John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, there is no more important role that the U.S. Senate plays than its role to advise and consent on treaties, as well as its larger role on foreign policy. In the 14 years that I have had the privilege of serving in the U.S. Senate, I have watched the Senate choose carefully, usually, how it exercises that authority. We have had some great debates here in the Senate at appropriate times over issues of enormous consequence to our country. And our efforts have usually been--I can remember some of these debates very well, whether it was over the Contras, or over the appointment of nuclear weapons in Europe, or over relationships with China previously--that where Presidents have been executing their constitutional authority on behalf of our country to engage in direct diplomacy, the Senate has tried normally to exercise both restraint and good judgment about what we choose to take up, when, and how as it might affect those policies. I know that there has always been a conscious effort in the Senate to try to be judicious about respecting the ability of the President of the United States to speak for the country. I know from personal history here that there were times when President Reagan, or President Bush may have been poised to travel to another country and engage in direct diplomacy, and we were beseeched by our colleagues not to raise X, Y or Z issue in a particular way, not to raise it but in a particular way that might do mischief to the larger interests of the country. I simply am confounded and disturbed and troubled by what is happening here. One might ask the question: What has happened to the U.S. Senate? What has happened to the disparate issues within this body where we try to reach across the aisle in the interests of our country and put politics aside just for a few days and a few hours? There isn't anybody in the U.S. Senate who doesn't understand how horrendous the policies of China are with respect to human rights. And there are 365 days a year where we can choose to make that clear in any number of ways, and we do, whether in hearings, or in press conferences, or even in legislation. But to be coming to the floor of the U.S. Senate the day before the President of the United States leaves to speak for our country--not for a party, for our country--and diminish the capacity of that President to go to China carrying the full measure of support of the Nation is nothing less than mischievous and partisan. I think it is entirely appropriate for any Senator to give any speech he or she wants whenever he or she wants. Any Senator can come to the floor at any time and raise an issue. That is appropriate. Any Senator can have a series of press conferences. Any Senator can introduce legislation. But what are we doing amending the Foreign Relations Authorization Act on the Defense Act without even having hearings within the Foreign Relations Committee? And why is it that we are suddenly discussing satellite technology when everybody knows that about every committee in the U.S. Senate has an investigation going on and none of them have reported back? None of them they have reported back. Yet, here we are with legislation on satellite technology which has no purpose other than to try to play a partisan political hand. What is horrendous about this is that it isn't just transparent. It isn't just partisan. It isn't just obvious. It is dangerous. It is damaging. It diminishes the ability of the President to go with a sense that he has sort of a clear playing field, if you will, an ability to be able to play out what has been a carefully thought-out, several-month strategy of how to engage in this particular summitry. It has already been made difficult enough by another set of issues. India and Pakistan have altered 50 years of understanding with respect to nuclear weaponry. We have huge issues about Tibet, enormous issues about the Asian flu. Holding China to its promise to maintain the valuation on its currency, not to devalue; enormous issues with respect to Burma, Cambodia where they are trying to hold elections and restore what was a huge U.N. investment in democracy; enormous interests with respect to the South China Sea; relationship with the Spratly Islands; China and its aggressiveness within that region; a whole set of any issues with respect to North Korea as a consequence of what has happened with respect to India and Pakistan and North Korea's statements that they now want to move to abrogate the agreements that we reached with respect to nuclear weaponry and nuclear power. Those are substantive, significant, enormous issues that go so far beyond day-to-day partisanship and concerns of party. It is mind- boggling. So what excuse is there for turning the defense authorization bill into a bonanza for political gamesmanship with respect to China on the eve of the President leaving? I think it is inexcusable, notwithstanding the merits of the amendment. No one is going to argue the merits of the amendment. What American is going to stand up and say, ``Oh. I am for forced abortion?'' I mean is this really the issue that we ought to be dealing with in the context of DOD right now? No. It certainly is an issue worthy of dealing with at any time. And I am confident that the President of the United States could raise that and a whole host of issues with the Chinese. This morning we had a breakfast with the Secretary of State talking about her trip to China. I didn't notice the Senators of concern here with these amendments at that breakfast working on what she might be raising. I didn't notice them at a number of briefings recently with Sandy Berger or other people working on the precursor effort to lay down what might happen there. There is a world of difference between trying to achieve these things, and in a realistic way, and playing out the politics on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Mr. President, I cannot say enough. This institution has a great tradition. And some of that tradition is a great part of history. Senator Vandenberg made a name that stays in history based on a willingness to reach across the aisle. Traditionally, every time we have ever seen a President go, I have heard talk on the floor of the Senate about how we ought to be judicious and how we ought to be cautious and how we ought to strengthen the hand of the President and not engage in this kind of politics, as appropriate as the substance and merits may be. And they are. There is no issue about the substance and the merits here; none whatsoever. It is 100 to nothing as to what you are going to do. But that is what even makes more of a mockery of the politics of it because it is 100 to nothing, because this is so clear it even underscores more, I think, the meddling nature and the politics of what is happening here. Mr. President, I know there is a desire to try to have a vote now. I am saddened to see the Senate engage in this kind of activity in the hours before the President of the United States goes to engage the most populous nation in the world and a nuclear power in the most serious set of discussions we have had in a long time, in my judgment. It is so inappropriate that I think we should just not have a series of votes on this measure until we make up our mind that we are going to legislate intelligently and seriously about the issues of the defense authorization bill and not a set of larger foreign policy goals. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY. I thank my colleague. I apologize.

