[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 79 (Wednesday, June 17, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6451-S6462]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        NATIONAL TOBACCO POLICY AND YOUTH SMOKING REDUCTION ACT

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator 
from Montana, Mr. Baucus, be added as a cosponsor of the Ford amendment 
pending before the Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. FORD. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. LUGAR addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, on behalf of the leader, I ask unanimous 
consent that the Senate now resume consideration of the tobacco 
legislation, S. 1415, for debate only until the hour of 3 p.m. today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LUGAR. I thank the Chair. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
following members of my staff be given the privilege of the floor for 
the duration of the debate on the current bill: Hunter Bates, Robin 
Bowen, David Hovermale, and Kyle Simmons.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, we have been on the tobacco bill now 
for four weeks. What is abundantly clear to this Senator is that the 
best favor we can do for the American people and, in particular, for 
Kentuckians who are tobacco producers is to defeat this bill. President 
Clinton and the majority of the Democrats have been pushing this bill 
for some time, going back to the 1996 campaign. A typical American 
family today already pays 38.2 percent of its total income in taxes at 
all levels of government. This tobacco tax bill before us will increase 
taxes by more than $600 billion, some argue even up to $800 billion 
over the life of the bill, and 60 percent of that tax will fall on 
working people who make less than $30,000 a year.
  Let me repeat: 60 percent of the taxes that we are raising will fall 
on Americans making $30,000 per year. Mr. President, more than anything 
else, what the tobacco bill is about is tax and spend.
  The original cause is a noble cause around which I guess virtually 
all of the Senate is unified, and that is the question of confronting 
the problem of teenagers and smoking. We know, of course, that only 2 
percent of smokers are teenagers. We wish they would not engage in this 
habit, and we ought to do everything we can to deter that behavior. But 
this bill, this $600 billion or $700 billion or $800 billion bill, this 
tax increase targeted at people in America making $30,000 or less is 
about big government and big spending and big taxes.
  A good starting place would be to defeat this bill, which is not in 
the best interest of the American people and certainly not in the best 
interest of the people of Kentucky for whom this is a particularly 
sensitive issue. The biggest beneficiaries of the bill before us, in 
addition to the Government and literally legions of new agencies, are a 
number of lawyers who are going to make a substantial amount of money 
even with the Gorton amendment yesterday.
  So a good starting place in discussing this issue is what ought to be 
done with the overall bill, and it has been the view of this Senator 
from Kentucky that the appropriate fate for this bill is defeat, the 
sooner the better.
  Should the bill not be defeated, it creates a catastrophe for the 
Commonwealth of Kentucky. We have over 60,000 farm families who derive 
some or all of their income from the annual growing of a legal crop.
  They are engaged in an honorable activity. They are raising their 
families, educating their children, obeying the law. And here comes the 
Federal Government with an effort to destroy this legal industry. And 
make no mistake about it, this bill is designed to bring the tobacco 
industry to its knees. And that goal and design is pretty clear, with 
the amendments that have been passed so far, including providing no 
immunity from lawsuits whatsoever for the tobacco companies, which, as 
we all know, was part of the original settlement agreed to last 
summer--no immunity is going to be provided in this bill for any kind 
of lawsuit of any sort.
  We doubled the so-called look-back provision--clearly, in this 
Senator's view, an unconstitutional attempt to make the company 
responsible for anyone who chooses to use its product. I do not know 
any reputable lawyer, Mr. President, either in or out of the Senate, 
who thinks that provision is constitutional. And, of course, there are 
advertising restrictions in this bill. Nobody that I know thinks those 
can be imposed by the Government either.
  The industry pulled out of this a long time ago--several months ago--
when they saw what form it was taking. So make no mistake about it, Mr. 
President, this bill before the Senate, in its current form, is 
designed to destroy the tobacco industry.
  Now, the victims of that are the 60,000 farm families in Kentucky who 
raise this legal crop every year. And in the wake of this effort to 
destroy this industry, it has produced a significant debate in our 
State about what to do.

[[Page S6452]]

  Now, if El Nino hits, the Federal Government steps in and helps the 
victims. In this particular instance, the Federal Government itself is 
causing the disaster. And it seemed to this Senator appropriate, if the 
Government were going to create this disaster, then the government 
ought to provide a lifeline or assistance or help to those victims of 
this Government-made disaster.
  And after a good deal of thought over many months, Mr. President, I 
concluded that if the Government were going to try to destroy this 
industry, the appropriate response was for the Government to provide 
assistance to the farm families who grow this legal commodity, and to 
do it as generously as possible over the shortest period of time.
  So it was my conclusion, Mr. President, that the Senator from 
Indiana--certainly no friend of tobacco, as he himself would readily 
admit--was prepared to engage in what I thought was a generous act in 
the context of this impending disaster.
  Where I differ with the Senator from Indiana is, I think the tobacco 
program has served us well. It has served us very well in Kentucky. It 
has allowed us to hold on to smaller farms a lot longer than we would 
otherwise have been able to hold on to them, even though, Mr. 
President, I must confess, in all candor, there has been consolidation 
even with the program.
  When I came to the Senate in January of 1985, the average tobacco 
grower in Kentucky had about an acre--roughly 2,500 pounds, which is 
about an acre. Today, the average tobacco grower in Kentucky has 4.5 
acres. So you can see that even with the program, consolidation is 
occurring. Without the program, unquestionably, consolidation would 
occur very rapidly. And the tragedy of the loss of the program is that 
the income, which has been divided up among an awful lot of medium- and 
low-income people, would in all likelihood consolidate into large 
farms. And I do not applaud that. I would rather keep the tobacco 
program. And we can keep the tobacco program if we can beat this bill.
  So, Mr. President, let me say, the first order for this Senator is to 
defeat this bill. I have done nothing to promote this bill at any point 
along the way. I opposed it in 1997, 1998, 2 months ago, last month, a 
week ago, yesterday, and today. This is a terrible bill for America and 
a particularly bad bill for Kentucky.
  But if it is to become law, the question you have to ask is, What is 
the best approach for the victims of this law, the tobacco growers of 
Kentucky? It is my view, in that context, that the Senator from Indiana 
has it right, that if the Government is trying to destroy this 
industry, the best thing the Government can do is to provide a generous 
transition payment to these growers on the way to the free market--not 
my first choice, but my choice in the context of the bill that 
President Clinton and the vast majority of Democrats in this body want 
to see become law.
  Mr. President, there are two competing proposals. One proposal, 
sponsored by my colleague from Kentucky, seeks to hold on to the 
tobacco program for the next 25 years. If it were not for this bill, we 
would have a chance of holding on to the tobacco program without any 
legislation, because this bill is what creates the problem, not that 
instantly tobacco becomes less controversial. But any time this kind of 
bill is seriously contemplated in Congress, it seems to me the only 
solution to that is to provide as generous a compensation as possible 
for our growers over the shortest period of time, because the program 
is going to end in the context of this kind of Government pile-on 
designed to destroy the industry.
  So, Mr. President, I stated my case as best I could and, if I may say 
so, I think pretty well, in a recent op-ed in the Lexington Herald-
Leader at home, which I ask unanimous consent to be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                  We Don't Have 25 Years for LEAF Act

                          (By Mitch McConnell)

       One of President Bill Clinton's signature political 
     maneuvers occurred early in his administration when he and 
     Vice President Al Gore declared war on tobacco--portraying 
     Kentucky's leading agricultural commodity as a modern-day 
     plague. The anti-tobacco zealots and an army of greedy 
     plaintiffs' lawyers eager to prey on the tobacco industry 
     created the most serious threat ever arrayed against tobacco 
     farmers.
       Disaster has loomed for Kentucky's tobacco farmers since 
     Clinton took office and is now manifested in the form of the 
     $850 billion McCain bill which sailed out of the Senate 
     Commerce Committee 19-1, with Sen. Wendell Ford's support. 
     Thus was the death knell sounded for tobacco.
       Liberal Democrats in Congress have eagerly piled on, vowing 
     to slay the tobacco industry generally and the farmers' 
     price-support program in particular. Senator Dick Durbin (D-
     IL) venomously wails that tobacco is the only government-
     supported crop ``with a body count,'' and lambasts the 
     tobacco program as ``. . . subsidizing the growth, 
     production, and processing of a product which kills hundreds 
     of thousands . . . .''
       Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), the most influential Democrat in 
     the Senate, decries tobacco with characteristic hyperbole, 
     charging the industry with ``the insidious and shameful 
     poisoning of generations of children.'' Durbin and Kennedy 
     sentiment, shared by nearly all their liberal Democrat 
     colleagues, does not auger for any easing up in the war 
     against tobacco. Quite the contrary.
       Kentucky's farmers are in this anti-tobacco squad's 
     crosshairs. Senator Ford and I, as always, are unified in our 
     goal of fighting for Kentucky farmers. Regrettably, we 
     disagree over the best means for achieving this protection 
     and security.
       Kentucky farmers stand at a critical crossroads, presented 
     with two alternatives for survival. Senate Agriculture 
     Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN) offers farmers a 
     three-year phase-out of the tobacco program that would 
     provide the average quota owner with meaningful annual 
     transition payments of $26,500 and the freedom to continue to 
     grow tobacco in a free market, forever.
       The LEAF Act, proposed by retiring Senator Ford, offers 
     farmers two very different paths: a buyout path or a gamble 
     that the program could continue for another quarter-century. 
     If the average quota owner chooses to go down the Ford buyout 
     path, he would receive a 10-year buyout with annual payments 
     of only $8,000--with the added proviso that he would be 
     barred from growing tobacco for the next 25 years! With such 
     an unpalatable buy-out option, farmers would likely buy into 
     the LEAF Act's contention that the tobacco program could be 
     preserved until the year 2023--even though the government is 
     currently phasing out other agriculture commodity programs 
     like corn, wheat and soybeans.
       After extensive consideration and consultation with 
     Kentucky growers, I firmly believe that the Lugar plan is the 
     wiser course because the LEAF Act is ultimately 
     unsustainable--a nice idea, but an unwarranted gamble in what 
     promises to be an increasingly hostile anti-tobacco 
     environment. In short, the Lugar plan is the best option in a 
     bad situation, the optimal approach to ensure that our 
     farming families and their communities are not grievously 
     wounded in the escalating anti-tobacco war being led by 
     Commander-in-Chief Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and 
     their eager lieutenants in the liberal Democratic 
     congressional caucus.
       This unprecedented assault on tobacco--a legal product--has 
     permanently altered the political landscape to the extreme 
     detriment of tobacco farmers. As difficult as it is to 
     understand in Kentucky, where tobacco is a way-of-life, the 
     liberals in Washington most closely associate tobacco with a 
     cause of death.
       Nevertheless, Senator Ford and I, joined by precious few 
     colleagues, have for years been fighting a rear-guard action 
     in defense of tobacco farmers, staving off the anti-tobacco 
     zealots with every parliamentary maneuver we could muster. 
     But Clinton gave the green light to punish the tobacco 
     industry into extinction; and virtually every governmental 
     and private-sector force--outside of Kentucky and North 
     Carolina--has followed suit.
       On the home front, politicians like Scotty Baesler and farm 
     bureaucrats like the Burley Co-op's Rod Kuegel and Danny 
     McKinney are exploiting the tobacco growers' terrible plight 
     with shrill rhetoric, unproductive attacks and politics as 
     usual. Contrary to these attacks, I firmly believe Kentucky 
     farmers understand the political and economic ramifications 
     of the highly-charged anti-tobacco environment. A Herald-
     Leader poll found that 70 percent of Kentucky farmers who 
     expressed an opinion said that the program would be gone in 
     less than five years. Similarly, the Tobacco Fairness 
     Coalition has reported that 63 percent of growers in Kentucky 
     and Tennessee favor Senator Lugar's front-loaded phase-out of 
     the tobacco program that pays farmers $8 a pound.
       The LEAF Act has been criticized from all sides on a number 
     of different issues. Even Sen. Ford's long-time Democratic 
     friends in the Senate have expressed serious doubt about the 
     viability of his plan. Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE) recently stated 
     that he is ``troubled by'' the cost of Senator Ford's plan 
     and declared on the Senate floor: ``I have a very difficult 
     time voting for something that has $28 billion for tobacco 
     farmers . . . .''
       Moreover, I am terribly troubled by the fact that LEAF 
     discriminates against Kentucky farmers, inexplicably treating 
     them worse than North Carolina farmers. For example, if a 
     Kentucky farmer takes the LEAF

