Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I am agreeable to a time agreement on this amendment, yes.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill remain in the status quo until 1 p.m. today.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that, following the remarks of the Senator from Missouri, the Senator from Iowa be recognized for 5 minutes, and following those remarks, I be recognized for 20 minutes.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I wanted to come over this morning to say a few words about the bill and about cloture. I am strongly supportive of the amendment by Senator Coverdell, and what I would like to try to do in my brief remarks is to put this whole debate in proper context. I know literally dozens of our colleagues who support the bill have come over and spoken. It is awfully easy on these kinds of issues for people to get confused. So what I would like to do, very briefly, is to go back and put the focus of attention on where the money is coming from that comes into the bill, where the money is going, and what both-- where the money is coming from and where it is going--say about the bill. Then I would like to talk very briefly about the Coverdell amendment and conclude by making a remark on the cloture vote. First of all, for endless hours our colleagues who support this bill have damned the tobacco companies. They have indicted--convicted on many occasions--the tobacco companies for their activities over the last 25 years. And let me say that it seems to me, based on the evidence they have presented, that if one were sitting on a jury, one would have to find the tobacco companies guilty. While our colleagues hold the tobacco companies in contempt, seeking to draw our eye to the tobacco companies, the problem is that the money coming into this bill comes not from the tobacco companies but it comes from working Americans who are relatively-modest-income people. The reality of the bill is, interestingly enough, that while our colleagues who support the bill go on and on about the tobacco companies, damning them for their activities--and justifiably so--the reality of their bill is that the tobacco companies not only do not pay these taxes but they are mandated to pass the taxes through to the consumer. I hope when people listen to this debate about the terrible activities of tobacco companies, they will realize that what we have in this bill is one of the giant legislative bait and switches in the history of American Government. The bait is tobacco companies--savage the tobacco companies--but the switch is that we are taxing blue-collar Americans, and, in fact, with an incredible pass-through provision in the bill, we are requiring the tobacco companies to work in concert to see that working Americans pay every penny of these taxes. That is the bait and switch of this bill. The proponents of the bill hold up tobacco companies to revile, but they reach into the pockets of blue-collar working Americans and take untold billions of dollars in one of the largest tax increases in American history and certainly the most regressive tax increase of any size in the history of this country. And I would like to remind my colleagues that 34 percent of the over $600 billion of taxes collected in this bill will come from Americans in families that make $15,000 or less; 47.1 percent will come from Americans in families that make $22,000 or less, and 59.1 percent of the taxes in this bill will come from families that make less than $30,000 a year. So while our colleagues hold up tobacco companies as this source of evil and the focus of the debate, the reality is that the tobacco companies are paying no taxes and that Americans who make $30,000 or less are paying 59.1 percent of the taxes in this bill. This is a tax on blue-collar workers, and it is a massive tax. Let me just give you an example. The Presiding Officer is from Alabama. And 24.9 percent of the people in Alabama, who are adults, smoke. That is 762,857 smokers. If this bill is implemented and, as is predicted by most sources, the price of a pack of cigarettes rises by $2.78 a pack, that means that a blue-collar worker in Alabama, a truck driver, a waitress, will pay $1,015 in additional taxes to the Federal Government if they smoke one pack of cigarettes a day. We can say, well, they ought not to be smoking cigarettes. And, obviously, we all hope they will quit smoking cigarettes. But the point is, this bill clearly assumes they will continue to smoke in vast numbers, because how else then would the bill get over $600 billion to spend? So the question we have to ask ourselves is, in the name of punishing the tobacco companies, why are we imposing a tax of $1,015 per year on blue-collar workers in Texas and in Alabama and all over the country? It is interesting to note that if this bill goes into effect, the Federal tax burden on people making less than $10,000 a year will rise by 44.6 percent. So this is a massive confiscatory tax on blue-collar workers. The amazing thing is, by the logic of this bill, they are the victims. These are the people the tobacco companies conspired to induce to smoke, targeted with their advertising, many of them when they were less than 21 years of age. They now are addicted to nicotine. While the bill dubs them as ``victims,'' and promises them that they will be helped, the reality is the victims are being taxed by a massive amount to fund this bill. That is a point we must never forget. I have an amendment pending to give some of this money back to blue- collar workers. I have read it