Many conservatives are cheering the Senate's recent rejection of my comprehensive tobacco legislation. What they overlook is that the bill's defeat was also a defeat for many conservative priorities--the elimination of the marriage tax, a cap on runaway legal fees, an aggressive war on drugs, school vouchers, and block grants to the states to use as they see fit. The tobacco bill contained every one of these Republican Party priorities.
All but the block grants were offered as amendments by my colleagues who opposed the bill. I supported all the riders, and, with the exception of the cap on lawyers' fees, persuaded the Clinton administration and Senate Democrats to accept them. It is unlikely that in this truncated legislative year Republicans will find another way to prevail over Democratic opposition to our priorities.
For many of the bill's critics, however, none of these conservative advances compensated for the bill's increase in the price of a pack of cigarettes. Nor did they temper the critics' scorn for my apostasy on the issue of cigarette taxes.
An objective review of my legislative career would reveal a solid record of support for lowering taxes and opposing wasteful government spending. But smokers impose a $50 billion per year "vice tax" on the U.S., much of it in Medicaid and Medicare costs required to treat diseases caused by smoking. Of course the advertisements that tobacco companies ran against the bill failed to mention that tax. It seems fair to make smokers assume a larger share of those costs. If people choose to smoke, so be it. But they shouldn't expect the rest of us to pick up the tab for their bad habit.
An increase in the price of cigarettes would discourage smoking among the young. Opponents of the bill disagreed with that contention. But as we considered measures to discourage youth smoking, the sponsors of the bill relied on the counsel of the very best analysts of the cigarette market--tobacco companies. The companies concede that a steep increase in the price of cigarettes is the most effective way to curtail youth smoking, according to documents they were forced to disclose. I doubt members of Congress know better how to sell tobacco than do the masters of cigarette marketing.
Opponents of the bill repeatedly alleged that while the June 20, 1997, comprehensive agreement between the state attorneys general and the tobacco companies may have had some merit, our legislation had grown into a far larger money grab by the federal government. Those opponents ignored the fact that after the nearly $200 billion cut in the marriage penalty was adopted, the revenues earmarked for the federal government were less than the amount contemplated by the 1997 agreement.
The premise of our legislation is that the federal government can settle the states' suits against the companies faster and at less cost to the states than they can themselves. With the defeat of the bill, the states will resume their suits. Forced to disclose all their documents revealing the extent to which they have marketed to kids, manipulated nicotine levels and lied under oath to Congress, the tobacco companies will lose or settle every one of the suits.
Of course, the time and expense involved in this litigation is considerably greater and more burdensome than if we had settled the cases at the federal level. But the companies will certainly lose their pending suits, just as they have lost the four state suits that began this process. They will lose because the evidence against them is overwhelming.
And what will be the effects of this costly litigation? Companies will pass on every penny of the judgments, settlements and legal fees to their consumers. Ultimately, this "tort tax" will raise the price of a pack of cigarettes by at least $1.10, and probably more.
Plaintiffs' attorneys will make billions more dollars in contingency fees than they would have under our bill, because the only cap on legal fees ever passed by the Senate was sacrificed to kill the bill.
Meanwhile, due to the demise of my bill, the elimination of the marriage penalty will be delayed indefinitely. An aggressive war on drugs will probably be postponed for lack of the $2.5 billion annually provided for it in the bill. Veterans who were robbed to fund highway pork projects this year will receive no compensation, whereas the tobacco bill included $3 billion to help pay for the costs of their tobacco-related illnesses. Furthermore, some Republican candidates might be vulnerable to the charge that their party is in the pocket of tobacco companies.
And every day, another 3,000 kids will start smoking, one-third of whom will die early.
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