[[Page S6453]]

     buyout, he is forbidden from growing tobacco for the next 25 
     years. Since the average age of a Kentucky tobacco farmer is 
     60, the LEAF buyout is effectively a lifetime ban. On the 
     other hand, a North Carolina quota owner receives a 
     guaranteed buyout under LEAF and is still allowed to continue 
     growing tobacco. This is simply not fair.
       Thoughtful newspapers in the heart of tobacco country have 
     surveyed the tobacco landscape and concluded that the tobacco 
     program is mortally wounded. In the words of the Paducah Sun: 
     ``[The] ultimate fate [of the tobacco program] seems sealed. 
     How can [the] program survive indefinitely when the 
     administration, Congress, health groups and public opinion 
     are arrayed so solidly against smoking?''
       Or as the Daily News in Bowling Green concluded: ``Hating 
     tobacco is popular. This national mood spells an end--and 
     soon--to federal programs seen as supportive of the `evil 
     weed.' McConnell has stated the facts. They are hard. But 
     they are the facts.'' The Courier-Journal also acknowledged 
     that my decision to support the Lugar plan was ``a reasonable 
     and defensible course.''
       As much as I would like to promise farmers 25 more years of 
     a federal tobacco program, I cannot in good conscience be 
     complicitous in handing out such a false promise to the 
     thousands of Kentucky families whose lives would thereafter 
     hang in the balance and twist in hostile political winds. The 
     combined forces of Clinton, Gore, opportunistic Democrats in 
     Congress and the nation's liberal media, have made tobacco 
     public enemy No. 1. In sum, I simply refuse to sell farmers 
     on the dreamy illusion of a new 25-year tobacco program.
       Contrary to the caricature of my position by the 
     politically-motivated and woefully ill-informed former 
     Democrat State Sen. John Berry and his poet brother, my 
     ``sole prerogative'' is to provide certainty and protection 
     to Kentucky's farming families. We should allow our farmers 
     and communities to take the cash-in-hand and not force them 
     into a high-stakes crapshoot. In the words of the Owensboro 
     Messenger-Inquirer: ``This may be the last chance farmers 
     have before it all goes up in smoke.'' Nostalgia for the past 
     may be good for poets, but not for policymakers.

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as you can imagine, this is a much 
discussed issue in Kentucky. Some people think the LEAF Act is the way 
to go; some people think the Lugar proposal is the way to go. 
Interestingly enough, a number of newspapers, having surveyed the 
landscape and having looked at the issue, have concluded that the 
Senator from Indiana--not, again, thought of as any friend of tobacco--
and the Senator from Kentucky, who has spent most of his career 
fighting, along with the senior Senator from Kentucky, for tobacco, 
have it right, that in the context of this kind of bill, the only 
rational response is to try to provide as much compensation as 
possible.
  In fact, the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, the daily paper in 
Owensboro--one of our major cities and one of our major papers--had an 
editorial on May 24, the headline of which was, ``McConnell may have 
right idea, Lugar's plan could ultimately benefit tobacco farmers more 
than Ford's.''
  Now, reasonable people can differ about what is the appropriate thing 
to do in the face of impending disaster. You can go down with the ship 
or you can go for the lifeboats. And what the Senator from Indiana is 
doing here is offering a lifeboat; and, interestingly enough, after you 
get in the lifeboat, you are still free to row.
  In other words, under the Lugar proposal, when you go on to the free 
market, it is indeed free; people are still entitled to grow tobacco, a 
legal product, if they want to. Under the competing proposal, the LEAF 
proposal, there is a so-called voluntary buyout, but, candidly, it is 
not very attractive. If you take the voluntary buyout, it takes you 10 
years to get your money. In the first year, the $8 presumably would 
still be worth $8; in the tenth year, the ag economist on the Senate 
Agriculture Committee, of which I am a member, says it is worth about 
$5.13. So your money erodes over a 10-year period.
  In addition to that, if you accept the voluntary buyout, you cannot 
grow tobacco. Even though you are in a free market, the Government 
tells you, you cannot grow tobacco. And, even more mysterious, under 
the same LEAF proposal, there is a mandatory buyout for flue-cured 
tobacco--that kind of tobacco grown in the Carolinas and Virginia--a 
mandatory buyout. But after it is over, you are free to grow tobacco.
  So I think, clearly, the purpose of the LEAF Act was to discourage 
any exit from the tobacco business. The buyout is not attractive, and 
it is designed to sort of hitch you up to a declining market created by 
a Government pile-on.
  So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the editorial in the 
Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Messenger-Inquirer, May 24, 1998]

                     McConnell May Have Right Idea


 lugar's plan could ultimately benefit tobacco farmers more than Ford's

       Tobacco farmers may be upset with U.S. Sen. Mitch 
     McConnell, but ultimately he may be doing them more good than 
     harm.
       McConnell did the once unthinkable last week--he sided with 
     Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar on a plan to end the federal 
     tobacco price support system.
       McConnell said when he first came to the Senate in 1985, 
     there were seven tobacco-related votes. ``Tobacco was a 
     sleepy, regional issue to which most members of Congress did 
     not pay much attention,'' McConnell said.
       The politics of tobacco have changed. In the current 
     Congress there have been 29 tobacco-related votes, McConnell 
     said, including one last summer in which crop insurance for 
     tobacco farmers barely passed.
       McConnell cited a statewide poll that found 70 percent of 
     the respondents thought the tobacco support program would be 
     dead in less than five years.
       Siding with Lugar is in direct opposition with Kentucky's 
     senior senator Wendell Ford of Owensboro. Ford's plan would 
     continue price supports, offer $8 per pound to cover farmers' 
     losses and would provide $28.5 billion over 25 years to 
     assist tobacco farmers and communities who suffer because of 
     decline in tobacco demand and jobs.
       Ford is doing what he is supposed to do--taking care of the 
     concerns of his constituents. In a different way McConnell is 
     doing the same, although tobacco farmers may not yet see it.
       Just a few years ago, Ford's plan would have been better 
     for Kentucky tobacco farmers. But tobacco is in trouble, and 
     with Ford leaving Washington at the end of this year, there 
     will be one less experienced voice in favor of the support 
     program.
       McConnell recognizes this and is trying to bridge the gap 
     between the two sides on price supports.
       McConnell is not simply cozying up to Lugar's initial plan, 
     which we still believe was overly punitive. Lugar's initial 
     plan was to pay those who hold quotas to grow tobacco $8 per 
     pound to get out of the business. Those who wanted to 
     continue to grow would do so under free market conditions, 
     but Lugar proposed transitional payments over three years to 
     wean farmers off the program.
       At McConnell's request, the Lugar plan now allows farmers 
     to continue growing tobacco during the phase-out program. And 
     sharecroppers and those who lease quotas to grow tobacco--
     initially left out of Lugar's plan--would receive $4 per 
     pound during the buyout.
       Also new at McConnell's urging was $1 billion over five 
     years for rural communities hit hard by the reduction in 
     tobacco revenue. That money would be invested in education 
     and retraining, and to assist warehouse owners and operators.
       We share a legitimate conflict of opinion on this issue 
     with, we expect, many Kentuckians. The global economy has 
     turned to a free market on tobacco, and some would surely 
     claim it wrong for the American government to continue 
     artificially maintaining higher prices.
       It would be easier to embrace that position if we lived in 
     Montana, Ohio or New Hampshire. But we live in Kentucky, a 
     farming state in which 25 percent of total farm income is 
     from tobacco sales. Any movement that would ultimately cut 
     prices more than in half for tobacco must be met with 
     concern.
       But McConnell obviously feels that this may be the best 
     chance for tobacco farmers to recoup some lucrative prices. 
     It is conceivable tobacco opponents will simply end the price 
     support program in a few years without any sort of 
     transitional buyout.
       This makes it imperative that both alternative crops and 
     new markets for tobacco be found for Kentucky farmers. 
     Biosource Technologies is working on exciting research using 
     tobacco in the development of pharmaceuticals.
       McConnell is too savvy a politician to make this move 
     without a firm belief that the majority of his constituents 
     favor it. Tobacco is in trouble no matter what McConnell 
     supports. This may be the last chance farmers have before it 
     all goes up in smoke.

  Mr. McCONNELL. And the Paducah Sun, Mr. President, in the far western 
part of our State, in taking a look at the situation, reached the 
conclusion that the Senator from Indiana and the junior Senator from 
Kentucky probably had it right, that in the context of this kind of 
bill, the rational response is to provide a generous buyout as rapidly 
as possible on to the free market.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the editorial in the Paducah 
Sun of May 23 of this year be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S6454]]

                  [From the Paducah Sun, May 23, 1998]

                              Smoking Bomb


                   Tobacco buy-out a reasonable idea

       Mitch McConnell's tobacco bomb has exploded with stunning 
     force throughout the state he represents. Nearly in unison, 
     Democrats and farm groups have denounced his buyout proposal 
     in the strongest terms, and his fellow Kentucky Republicans 
     are keeping quiet. Conservatives from outside the tobacco 
     belt are criticizing the Kentuckian's plan as too generous. 
     So politically, the senator's idea looks like a loser. As a 
     matter of policy, it is worth a cooler appraisal.
       Sen. McConnell has signed onto Indiana colleague Richard 
     Lugar's legislation to close out the federal tobacco support 
     program over three years by buying up the production quotas 
     at $8 a pound. Participation would be mandatory, but in the 
     end, farmers would be free to grow as much leaf as they 
     wished and sell it in an unregulated market.
       The alternative by his Democratic counterpart, Sen. Wendell 
     Ford, would give farmers the option of selling their quotas, 
     also for $8 a pound, over 10 years, but those who take the 
     money would have to quit growing the crop. For others, the 
     price subsidies would remain in place.
       Gov. Paul Patton, the three Democratic senatorial 
     candidates, the burley tobacco organization, and the Kentucky 
     Farm Bureau all embrace the Ford proposal. So does Republican 
     Rep. Jim Bunning, his party's likely nominee for the U.S. 
     Senate seat this year, which is a fair indication of the 
     political lay of the land in Kentucky.
       The competing plans are substantially different, but have 
     at least one major goal in common. Both are designed to 
     cushion the impending blow for tobacco growers in a social 
     and political environment that is increasingly hostile to 
     cigarettes and smoking.
       Which proposal is superior as national policy--or better 
     for the growers (which is not necessarily the same thing)--
     depends largely on the future of the tobacco program.
       The Lugar-McConnell plan is premised on the belief that the 
     tobacco subsidy is on its way out no matter what and the best 
     deal for farmers is a short-term cash buyout.
       State Democrats are far more optimistic about the leaf 
     program. The accuse Sen. McConnell of premature surrender and 
     seem to resent particularly his break from a previously 
     united front among the Kentucky delegation.
       We believe Sen. McConnell has reason on his side. Whether 
     the tobacco price support program lasts another three, five 
     or 10 years is not the main point. Its ultimate fate seems 
     sealed. How can the program survive indefinitely when the 
     administration, Congress, health groups and public opinion 
     are arrayed so solidly against smoking?
       Even now, lawmakers mainly are arguing about how punitive 
     the federal legislation will be against the tobacco industry. 
     At last report, the U.S. Senate is prepared to impose a $1.10 
     per pack tax hike on cigarettes, which incensed Sen. Ted 
     Kennedy because it wasn't $1.50. The contradictory notion--
     manufacturers bad, growers good--will not wear well forever.
       Moreover, tobacco, of all commodities, hardly would be the 
     exception in the overall movement of agriculture away from 
     support programs and toward a market system. Price supports 
     for corn are not surviving; why should tobacco's?
       In plain fact, the tobacco program was never defensible in 
     a government that is trying to discourage smoking by every 
     means. Ending it now at least would allow government to purge 
     itself of hypocrisy.
       The prospect of handing $80,000 to the typical tobacco 
     farmer who cultivates four acres, as the Lugar-McConnell 
     proposal would do, does not strike us as victimizing him 
     excessively. The out-of-state conservative critics of that 
     bill's generosity may have a point. The payoff would be 
     $20,000 an acre, as compared to about $200 an acre for corn 
     growers.
       The relative merits of Sen. McConnell's and Sen. Ford's 
     competing approaches are still up for debate, and much is yet 
     to be decided. We fail to see how the Republican's proposal 
     is so inimical to state or national interest as to justify 
     the furor it has created.