written up in many newspapers and being covered in the media. Obviously, I must be doing a poor job of explaining what the objective of this amendment is, or else you would have to conclude that maybe the point is not being portrayed accurately. I would never assert that. Basically, what I am trying to do here is to say to blue-collar workers all over America who smoke: Look, this bill wants to raise the price of cigarettes to discourage teenagers and to discourage you from smoking. But rather than impoverishing you, our objective is to change the price of cigarettes and alter behavior, so we are going to take a portion, a substantial portion of the money and give it back to blue- collar workers by repealing the marriage penalty for couples that make $50,000 a year or less. Now, let me make it clear. In our budget, and the tax cut that will flow from it, we are going to cut the marriage penalty for those who make over $50,000 a year. And if we do not pass this bill--and increasingly it looks like we may not--then we are going to repeal the marriage penalty for everybody. But the reason that I focused in on $50,000 and below in this bill, is that smoking in America today is predominantly a blue-collar phenomenon. Seventy-five percent of these taxes will be paid by people who make $50,000 or less. So the objective here is to give some of the money back to them, so we raise the price of cigarettes but we do not pound blue-collar workers literally into the ground with this tax. We have been in a period of chaos since my amendment was introduced because our colleagues are concerned about losing the money. If you listen to this debate, almost every day, at least a dozen times, proponents of the bill say, ``This is not about money. This is about smoking. We're raising taxes not because we want the money.'' They say, ``But we're raising taxes because we want to discourage people from smoking, and studies have shown that price is the most effective way to do that.'' But their bill belies what they say in two ways: No. 1, they spend the money; and, No. 2, they spend it in the name of getting people to stop smoking when, in fact, of the 60 percent reduction in teenage smoking they seek, 50 percent would be produced by raising price alone. So what I am trying to do in my amendment is to simply do this. Let them raise the price of cigarettes, but hold them to their word that this is not about money, and give a substantial amount of the money back to blue-collar workers who are paying this tax in the form of a tax cut, and the one I have chosen is to repeal the marriage penalty for modest income people. I think the debate about the marriage penalty is well understood. When we get to my amendment, I will talk about it in detail. But never in America should there be a penalty involved for people who fall in love and get married. The average marriage penalty in America is $1,400 of additional taxes that people pay for the privilege of being married. As I have said on numerous occasions, my wife is worth $1,400, but I think she ought to get the money and not the Government. And so I am going to hold out on my amendment. This bill will not pass without my amendment being part of it. And it may not pass with my amendment being part of it. The argument against the tax cut which I have proposed, which is really a rebate to people who are bearing confiscatory taxes under this bill, and the argument against the Coverdell amendment, which seeks to broaden the protection for teenagers from smoking to smoking and drug use, the argument against it is we do not have enough money to do these things. We are collecting over $600 billion in this bill, but they do not have enough money to give some of it back to blue-collar workers and they do not have enough money to try to do something about illegal drugs even though that is the No. 1 concern of parents. In a recent poll, when parents were asked what things they worried most about in terms of things their children might do, 39 percent said using illegal drugs, 16 percent said joining a gang, 9 percent said drinking alcohol, 7 percent said having sex, 7 percent said driving recklessly and 3 percent said chewing or smoking tobacco. What the Coverdell amendment simply says is, while we are protecting our children, let us not just protect them from the 3 percent, let us protect them from the concern that 39 percent of our parents list as their No. 1 concern, and that is using illegal drugs. But yet our colleagues say, we do not have enough money to do this. That leads me to the next point, and that is, what are they using the $600 billion for? The cold reality is, not only do they have enough money to give some back to workers to prevent a massive tax-and-spend program from coming into effect, not only do we have money to improve our war on drugs and to promote the cessation of smoking for teenagers and adults, but the plain reality is this bill is awash in money. It is obvious from looking at how it is spent. And I want to give you three examples. The first example has to do with the tobacco farmer. Obviously, we are all concerned about the impact of this bill on tobacco farmers. But when you look at this bill it is clear in looking at the tobacco farmers section that no logic whatever has gone into devising this section. In fact, it is clear that this bill has more money than it knows what to do with. Let me just give two examples, not to belabor the point. The first example is that we are in the midst of a program we call Freedom to Farm where we literally have gone through our major commodity groups