Lloyd Doggett

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I am glad the gentleman pointed that out, because the kind of indifference and disinterest in this subject I am talking about has not always been true in the House. When the Democrats controlled the House, bottle collection since that time and recycling has dropped 83 percent. Can collections have only dropped 73 percent. Statistics on paper recycling have not been completely available, because when the House attempted to recycle four million pounds of paper, almost 90 percent of it was cluttered with garbage and the recyclers refused to take it. I am aware of the gentleman's support of the amendment of the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr); that there are some people, including the gentleman who is asking the questions, who are of good faith and concerned about this. But to spend 3.5 years and have 3 of that without any recycling coordinator, to come into my office in the past week and be told the recycling program is suspended, is truly outrageous. To have this report which the recycling coordinator prepared, by an honest Pat Dollar, who was hired here very briefly, prepared, hidden, secreted, covered up and not released by the Superintendent's Office despite months of requests there, and to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), to not release this information is a disgrace. That secret report, never formally released, points up that there is so much confusion around here in the corridors of these House buildings because many people do not think there is a recycling program, because they see so much garbage cluttering the floor out there. And when someone has to go through the recycling, it is pretty clear that effective recycling is not being done. The Farr amendment, which I understand the gentleman supports, is a step in the right direction, but it is a very modest step. Just devoting some money to this is not going to solve the problem. There has to be interest. There has to be leadership. There has to be a total and complete change to adopt the attitude of the schoolchildren in Austin, Texas, instead of the attitude of the House Republican leadership, which has been unwilling to have this Congress lead the way on recycling. Let me just say that I believe there are businesses and schoolchildren and citizens all over this country that realize that recycling papers, cans, bottles, anything that will tear, is a win-win proposition. It is true of numerous Federal agencies right down the Mall that recycle, and actually earn thousands of dollars a year from their recycling program. It is not true of this House. Despite the fact that out here every day we have more recycled rhetoric about the environment and more recycled old bad legislative proposals, when it comes to the simple matter of doing something about all the trees that get chopped down for the tons of paper that come through these halls, just simply seeing they do not end up in a landfill, that they get recycled, that very simple thing that so many American families are able to do, this family, this House, has not done, is not doing, is not going to do until there is a total change of attitude and some emphasis on and direction from the House Republican leadership to get the job done.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. With regard to the comments from the gentlewoman from Ohio, Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Rules was so enthusiastic about addressing this problem that they have allowed us an entire 5 minutes to discuss the amendment offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr). It is the same kind of priority we have had in 3 of the last 3\1/2\ years with no recycling coordinator. With regard to the comments of the gentleman from New York, that the problem was the Members, I am surprised that any Member recycles. The rules that are given out are confusing. They were sometimes in direct error with regard to recycling practices. Furthermore, the level of commitment is such that a few months ago the custodial workers had had to bring their own plastic liners in order to do recycling. Member compliance, as was noted in this secretive report, is a problem because many Members are not even convinced there is a recycling program. It is true that all, but I think, 11 Republican Members of this House, who have said they were willing to participate in voluntary recycling, but they are not given the guidelines, nor are their staffs, to ensure that this program works.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I commend the gentleman's leadership. I think it would be really helpful in focusing on what is a disgrace for the Congress, and perhaps with the adoption of the gentleman's amendment we can begin to correct this blunder.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, the power to tax is indeed the power to destroy. The Internet not only offers us an amazing way of communication, but it offers a tremendous potential, a revolutionary potential for electronic commerce. With the Internet still in its rather fragile youth, hasty or excessive use of taxation could easily destroy this wonderful new wellspring of free speech and economic enterprise. Suppose a Texan finds on the Internet a new software package that could double her business potential and decides to buy it over the Internet. She is sitting at a computer in Texas. The company which produces the product is headquartered in Washington State, and she uses an Internet server that is located in Illinois. Washington, Illinois and Texas and all of their subdivisions that are relevant have a claim to somehow tax this transaction. In a way, the transaction has taken place in each of these three States. Will my neighbor in Austin get a tax bill from all three, plus their subdivisions, or will the States somehow have to fight it out over who gets to tax the most-and-the- first test? Well, I believe that the current situation is really a mess. We have the potential of over 30,000 jurisdictions that could be doing the taxing. If we do not enact this moratorium, it will mean up to 30,000 hands in the cookie jar, and when all these governments have taken out all the taxes they want, the consumers and the businesses who want to rely on the Internet will have only a few crumbs. Last year, our bipartisan Information Technology Working Group that I founded with the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) focused attention on this problem and had experts from around the country come in and discuss it. That is both in my work there and as a representative of central Texas, which is at the forefront of the high-tech economy. I have seen firsthand the tremendous economic potential of the Internet. I believe that the Internet is at its best when government interference is at its least. The Internet is at its best only when government is at its least. We call for a time out from taxes and a time on for perfecting electronic commerce. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, which will allow us a 3-year period in which to work together and devise a bipartisan and equitable solution to the future of electronic commerce in this country.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. I am greatly encouraged by the gentleman's comments in this regard and would just want to be sure I understood them correctly. As you know, the Committee on Rules, in addition to any germane amendments that Members might have, has approved the consideration here on the floor by special rule of 259 nongermane or irrelevant amendments, which I think is more nongermane amendments than they have accrued on all of the bills that have been considered while the gentleman has been majority leader. Is it the gentleman's intent then when we begin consideration of this bill next week to work through to the end rather than to start stop, start stop, start stop, as we have done today in an effort to kill the bill?

Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentleman very much. Does the gentleman believe then, as the gentlewoman from New York asked, that we can see this work completed before July 4?

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, these are some mighty strange cats. They offer the opportunity to fatten up the fat cats, and they offer a little cat chow for everybody else. They call it conservative, but when it comes to conserving our resources and seeing that every penny of the budget surplus that was achieved this year in historic terms is allocated to reducing the debt and protecting Social Security, they say no way. They do not give our public schools very much to meow about either, because they really do not believe in any Federal commitment to public education. What a change it was to go from this Congress home to Texas and to see the enthusiasm for learning of young people, the determination of our professional educators, and the involvement of parents to see their young people graduate this spring. How incredibly contradictory at the very time we are celebrating learning and the struggle of American families that these Republicans in one budget called one thing and one called another do the same thing, and that is, to rip the heart out of American public education. I had a blue ribbon school winner, the kind of principal who is there turning a gang-infested area around into a success story for young people. I asked her about this Kasich budget to rip out Title I and in her words, she said ``We would die without those Federal funds.'' That is what is at stake here, not just some rhetoric about who can be more conservative than someone else. In my community we are turning the corner on crime. It has not hurt a bit to have 200 new officers on our streets to help deal with the problem of juvenile violence. These folks say forget that, we want to cut what is there now, not help to do more about juvenile violence. They say they can do it with just a penny across the board. Well, they could not find one penny, one $400 hammer out of the Defense Department bureaucracy to cut. Not a penny do they cut there. They say they have got to have more money in order to succeed. Mr. Chairman, they say there is more than one way to skin a cat, but I maintain that, under either of these Republican budgets, it is only the American people that are going to get skinned.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have my name removed as a cosponsor from H.R. 1766 and H. Con. Res. 240.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, freedom of religion is certainly a vital cornerstone of this country. The right to pray, the right to seek divine guidance should be unimpaired, and heaven only knows by watching this Congress in action, or this year in inaction, we have more and more to pray about every day. But throughout recorded history our forebears have recognized the importance not only of religious conviction but of religious freedom and tolerance, for throughout recorded history there have been those who, as Jonathan Swift so aptly put it, had just enough religion to make us hate and not enough to make us love. And so it is this country was founded on the concept of religious freedom, to respect the rights of others, and that concept has served this Nation very well. As we look around the world today we think of the divisions caused in society over religion. We look to South Asia or to the Balkans or to the Middle East. But indeed we have our own religious Ayatollahs right here in this country. Some of them unjustly attacked our colleague the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), and others like Jerry Falwell have declared, ``I hope to live to see the day when there will be no public schools. What a happy day that will be.'' That is what this amendment is all about, the movement to destroy public education and to substitute religious arrogance for religious freedom.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, for those just tuning in, this might well be called ``Trillions after 10,'' because as we approach the 10 o'clock in the evening hour here in Washington, we are beginning to consider how trillions of dollars, of taxpayers' dollars of the American people, are to be expended. Why this manner of consideration? Because this Republican budget, taken up after a full day of dilly-dallying, like most of this Congress, this Republican budget is truly a national embarrassment. It rejects the whole spirit of bipartisanship that produced the first balanced budget in decades, and the largest Federal surplus in the history of this Nation as a result of a bipartisan spirit. Instead of a bipartisan approach to trying to resolve our budget for the next few years, the approach we hear tonight is the same tired old rhetoric of tax and spend that had to be rejected in order to get us together in a bipartisan spirit for this budget. We came in as members of the Committee on the Budget to consideration of this proposal in much like the circumstances we find ourselves in tonight, with a take-it-or-leave-it