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the State Journal in Frankfort, our 
State capital, on May 21 of 1998, essentially agreed, as well as did 
the Owensboro paper and the Paducah paper, that in this particular 
situation the buyout proposal offered by the chairman of the 
Agriculture Committee makes the most sense. I ask unanimous consent 
that the State Journal editorial be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                 [From the State Journal, May 21, 1998]

                             Mortal Wounds

       U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell ignited a firestorm in Kentucky 
     this week when he threw his support to Indiana Sen. Richard 
     Lugar's legislation that would end federal price supports on 
     burley tobacco by 2002.
       In doing so, McConnell deserted his fellow Kentuckian Sen. 
     Wendell Ford, who is trying desperately to salvage the 
     tobacco price support program as the Senate debates historic 
     legislation targeting the tobacco industry as a whole.
       It goes without saying Ford is furious. Tobacco farmers are 
     irate. Agriculture groups are in a frenzy. And Democrats 
     running to replace Ford are on the political warpath.
       McConnell says he made the decision to desert Ford's 
     legislation, which McConnell originally co-sponsored, because 
     he saw the handwriting on the wall. Tobacco is so universally 
     despised in Congress that there is no hope the price support 
     program can survive at a time when federal agriculture price 
     support programs are being jettisoned all over the place.
       The tobacco price support program, McConnell says, is 
     ``mortally wounded.''
       If everyone will calm down and think about it, they will 
     realize that McConnell is right. Tobacco in all its forms is 
     anathema in Congress and much of the nation outside a handful 
     of states where it is grown. The anti-tobacco sentiment has 
     reached a level of zealotry rarely if ever seen involving a 
     single issue.
       Ford, McConnell and Kentucky's congressional delegation 
     have waged the good fight, but they are going to lose on the 
     issue of price supports. The issue now must be what they can 
     salvage to help farmers who rely on burley tobacco for their 
     incomes and the communities that rely on those farmers for 
     their prosperity.
       The Lugar legislation would pay the owners of tobacco 
     quotas $8 a pound over three years. Tenants and those who 
     lease tobacco quotas would be paid $4 per pound over three 
     years. Tobacco states would receive $1 billion over five 
     years to aid affected communities and to pay for job 
     retraining and crop diversification programs.
       Once the support program ends in 2002, farmers could 
     continue growing tobacco, but the price would be subject to a 
     free market.
       In that free market, Kentucky burley undoubtedly would be 
     worth far less and, in time, most small growers would get out 
     of the business because it no longer would be profitable.
       Whether the Lugar bill is fair compensation to burley 
     growers is open to debate. Certainly, it will take far more 
     than $1 billion to insulate communities and farmers from the 
     potentially devastating economic impact of tobacco's 
     disappearance as a major crop. But Kentuckians need to join 
     the debate, not insist blindly that something ``mortally 
     wounded'' can survive, especially when that something is 
     associated with tobacco.

  Mr. MCCONNELL. Mr. President, the Bowling Green Daily News in the 
heart of our tobacco-growing part of the State--an area of the State 
represented by Congressman Ron Lewis who is on the House Agriculture 
Committee, who also endorses the Lugar approach as the only logical 
thing to do in the context of this bill designed to destroy this 
industry. The Bowling Green paper, also says that this is a realistic 
and appropriate response to the kind of catastrophe we are confronting.
  I ask unanimous consent that the editorial from the Daily News in 
Bowling Green of May 21 be printed in the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                  [From the Daily News, May 21, 1998]

                    Tobacco Plan Is Merely Realistic

       U.S. Sen. Wendell Ford and Democratic Senatorial candidates 
     Scotty Baesler, Charlie Owen and Steve Henry can say it isn't 
     so, but the support system for tobacco is doomed.
       It is best to get out quickly while tobacco farmers still 
     have some political capital to expend.
       That is what U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. 
     Richard Lugar, R-Ind., are advocating. McConnell has joined 
     Lugar in promoting a buyout plan that would pay tobacco 
     farmers $18 billion and help tobacco-impacted communities 
     adjust to cessation of the support system.
       However politicians from Kentucky and other tobacco-raising 
     states may deplore it, tobacco has become a favorite 
     political kickball, and termination of the support system is 
     inevitable. It is just a matter of time. Surely, Kentucky 
     politicians now raising such a flap over McConnell's 
     ``defection'' know this as well as does he.
       No tobacco farmer has to be told that there is a rising 
     swell of anti-tobacco sentiment. Proponents of the system may 
     argue honestly that the program is mostly paid for by 
     farmers, but that argument will fall on deaf ears. Tobacco is 
     politically incorrect.
       Facing up to that reality, McConnell and Lugar offer a way 
     out. But there is scant time for debating whether this buyout 
     plan or that buyout plan might prove best for Kentucky 
     farmers. Tobacco has been called to judgment in the court of 
     American public opinion and has been found guilty.
       The Lugar-McConnell approach is the best of several poor 
     choices.
       It would allow Kentucky farmers to do what many want to 
     do--get out of the frustrating business of raising tobacco 
     with some hope of saving the farm. It would pay tobacco 
     farmers $8 a pound over three years, pay tenants and those 
     who lease their tobacco quotas $4 a pound over three years 
     and provide $1 billion in community assistance for tobacco 
     states. The support system would be eliminated by 2002.
       These are not harsh terms given the reality of the nation's 
     anti-tobacco mood. In fact, they probably represent the best 
     conditions that Kentucky tobacco farmers can hope to get.

[[Page S6455]]

       Few people in Kentucky, including McConnell, want the 
     destruction of the tobacco support system. But it is 
     foolhardy to believe that the tobacco states can muster 
     sufficient political power to long continue the program.
       Hating tobacco is popular.
       This national mood spells an end--and soon--to federal 
     programs seen as supportive of the ``evil weed.''
       McConnell has stated the facts. They are hard. But they are 
     the facts.

  Mr. McCONNELL. The Louisville Courier-Journal is conflicted on this 
issue. David Hawpe, the editor, a twice-a-week columnist, agrees with 
my senior colleague that the LEAF Act is the way to go, but the 
editorial page in the same paper, looking at the same issue, comes to 
the opposite conclusion.
  Just reading in part from the Louisville Courier-journal of May 20:

       [T]he LEAF Act would be in trouble in any event. This, 
     after all, is a Congress that passed the Freedom to Farm Act, 
     which ended price support programs for such noncontroversial 
     crops as wheat, corn and soybeans. Why would lawmakers, 
     especially now, make an exception for tobacco, which is 
     blamed for 400,000 deaths a year?
       Of course, some anti-smoking groups have formed an alliance 
     with tobacco farm organizations who support the Tobacco 
     Program on the grounds that cheaper tobacco would lead to 
     more smoking. But the cost of tobacco is a tiny fraction of a 
     pack of cigarettes, and it will get smaller as Congress piles 
     on new taxes.
       The grim fact is, the tobacco growers have a stake in 
     people continuing to smoke, while the government, with broad 
     public support, is determined to discourage smoking.
       Sooner or later, a way of life in Kentucky [according to 
     the Courier] is going to end, and it is going to be painful. 
     Senator McConnell would get it over quickly. Senator Ford 
     will stretch it out. Neither can save a rural economy based 
     on burley.

  That is from the Louisville Courier-Journal on May 20 of this year.
  There have been numerous letters to the editors of various papers. I 
will not read them all, but I think one is interesting in particular. 
It appeared June 11, 1998, in the Courier-Journal, from H.H. Barlow 
III, Cave City, KY.

       I am a 47-year-old lifelong tobacco farmer in Barren 
     County, the largest tobacco-producing county in tobacco. The 
     media, Senator Wendell Ford and Representative Scotty Baesler 
     [according to this grower] are not telling the whole truth on 
     tobacco.

  That is he--the writer of the letter--not I, I say to my senior 
colleague from Kentucky.

       Senator Mitch McConnell has taken a bold step to protect 
     the tobacco farmers of Kentucky by proposing an $8-per-pound 
     buyout that would allow farmers to continue to grow tobacco 
     in the free market. For me and my neighbors who are older and 
     have spent our life raising tobacco, McConnell's proposal 
     gives us a retirement plan and compensation for the loss of 
     income. Most important is that under the McConnell plan, 
     tobacco farmers would receive payments over a 3-year period 
     as opposed to 10 years as Ford has proposed. Payments over 3 
     years would be significant enough to enable farmers to reduce 
     debt and to invest in retirement or to develop other 
     agricultural enterprises on the farm.
       There are seven tobacco states fighting 43 non-tobacco 
     states, and tobacco votes in Congress get closer every year. 
     Ford proposes to establish another government-run program 
     that can be voted out by tobacco opponents at any time, 
     leaving tobacco farmers to bleed a slow death with nothing to 
     show for our quotas. McConnell has risked a lot to be honest 
     about the true future of the tobacco program. You be the 
     judge, but for me and my neighbors, having the buyout money 
     for our quota is like having a bird in hand instead of two in 
     the bush, as Ford and Baesler want.

  Another letter appeared in that same edition of The Courier-Journal. 
This letter was by Ms. Megan Cobb of Henderson, Kentucky. Here are some 
of the thoughts offered by Ms. Cobb:

       As a young, non-smoking Kentuckian, I have been reading the 
     information and misinformation surrounding the tobacco price 
     support issues. Being apolitical, I have no interest in the 
     politics of the issue, but I am concerned that our political 
     candidates . . . are using the issue for their own benefit 
     and really have no concern for the issue itself or the people 
     who are affected.
       I will say it takes great courage for our Senator Mitch 
     McConnell to stand up and tell the cold truth. That is, the 
     price support system for most farm products is over for all 
     intents and purposes. And that tobacco, and its production, 
     is going through radical changes not caused by the political 
     process but, rather, by the social process that causes 
     societies to change dramatically.
       It is unfortunate that some of our farmers are looking for 
     a scapegoat rather than solutions. It is unfortunate that our 
     Senate candidates are pandering to the issues rather than 
     boldly charting new courses like McConnell. And to say 
     McConnell's position is anti-farm is not only distortion but 
     irresponsible.

