Lloyd Doggett

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. And the two of course are very closely related. I think we received so many promises of when action would occur and when debate would be permitted on campaign finance. At a minimum, we ought to be offered--another broken promise here, it seems to me, from the Republican leadership--and they ought to set a firm time at which we could have a debate on the floor of this House with all of our Members present about comprehensive tobacco legislation, and let people of both parties and all political philosophies come forward with their ideas about the most comprehensive and complete way of protecting our young people.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield, and I have seen that adopting the approach the gentlewoman has suggested, according to the Children's Defense Fund, would save almost 200,000 lives in my State of Texas alone. And I am sure the number nationally runs into the millions of young people who will not meet an untimely death if we can discourage them from becoming nicotine addicts.

Mr. DOGGETT. It sounds consistent with the criticism of Dr. Kessler as a thug and some of the other comments he has made in the past.

Mr. DOGGETT. That is a concern. They wanted to give Joe Camel a passport. They have already given him one really and taken him around to addict other people's children on nicotine, just as these nicotine peddlers have addicted our children in too many cases across America. I would reflect on some of the points the gentleman just made. I think this is important to put this in an important historical setting, and to recognize that experts that we turn to now, experts that were appointed, indeed, by Republican Presidents like Mr. Kessler, Dr. Kessler, in fact, now up at Yale, we turned to him for expertise on these subjects. A person that Speaker Gingrich labeled a thug; as you referenced, the kind of rhetoric that unfortunately has too often characterized debates in this House. To now suggest, and I read the same article about his comments, that the approach that the Republicans, I believe all of the Republicans on the Senate Committee on Commerce endorsed, was too liberal, is an indication of how really extreme and controlled by the tobacco lobby the leadership of this House is. I know the gentleman from New Jersey shares my view that what we need with reference to tobacco is a genuinely conservative approach. We need to place the emphasis on conserving the health of our children, and the rejection of what is really a fairly modest step by the Senate Committee on Commerce, a step that leaves many deficiencies, as has been pointed out with reference to international tobacco, with reference to many other issues. I think the House could improve on the steps that are important, but lacking, that Senator McCain has taken, to simply condemn them and the work of Republicans and Democrats alike as too liberal, and say we need a conservative approach. While I agree with the conservative part, but the only thing liberal I have seen in this bill is the way the tobacco companies have liberally circulated campaign contributions all around this Capitol. In fact, the gentleman from New Jersey will remember when I first got here, we had Republican leadership people passing out checks from the tobacco companies right here on this floor in such a grievous offense of the dignity of this House that they had to finally come back and pass a rule to keep themselves from doing this kind of errand running for the tobacco industry. So I think that as important as it is to ask the tobacco companies to voluntarily restrict their advertising, so much of this is linked to the campaign finance problems that the gentleman from New Jersey and I have worked on also, and knowing that if the tobacco companies would voluntarily restrict their campaign contributions, we probably would not need to be here tonight. We would not have 3,000 children tomorrow in America becoming addicted to nicotine because of the failure to act on restrictions with regard to tobacco. Rather, we could be moving on to other issues. Does not the gentleman from New Jersey, indeed, feel that this whole issue of tobacco is just another part of our effort to put families and children first in America like with child care and education? That this is a leading public health menace to our children, and that that is the center of this debate, rather than putting these labels on it?

Mr. DOGGETT. I know the gentleman is aware, after years of denying, I think really flat out lying about their attempts to hook children, we now know through the documents that the judges are forcing these tobacco companies to reveal to the public, after they get every big bucks lawyer in the country to go to every court of appeal and do everything they can to keep those documents secret, the documents are finally becoming to come out to show, as we found out in the State of Texas, they are targeting kids in elementary school to try to find out what would be the most effective way to hook them to nicotine. And once hooked, like to any other dangerous lethal drugs, many of these children are unable to leave the nicotine habit, and that has a tremendous effect on, really, as the gentleman described it, a public health epidemic in this country.