budget, that rejected at the outset the number one goal of budgeting this year, and that is to save Social Security, first and foremost. We presented an amendment that suggested that every penny of this large surplus ought to be devoted to protecting and preserving the Social Security system. That approach was rejected. It is rejected in this embarrassing Republican midnight budget. Secondly, we said, recognize that there are a lot of American families out there struggling to make a go of it. Give them a targeted tax cut to address their needs with reference to child care, and support public education for those families that are trying to help their children get through our public schools. Instead, this Republican budget proposes to eliminate the only Federal program that provides direct assistance to our schools for economically disadvantaged children. It is an embarrassing budget that rejects the needs of America's families and the needs of this Congress to work together.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I can certainly sympathize with the comments of my colleague from Maine. I guess if I lived in Maine or Vermont, I would like to get this stuff as far away as possible as much as anyone else. There are two very serious misnomers in this compact as proposed. One is that it is a low-level radioactive waste disposal site. It is low- level only as compared with higher level, but not as compared to the life of anybody sitting around here tonight. Indeed, long after every person in this body is gone from this Earth and everyone who ever knew any of them is gone from this Earth and everyone who knew anyone on this planet is gone from this Earth, this radioactive waste is going to be very, very deadly. Indeed, this radioactive waste that is going to be put out in Sierra Blanca, Texas, is going to be very deadly to humans for far longer than all of recorded human history in the existence of men and women on this planet. So it is a very momentous occasion when we consider the issue of what we are going to do with waste that is waste and is harmful for thousands and thousands of years. It is true that nuclear medicine, as my colleague from Texas indicated, is important, and all of the wastes generated from the academics, from medicine, from other sources of this type as proposed would take up, I believe it is something like five ten-thousandths of a percent of the capacity of this dump site. Well over 90 percent would come from the nuclear power industry. So it is indeed misleading to suggest that we are trying to thwart nuclear medicine, which we certainly are not. What we are trying to do is to ensure that something that is going to be extremely dangerous for tens of thousands of years is not inappropriately dumped on a poor, impoverished, heavily Hispanic area of Texas, that also happens to be environmentally unsuitable. The second misnomer in this bill is something we can and have done something about, and that is it is labeled as the Texas-Maine-Vermont compact. Indeed it is so labeled. Yet in the fine print, as the comments of my colleague from Maine suggest, there is a little escape clause that says that a group of unelected commissioners, appointed by governors who have long forgotten about this compact, that this group of people can let anybody into this compact they want to, and have everybody dumping on the poor people of Sierra Blanca, Texas. That is wrong, and that is why this House of Representatives has already gone on record in approving an amendment that I offered to limit the compact to the title, Texas, Maine and Vermont. The United States Senate did exactly the same thing. They approved the same kind of amendment. So the conferees ought not to have to spend any time on the issue of limiting this dump site to three states, Texas, Maine and Vermont, because both houses of Congress have already acted on this issue. Unfortunately, our statewide elected officials in Texas have been strangely silent on it, and hopefully the fact that now both the House and the Senate have acted will give them the fortitude to come forward and speak out and say, ``Don't mess with Texas; don't dump everybody else's waste.'' At least limit it, if you are going to mess with Texas, to just the states of Maine and Vermont. Indeed, that is exactly what they said. My good friend, the gentleman from Rockwall, Texas (Mr. Hall), told this body on October 7 of 1997 that by approving this compact, and I am quoting, ``Texas will be required to accept waste only from Maine and Vermont.'' The same comments were made by our colleague the gentlewoman from Dallas, Texas (Ms. Johnson), by the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), and by a number of other of our colleagues, and it was reiterated by Governor George Bush in an interview with the Houston Chronicle on April 19th, that that was the objective of this whole proposal. Well, if it is, let us write it into law, as we have done. The suggestion of the gentleman from Maine and others that this somehow would require reratification is nonsense. There is no reason