  So these are just a few of the thoughtful Kentuckians in the heart of 
tobacco country who have surveyed the landscape and agree with me on 
this difficult issue.
  I also ask unanimous consent a letter to the editor in the Lexington 
Herald-Leader from Alben B. Mills in London be printed in the Record, 
and another letter in the Courier-Journal from a Larry Bond be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               McConnell Right About Tobacco Buyout Plan

                      (By Alben B. Mills, London)

       As a tobacco farmer, I want to thank Sen. Mitch McConnell, 
     R-Ky., for his courageous stance for a tobacco base buyout. 
     While it may not be the most politically popular position 
     McConnell could have taken, it was the most realistic and 
     responsible solution to the uncertainty that Kentucky burley 
     growers have faced since President Clinton declared war on 
     tobacco. Like McConnell, I will be saddened to see the 
     program go, but I have known for several years that tobacco's 
     days in the federal government were numbered. At least, 
     McConnell's plan will allow my colleagues and me to receive a 
     secured payment for our quotas. I have not enjoyed security 
     in my tobacco farming for a long time, thanks to Clinton and 
     Vice President Al Gore.
       Those who say that the program can survive the ever 
     increasing anti-tobacco sentiment in Congress are taking a 
     huge gamble, and they are wagering irresponsibility with the 
     farmer's future. McConnell has made the tough call. He has 
     told us the painful truth that the program is unsalvageable 
     and that we should cut our losses while we still have the 
     chance for fair compensation for our tobacco bases. His 
     opinions have the ring of statesmanship, and the tobacco 
     farming community will be forever indebted to him for his 
     candor. I am grateful to McConnell for placing our interests 
     before his own.
                                  ____


                         Backs McConnell's Plan

                    (By Larry O. Bond, Sanders, Ky.)

       I am very displeased with the attacks made on Sen. Mitch 
     McConnell by the Democrats regrading his stand on the tobacco 
     buyout.
       I am a farm owner and have raised tobacco for 21 years. 
     When we went to the no-net program in 1982, we were doomed. 
     Sen. Wendell Ford helped pass that law. By 1985, the tobacco 
     companies had forced so much tobacco into our pool that they 
     broke us. Ford helped negotiate a tobacco company buyout of 
     the pool stocks. Farmers took a cut in an allotment and a cut 
     in price. My tobacco income was reduced by 50 percent. I grew 
     tired of being abused by the tobacco companies, and 1989 was 
     my last crop.
       It seems to me that when Ford does the negotiating, the 
     companies get the ``gold,'' and the farmers get the 
     ``shaft.''
       The provisions of Ford's LEAF Act have changed several 
     times over the last six months. The language is so complex 
     that it appears to have been written to deliberately confuse 
     the reader. Our experience since 1982 indicates that no 
     tobacco agreement can last unchanged for 10 years.
       I believe that when people want to change society it is 
     only fair that they should pay for the change. If Sen. 
     Richard Lugar and McConnell's buyout takes place, I will be 
     satisfied that has happened. Farmers' lives will be radically 
     changed, but at least they won't be completely dispossessed.
       I would like to mention a critical point to my city 
     cousins: The Lugar-McConnell buyout pays the farmer $8 a 
     pound for his government allotment, and it goes out of 
     existence. Ford's LEAF Act will pay those who choose to sell 
     $8 per pound for the government allotment; however, those 
     pounds will not cease to exist but will be redistributed to 
     farmers who choose not to sell. Ford will spend America's 
     money and give no benefit to American society. The Ford LEAF 
     Act will not solve any of the problems that face tobacco 
     farmers or society at large.
       The three-year Lugar-McConnell plan is easy to understand, 
     will solve the tobacco program problem once and for all, and 
     relieves the government from being responsible for the 
     tobacco farmer. It reimburses the farmer for property that 
     society wants done away with. The farmer can pay down his 
     debts and move on with his life.
       McConnell has taken a bold and courageous stand on this 
     issue, and I back him 100 percent. Nothing can shake me from 
     that position.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Now, Mr. President, let me just, in conclusion, sum up 
what the point is here.
  What is proposed before the Senate is a bill designed to destroy the 
tobacco industry. As a matter of fact, one CEO of one of the companies 
said this bill in this form would put them into bankruptcy. There is no 
immunity provided for the companies. There is a Draconian look-back 
provision of certain unconstitutionality, various and assorted 
advertising restrictions also of dubious constitutionality, and a $1.10 
cigarette tax increase over 3 years designed to net for the government 
some $500 to

[[Page S6456]]

$800 billion in revenue, depending on whose estimates you listen to. 
The net effect of all that is a government designed to destroy this 
industry.
  It is in that context that I believe the appropriate thing for the 
government to do is to throw a lifeline to the 60,000 hard-working 
Kentucky tobacco growers who make their living off of this legal crop.
  Now, Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes and frame this issue 
from a larger perspective and walk through how our farmers found 
themselves in the current predicament.
  One of President Clinton's signature political maneuvers occurred 
early in his administration when he and Vice President Gore declared 
war on tobacco--portraying Kentucky's leading agricultural commodity as 
a modern-day plague. The anti-tobacco zealots and an army of greedy 
plaintiffs' lawyers eager to prey on the tobacco industry created the 
most serious threat ever arrayed against tobacco farmers. Disaster has 
loomed for Kentucky's tobacco farmers since Clinton took office and is 
now manifested in the form of this half-trillion dollar McCain bill 
which sailed out of the Senate Commerce Committee 19-1, with Senator 
Wendell Ford's support. Thus was the death knell sounded for tobacco.
  With our tobacco farmers now caught in the crossfire of this war, we 
are being asked to make a monumental decision. That decision is simply 
this: despite all we know about tobacco's desperately weakened state--
  (1) do we ignore the warning signs and commit ourselves to a path 
that leads to uncertainty and a diminished standard of living for our 
farmers, or
  (2) do we recognize that change is coming to the farm and there is a 
better way to prepare for it than by blindly pursuing the policies of 
the past?
  Mr. President, after months of thought, countless conversations with 
my colleagues, and a continual dialogue with Kentucky growers, I 
believe there is only one road for us to travel if we decide to pass 
this monstrous McCain bill. Let me explain why.
  The politics of tobacco have changed. Throughout most of American 
history, we have paid tribute to tobacco and tobacco farmers. Nowhere 
is this national tribute more evident than right here in our nation's 
capitol. As I sat in my office this morning, I glanced at the small 
columns on my fireplace and took note of the tobacco leaves which adorn 
those columns.
  And, then as I left my office and walked to the Senate floor, I 
passed various pillars here in the Capitol and looked upward to see, 
once again, the sculpted tobacco leaves bursting forth at the top of 
these pillars.
  No longer do we pay tribute to the golden leaf or the farmer whose 
sweat and toil produces that leaf. The leaf is now seen as dark and 
brown and dirty. And, it is targeted for extinction and eradication by 
virtually every governmental and private-sector force in America.
  Although tobacco leaves still adorn the halls of Congress, the leaf 
is no longer sacred. What was once seen as sacred, is now looked upon 
with contempt and outright hostility.
  When I came to the Senate in 1985, there were only 7 tobacco-related 
votes. But, the times have changed--dramatically--and for the worse, 
where our tobacco farmers are concerned.
  In the 105th Congress alone, there have been 29 tobacco-related 
votes--notwithstanding all the votes on the woefully misguided bill 
currently before the Senate. Twenty-nine votes--even prior to the 
McCain bill--that is three times more votes than there were when I 
arrived here in 1985. In fact, we've had more votes on tobacco in the 
105th Congress alone than we had in all the years between 1985 and 
1996. And each of these votes has the effect of putting a bull's eye on 
the tobacco farmer's back.
  No vote points up tobacco's weakened position more vividly than a 
vote last summer (Durbin, July 23) to end crop insurance for farmers. 
Can you imagine? The amendment's sponsor was saying, in effect, ``if 
you grow corn, wheat, soybeans, etc., you are entitled to insurance. 
But not if you grow tobacco. Even though you have never sold your 
product to a minor, or committed any of the transgressions we accuse 
tobacco companies of, you do not deserve basic protection from natural 
catastrophe.''
  On an issue that blatantly unfair, the vote, shockingly, was 53-47. 
That's three votes shy of elimination.
  Tobacco interests have been under a constant, daily barrage of scorn 
and derision. Tobacco has become the enemy of choice among politicians. 
It is the darling of the attack set. Politicians across the political 
spectrum believe that attacking anything ``tobacco'' pays political 
dividends. And attack they do.
  But these are not precision strikes. These are broadsides against the 
entire tobacco industry that wreak devastating collateral damage on 
tobacco farmers.
  Let me tell you what Senator Ford's colleagues on the left are saying 
about the tobacco program and the tobacco farmer.
  Here's Senator Durbin: ``Tobacco growers have to know the party's 
over.'' And again: ``Uncle Sam ought to get out of the tobacco 
business. We have no business subsidizing the growth, production, and 
processing of a product which kills hundreds of thousands of Americans 
each year.''
  And, if the views of the left still aren't clear to you, Mr. 
President, let me share with you yet another quote from Senator Durbin: 
``There is only one agricultural product in America that has a body 
count, and it is tobacco. That is why it is different, and that is why 
it is treated differently.''
  And what about Senator Lautenberg? He summed the anti-tobacco views 
of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and the Congressional left by offering this 
advice to tobacco growers: ``Grow soybeans.''
  Now we have gotten to the point where, in the name of stopping teen 
smoking, we have created a half-trillion-plus dollar bill--more than 
twice the size of the Pentagon's budget--designed to stop what 
researchers have told us is 2 percent of all smokers.
  And is addressing teen smoking really the goal? The American people 
don't think so. An April Wall Street Journal poll found that only 20 
percent believed this tobacco bill is about stopping teen smoking. A 
resounding 70 percent say this effort is merely a back door way to go 
after tobacco and take in more money for the government to spend.
  In this mad dash for cash, 124,000 tobacco farm families are caught 
in the crossfire of political ambition and partisan competition--60,000 
of them from Kentucky. They did not start this war. And they should not 
be casualties. But casualties they will be if we do not act.
  Senator Ford--whose work on behalf of all tobacco farmers is well 
known and rightly applauded--and I agree that these growers should be 
compensated. After all, they have done nothing wrong. Tobacco is a 
legal commodity. Whatever the larger arguments may be about Joe Camel, 
tobacco farmers are not a party to that debate.
  So Senator Ford and I agree that they need to be taken care of, we 
disagree as to how. That disagreement arises from a fundamentally 
different interpretation of the political and economic terrain in which 
tobacco grows.
  Senator Ford has surveyed the scene and concluded that the federal 
tobacco program is healthy and will enjoy another 25 years of support 
from the United States Congress. In his estimation, the best thing to 
do is continue the program and compensate farmers for the drop in 
demand that this bill is specifically designed to produce.
  Let me repeat. The single greatest danger to Kentucky tobacco farmers 
is the passage of the McCain bill. You cannot suck more than a half-
trillion dollars out of the tobacco industry without also ruining the 
tobacco farmer in the process.
  As for me, I look at the same landscape as Senator Ford and come to 
the same conclusion that the farmers in my state have reached. In a 
statewide poll taken by the Lexington Herald-Leader in March, 70 
percent of those who expressed an opinion said the program would be 
dead in less than five years. Let me restate that: 70 percent of 
farmers think the tobacco program is on its deathbed. Seventy percent 
of farmers think they will be forced to earn a living doing something 
else in just five years!
  Like me, they look at the constant assault and realize a simple fact. 
Elected representatives in our country fundamentally reflect the 
prevailing view of their constituents.