Mr. DOGGETT. Well, I think we know the tobacco companies would not be throwing their money away on advertising if it did not work to bring in more smokers, young smokers, to take the place of the many Americans who have died prematurely from smoking-related diseases of many types. Just as the tobacco companies know that their campaign contributions are not being wasted, they would not be making these campaign contributions frivolously. I am sure in your history you were giving to put in perspective this now refusal to move forward in the House on reasonable public health measures to protect our children, you are probably going to cover what happened just last year when two tobacco companies were the Number 1 and the Number 2 soft money contributors to the Republican Party, and then right after they set their record of contributions, the next month, along comes this secret $50 billion tax break. We, in a way, have already begun to take up the tobacco settlement issues. It is just that Speaker Gingrich and the Republican leadership thought the first issue that ought to come up was not protecting our children, but protecting the tobacco companies by giving them a $50 billion tax break, which when it became public, they were so ashamed of, they snuck out here and repealed it last year, as you will recall.

Mr. DOGGETT. I certainly share that concern. I believe that is one of the areas that we could make significant improvements on the work that the bipartisan group there in the Senate has begun. They have begun the work; they have moved in the right direction, but they haven't done quite enough to protect the public health of our children. To say to an industry in this country, of all the industries that we could turn to and give some kind of special protection and say we won't hold them accountable, we will not hold them personally responsible for their deviousness, for their criminal misconduct, to say that, as is suggested by this limitation on their civil liability for these malicious acts that they have engaged in, would be to reward them for decades of abuse in creating the largest cause of preventible death in America today. And what would that say to other industries? That the worse you are, the more legal protection the Congress of the United States is going to give out? I think it would be a signal far beyond this tobacco industry's misconduct that could have untold consequences in other areas of our life here in America.

Mr. DOGGETT. I think that is right. He affirmed the same viewpoint to reflect back on his early tenure in the office of Speaker that the gentleman referred to out of the article at the beginning of his remarks, when he put a stop. We could have been moving on this and obtained some of this information months ago. Thousands of deaths ago we could have acted on this measure. But the Speaker put a stop to the investigation that was going on in the House Committee on Commerce of the misconduct of the tobacco industry. Had it not been for vigorous action in the private sector to point out the abuse and misconduct of the tobacco industry, we would not be to this point. Now it is a question of whether the Speaker can be a continued roadblock. He has been successful. I will have to give him credit where credit is due. He has managed to destroy thus far our efforts to reform the campaign finance system, blocking it in a most devious form. But whether the American people will tolerate that remains to be seen. We have our discharge petition moving along on campaign finance. Now to add to that insult further injury by permitting the Republican leadership to block us from moving forward to deal with the problems that our young people face here and abroad with reference to nicotine addiction would be a terrible wrong. I think it is a wrong clearly that that overwhelming vote in the Senate Committee on Commerce indicates that Members, Republican and Democrat in that body, will not tolerate. I think if the American people hear about this enough, they are going to be speaking about it to their Members, Republican and Democrat alike, saying, you cannot go home without addressing the number one public health epidemic in America today for our young people, and that is nicotine addiction, and the fact that 3,000 new addicts will be added to the rolls every day until we are able to address this problem of youth smoking.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I will be expanding on this legislation this next week with a revision, including some of the provisions that have been incorporated in the Senate Committee on Commerce, but recognizing that when the tobacco companies go abroad to try to pay the penalties that they have incurred here at home, that it is just wrong for us as Americans to be projecting forth the idea that there is something American about smoking. We see some of these billboards up in foreign countries suggesting that the western, democratic thing to do is to smoke. We see at schools, at kiosks, at clubs, we see, as the gentleman and I have been in some parts of the world, young people who look like they are barely old enough to go to elementary school passing out free cigarettes on the streets; using cigarette logos on toys, on toy cars in Buenos Aires; on arcade games in the Philippines; Marlboro labels on various kinds of children's clothes. Those are the kinds of things that makes it pretty clear that they are targeting young people in these other countries, recognizing that many of the other countries do not even have the feeble limitations on tobacco that have existed in this country. We now have literally a worldwide health epidemic with nicotine addiction, and I hope to expand on the action that the House considered last year, the legislation that I introduced with the gentleman's help, in addressing in a more broad form the steps we could take to reduce this worldwide epidemic, and project our role as a superpower, frankly, in a very positive way to try to improve world health.