and given farmers transition payments to begin phasing out of the program. We are in the process for wheat, corn, grain sorghum, barley, oats, upland cotton and rice. We paid for wheat, a total over a 7-year period of $125.34 per acre; for corn, $220.27; for grain sorghum, $131.25. The highest payment was for rice, $714.09 per acre. If you add up all the amounts, all that we paid all seven major crops combined was $1,495.78. If you multiply that times the 740,000 acres we have planted in tobacco in America, under the Lugar provision of this bill, if you paid the cumulative amount of all the other programs combined, you would pay tobacco farmers $1,106,877,000. The Lugar provision in the bill pays tobacco farmers $22,297.29 an acre and they can go right on growing tobacco. We don't even get the land for $22,297.29 an acre. Now, my purpose here is not to ridicule this provision. My purpose is to point out how much money is squandered in this bill. Robert Samuelson, in his article in the Washington Post the other day, cites a figure of $92,000 an hour paid to attorneys in these tobacco settlements. Yet we have no provision of this bill setting out some limit. It is my understanding that we are going to try to limit that at $1,000 an hour or $2,000 an hour, but in a bill where supposedly we can't give any of the money back to working people who are bearing a massive tax increase, we have enough money to pay tobacco farmers $22,297.29 an acre. We have enough money to pay plaintiffs' attorneys $92,000 an hour. I have a new one today, and what I thought I would do is begin to do a new one each day that we do this bill. My new one today is on Native American smokers cessation. We have a provision tucked away in this bill, one of dozens and dozens of provisions, where we are going to provide up to $7.56 billion for smoker cessation programs among Native Americans. These bills will be targeted at the 1.4 million Native Americans served by the Indian Health Service. Adult Native Americans smoke at a higher rate than the population as a whole--39.2 percent. We will be spending $18,615.55 per adult Native American smoker in this program. If you have a family in which both adults smoke, we will be spending on their smoker cessation programs under this bill--now, hold your hat on this--$37,231.10 for every Native American family who smokes, $37,231.10. Now, we could buy people a Chevrolet Suburban. We could buy every smoking Native American family a Suburban for what this program will cost on a per capita basis for smokers. Now, does anybody believe that when we are talking about one little provision--and I could make this point about dozens of other programs, and I will as we go further along the debate--but does anybody believe this bill is seriously ``scrubbed'' for how we are spending money, when we are spending $37,231.10 per smoking Native American family on cessation? Does anybody view that as anything other than what a candidate for State office in my State called this whole process when he said, ``We won the lottery.'' Well, let me remind my colleagues that to some people this money is a lottery, but to blue-collar working Americans who will bear the brunt of this tax, this is going to be a massive tax increase. Now, even at this late date, what could we do to salvage this bill? I thought I would add one final thing before I end my remarks this morning. What could we do that would make it possible to move ahead with this bill? First of all, the bulk of the money we are collecting ought to go back to the people paying the tax. If the objective of the tax is not to tax and spend, if the objective of the tax is not to fund more government, why not raise cigarette taxes, but give the bulk of the money back to the same people by repealing the marriage penalty, by making health insurance tax deductible for the self-employed, and people who don't get health insurance on their job so that Joe and Sarah Brown--one a waitress and one a truck driver, neither of which gets health insurance on their job--get the same treatment as General Motors. Repeal the tax penalty. What I would like to see is maybe 60 percent to 70 percent of the money given back in tax rebates--not tax cuts because their taxes are going up. The taxes of Americans making less than $50,000 a year as family income will go up on a massive scale in this bill. If we repeal the marriage penalty for them, if we make health insurance tax deductible for people who make less than $50,000 a year, their taxes will still go up as a result of this bill, but they won't go up as much as they would under the existing bill and will raise the price of cigarettes without impoverishing people. Now, if my colleagues are serious when they say that it is not their objective to get this money to spend it, they just want to raise the price of cigarettes, I don't understand why we don't begin there. Second, we ought to bring drugs and tobacco on an equal level in the bill and use half our money for smoking cessation for teenagers and half our money to try to get teenagers to stop using drugs. Since 1992, drug use among seniors in high school has risen faster than tobacco use. It is a much more serious problem and ought to be treated at least on par in this bill. Now, if we had a bill that gave some of the money back to the States, gave some of the money back in tax rebates to the very people who will pay the taxes, and then took the rest of the money, throughout all of the massive overkill--you can't spend the money; the levels of money spent in this bill are virtually unspendable by any stretch