[[Page S6457]]

  Let me remind us all that the vast majority of Americans polled are 
against smoking tobacco. A near majority of U.S. Senators think that 
tobacco farmers don't even deserve our support for basic crop 
insurance. In the heart of tobacco country, the growers themselves are 
predicting the program's demise. And, finally, influential members of 
Congress have publicly declared that the tobacco program must die.
  Mr. President, under the McCain bill or any other bill like it, the 
tobacco program is mortally wounded. It's struggling through the 
underbrush, hemorrhaging and slowing with every step. The question is 
not whether the tobacco program will end, it's when it will end if the 
McCain bill becomes law?
  In the face of the deep, widespread unpopularity of tobacco, does 
anyone seriously think that the government that is trying to kill 
tobacco TODAY in this very bill will then turn around and support a 
taxpayer-funded program for a product widely-presumed to be 
carcinogenic?
  Mr. President, it is clear that the vast majority view in this 
Congress, in tobacco country, and in America generally is that, if the 
McCain bill passes, the tobacco program will not survive. Knowing these 
facts, the challenge before us is to make sure tobacco farmers do.
  Senator Lugar's buy-out plan is tobacco growers' best hope to 
transition to a new farm existence with the resources necessary to make 
it, or to retire with sufficient funds if they so choose.
  Under Chairman Lugar's approach, quota owners will receive $8 per 
pound for their tobacco spread out over three years. The average grower 
in my state farms a little over 4 acres, yielding roughly 10,000 pounds 
of tobacco annually. That means that the average Kentucky quota owner 
will receive $80,000 over the next three years in buy-out payments.
  In contrast, under the LEAF Act, the average farmer who wants to 
adapt to the changing world and take a buy-out, will only receive 
$24,000 pre-tax after three years.
  The Lugar plan also invests $1 billion in rural economic assistance 
over 5 years for those communities hit hardest by the loss of tobacco 
income. This money will help invest in education, retraining, 
diversification, and give assistance to tobacco warehouse owners and 
operators.
  Most importantly, under the Lugar plan tobacco growers may continue 
to grow and sell their product.
  Let me repeat, under the Lugar plan every grower may continue to grow 
if they choose.
  That is not the case under the LEAF Act. The LEAF Act specifically 
forbids Kentucky burley growers from growing tobacco for 25 years. 
Since the average age of a tobacco grower in my state is 60, that is 
effectively a lifetime ban on growing tobacco.
  But that's not all. Under the LEAF Act, if you are a North Carolina 
flue-cured quota owner, you get a buy-out and then you get to keep on 
growing tobacco. That is simply unfair, and on that basis alone I 
cannot support a system that treats Kentucky growers worse than North 
Carolina growers.
  As we move through this debate, there are other concerns related to 
the LEAF Act's buy-out funding that I will address, but for now, let me 
close by saying that I believe the Lugar approach is the best for our 
people in tobacco country. It provides a generous flow of money over a 
short time period that allows our growers to invest, retire, diversify, 
get into a new line of work, or keep on farming tobacco. It provides 
community investment dollars to help hard hit rural areas. And, it is 
the best deal I believe we can get for tobacco growers if the McCain 
bill becomes law.
  Let me conclude by summing up the decision before us. The Titanic has 
come into the harbor for the moment. We have two choices. One, we can 
send her back into the Atlantic with more lifeboats strapped to her 
side--but not enough boats to save everyone aboard. Or, we can unload 
all passengers while she's in safe harbor. I think the choice is clear.
  Mr. President, I look forward to this important debate over the best 
course to follow for our tobacco farmers.
  I conclude by saying I sincerely hope that the Senate will find a way 
to put this bill out of its misery.
  I want to particularly commend the senior Senator from Texas for the 
outstanding work he has done on this bill over the last 3\1/2\ weeks. 
He has been tenacious and effective in pointing out the flaws in this 
bill conceptually. The whole concept, I say to my friend from Texas, is 
fatally flawed and no one has pointed that out better than he has. I 
want to thank him on behalf of the 60,000 farm families in my State 
that, but for the leadership and tenacity of the senior Senator from 
Texas, would be destroyed because the ultimate threat to my people is 
this bill. This is what is designed to destroy their livelihood.
  I think until the Senator from Texas decided to put the bit in his 
teeth and come over here and fight this thing, there was widespread 
feeling that it was just going to happen. I am hoping we may have 
reached a point in the Senate where it isn't going to happen. If we can 
find a way to put this horrible proposal out of its misery, I will 
always thank the Senator from Texas for his extraordinary leadership 
and good work in pointing out the fundamental flaws in this proposal.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we always love it when someone has 
something nice to say about us, but I am especially grateful when one 
as thoughtful as the Senator from Kentucky has something nice to say, 
especially when it is about me. I have been grateful to the Senator 
from Kentucky for his leadership on many, many tough issues and his 
comments today, therefore, are doubly appreciated. I thank him for his 
comments.
  I have a little housekeeping before I speak. This has been cleared on 
both sides. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate continue 
consideration of S. 1415 for debate only until the hour of 4 p.m. 
today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I believe that we are reaching the final 
hours of the debate, and rather than try to go back and replow ground 
that we have now plowed over and over again--in fact, we have been on 
this bill since May 18. Looking at my watch with the date on it, unless 
I missed a month that has 30 days instead of 31, today is the 17th of 
June. We have, for a month, debated this issue.
  Quite frankly, I would like to say as we enter the final hours of the 
debate, I am proud of this debate. I am very proud of the Senate. When 
Jefferson came home from France, where he had been minister to France, 
as many of my colleagues will recall, while the Constitution was being 
written, he went to Mount Vernon to visit with General Washington. They 
were discussing the Constitution and Jefferson said to Washington, 
``What is the Senate for if the House of Representatives is to be the 
body that represents the people, if it is to be the people's House, if 
it is to be the legislative body?'' ``What is the Senate for?'' 
Jefferson asked. Washington, who, of course, was a southerner, had 
poured his tea out of the cup into his saucer to cool, and he explained 
to Jefferson that the cup would be like the House of Representatives; 
it would be caught up in the passions of the moment--with Members 
elected every 2 years--and that passions would flare and the House 
would justifiably respond to those passions. But the Senate would be 
the saucer, where the tea would cool before it was consumed. That was 
the purpose of the Senate, and I think the Senate's rules, which 
obviously have evolved from that constitutional system, have in this 
case, as they have on many occasions, served the public well.

  I believe this bill will die today. I believe that we will see the 
bill sent back to committee. Now, another bill on the same subject, 
within the parameters of reason and responsibility and limited 
government and within the budget might come alive another day. But I 
believe that this bill will justifiably come to a legislative end 
today. I believe that the system has worked well.
  This bill, in many ways, reminds me of another bill--the Clinton 
health care bill. I remember that debate vividly; I was very much 
involved in it. I remember the President was talking about this bill 
that ``the public wanted,'' that it was unstoppable. Even those who

[[Page S6458]]

were offering substitutes for it were adopting its basic principle. It 
looked as if it were 200 feet tall, and no one was willing to come 
forward and even say they were against it. But like the mighty Goliath 
of old, when someone did step forward with a few small stones and flung 
the first stone, the giant tumbled. Probably a better analogy would be 
when someone took a very small pin and just pricked its belly and it 
went boom; it was a lot of hot air.
  The American people were never for the government taking over and 
running the health care system. And in reality, the American people 
were never for this bill. Had we been forced to vote on this bill the 
first day it came to the Senate, it no doubt would have passed by an 
overwhelming margin. Had we been forced to vote on this bill the first 
week it came to the Senate, at the end of that debate, it would have 
passed by a smaller margin. Each day, support for this bill--or fear of 
it, depending on your perspective--has declined dramatically. Today, it 
is my hope and my opinion that the bill will be taken from the floor 
because, in the final analysis, there never was any support for this 
bill.
  I don't know where this bill came from. I don't know whether it was a 
focus group conducted by the Democratic National Committee, or whether 
it was a poll. But the bottom line is, the bill never had any real 
support from the American people. In reality, this bill was always a 
giant bait and switch. The bait was the tobacco companies. We have 
heard our colleagues justifiably try, convict, and hang or lynch--
depending on your perspective--the tobacco companies, and justifiably 
so in many cases. But while our colleagues sought to get us to focus on 
these tobacco companies, the reality of their bill, if you read it, is 
that it does not impose a penny of taxes on the tobacco companies. In 
reality, it has an extraordinary provision, and that extraordinary 
provision is that it makes it illegal for the tobacco companies to not 
pass through every penny of taxes to the consumer.

  So in reality, while the proponents of this bill were forever trying 
to divert our attention to the tobacco companies--and facts are 
persistent things--the reality of this bill is that it doesn't tax 
tobacco companies. The reality of this bill is that it basically taxes 
blue-collar workers, because smoking--obviously, with many exceptions 
when you count people, but a very small number of exceptions when you 
look at averages--smoking in America is basically a blue-collar 
phenomenon. So our colleagues have vilified the tobacco companies and 
they created sympathy in the country.
  It must be like the old story of this tiger who comes out of the 
forest and eats people in the village, so they send to the provincial 
capital for a great warrior to come forward. He comes forth and pulls 
out his sword and dances around. The tiger comes out, and instead of 
killing the tiger, which would produce a tremendous eruption of 
applause, he starts beating the tiger with the side of his sword. 
Finally, the people become so outraged, they stone the warrior. In a 
very strange way, the proponents of this bill have so overdone it that 
they have created some sympathy, as the polls show very clearly, for 
the tobacco companies--one of the most incredible reversals of public 
opinion that I, as somewhat of a minor student of it, have observed. 
But the reality is that with all the talk of the tobacco companies, 
they pay none of the tax. The tax is borne by blue-collar Americans.
  The stubborn facts are that 34 percent of the taxes that will be 
collected by this bill will be paid for by Americans who make less than 
$15,000 a year; 47.1 percent of the taxes will be paid for by Americans 
who make less than $22,000 a year; 59.1 percent of the taxes will be 
paid for by Americans who make less than $30,000 a year.
  So no matter how many times the proponents of this bill vilify the 
tobacco companies, the cold reality which the American people, as we 
debated this issue for a month, came to understand was that with all of 
the things that the tobacco companies did, were verbally convicted of, 
and punished for right here on the floor of the Senate, was that they 
weren't being taxed; we were taxing blue-collar Americans. That is the 
first thing that Americans came to understand as we debated this bill 
for a month.
  The second thing they came to understand was the incredible amount of 
money that was going to be raised in these taxes, and not only the 
burden that would impose--a massive burden--but how that money was 
going to be largely squandered. I remind my colleagues that, for 
example, in my State, we have 3.1 million Texans who smoke. Under this 
bill, if those 3.1 million Texans--we have 3,137,723 people in my State 
who smoke--would have continued to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day 
after the passage of this bill, given the estimate that this bill, in 
the end, when you figure everything in, would have driven up the price 
by $2.78 a pack, they would have paid an additional $1,015 a year in 
Federal taxes.
  Now, I remind my colleagues that 34 percent of that tax would have 
been paid for by people that made $15,000 or less. So we were talking 
about a confiscatory tax on blue-collar America. The American people, 
over a month, despite all the efforts to confuse the subject, came to 
understand that point. That is a major reason why this bill is about to 
come to the end of its legislative life.