Mr. DOGGETT. Of course, I am familiar with the gentleman's leadership role on behalf of Armenia and Armenian Americans, and I am sure the gentleman has found it troubling, as he has traveled there and in some of these other former Soviet countries, that it is not only the opening up of the country economically, but there is a sense on a cultural level that there is something about smoking that connotes freedom in the western philosophy, western openness. The tobacco companies, and I met recently with a medical director from a health unit in Moscow, apparently are using billboards to really take advantage of this whole idea that there is something western, there is something free and democratic about smoking. That is not the kind of America that I want to project to these countries as we hopefully see them turning around to a western style of open economy and open government. Rather, we should be projecting our best. But I think all of our concern about the international aspect does come right back to this room. Was there not also some comment within the last few days questioning whether Joe Camel was somehow even related to attempts to addict children?

Mr. DOGGETT. That the whole effort was targeted towards children?

Mr. DOGGETT. I think that is why we need to address the issue of advertising directed to young people. They are susceptible to the many subliminal messages, the many direct messages in this advertising. I believe that one key part of the action that we need to take addresses advertising. I know that there has been some feeling that there needed to be agreement on the part of the tobacco industry, and certainly that would be better on the advertising front in particular. But does not the gentleman agree that our responsibility as Members of Congress is not to ask what would be best for the tobacco companies, or to ask whether this is okay by them, by RJR, but that we ought to make our priority to be a conservative approach, of conserving children's health first, and seeking out the way that we can best address children's health and its protection, not how we can best protect the tobacco companies that have caused so much harm to so many Americans and people around the world?

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, could the gentlewoman yield on that?

Mr. DOGGETT. I was wondering how the gentlewoman would react to a statement, and we have covered many of the various outrageous statements that Speaker Gingrich has made on the subject, but how the gentlewoman would react to a statement I understand he made this month that in order to understand what has happened with teenage smoking, this is not complicated. It has nothing to do with Joe Camel. He made that statement, apparently.

Mr. DOGGETT. We cannot let this Congress run out of time without responding on the leading public health challenge our young people face.

Mr. DOGGETT. I know from your service on the Committee on Appropriations that we expend millions of taxpayer dollars to investigate the causes of various kinds of illnesses and diseases in America to try to improve health. Here is one that we know what the cause is. We know that nicotine addiction is the leading cause of preventable illness in America today. We do not need any more research to find that out. In fact, some of the most powerful research was done by the tobacco companies, hidden by them, hidden by them for years, but we now finally have it. And having that, if we cannot on this leading and most obvious cause do something about it, then I think we really are shirking our responsibilities.

