoon, or when I get the floor again, I will go through a 
list of what that is going to mean. I mean, if ever--if ever--there was 
a lawyers' relief bill, beyond that which we have been discussing in 
terms of their recompense for the settlements, it is here.
  We have been looking around for tort reform. And here we have exactly 
the wrong kind of tort reform. I do not believe very many Senators know 
that this provision is in this bill. I do not know whether I will try 
to take it out. I would just like to make sure it is well known.
  I do not want to leave the impression, and never have, that tobacco 
companies should not pay for what they have wrought on this society in 
terms of misleading advertising and the effects of smoking. But to say 
that three reports that compiles the research of every ailment or 
disease that has been researched to try and find a causal relationship 
between that ailment and cigarette smoking should be incorporated by 
reference in this bill is not a good way to legislate. Under this 
provision a plaintiff would not have to worry about proving it anymore, 
just allege it, sue for it, and the tobacco company must then prove 
that they did not cause it.
  That provision has been researched of late, and we will talk about it 
in a little more detail--how many thousands and thousands of lawsuits 
that would precipitate from people with diseases and ailments who never 
even gave a thought until now that they might find somebody who would 
pay for that; namely, the tobacco companies.
  So I say to those who are very, very well-intentioned, who support 
this measure, I have said before--and the bill was redone--I said 
before that it was far too cumbersome, had way too many agencies and 
bureaus and bureaucratic innovations in it that nobody should really 
support. It was fixed somewhat. And I still seriously question how it 
got put together, how these kinds of provisions could find themselves 
in there with no discussion.
  To me, this is one bill that I am very glad is taking a long time to 
get through the Senate. We normally say discussion on the Senate floor 
is good because it lets everybody understand what is going on and what 
the issues are. Frankly, I do not think we would have found out about 
all the things in this bill if we had not been down here for a couple 
weeks. It is just a very difficult job, very hard to do.
  So let me summarize. I believe the amendment ought to pass, because 
if we are going to raise significant money, as purported in this bill, 
we ought to go after more than just the problems that teenage tobacco 
smoking brings to our country. We ought to try our best, in a very 
reasonable and well directed way, to spend money trying to get a better 
handle on illicit and illegal drug use by our children and, in fact, by 
the American population. So I hope that passes. I hope cloture is not 
invoked.
  But I say that I believe it is beginning to come to the surface that 
a bill could be put together. It surely cannot be the bill that is 
before us. As a matter of fact, I think probably it ought to just get 
redrafted, if people want to put a bill together. Essentially, it ought 
to take care of the States in some way, not necessarily 40 percent. It 
ought to have a very significant tax cut, especially for those American 
families who are going to pay the tobacco tax--pay most of the tobacco 
tax. If we do that, it ought to be directed at the marriage penalty, 
perhaps some health related tax provisions, but that ought to take the 
lead. And we ought to put a major program together in trying to really 
declare war through advertising and other initiatives to aid in the 
prevention of smoking among kids. And, as I indicated, it is corollary 
with reference to illegal drugs.

  Another component could be research at NIH on cancer and related 
kinds of research. And that is probably doable in this country. And if 
you are going to spend some additional money, you can probably justify 
it there as well as anywhere else, although I would suggest that if you 
have a big bill like this with a lot of resources, we can bring 
amendments to the floor, one after another, showing areas where the 
U.S. Government is not doing what it ought to do in certain areas of 
endeavor that are our responsibility as a nation. And if it is needed, 
and doing a better job, we could have a myriad of amendments that we 
could let people vote on and decide what to do.
  For instance, I give you one. It is totally unrelated, but some 
provisions in this bill are also. When will the U.S. Government pay for 
Indian schools in America?--which are falling down around the kids, 
totally ill-equipped, are way beyond anything we would have non-Indian 
kids in in the United States. And the only entity that is supposed to 
pay for it is the Federal Government. It is not a school board, not a 
State; it is the Federal Government. There is a backlog of over $750 
million. And we are leaving those kids out there, watching the suicide 
rates go up, watching the illegal drug rate go up, watching all the 
social problems they have, and every year we take care of one or two 
schools.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator should be reminded we have an 
agreement to recess at 12:30.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I am sorry I went over. I yield the floor.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, first, I thank the Senator from New 
Mexico for the enlightened remarks we just heard on this very important 
subject. I always enjoy the opportunity to hear his analysis. I hope he 
will return later this afternoon and continue with it.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. DURBIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. I make an inquiry. I know we have the agreement to recess 
at 12:30. Is there not a vote at 2:15 when we return?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct. We have a cloture vote at 
2:15.
  Mr. DURBIN. I was looking for an opportunity to speak for 5 minutes. 
I ask unanimous consent that, after that vote, I have that chance in 
general debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Thank you, Mr. President.

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