that simply holding these parties to what they presented to this Congress, of limiting it to those three states, would require reratification. Nor does it constitute any violation of the commerce clause, as some have suggested, since it deals exclusively with the compact and not all sources of waste. But, you know, the real issue here is not the legalism, but the environmental soundness of this decision. The most recent report on the whole subject of nuclear waste dumping, one that came out in December of this past year, indicates we already have excess capacity, that the three waste sites that we have at present are perfectly adequate to meet future waste needs. Senator Wellstone has done an excellent job of adding an amendment in the Senate that deals with this issue of environmental justice. I hope that it is maintained by the conference committee. I think that the reason this site has been placed in Sierra Blanca, Texas, for Maine and Vermont, and perhaps for other states, is not because of environmental suitability, but because of perceived political weakness. We are today speaking out on behalf of the poor people of Sierra Blanca and all those that care about this nuclear waste issue, to say it is wrong to dump on them what we would refuse to keep in our own backyard.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, when it seemed they had no promises left unbroken, the Gingrich Republicans have apparently decided to break yet another promise on cleaning up this Congress. As over 200 Members of this House stood strong outside this door signing a petition, demanding that campaign finance reform be debated here on the floor of the Congress in a fair and bipartisan manner, Speaker Gingrich grew desperate, and he came forward and said, if you will not have that kind of reform, we will vote on campaign finance reform no later than May 15. On my calendar, that is next week. Yet, word is circulating that the Gingrich Republican leadership, which has done practically nothing in this entire Congress on anything, has decided to do absolutely nothing on campaign reform in the entire month of May. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the matter of cleaning up corruption, they know that each day of delay will assure the death of real reform.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DOGGETT. The gentleman may be aware that the Speaker has answered this question. Back on April 22, Congress Daily reported that Speaker Gingrich himself told Congress Daily that we would have a fair and open debate on campaign finance not just during May, not just before the Memorial Day recess, but by May 15. By my calendar, that is next Friday. We have the tentative schedule that the Republican leadership has put out for next week and there is not any reference to campaign finance reform on it and, apparently, they are afraid to come out here and tell the American people that. I wonder if the gentleman has been advised anything to the contrary? I thought they had broken all the promises there were to break on campaign finance reform, but they have found yet another promise to break with the Speaker having promised and said in print that it will be done by May 15, next Friday. They have misrepresented to the American people. They do not have any intention to do it and do not have the courage to come out here and tell the American people that.

Mr. DOGGETT. I would express the same concern as our colleague from Wisconsin. First, that the American people have a legitimate concern about the need to reform our whole tax collection system. I have been hearing a lot about that. But in order for that to be a fair process, we have to take the money out of the system that is corrupting the system that really stands in the way of our getting real legitimate tax reform. I want to bring to the gentleman's attention the fact that another member of the Republican leadership who was not willing to come out this afternoon has also spoken on this issue. ``House majority leader Armey indicated Tuesday that campaign finance reform legislation could be on the House floor before the end of this session.'' This is a Congress Daily article dated September 17, 1997. The credibility of the suggestion that there are private negotiations or that this is about to come up is tested by the fact that we have had these promises now ever since, I guess, the first day of the Republican revolution on January of 1995, that this issue would come up. And each of these promises each time either gets broken or changed. Is the whip advised as to whether, in anticipation, this last promise of action by May 15 was relied upon by public interest groups not affiliated with either the Democratic or the Republican Party, and whether or not Common Cause and literally dozens of religious and public interest groups came together in anticipation of our voting next week, by May 15, to present some type of bipartisan proposal for us to consider that would not advantage either party but might advantage the American people?

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman).