Mr. DOGGETT. It would be consistent with what they did on campaign finance; coming up with some phony proposal probably written by some tobacco companies, and paid through their high-paid lobbyists here. Some kind of complete subterfuge, as they tried in blocking campaign finance reform. We cannot let that happen with reference to the health of our children.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, the most congested and the most dangerous section of Interstate 35 anywhere between Canada and Mexico is in my hometown of Austin, Texas. Correcting the gridlock on Interstate 35 is vital not only for the Central Texas economy but for everyone in this Nation that relies on this vital transportation artery. I commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster), the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri), and all of the Members that have worked so hard to produce this bill. We have followed their example with a broad regional bipartisan coalition to build a bypass to I-35 in Texas known as State Highway 130. Our work on SH-130 demonstrates the wisdom of the Chairman's support of demonstration projects. These high-priority projects like SH-130 are a way of assuring that our priorities are addressed by both State and Federal transportation bureaucracies. These bureaucracies are not the know-all and the be-all on planning transportation. Sometimes the bureaucratic number-crunchers forget that their actions can crunch people and can crunch neighborhoods as well as numbers. In the case of SH-130, we have required in this bill a specific route endorsed unanimously by City Council members and commissioners as well as some State legislators. We have also specified that that money must be expended solely for the construction of that portion of SH-130 within Travis County and south of U.S. 290. From the outset, I have supported a bypass for traffic, not a bypass of local community concerns by an unresponsive bureaucracy. Now is the time for the Texas Department of Public Transportation to apply some of the $10\1/2\ billion that it is receiving in this bill to build SH-130, build it now, build it in the right way to the east of Decker Lake in Travis County, Texas.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, as this Congress concludes the first 100 days of 1998, it is quite appropriately in recess. Indeed, the Republican leadership of this House has been in recess for most of this year on most issues that could really make a difference in the lives of most Americans. They were in recess yesterday when, after demands for over a year to have a real debate on how to get the big money influence in this Congress controlled, they presented a phony bill that was rejected by even most of their own Members. They talk about taxes, but when it comes to closing the tax loopholes and ending the corporate welfare for those same big money contributors, this Congress has been in recess. When it comes to passing a budget that would protect Social Security first, in recess. On child care, on improving the quality of education, on pension protection, they have been in recess. The first 100 days of this Republican Congress: a do-nothing Congress in recess, in recess from reality.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, there are people of good faith, both Democrats and Republicans, who have some good idea about how to clean up the corrupting influence of big money in our campaign system. But every one of our Republican friends will have to admit that the only reason that those ideas are not being considered tonight is because the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrich), and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey) do not want them considered. They know if we had a full and fair debate, as some of us have been demanding since January of 1995, that we would approve real reform and respond to the needs of the American people. So this year, the Republican leadership, unlike 1996 when they were satisfied with a mere knife in the back of campaign finance, this year they prefer an axe murder. They have chopped this bill up. They want the blood to splatter across this Chamber and let everyone share a little bit of the blame. The blame is clearly placed in one and only one place: Those who have chosen to deny a fair debate on Republican and Democratic proposals alike. They are the people who said they came here as revolutionaries. But when it comes to campaign finance, there they are only revolting. Some of us say they delayed too long on this, but I think we were wrong. They should have brought this bill up a day later, on April Fool's Day.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentleman. It would appear, then, that the last bill that leadership offered is not the only one that has been killed by this House. Campaign finance is as dead as a door nail.

Mr. DOGGETT. Haste was very important to us last September when the gentleman told us this issue was going to be coming up, but I missed the answer to my question. Is it correct that the only debate that will be permitted next week on campaign finance will allow 20 minutes to a side for debate, no amendments, and none of this legislation will pass the House if it only secures a majority vote?

Mr. DOGGETT. Well, if the gentleman will yield further?