of the imagination. Read two paragraphs in here and you can't figure out what they are doing, and we are giving them $10 billion to do it. Read another paragraph, it is not clear what they are doing, and we are giving them $20 billion to do it. What I am saying is throw all that stuff out, come up with a coherent, antismoking, antidrug program. If you do that, we have a bill. But if you do that, you do not have what I believe is driving this bill in many quarters, and that is the desire for a massive tax increase to fund the most rapid growth in government spending since Lyndon Johnson became President. So if this is not about tax and spend, this bill can still be saved. The way it can be saved is give most of the money back in tax cuts, get the benefit of raising the price of cigarettes, give money to the States, take what is left, split it between drug abatement and smoking abatement, and come up with a simple, coherent, practical program to try to abate smoking and drugs for teenagers. If we do that, we can still have a bill. But we are not going to have one of the largest and certainly the most regressive tax increases in American history to fund a massive growth in Government. I assume my colleagues will vote against cloture. If they vote for cloture, they are basically voting to freeze all of these programs in place--two different programs; I was only talking about one of the two programs for tobacco farmers. All of this wasteful spending, all of these massive tax increases, all of this tax-and-spend effort--if people vote for cloture, they are locking that in, because at that point none of these amendments--the Coverdell amendment to bring in drug abatement, my amendment to give a tax rebate to moderate-income people so we don't drive them into poverty with this tax--all these things will be denied. The Senate will not have an opportunity to vote on them if they vote for cloture. I trust that my colleagues will not do that. I yield the floor. Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I am simply reading numbers out of the bill. Basically, we have 743 pages of mandated spending on everything from maternal and child care health services, funding child care, mandating funding under child welfare, title IV, section (B), and mandating that the funds in this bill be spent by the States be spent on the Department of Education, Dwight D. Eisenhower Professional Development Program, under title II of the Elementary and Secondary Act. We have in this bill what some estimate is the ratification of a settlement that will pay attorneys $100,000 an hour. Yet we do not have enough money to prevent the impoverishment of blue-collar workers who have been victimized by the very tobacco companies that we assail. This bill gives all this money--endless billions--to all these groups in the grossest giveaway that I have ever observed in my political career. Groups that would have been happy with hundreds of dollars, in this bill we give them billions of dollars, because the mentality is, as one office seeker called it: ``We won the lottery.'' Well, unfortunately, this is a lottery that is paid for with taxes imposed on blue-collar workers. What I have proposed to do is to simply take a third of the money so that we still get the full impact of raising the price of cigarettes. However since our colleagues claim this is not about money, I would like to give part of the money back to blue-collar workers by repealing the marriage penalty on moderate-income families who make below $50,000 a year so that we do not end up impoverishing the victims of the whole effort to induce people not to smoke. Also, let me say that it is not possible to effectively spend the amount of money that is allocated in this bill. It is not possible to spend the billions and billions and billions of dollars in this bill, nor is it wise public policy. So I think if you really wanted to have a bill and you wanted to raise the price of cigarettes, that you would raise the price of cigarettes and you would take the bulk of the money and cut taxes on moderate-income people who are going to pay the costs. So you discourage people from smoking but you do not pound them into the ground economically. That is what I am proposing to do. What is this deal about suddenly the Democrats want to cut taxes? What is all that about? Well, what it is about is, they think that if they can guarantee their Members that they will immediately get the vote on a figleaf amendment right after we have the real vote, that they can get every Democrat Member to vote against repealing the marriage penalty. Basically, let me tell you what will happen. I just want to ask people who might watch this vote to watch it happen. When my amendment is voted on, because if anything is voted on, this amendment is going to be voted on, when we reach 51 votes on my amendment, you are going to see about 20 or 30 Members rush down and vote for it right at the last minute. It will pass with 65, 70, 75 votes. But if it only gets 49 votes, none of them will rush down, because what the minority leader is trying to guarantee them is that if they vote against the amendment to repeal the marriage penalty, that they are going to get a vote later on. Their amendment will be a much smaller tax cut, but when they get asked back home, ``Well, weren't you willing to repeal the marriage penalty on working families?'' They are going to say, ``Oh, yeah, I was for it. I just wasn't for that provision. I was for another provision, but I wasn't for that provision.'' So I do not know if anybody is going to be fooled.