  The second thing the American people came to understand was how money 
was squandered in this bill, how in this bill we were ratifying 
agreements where plaintiffs' attorneys were going to earn $92,000 an 
hour, how in this bill we were providing money for smoker cessation for 
Native Americans who live on or near Indian reservations. If they smoke 
at the same rate the general public does, we would be spending $39,000 
per beneficiary, with the goal of trying to promote the cessation of 
smoking--$39,000 a person.
  They came to realize that under the provisions of the bill related to 
tobacco growers, one of those provisions would have ended up paying 
tobacco growers an incredible $22,297.29 an acre, and they could still 
own the land and still grow the tobacco.
  People came to realize that this program literally gave tens of 
billions of dollars to various advocacy groups that would be advocating 
many things other than just smoking.
  So in the end, the American people came to see this bill as having 
relatively little to do with teenage smoking and everything to do with 
taxing and spending, but doing so at a grander scale than anything we 
have seen in government in a long time.
  I would have to say that I know it is popular now for people who are 
covering the debate and discussing it to talk about ads that the 
tobacco companies have run. But I would like to give a dissenting view. 
I do not believe that this bill is going to come to a legislative end 
today because tobacco companies have run ads against it. I think in the 
end that the American people never bought into the idea that this bill 
was going to have any substantial impact on teenage smoking. I think 
the American people never bought into the idea that this was anything 
other than a tax-and-spend bill, and the more they knew about the bill, 
the more conviction they had in that basic belief.
  So despite the master work of spend and manipulation, which the White 
House, and I say admiringly, has and can engage in, despite an effort 
by all of the groups who supported the bill, and those groups 
ultimately came down to groups that wanted the money, despite all of 
that effort, in the end the Dicky Flatts of the world, the people who 
do the work and pay the taxes and pull the wagon, listen to our 
President, listen to the advocates of this bill, heard its high and 
noble stated objectives, but in reality in the end, after a month of 
debate, they finally saw this bill for what it really is--an effort to 
take money away from blue-collar workers and to have the government 
spend it, and spend it in a way that is obscene. There is no other word 
for it than that. The level of spending in this bill and the way the 
money is thrown around is almost beyond imagination, and in the end the 
American people recognized it.
  So I don't know that you can ever pat anybody on the back when you 
end up not doing a bad thing. I guess part of any legislative process 
is to try to do good things and to try to stop bad things from 
happening. And when you defeat a bad bill, you have done a good thing.
  But I think in the end this bill failed because the American people 
rejected

[[Page S6459]]

it. And it was an amazing thing. Maybe there is a lesson for all of us 
in this. It was exactly like the Clinton health bill. In Washington it 
looked like everybody in the world was for this bill. In Washington it 
looked as if this bill was totally and completely irresistable. But yet 
when you get outside of Washington, back in America, the public either 
was totally disinterested in this issue or they were against it. So in 
the end the American people knew more than we knew, and as a result, 
for the good of the Nation, this bill is going to die.

  Let me conclude, because I know my dear colleague from Delaware is 
here, and I want to maintain his friendship, which I value and 
treasure. I would like to make the following point.
  I do believe there are things we can do to deal with teenage smoking. 
I think we have to start by holding teenagers accountable for what they 
do. I think there are ways that we can tighten up the law to penalize 
people who knowingly sell tobacco products to teenagers and knowingly 
sell alcohol to teenagers and sell illegal drugs to teenagers. I think 
there are many things we can do. But the focus ought to be on the 
problem, which is teenage smoking.
  I also believe that a fundamental premise of this bill is false; that 
is, that people are not responsible for what they do, that somehow 
somebody smokes and it is the tobacco company that made them smoke.
  I used to, as this debate was underway, love to tease my 85-year-old 
mother, that she had not smoked for 70 years because she wanted to, 
that it was this Joe Camel that made her smoke. She hardly knew who Joe 
Camel was. But she had a telling point, which was my first indication 
that in the end this bill probably was not going to make it. Her point 
was a simple question, which the proponents of this bill tried their 
best--and they were very talented--but they could never answer the 
question. Her point was: ``If I am the victim, if the tobacco companies 
have conspired to force me to smoke and I am still doing it at 85, how 
come you are raising my taxes? If I am the victim, how come I am being 
punished?''
  In the end, that was the question that not only was not answered, but 
could not be answered.
  I want to congratulate our colleagues who were leaders on this issue. 
I don't think anybody ever questioned their sincerity.
  I especially want to say about Senator McCain, that under very 
difficult circumstances with his dearest friends in opposition on an 
issue where there were very, very strong emotional feelings on both 
sides of the debate, I especially want to congratulate Senator McCain 
for the way he was able to separate issues from personalities. He was a 
person who was asked to do a hard job; and that is to get the best bill 
he could out of committee. He did that. But when the bill got to the 
floor and we got a chance to look at it, the basic conclusion was the 
best bill that could be gotten out of committee was not good enough. So 
basically that is where we are.
  We will see a vote on a point of order. And the point of order is not 
a trivial matter. The point of order that we will vote on today is a 
point of order that has to do with the fact that this bill circumvents 
the balanced budget agreement. This bill raises spending above the 
limits that we set out in the budget. This bill would bust the budget, 
bust the spending caps, and violate all of the fiscal restraints that 
we have imposed.
  So Members of the Senate will be asked in the vote--and I assume that 
the minority leader will move to waive the Budget Act. There will be a 
point of order that makes the point of order that this bill violates 
the budget, violates the spending caps, and would violate the balanced 
budget amendment. Then I assume that the minority leader, or someone, 
will move to waive that point of order. In doing so, they are saying, 
pass the tobacco bill even if it means busting the budget agreement.
  I hope and believe that enough of our colleagues will vote ``no'' on 
that so that we can sustain the Budget Act. The bill would then go back 
to the Commerce Committee.
  If all of these problems can be fixed, if a consensus could be built, 
there would be nothing to prevent this issue in another form, with 
another bill, with another approach, from coming to the floor of the 
Senate.
  But if we send the bill back by sustaining the point of order, we are 
saying that this approach in this bill is not good enough. I hope that 
is what we will do.
  I thank the Senator.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, I was about to ask that we move into 
morning business to speak. My friend from Kentucky wants to speak on 
this matter, and I will in 10 seconds yield to him.
  I say to my friend from Texas, it is always a joy to listen to him. 
The fairy tales he remembers always warm my heart. But I think he 
sometimes gets it mixed up. I think the Goliath here was the tobacco 
companies with their millions of dollars, and in the health care fight 
it was the insurance companies with their millions of dollars. I have 
no doubt my friend, with a small sling and a small stone, with his 
skill could take down Goliath, but in this case he had a few cruise 
missiles. The cruise missiles were the $40 million the tobacco 
companies are spending on advertising to kill this bill and the $14 
billion that Harry and Louise spent on television to kill health care 
reform.
  I don't doubt his prowess, but I acknowledge he probably had a little 
bit of help. It was a nuclear bomb in that little sling that David had, 
and it was worth tens of millions of dollars. It works every time in 
this town, and I just find it absolutely fascinating.
  Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. BIDEN. I would be delighted to yield.
  Mr. GRAMM. I guess I ought to remind my colleagues that David was not 
alone on that battlefield either.
  Mr. BIDEN. No, I know he wasn't. But I just want to point out that in 
that case David had several hundred--
  Mr. FORD. The Senator is not suggesting he is with you.
  Mr. GRAMM. Perhaps the same force is on this side on this issue. Who 
knows.
  Mr. BIDEN. David was not alone, nor was my colleague with the sling. 
He had a force behind him of noble tobacco merchants who stood shoulder 
to shoulder making sure that their ultimate threat was, if they didn't 
get a bill they wanted, they were going to continue to advertise. Isn't 
that kind of fascinating. These no-good sons of guns talking about how 
they care about the health of America. Much of the criticism this bill 
had leveled at it I agree with. I agree with much of the criticism.
  But the idea that at the end of the day--at the end of the day--we 
are going to have no bill and these young pages sitting here in front 
of me, their peer group is going to end up, every single day, being 
lured by specifically teenage-based advertising done by companies that 
lied straight out, right through their teeth, about what they have been 
doing. These companies are going to continue to consciously--
consciously--attempt to addict them to nicotine, a conscious effort 
where they will spend tens of millions of dollars this year, next year, 
and the following years in advertising to addict them--addict them--and 
they are going to do it.
  Notwithstanding the fact I had criticisms with some parts of this 
bill, at the end of the day, they win. They win big, and our children 
lose. Our children lose. And so David in this case had some cruise 
missiles. They were all paid for by big tobacco --big tobacco, period. 
I am not talking about tobacco farmers. They grow it. They get a small 
piece of this action. They don't do the advertising. I am talking about 
the tobacco executives.
  And so it is going to be business as usual. But mark my words--let me 
end with this--the tobacco companies, from the advertising they have 
been out with now about how bad this bill is, if they are serious, I 
ask them in good conscience, for the health of the Nation--which they 
have now finally had to acknowledge has been put in peril by their 
action--I ask them publicly: voluntarily refrain from advertising, 
voluntarily refrain from advertising in any way that appeals to our 
children --if they have one ounce of moral fiber in them. We don't need 
a bill. They can

[[Page S6460]]

take care of this if they have any decency. Just voluntarily stop. No 
Government, no tax, no nothing. They know what they are doing to our 
children, and they are intending to do it.
  So if they want to solve the problem, it is real simple. Voluntarily 
stop. As was said years ago in a committee by a witness to a former 
Senator named McCarthy--at one point the witness looked up and said, 
``Have you no decency, sir?'' My question to the tobacco executives of 
America today is, Have you no decency? If you do, stop, stop luring our 
children.
  I yield to my friend from Kentucky, and then later I am going to come 
back and ask to speak to Kosovo.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky is recognized.
  Mr. FORD. I ask unanimous consent that I might speak for 5 minutes 
and that at the end of that period of time my friend from Delaware be 
recognized.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. FORD. I thank the Chair.
  Madam President, a few moments ago, my colleague from Kentucky 
inserted some editorials in the Record--a few, and selective letters to 
the editor concerning our debate over the future of tobacco farmers.
  I do not want to take a lot of time on this matter, but I do not want 
anyone to get the mistaken impression that these articles represent the 
prevailing view in my State. I have 30 pages or more here, Madam 
President, of articles of my own, editorials with headlines like--and 
this is the Owensboro Messenger and Inquirer that my colleague 
mentioned a few moments ago. It says, ``Lugar Tobacco Bill Punishes 
Farmers.'' I think that tells a lot and that there are opinions at home 
that are somewhat different.
  Rather than take a lot of time, Madam President, I will simply ask 
unanimous consent that some of these articles be printed in the Record, 
and anyone with any doubt can simply read them, and they will 
understand how average tobacco farmers feel about the Lugar proposal.
  There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in 
the Record as follows:

         [From the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, Apr. 26, 1998]