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, as I listened to this afternoon's disgraceful announcement given to us, I gather, with some glee by the Majority leader, that the American people would be denied any free and fair debate on the issue of campaign finance reform, I could not help but reflect on how this Congress began back in January of 1997. Mr. Speaker, we assembled here on this floor to begin the people's business. We have come now through the full year of 1997 and well into 1998. It was on that very first day in January of 1997 that we cast a vote on the issue of campaign finance reform and were denied an opportunity to move forward on it in this Congress. And repeatedly, over the course of 1997 and 1998, there have been those of us, both Democrats and Republicans, who have come to this floor asking not to have it exactly our way, the way we would write a campaign finance bill, but to have a free and fair debate of this issue that goes to the core of the problems that surround this institution, the Congress and the Government of the United States and the way that it operates. Over that time period, we first were told by some that we could accomplish the issue of campaign finance reform in time for our Nation's birthday, on July 4 of last year. That time came and went. I think some looked to that date, because a couple of years earlier Speaker Gingrich went up to New Hampshire and shook hands and smiled with President Clinton and said that they would move forward on real campaign finance reform. That was in 1995. He delayed for a year and then engaged in the kind of sham maneuver we have seen this afternoon in order to kill campaign finance reform in 1996. So we came to the fall of last year, after many speeches and many demands for action on campaign finance reform and, lo and behold, the majority leader, the same gentleman from Texas who stood before us today to kill campaign finance reform, he announced that we would have action on campaign finance reform last fall before the Congress recessed. Of course, as we all know, that time went by and no action occurred. No debate on any proposal was permitted. But we heard, with some degree of incredulity I suppose, as we listened to the discussion on the last day of that session, the Republican leadership assembled upstairs in front of the press and they announced a great task force. They had all of these proposals they were going to put together and they were going to put a Republican fix on the campaign finance reform system and they were going to be ready to debate that when we gathered here in 1998. Well, now we are in 1998, and we reached the day yesterday when they were going to present their great proposal, and they have since found now that they have presented it, that it is being rejected by the majority of Republicans. And so they have decided to pull down that proposal and to deny us full and fair debate of that, because if we began debating that fully and fairly, we might be able to offer a motion to recommit it to the committee and get some genuine reform of the campaign finance system. So, Mr. Speaker, on a day when many Members of this Congress will be traveling to New Mexico to honor our distinguished colleague, the late Steve Schiff, at his funeral, on that day they have scheduled the debate in which any of the Members who will be traveling to the funeral will be unable to participate. And should they get back here in time to vote on Monday night, if only a majority of this body votes to approve campaign finance reform, it will be defeated because Speaker Gingrich and Majority Leader Armey and, to hear the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey) say it, all of the Republican leadership has agreed on one thing: The only way they will permit any Democrat or any Republican to discuss and debate the issue of campaign finance reform is in a contrived procedure designed for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to ensure that campaign finance is dead and gone for this session, that nothing will happen. Mr. Speaker, why is this issue, which frankly, as we travel around the country, we do not hear on the tips of the tongues of the ordinary working people of this country, why is it so important? Well, the reason that it is so critical that we have a full debate is that it goes to every other issue that occurs in this Congress. Because increasingly, there are Americans out there who say that in this Congress we do not decide issues, whatever they might be, in terms of what is good for America. Rather, we decide them principally on the basis of who gave how much to whom and how often they did it. It is that kind of corrupting influence in our democracy, to the extent it actually occurs, and more importantly perhaps to the extent that that is the way the American people feel about this system and they lose faith and confidence in our democracy because of the role of big money and corrupting this system, that this is so critical. Perhaps some in America are concerned with our tax system or with Social Security or education or child care. If we are to deal with any of those issues constructively, we have to reform this system, and that is why today's action is so disgraceful.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, in a Congress that has been full of outrageousness, what we have seen here this afternoon represents by far the greatest outrage of all. To imagine that the Republican leadership, as announced by the majority leader, could get together in a secret meeting and plot to deny the American people an opportunity to have a bipartisan discussion and debate about how to clean up our corrupt campaign finance system is incredible. The majority leader has placed this matter on the docket for action on a day that many Members of this body will be at the funeral of a distinguished statesman, a Republican colleague, the late Honorable Steve Schiff in Albuquerque. Unfortunately, on Monday, it will not only be Mr. Schiff who is buried, but campaign finance, an incredible action in which Members are denied any opportunity to offer an amendment, any opportunity to debate beyond 20 minutes per side, and in which, if after all those contortions to defeat campaign finance, if that is not enough, if only a simple majority of this body should vote for campaign finance reform, it would be defeated because they demand a two-thirds vote. A disgrace has occurred here today.