Mr. GRAMM. I always stand ready to be corrected.

Mr. GRAMM. I will not yield.

Mr. GRAMM. I do not intend to yield until I am through. We hear the minority leader say that we can't afford to give a third of the money back to blue-collar workers who, if they smoke one pack of cigarettes a day, will pay $1,015 of new Federal taxes. People making less than $10,000 a year will see their Federal tax burden go up by 41.2 percent because of this bill. They say we don't have a nickel in this bill that we could give back to blue-collar workers who have been victimized by the very tobacco companies that they denounce. But it is interesting that while they do not have a penny to give back to working people, they have $28 billion to give to tobacco farmers. Let me try to set this in perspective. Under a provision in this bill, tobacco farmers would be paid $21,351.35 an acre. We would make a payment to tobacco farmers of over $21,000 an acre, and then they could continue to grow tobacco under the same program they grow tobacco under now. I can go out today and buy a quota to grow tobacco for $3,500 an acre, but yet we are proposing in this bill to pay $21,351.35 for what can be bought for $3,500 today? Why? Basically because this bill is not about teenage smoking, except for about 10 pages of it. And 743 pages of this bill are about the most egregious kind of spending that has ever been observed anywhere in the history of this Government.

Mr. GRAMM. I do not yield. I listened to everybody else talk. I simply want my turn.

Mr. GRAMM. I don't want to get into a long argument with the minority leader, but I have to explain what this is about, in case somebody tuned in the middle of all this. For several weeks our Democratic colleagues have stood on the floor of the Senate and denounced the tobacco companies, with great justification. But they have proposed a bill that imposes taxes principally on blue-collar Americans, and they have in their bill an incredible provision that mandates tobacco companies to pass the tax through to the consumer. Despite the fact that it sounds like we have come to a lynching of tobacco companies, the reality is we have a confiscatory tax on their victims, the people who smoke. As my 85-year-old mother has observed, ``You are saying to me I have been victimized, and then instead of taxing the tobacco companies, you are taxing me.'' The tax in this bill is imposed on very moderate income people: 34 percent of it is imposed on those who make less than $15,000 a year; 47 percent is imposed on those who make less than $22,000 a year; 59.1 percent is imposed on those who make less than $30,000 a year. Our colleagues say this is not about money. It is not money they want. It is just coincidental that they get $700 billion from blue- collar workers in higher taxes. What they want is to raise the price of cigarettes. My amendment simply says raise the price of cigarettes, but rather than impoverishing the victims, the people who have been induced to smoke, let's take a portion of the money, in this case roughly a third of it, and let s give it back to moderate-income families by eliminating the marriage penalty for families that make $50,000 a year or less. I basically view this as a rebate of part of this tax. I am trying to take our colleagues at face value as to what they say they want to do. They say their objective is to raise the price of cigarettes not to pass one of the largest tax increases in American history. When I offered the amendment that would give a third of the money back to blue-collar workers, suddenly our colleagues were all up in arms, and we find ourselves in this situation.