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the International Tobacco Responsibility Act of 1998, a bill to adopt a truly responsible policy on nicotine addiction. With the recent forced disclosure of documents, we have learned, in the words of the tobacco companies themselves, the treachery they have engaged in in targeting America's children. Less well-known is the activity they have had around the world to addict the children of other countries. Since 1990, while Philip Morris sales have risen by a little less than 5 percent here in the United States, they have grown by more than 80 percent abroad. Only last Thursday RJR Nabisco posted some bad news: They had about an 11 percent drop in their tobacco earnings. But the news was not all bleak. As the New York Times reported, the analysts said that the company's tobacco sales grew impressively in some areas like Romania, where they more than doubled. The analysts noted there was extremely good volume in market share growth in Eastern Europe and Russia. The big tobacco companies that disavowed the settlement now, originally, when they entered that settlement, they knew they could pay any penalties they owed for what they did to our children by going and addicting children in someone else's backyard. I think that is wrong. If America is to be called a world leader, it must also lead in the battle to save the lives of young people around this planet. Last year, this Congress took some constructive action when it adopted an amendment that I authored to an appropriations bill to stop the American taxpayer from having to be an unwilling accomplice in promoting the activities of these tobacco companies abroad by involving improperly, I think, and now it is against the law, the Trade Representative's office and our various consulates around the world. Now we need to address this problem in a much more comprehensive way. And that is what this legislation does, recognizing that every year tobacco-related diseases kill 3 million people in this world, and if the trends continue, it is estimated that in the next 25 years we will be up to a level of 10 million deaths a year as a result of tobacco. This legislation that I have introduced for myself and for a number of our colleagues in a bipartisan effort addresses five major areas. First, we seek to establish a worldwide code of conduct for U.S. tobacco companies. We basically are saying, do not market tobacco to children anywhere, and alert consumers to the dangers of your product everywhere. The Marlboro man has hardly vanished. He has just taken a trip around the world to a school or a youth-oriented magazine in someone else's country. Last August, at the very time these high-paid, high-powered tobacco lobbyists were trooping around the Capitol asking us to endorse the settlement, one of these tobacco companies provided all-expense-paid vacations to Miami Beach for Latin-American reporters so that they could hear company representatives announce that restrictions on smoking and advertising were scientifically unsound. That is the kind of hypocrisy that we are dealing with. Two decades ago, the United States set a higher ethical standard with regard to bribery. We can do the same thing with regard to tobacco. The second part of this bill is to strengthen last year's prohibition on our Government promoting tobacco abroad. The third is to recognize that public health advocates around the world lack the resources to combat the very seductive practices perfected in addicting our children of these United States tobacco companies. And so it sets aside some revenues from any settlement to help establish an American Center on Global Health and Tobacco and to help fund efforts through the Department of Health and Human Services to discourage tobacco use worldwide. A fourth issue is to address the matter of cigarette smuggling which is already going on and actually helps some of these companies open up new markets. And finally, we encourage the involvement of the United States in an International Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This convention would be similar to the international campaign to ban land mines, because we have a real mine here threatening the future of the children of this world. For our Government to allow companies to pay their debts at home by hooking children abroad to nicotine addiction and pushing them down the path to cancer, heart disease and emphysema would be an unprecedented act of hypocrisy. After so much talk about a global tobacco settlement, it is time to pass truly global legislation that will establish a responsible United States policy for addressing our country's long complicity in the export of death and disease.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I believe that the millions of Americans who want some real change in the way our campaign finance system works and want to reduce the corrupting influence of money on our political system can be encouraged by the sudden reversal yesterday of Speaker Gingrich and his announcement that we would, within the next 3 weeks, act on this floor in a fair, bipartisan way to address the problems that are so critical in this system. However, I think all of us have to wonder whether this represents only another New Hampshire handshake. Americans will remember that it was back in 1995 in New Hampshire that Speaker Gingrich promised President Clinton there would be action then on campaign finance reform. We have had one broken promise, one bit of double talk, doublecrossing after another on this issue since then. So we must remain vigilant and involved to ensure that real reform occurs here, and not more talk and doubletalk.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, it is alarming, but hardly surprising, to find the House Republican leadership continuing to do the bidding of the tobacco lobby. Within the last few days, the Speaker has declared that Joe Camel had nothing to do with youth smoking, and today the House Republican whip has opposed efforts in an article in the Wall Street Journal, of course, to reduce youth smoking by raising the price of tobacco. This is the same House Republican leadership that last year thought the way to a tobacco settlement was to approve a $50 billion tax break for the tobacco lobby. The only thing I can find to agree on this subject with Speaker Gingrich on is we need a conservative approach, a very conservative approach that begins with conserving the health of America's young people; not protecting the nicotine peddlers who have exploited them at the same time they have funded the Republican Party.