                  Lugar Tobacco Bill Punishes Farmers

       Spending the long, hot summers of Kentucky in the tobacco 
     field has been a way of life for many farm families this 
     century, and farmers hope it continues another 100 years.
       But tobacco's fate has never been as shaky as it is today, 
     as lawmakers battle over a way to curb teenage smoking at the 
     tobacco industry's expense.
       One of those battles is in our own backyard, between 
     Kentucky's U.S. Sen. Wendell Ford and Indiana's U.S. Sen. 
     Richard Lugar. We believe it is a fight Ford should win.
       Ford, a Democrat from Daviess County, proposes a plan that 
     will protect tobacco families harmed financially by tougher 
     anti-smoking legislation. Ford's plan would provide $28.5 
     billion over 25 years to assist tobacco farmers, communities 
     and workers who suffer because of decline in tobacco demand 
     and jobs. The quota holder--farmers who have an allotted 
     amount of tobacco they can sell--along with those who 
     sharecrop and lease those quotas would receive up to $8 a 
     pound for their losses.
       Ford's bill also calls for the continuation of the tobacco 
     program created in the post-Depression days that sets prices 
     and limits production.
       Lugar, a Republican, thinks government price supports for 
     tobacco are wrong and ought to end.
       Those who hold quotas to grow tobacco but want to get out 
     of the business would receive $8 per pound under Lugar's 
     plan. Those who want to continue to grow would do so under 
     free market conditions, but Lugar proposes transitional 
     payment to wean farmers off the program. Grain farmers are 
     receiving similar payments that decrease each year to ease 
     their departure from price supports.
       Lugar's bill would cost less, an estimated $15 billion, but 
     its effect on Kentuckians would be punitive.
       We agree that Lugar's argument has merit. The global 
     economy has turned to a free market on tobacco, and much of 
     the reasoning for protecting the U.S. system is in conflict 
     with that fact.
       We also think the length of Ford's plan is too generous. We 
     believe supplanting lost income for 10 years is more fiscally 
     responsible than 25 years, while still easing the burden on 
     farmers.
       But it is important not to lose the intangibles involved in 
     tobacco production. Generations of Kentuckians have built 
     their lives around growing a perfectly legal, and at times, 
     revered crop. Any effort to strip the protections that 
     farmers have grown up with could only hurt those families and 
     the commonwealth as a whole.
       While Lugar compares his phaseout plan to the grain 
     program, the effects on tobacco would be exponentially 
     greater. While only 1.2 percent of Kentucky farm acreage is 
     used for growing tobacco, the crop produces 25 percent of 
     Kentucky's farm income.
       Tobacco farmers already are threatened by American 
     companies increasing the amount of imported tobacco. Lugar's 
     bill effectively bullies more family farmers out of business.
       That would be a sad statement as we enter the next century.
                                  ____


            [From the Lexington Herald-Leader, May 27, 1998]

           Rural Areas Must Survive, Even if Tobacco Doesn't

                      (By Wendell and John Berry)

       In the midst of the Depression of the 1930's the tobacco 
     farmers, who had experienced a long history of exploitation 
     by the tobacco companies and who were in want as a result, 
     asked their government for help. The result was the tobacco 
     program. This program, run at practically no cost to the 
     government, has kept a lot of small farmers in business for a 
     long time. The program enacted a kind of economic justice, 
     helping the farmers to survive by assuring them a fair price 
     for their products.
       Virtually from the beginning, the program has been under 
     attack from proponents of the so-called free market. In more 
     recent years, tobacco itself has come under attack because of 
     its adverse effects on the health of smokers and other users. 
     And so we have come to the moral dilemma of a good program 
     protecting the producers of an unhealthy product. We have 
     come at the same time to the need to make a political 
     distinction between the program and the product, and this is 
     difficult.
       The defenders of the tobacco program are not arguing that 
     tobacco is healthful. They are arguing that the program is 
     necessary to maintain the rural economy while we make a 
     large-scale transition from tobacco to other crops. They and 
     their allies are arguing that to allow the rural economy of 
     Kentucky and other tobacco states to crash will not eliminate 
     smoking and is not a sane way to end our farmers' dependence 
     on tobacco. On the contrary, it will do great harm in order 
     to do no good whatsoever.
       Sen. Mitch McConnell would like to claim (and he may be 
     expected to claim when he runs for office again) that by 
     washing his hands of his state's rural economy he has helped 
     the farmers. In fact, as soon as it appeared expedient, he 
     had done what he has always wanted to do, for he disagrees 
     with the principle that the government should protect the 
     economically weak from exploitation by the economically 
     strong. He has demonstrated his true allegiance by consenting 
     to Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar's estimate that the livelihoods 
     of Kentucky farm families are worth only $80,000 apiece, and 
     that the livelihoods of all the other participants in the 
     rural economy are worth nothing.
       The political philosophy underlying this betrayal does not 
     concern itself with the question of what is right, but merely 
     subordinates all issues to the crudest sort of economic 
     determination. Lugar put it plainly: the tobacco program is 
     not defensible, he said, because ``In many markets, U.S. 
     tobacco is not competitive on price.''
       In other words, if farmers in the United States cannot 
     undersell farmers working at slave wages in the Third World, 
     then they deserve to fail. This is a different kind of 
     economic justice. Asking the farmer (like the industrial 
     worker) to produce more for less has always been the 
     objective of the ``free market'' politicians, because farmers 
     and wage earners don't give as large political donations as 
     do the interests that exploit them.
       McConnell and Lugar propose to scatter several billions of 
     government dollars among many thousands of farmers 
     individually. This money will be taxed by government when it 
     is paid out and again when it is spent. Obviously, nobody 
     knows yet how it will be spent, but it will not necessarily 
     be spent in ways that will help the farmers to keep on 
     farming or the state's rural economy to remain intact.
       It is, at any rate, hard to imagine how a farm family's 
     prospects might be significantly improved by $80,000 paid to 
     them in compensation for the loss of a staple crop that, with 
     the program, would have been worth far more.
       The only other available way to help our state's rural 
     economy in this crisis would be to preserve the tobacco 
     program as the agent of a gradual transition from dependence 
     on tobacco to dependence on other crops--a transition which 
     the Burley Co-op, in fact, has been working on for the past 
     six years, in co-operation with allies both within and 
     outside agriculture, urban as well as rural.
       This rural is based on the recognition of the tobacco 
     farmers' demonstrated and potential capacity for food 
     production. Though this transition is still in its infancy, 
     there is already much evidence that it can be made--and also 
     that it cannot be made within the next three years. To pay 
     farmers an average of $80,000 over three years for their 
     tobacco quotas, without having in place some alternative to 
     tobacco, is about the same as paying them to quit farmers.
       Obviously, there are some who would like to see all the 
     same farmers put out of business, specifically for the 
     benefit of big farmers but that aim makes no agricultural 
     sense anywhere, and the loss of the small-farm economy would 
     be especially devastating in Kentucky. We have a lot of small 
     farmers,

[[Page S6461]]

     and much of our landscape, to be properly conserved, needs to 
     be farmed in small acreages.
       If the farmers fail, then other members of the rural 
     communities whose businesses or professions depend on farm 
     income must also fail. Where are these people to go? How are 
     they to earn a living? What will be the impact of their 
     failure on the economies of our cities? Do McConnell and 
     Lugar think that failed farmers and rural merchants will be 
     so obliging as to simply disappear?
       To develop new crops and other agricultural sources of 
     income for farmers requires that we must find the markets and 
     solve the problems of production, transportation, storage and 
     processing. People now involved in this effort estimate that 
     it will take at least 15 years. Tobacco farmers have always 
     assumed that even their worst enemies in Washington would not 
     pull the rug from under them, and that any plan to eliminate 
     the program would be gradual, allowing time for the 
     development of alternatives. After all, ending the tobacco 
     program will not end tobacco production any more than it will 
     end smoking.
       What it will do is enable the tobacco companies to buy 
     their tobacco at a much lower price, and thus shift a 
     significant part of the cost of the ``tobacco settlement'' 
     onto the growers. This, not help to farmers, will be the 
     certain result--and we suspect it was the motive--of 
     McConnell's sudden alliance with Lugar.
       There are many people in Kentucky and the nation who 
     believe that our rural people and places are worth saving, 
     and that our small farmers are better producers and stewards 
     than the industrialized agribusiness firms that are trying to 
     replace them.
       The wishes of those people are reflected in Sen. Wendell 
     Ford's LEAF Act--which McConnell, for reasons now unclear, 
     once co-sponsored. To put an end to the hopes of so many and 
     to jeopardize the economy of an entire region ought not to be 
     the sole prerogative of McConnell.
                                  ____


            [From the Lexington Herald-Leader, May 20, 1998]

 The Best Deal?--Plan McConnell Backs Brings in Quick Cash, but Would 
                    Ultimately Kill Off Small Farms

       In purely pecuniary terms, Sen. Mitch McConnell might be 
     right. Maybe the best deal Kentucky can get is a quick cash 
     buyout of tobacco quotas. We know many landowners are 
     salivating at the prospect of collecting $8 a pound over 
     three years under the proposal McConnell endorsed Monday.
       But McConnell's dollars-and-cents calculation ignores the 
     inevitable losses. The greatest of these losses would be 
     farming as we know it in Kentucky.
       Cigarette makers would benefit from cheaper tobacco grown 
     on fewer but larger farms, while rural communities up and 
     down both sides of the Appalachians would be torn by the 
     upheaval.
       Without the government's tobacco price support program, 
     thousands of small family farms from Maryland to Georgia, 
     would cease to be. some would be paved over and subdivided. 
     Banks would take some. Cedar trees and marijuana patches 
     would take some, too.
       The communities these farms support also would cease to be, 
     replaced by commuters and pensioners.
       As the Senate debates the tobacco bill this week, the 
     spotlight's glare will be on teen smoking and how much relief 
     from lawsuits the cigarette companies should get. The fate of 
     hand-tended hill farms is likely to get lost in the glare, or 
     subsumed buy a Republican ideology that insists on a pure 
     free market in agriculture.
       It seems to us, though, the fate of tobacco farms has more 
     to do with issues of land stewardship and national 
     agricultural policy than with smoking and product liability.
       Do we want American agriculture to be nothing but 
     industrial-scale operations and corporate contractors? Are we 
     ready to do all our shopping at the Supermarket to the World? 
     Or should we save a place for family farms that pasture 
     cattle, sell produce at the farmers market, grow a few acres 
     of tobacco and depend on government planning to smooth out 
     the ups and downs of the invisible hand?
       It's a vital question, and one that shouldn't wait until 
     the tobacco program, like the rest of America's farm 
     programs, is dismantled.
       For 60 years, the government has kept tobacco production in 
     line with demand and guaranteed growers a good minimum price. 
     Growers bear all but a little of the program's cost; there is 
     no tobacco subsidy, contrary to popular belief.
       As a result, Kentucky has more farms than all but three 
     states. The tobacco program has immunized tobacco-growing 
     regions against the consolidation of land and the loss of 
     farmers that is fast remaking the rest of rural America.
       The plan that McConnell endorsed, introduced by Senate 
     Agriculture Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, should be 
     viewed in its proper context--as the logical extension of the 
     Freedom to Farm Act that ended the federal role in 
     agricultural planning. In this new free market, farms on the 
     Northern Plains already are going under, according to the 
     Wall Street Journal, because the climate there is too cold 
     for farmers to play the global market by growing anything but 
     wheat. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman says Freedom 
     to Farm should be revisited.
       Until Monday, McConnell was co-sponsor of Sen. Wendell 
     Ford's LEAF Act, which would preserve the price support 
     program and provide tobacco communities with a much softer 
     landing than the Lugar-McConnell plan.
       That Kentucky's two senators have split on this most 
     important tobacco question shows how very difficult it is.
       Neither the Ford nor McConnell approach is perfect. Some 
     hybrid of the two would be a better alternative. But if it 
     comes to an either-or-choice, we're for the conservative 
     approach, which oddly enough, is the one espoused by Democrat 
     Ford.
                                  ____


            [From the Lexington Herald-Leader, May 21, 1998]