Mr. GRAMM. I would like to respond to the minority leader, if I may.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRAMM. I listened to the Senator speak for over an hour. All I want to do is make my point, and when I get to the end of it, I will yield. So with the wisdom that comes from being 85 years of age, my mother, who has no formal education, has listened to this debate. She has listened to this vilification of the tobacco industry--and justifiable vilification I might add. Yet she has figured out that nobody is taxing tobacco companies, they are taxing her. She is the victim. The Government is here to help my mother. And how are we going to help her? Having been addicted to smoking for 65 years, and despite her baby son's efforts for 55 of those 65 to get her to stop smoking she is addicted, and she is not going to quit smoking. She has concluded that we are talking about how bad tobacco companies are for having gotten her addicted to smoking, but we are taxing her. The cold, persistent, unhappy fact is that 59.1 percent of these taxes will be paid by working blue-collar Americans who make less than $30,000 a year; 75 percent of the taxes will be paid by people and families that make less than $50,000 a year. If this is not a classic case of bait and switch, I never heard one. All of the rhetoric is about keeping teenagers from smoking. I would love to do that. I would like to get people who are not teenagers to also stop smoking. I would love to do that. But why we have to give $700 billion to the Government to do that, I don't understand. I am struggling, opposing this organized effort and all of these people who are outside with their buttons on saying ``Give me your money.'' Secretary Shalala has said that the price increases will reduce smoking by 50 percent among teenagers. This bill sets a target of reducing smoking by 60 percent, so they are going to take $700 billion and all they claim they are going to be able to do with it is reduce smoking another 10 percent. Though it is interesting, when USA Today asked the American people in a poll if they believed this bill would stop people from smoking, 70 percent said no. Here is my point: If we want to raise taxes to discourage smoking, that is one thing. But why do we have to keep the $700 billion? Why do we have to raise the level of Federal taxes on Americans making less than $10,000 a year by 41.2 percent? If the objective is to make cigarettes more expensive and discourage smoking, why do we have to impoverish blue-collar America in the process? What I am saying is, if we believe that raising prices will discourage smoking, let's raise prices. But let's take at least part of the money that comes to the Government, and instead of paying tobacco farmers $21,000 an acre and letting them go on growing tobacco; instead of paying plaintiffs' attorneys $100,000 an hour for filing these suits; instead of setting up programs where every major Democratic contributor will have his charity or his interest funded by this program, why don't we raise the price of cigarettes, discourage smoking, and take the money and give tax cuts to blue-collar America so we are discouraging them from smoking, but we are not pounding them into poverty? Maybe you can be self-righteous enough that you are not worried about a blue-collar couple in Texas paying $2,030 of additional Federal taxes if they smoke one pack of cigarettes a day. Maybe you are not worried about what that is going to do to their ability to pay their rent, to pay their groceries, to have any chance of saving money to send their child to college. But I am worried about it. I am not in any way made to feel better by damning the tobacco companies while writing a bill that protects them from paying this tax; a bill that mandates they pass the tax through to the consumer, which basically is blue-collar America. I have an amendment that is very simple. It says: Raise the price of cigarettes, discourage smoking, but instead of letting the Government have this money, what one office seeker in my State has called ``winning the lottery'', instead of setting up a program that gives not thousands, not millions, but untold billions to everything from community action to international smoking cessation--it is obvious that people long since ran out of ideas as to how to spend the money-- instead of engaging in this feeding frenzy, which will bloat Government forever, why don't we take some of the money and give it back to moderate-income people. So we raise the price of cigarettes, we discourage them from smoking, but we don't impoverish them? I have picked probably the worst feature of the current Tax Code to try to fix as a part of this process. What I have done is targeted a part of the Tax Code where it is the policy of the Federal Government to discourage people who fall in love from getting married. I happen to believe the family is the strongest institution for human happiness and progress that has ever been developed. I don't understand a tax policy that says if you have a waitress and a truck driver who meet and fall in love and get married, we are going to make them pay more taxes for being married than if they were single or lived in sin. Or if a CPA and a lawyer, working all the way up and down the income structure, fall in love, get married and have a whole bunch of children who can pay Social Security taxes in the future and solve America's problems in the future, we tax them an average of $1,400 a couple because they got married. As my colleagues have heard me say on many occasions, my wife is worth $1,400, and I would be willing to pay it, but I think she ought to get the money and not the Government. So what my amendment does is take roughly a third of this money in the first 5 