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this Republican tax loophole preservation act. Certainly, it is tempting to write off the proposal as just another expression of Republican frustration at their failure to advance the cause of true tax reform in this Congress. We know that even the bipartisan legislation that we approved here in the House last year to correct some of the abuses at the IRS continues to linger. Indeed, one of the many subjects on which this do-nothing Republican Congress has done nothing this year is tax reform. There is not one taxpayer in this entire country that can point to a bit of help that it has gotten in 4 months out of this Republican Congress since it convened in January. And this constitutional amendment is no doubt a part of the overall Republican strategy with reference to the United States Constitution. I have got some friends there in Austin and they wake up each morning and on their calendar they have a thought for the day. Well, the House Republicans always go them one better. They seem to have a constitutional amendment a day. They profess to be a conservative Congress, but we would never know that from the fervor and the furor to edit and tinker and rewrite one provision after another in the United States Constitution that has served our country so well over the last 2 centuries. The document upon which this Nation was founded is in danger of being tinkered with and overwritten, until it commands as much respect as the municipal traffic code. And, of course, the immediate effect of this proposal on our efforts to reduce youth smoking must also be considered. In this morning's paper, our colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), writes, ``No new taxes. No, not even on cigarettes,'' and he declares that any increase on Federal taxes on tobacco is unwise, unwarranted, and unfair. Well, those of us who have seen the studies that this is the most effective way to cause young Americans to not become addicted to nicotine, the leading cause of preventable death in this country, reject that kind of thinking. We have had difficulty mustering a majority to overcome the stranglehold that big tobacco has had on this House, and to get a two-thirds majority would be impossible forever. And perhaps that is why the tobacco companies support this kind of an approach. But even more is at stake on this particular matter, and that is why I call it the Republican tax loophole preservation act. Americans are rightfully dissatisfied with our tax system and our Tax Code. They know that it has one provision after another that is a special loophole or advantage that benefits the few at the expense of the many. Let me reiterate one of the examples that has been given on this floor and enlighten my colleagues a little bit more about it. The $50 billion tax credit that the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrich) and his cohorts put into this Tax Code last year as they proposed it was passed here in the House on about page 317 of an extensive bill under a title that masqueraded as assistance for small business. They included $50 billion for the tobacco industry. And only after the bill passed and that little provision was found tucked in there did they suddenly disavow any knowledge. They did not even know how it got there. Well, if this piece of legislation, this constitutional amendment, passes, all that we need is to get some smooth lobbyist and the cooperation of the Speaker of the House to tuck in a provision like this $50 billion tax credit, and guess what? It will be there forever unless we can muster two-thirds to undo the damage. Unless we can find the will in the House to get two-thirds of this body to write out these loopholes, they are going to be there forever. I am concerned about the loopholes, about the corporate welfare in our Tax Code. I think it is unfair. I think there is one provision, one special provision put in there by these thick-carpet lobbyists after another that ought to be repealed in the Tax Code. But if we want to ensure that our Tax Code has all the loopholes that it has today plus any that the Speaker and the lobby can throw in there in the future and that they stay there and that all the rest of us who are out there working for a living have to pay for those tax loopholes, approve this measure. Because the only way we get rid of any of those loopholes is not only to get the majority we find so difficult to get for reforming the tax system today, we will have to have two-thirds of this body. This is the tax loophole protection measure that is up for consideration today. And every American who wants to see this system change and changed fundamentally so that there is more fairness in our tax system, so that it does not take a bank of accountants to prepare a tax return on April 15, all of us who want to see real change in that system need to be here speaking out against this constitutional amendment. Because it will set back our effort at reform, not advance it.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. With that kind of money at stake, it is pretty clear why the tobacco industry can afford to lavish such giant campaign contributions on this Congress. And it is also pretty clear that the type of addiction that is at stake here is not just the addiction of our young people to nicotine, but the addiction of some of the leadership around this place to that kind of tobacco campaign money.

Mr. DOGGETT. I think quite clearly you need to give the Food and Drug Administration, which deals with other kinds of harmful substances, lethal substances, the authority to do what it needs to do with reference to nicotine because it is such a deadly drug. It is responsible for so many lost lives. But I think about the personal example you gave, and I believe that tomorrow morning there will be so many people around America taking car pools, as I used to do when my daughters were a little younger, and you go by at any high school in America almost, and at too many middle schools, the smoking corner. And you see bright young people with tremendous potential out there and realize that what we are talking about here in Washington, when we talk about hundreds of thousands or millions of people, they are Jane and Tom and Sally and Bill that are down there on the corner tomorrow when you see them on the way to taking the kids to school, or passing by a school on the way to work. It is their future that is at stake here. The thought that tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day this year 3,000 young, bright people with so much potential will become addicted each day to nicotine, and that all of us working collectively here could do something about it, that is why we are here tonight talking. That is what is at stake, the lives of bright, creative young people getting misdirected in their youth on to something that stays on their backs forever and leads to their premature death and illness and destruction of them as an individual, and tremendous harm to their family, and limiting the potential of what they can give back to their community. There is just so much at stake here. I think we have to keep pressing Speaker Gingrich that even though he may have these commitments to the campaign contributors, and he may feel that the person who has been a public health leader should be called a thug, and these other kind of outrageous statements; that Joe Camel does not have anything to do with our young people smoking; that despite all that, we have no choice but to keep saying we will not take no for an answer; that we are demanding a full and complete debate about the most comprehensive bipartisan public health effort we can have to reduce the danger to those young people.