     Untimely Demise--McConnell Plan Kills Tobacco Program Too Fast

       Some see Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell's shift to 
     supporting an abrupt end to the tobacco price-support program 
     as a political ploy aimed at sinking Arizona Sen. John 
     McCain's anti-smoking bill.
       Whether or not that's McConnell's strategy, he is putting 
     rural Kentucky at too much risk. At the very least, the 
     Republican from Louisville should demand tobacco farmers get 
     as much time as grain farmers to make the transition to a 
     free market.
       Under the timeline McConnell endorsed just this week, 
     tobacco-dependent communities would have way too little time 
     to prepare for the economic upheaval. Likewise, farmers and 
     farm cooperatives wouldn't have time to build up markets for 
     other crops and products.
       McConnell says the 68-year-old system of production 
     controls and guaranteed minimum prices for tobacco is doomed. 
     He says a mandatory buyout at $8 a pound is the best deal 
     Kentucky farmers can get. If that's so, give farmers a 
     certain date when the program will end. But make it a 
     reasonable date.
       What McConnell and Senate Agriculture Chairman Richard 
     Lugar propose is not reasonable. Their three-year phaseout of 
     the program is too quick. Payments to grain farmers under the 
     Freedom to Farm Act, by contrast, are lasting seven years. 
     And some people think Freedom to Farm will be overhauled when 
     the payments end in 2002.
       We're not necessarily saying spread out the tobacco 
     payments, since there are advantages to getting the money in 
     a lump. We are saying give farmers more time to grow tobacco 
     under production controls before jerking the safety net from 
     under them.
       The McConnell-Lugar plan is just as stingy with financial 
     aid to tobacco communities. The competing proposal by Sen. 
     Wendell Ford would pump $8.3 billion over 25 years into 
     educational grants and economic assistance to tobacco-growing 
     areas. The Lugar-McConnell plan provides $1 billion, which is 
     not enough to have much impact. Ford's proposal also 
     continues the price support program.
       We doubt the tobacco program's prognosis is as dire as 
     McConnell claims. The politics of tobacco have changed 
     drastically in the last few months. Anti-smoking forces have 
     come out in support of keeping some form of a tobacco 
     program. So has President Clinton. They realize that in an 
     uncontrolled environment, the cigarette makers get a 
     projected $1 billion a year windfall from cheaper and more 
     plentiful American tobacco, while many rural communities get 
     the shaft.
       That McConnell has embraced such an unbending approach 
     reinforces the notion that he's really out to kill the 
     tobacco bill. By staking out an extreme position, he lessens 
     the chance of compromise with Southern Democrats defending 
     the program.
       We can't forget McConnell heads political fund-raising for 
     Senate Republicans. The death of the McCain bill would make 
     the cigarette companies happy, and happy cigarette companies 
     would pump even more millions into Republican campaign 
     coffers. A lot of Kentucky farmers would love to see the 
     anti-smoking legislation disappear, too.
       But that seems unlikely, given the public's revulsion at 
     the cigarette companies' shameless efforts through the years 
     to hook kids.
       When it becomes clear he can't stop the inevitable, we 
     trust McConnell will use his clout as a member of the 
     Senate's majority to undo the Lugar plan, and give rural 
     Kentucky a fighting chance. We hope it won't be too late.
                                  ____


                 [From the Kentucky Post, May 22, 1998]

        McConnell's About-Face Might Mark End of Tobacco Quotas

                            (By Bill Straub)

       Mayfield, Ky.--Over the past decade, Sen Mitch McConnell 
     has proved himself to be the most astute politician in 
     Kentucky and certainly one of the smartest in the nation.
       Under his guidance, the state Republican Party, once a 
     laughing stock, has emerged to not only dominate the 
     Bluegrass congressional delegation but challenge the 
     Democratic Party's traditional hold on Frankfort. Were it not 
     for McConnell's touch and tactics, folks like Rep. Ron Lewis 
     would be back selling Bibles in Salvisa.
       Even when it seemed like McConnell tripped up there was a 
     method to his madness.
       He has, for instance, earned the enmity of do-gooders 
     everywhere for his no-holds-barred opposition to campaign 
     finance reform. Yet, as he delights in pointing out, no one 
     has ever won or lost an election based on electoral process 
     issues, and the GOP is reaping the benefits of his 
     recalcitrance by pulling in contributions as if it were 
     printing money.

[[Page S6462]]

       The time, however, it just seems like madness.
       On Monday, the Louisville Republican announced he was 
     abandoning his support for the tobacco program and siding 
     with Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate 
     Agriculture Committee, in seeking to have it abolished.
       It could be the biggest political story of the decade. 
     Imagine a Texas lawmaker suggesting that vehicles propelled 
     by fossil fuel cause too much pollution and embracing a 
     proposal to convert to cars that run on electricity. That's 
     what McConnell has done--in spades.
       Burley is Kentucky's number one cash crop, pulling in $1 
     billion per year. But it's more than that. It's grown on 
     60,000 farms, permitting uncounted numbers of men and women 
     to retain their beloved rural way of life.
       This is not Nebraska or Kansas, where thousands of acres of 
     wheat and soybeans are grown as far as the eye can see on 
     huge spreads. Kentucky's farms are small, family owned and 
     operated, and the hilly and rocky terrain prohibits a lot of 
     row crops.
       That's why tobacco has proved invaluable over the decades. 
     Folks on these small farms take city jobs but tend to a 
     tobacco crop that brings in enough money to permit them to 
     stay on the land. It is, in every sense, Kentucky's cultural 
     legacy.
       That heritage has been protected by the tobacco program. 
     The amount of burley produced every year is limited by a 
     quota system. It elevates the price and stops farmers from 
     other states from planting their own tobacco crop from fence 
     row to fence row.
       Without the tobacco program, which operates at no net cost 
     to the federal government, its's hard to imagine small family 
     farms surviving for very long in Kentucky. It's that simple. 
     There's no crop that pays enough to take its place. Folks 
     don't earn enough in the factory to maintain their small plot 
     of heaven without it.
       McConnell insists he is acting in the interest of these 
     farmers by killing the program. Its demise is inevitable, he 
     says, noting that support programs for wheat, corn and other 
     commodities have already been eliminated. Considering the 
     anti-tobacco fervor that seems to be overwhelming Washington 
     these days, he maintains that the responsible political 
     position is to join in the slaughter and broker the best deal 
     possible.
       The rationale makes absolutely no sense.
       For one thing, there remain some commodities, such as 
     peanuts, that continue to operate under a support system. 
     Many anti-tobacco activists support the tobacco program 
     because it limits production and keeps prices higher than 
     they otherwise might be--working as deterrent to smoking.
       President Clinton, who has hopped on the anti-tobacco band 
     wagon with both feet, has expressed support for keeping the 
     price-support program.
       The tobacco bill that passed out of committee contained a 
     provision offered by Senate Minority Whip Wendell Ford, the 
     Democrat from Owensboro, Ky., that offers a voluntary buyout 
     while keeping the price-support program.
       There is absolutely no detectable groundswell to kill the 
     program despite the continuing animus for the tobacco 
     industry itself.
       McConnell, suddenly, is leading the charge against what is 
     arguably the most important federal program in the entire 
     state when there is no army to lead.
       But consider it politically. The Lugar plan calls for a 
     three-year phase out at a cost of $18 billion. Each farmer, 
     under the proposal, will receive $8 per quota pound.
       What exactly has McConnell gained for Kentucky's small 
     farmers by colluding with the senator from Indiana?
       Prior to what some are portraying as McConnell's betrayal, 
     the worst-case scenario for Kentucky farmers had the Senate 
     killing the price support program over objections from Ford, 
     McConnell and other tobacco state lawmakers--under the terms 
     of the Lugar bill, which hasn't changed significantly in 
     recent months.
       McConnell's defection hasn't changed the terms of the 
     abolition debate, only provided cover to those who may have 
     been on the fence.
       McConnell is a power in Washington these days and he 
     generally has served in the state's best interest.
       But this move is inexplicable and the Republican Party he 
     has built and served with distinction could ultimately 
     suffer.

  Mr. FORD. Madam President, let me just pick out a couple of headlines 
here. ``The best deal? Plan McConnell backs brings in quick cash, but 
would ultimately kill off small farms.'' ``Untimely demise. McConnell 
plan kills tobacco program too fast.''
  These are in the Record.
  My colleague, Senator McConnell, referred to Congressman Ron Lewis 
who is for his position. Well, let me just say this, that Congressman 
Ron Lewis said that blood would run through Congress before he would 
give up the fight for the quota system. Then all of a sudden he now is 
for selling out. The Republican nominee to replace me for the U.S. 
Senate is for the LEAF program, not for the side that Senator McConnell 
is on. So it raises a lot of suspicion in the minds of my folks back 
home. Are Senator McConnell and Senator Lugar supporting the 
manufacturers or are they supporting the farmer? Because if the Lugar 
plan would go into effect, it would save the tobacco manufacturers a 
minimum of $1 billion a year over the next 25 years.
  And so when you have one major statewide official in Kentucky, 
elected official, representing the tobacco farmers in Kentucky for one 
position, the others the other way--our Governor supports the LEAF 
plan--I just do not understand. Maybe it is the big bucks for the 
Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee to kill this bill and, in 
fact, killing the bill, then can say that the farmers continue to grow 
as they are. But then everybody is worried about their demise. And if 
you have a demise of the tobacco program, then we are in mighty bad 
shape without funding.
  I was criticized for supporting Senator McCain and $1.10, but then we 
find the Lugar-McConnell plan is using that money to pay the farmers. 
If we didn't have the money, we would not be able to pay the farmers.
  So, this thing gets awful mixed up. I will be very hopeful about 
those who read this and those who understand what is happening.
  I have a lot here I could talk about, but we have ENACT, that 
supports the Ford-Hollings plan; an open letter from the tobacco 
States, from all of the health groups and the tobacco groups supporting 
our plan. It just seems some way, somehow, there is something more than 
trying to do something for farmers here and those who are trying to 
defeat the program.
  I might just say in closing, here is the Chicago Tribune today: 
``Health Funds Lose In Tobacco Talks: Everybody else gets their project 
on and youth are forgotten.'' If we are going to forget youth in this 
bill, maybe it is time we send it back to the Commerce Committee and 
try to write a bill that will be on target, that will save the youth 
from smoking.
  I think these young pages, after they hear the debate here, will 
never want to smoke, and I hope that is true. But when they become 21, 
they can do basically whatever they want to do. At that point, if they 
have not started smoking, they probably will not. But at the same time, 
we have a lot of folks who depend on this program. What we have done is 
help phase it out rather than cut it off at the knees.
  One of the things my friends on the other side, Senator Lugar and 
Senator McConnell, fail to say is when they do away with the program 
and the farmers get some money, they lose the value of their land. By 
some $7 billion in Kentucky alone, the value of farmland will be 
reduced, because the farmland is based on the tobacco quota. When you 
advertise a farm for sale, you put what the tobacco quota is in that 
farm sale.
  So, if we lose the farm program, as they would try to do, then we 
lose $7 billion in farmland value almost immediately. Some farmers 
could go to bed at night with their farm at one price, get up in the 
next morning and their farmland is at a lower price and it doesn't 
cover the mortgage, and the bank will foreclose on those farmers.
  People have not thought this through: ``Pay them some money, and get 
out of the business.'' Pay them a little bit of money, help them 
through the transition period here so we might be able to save their 
way of life.
  If my 5 minutes is up, I thank the Chair. I thank my friend from 
Delaware. He is always gracious, and I appreciate him as a friend very 
much.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, I ask to proceed as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________