years, and then half of it in the second 5 years, letting them spend two-thirds of this money, more money than you would possibly spend efficiently if your life depended on it. People who would have been happy with thousands now will be given billions. Tobacco farmers will, in 6 months, take a quota for growing tobacco they could buy today for $3,500, and we are going to pay them over $21,000 for it in this bill. I personally don't know why these quota prices have not exploded, given this bill is out there. Maybe they figured out this bill is not necessarily going to become law. Rather than do all of those things, I am saying, let's raise the price of cigarettes so we try to discourage people from smoking--which is God's work; I am for that --but take a third of the money and instead of letting Government spend it, let's eliminate this marriage penalty for couples who make less than $50,000 a year so that while the price of cigarettes goes up, we don't impoverish people. That is basically what my amendment does. I hope my colleagues are going to support it. Our Democrat colleagues do not really want to give this money back. They don't like giving money back. They like spending it. And they think anybody who works is rich and they ought to be giving more than they are giving. But their idea is: Take my amendment and water it down to almost nothing, and then get all their people to vote against my amendment. Then get them to come back and vote for their figleaf, amendment. Then they can all go home and say, ``Repeal the marriage penalty? I was for repealing the marriage penalty; it is just I didn't want to do it the way that Republicans wanted to do it. But I am with the family. I'm with the blue-collar worker. I represent the blue-collar worker.'' I am hopeful we can reach an agreement that will guarantee that I will get 51 votes for my amendment. If anybody wants to watch the debate, once it goes over 51 votes, I predict that at least 20 or 25 percent of our colleagues who have not voted for it will immediately rush and vote for it once it is adopted. We might watch that at the conclusion of this vote. In any case, the point that I want to reiterate, because it gets lost in this whole process, is a simple point: Everything that is being said about the tobacco companies I agree with. If we are here to indict them, they are indicted. If we are here to convict them, they are convicted. If we are here to hang them, let the hanging begin. But despite all that rhetoric, which is interesting and appealing and it makes us feel good, in the end, 59.1 percent of this tax is being paid by American blue-collar workers who make less than $30,000 a year. The tobacco companies, on the other hand, have a provision that even if one tobacco company should say, ``Well, I could get a market advantage by not passing this through,'' they have legal protection that makes them pass it through to be sure the blue-collar worker gets all of the tax burden and that none of it is absorbed by the tobacco companies. All I am trying to do is say this: Don't get blue-collar Americans, who are the victims of the effort by tobacco companies to get people to start smoking, confused with tobacco companies. If you want to impose taxes on tobacco companies, have at it. If you want to drive them out of business, have at it. But you are not going to do that, because basically there is a rule that every parasite learns. If the organism is to survive, you don't kill the creature on which you engage in the parasite activity. You bleed the host creature, but not to the last drop of blood. My view is, I care nothing about the tobacco companies and, if you want to destroy them, have at it. But I do care about 3.1 million Texans who smoke. Many of them would like to stop. My mother would like to quit smoking, but she is not going to quit smoking. All I am saying is, don't get tobacco companies and workers confused. And I am talking about taxpayers. If the price increase, according to Secretary Shalala, is going to cut consumption by 50 percent and the target of this bill is to cut consumption by 60 percent, then this $700 billion is getting you 10 percent more, supposedly. I just don't see how you can spend that much money. If you look at what is being done, it is clear that much of what is being funded in this bill has nothing to do with smoking. For example, we mandate that the States spend the money we give back to them on maternal and child care block grants, on funding child care, on federally-funded child welfare, on the Department of Education Dwight D. Eisenhower Professional Development Program under title II of the Elementary and Secondary Act, and it goes on and on and on and on, because nobody has ever had this much money before to spend. Actually, this is a modest proposal. What I am saying is, give a third of what we take in cigarette taxes back to blue-collar workers so we get the benefits of the higher price of cigarettes but we don't impoverish blue-collar America by making it fund the largest growth in Government that we have seen since the mid-1960s. I hope my colleagues will support this amendment. One way or the other, I hope to see it adopted. I want to get a vote on it. I want America to know who is for it and who is against it. That is the essence of democracy--accountability. I think this is an issue on which we need some accountability. Quite frankly, I think my amendment improves this bill. We ought to be giving about 75 or 80 percent of the money back in tax cuts. We need to have an effective but reasonable program for antismoking, and we need to throw out about 745 pages of this 753-page bill so that it is really about smoking and not about the largest money grab that has occurred in Congress in my period of service. This amendment is a first step in the right direction. I hope it is not the last step. I understand there are others who are going to be offering provisions related to tax breaks for health care and other items, but this is a logical place to start, and it is where I want to start. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I am not going to give a long speech this afternoon. We are working to develop a compromise to provide some cushion to basically blue-collar Americans who are going to bear the brunt of this massive tax increase that is before the Senate. I am hoping that we can reach an agreement, and that we will move forward in an orderly way. Let me say to my colleagues that I am determined to see that we do not allow the Senate to engage in one of the greatest bait- and-switch legislative activities in history. Our dear colleague from Massachusetts has in passionate terms indicted the tobacco industry. If this is a trial of the tobacco industry, I vote guilty. If this is a lynching, I say hang them. But I want to remind my colleagues of one unhappy fact. And facts are stubborn things. The cold reality of the bill we have before us, all 753 pages of it, is that we can damn the tobacco companies all we want, and I join in that chorus. As to where conspiracies have been committed, we have a Justice Department which is largely unemployed in any other activity, let them investigate and prosecute. But I want to be sure everybody understands that nobody is talking about penalizing the tobacco companies. What we hear day after day after day is a steady drumbeat of denouncing the tobacco companies while we have 753 pages in this bill that raise taxes on blue-collar America. In fact, we have a bill before us that not only does not tax tobacco companies but has the extraordinary provision that makes it illegal for them not to pass the tax through to the consumer. So tobacco companies are held harmless. What we have here is a giant bait and switch. The bait is tobacco companies. Try them. Convict them. Hang them. But the switch is to impose $700 billion of taxes primarily on blue-collar Americans; 59.1 percent of this tax will be paid for by Americans who make less than $30,000 a year. In my State, 3.1 million people smoke. As you listen to all of this ringing debate, we are talking about these victims. The 3.1 million Texans that the tobacco companies have conspired to addict to nicotine are going to have taxes imposed on them under this bill. A blue-collar family, a husband who is a truck driver and a wife who is a waitress, will end up paying $2,030 of new Federal taxes if they smoke one pack of cigarettes each a day. So we are damning the tobacco companies but we are impoverishing the victims of the tobacco companies. As my 85-year-old mother, who speaks with the wisdom that comes from being 85 years old, has said to me, ``I'm a little bit confused; you tell me that this guy Joe Camel makes me smoke and that I am a victim, but you turn around and tax me.''

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we proceed under the current status quo, that Members be recognized for the purpose of debate only, until 2:15.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be granted permission to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 4, for purposes of conducting a full committee hearing which is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. The purpose of this oversight hearing is to receive GAO's preliminary comments on its review of the Administration's Climate Change Proposal and to hear the Administration's response to GAO's comments.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Communications Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet on Thursday, June 4, 1998, at 9:30 a.m. on Oversight of the Cable Services Bureau.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Small Business be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate for a hearing entitled ``Oversight of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program.'' The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 4, 1998, in room 428A Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 4, 1998 at 10 a.m. to hold a closed hearing on Intelligence matters.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Aviation Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet on Thursday, June 4, 1998, at 2:15 p.m. on Airline Alliances.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Forests and Public Land Management of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be granted permission to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 4, for purposes of conducting a subcommittee hearing which is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. The purpose of this hearing is to receive testimony on S.1253, the Public Land Management Act of 1997.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet at 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 4, 1998, in open/closed session, to receive testimony on the future threats to the Department of Defense information systems, including the year 2000 problems and the sale of the frequency spectrum.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet at 2 p.m. on Thursday, June 4, 1998, in open session, to receive testimony on U.S. forces participating in NATO operations in Bosnia and progress in achieving benchmarks in the civil implementation of the Dayton Agreement.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Housing Opportunity and Community Development of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the sessions of the Senate on Thursday, June 4, 1998, to conduct an oversight hearing on the Programs and Operations of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).