Mr. KERRY. We have a vote at 10:15, and there are a couple folks who hope to make a comments. Could the Senator perhaps indicate to the Senate when he might be concluding?

Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield for a point of inquiry?

Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, those of us who serve with our distinguished colleague from Ohio, Senator John Glenn, have long known him to be a very special American. We have had the privilege of working with someone who, in his Senate service that might be characterized as his third career, has demonstrated his capability as an accomplished statesman and politician. He has capably provided strong leadership to the committees on which he has served, notably including but certainly not limited to his work as Chairman and Ranking Member of the Committee on Governmental Affairs in fields as diverse as counterproliferation and government efficiency. John Glenn's public service, of course, follows his other two careers--most recently as a very successful businessman in our free enterprise economy, and, of course, as an accomplished military pilot with a distinguished record culminating in the distinction of being the first American to orbit the earth in space as one of the original seven Mercury astronauts. This fall, Senator Glenn expects to return to space to participate in important experiments concerning the effects of space travel on senior citizens. In some ways to those of us who know him well, and watch the pace at which he works and his amazing capacity for the nearly interminable activity that consumes the lives of our nation's elected officials, it is difficult for us to see him as a senior citizen. But the calendar tells us that Senator Glenn is well into his 70's--and, in fact, will see his 77th birthday very soon. We wish him well, and, once again, many years after the first time our nation held its breath and offered him our prayers and best wishes, we will do so again later this year when he and his fellow Discovery crew members board the shuttle for the flight in which he will serve as a crew member. On Tuesday night of this week, we colleagues in the Senate honored Senator Glenn, and met his fellow crew members, at a dinner in the Capitol. On that occasion, the Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle delivered remarks in honor of John Glenn. Because Senator Daschle's remarks eloquently and succinctly captured much about John Glenn that I believe others should know, I ask that those remarks be printed in the Record. Remarks by Senate Democrat Leader Tom Daschle Honoring John Glenn, an Old-fashioned American Hero Every time I hear John talk about wanting to go back up into space to study the effects of space flight on aging bodies I think, ``Right. What does he know about aging bodies?'' John Glenn is the only person I know who can do pushups with one hand and salute the flag with the other at the same time. So, I appointed a task force to investigate the real reasons John wants to blast back into space. Tonight, I'm releasing their report. Here are the top three reasons, in Letterman style: Number three: It turns out, he left his billfold up there the first trip. Number two: Before he leaves Congress, he wants to pioneer the ultimate CODEL. And reason number one: He wants to explore places to send Ken Starr on his next assignment. Actually, the reason John is going back into space is the same reason he's doing practically everything in his life. It is, quite simply, to serve his country. We are here tonight to pay tribute to an old-fashioned American hero, and to thank Annie, and all the Glenn children and grandchildren, for sharing so much of John with America for so long. About two years ago, Linda and I had the privilege of flying to China with several other members, including John and Annie. During the flight, we were able to persuade John to recollect that incredible mission aboard Friendship 7. He told us about losing all communication during re-entry, about having to guide his spacecraft manually during the most critical point in re-entry, about seeing pieces of his spacecraft splitting off in a big fireball. We all huddled around him with our eyes wide open. No one said a word. Listening to him, I felt the same awe I had felt when I was 14 years old, sitting in a classroom in Aberdeen, South Dakota, watching TV accounts of that flight. I feel that inspiration now, when I think about what will be the next chapter in the life of this amazing man. A lot of people tend to think of two John Glenns: Colonel John Glenn, the astronaut-hero; and Senator John Glenn. The truth is, there is only John Glenn--the patriot. Love for his country is what sent John into space. It's what brought him to Washington, and compelled him to work so diligently over all these years in the Senate. As he said, when he announced that he would not seek re-election: Despite all our problems--despite our sometimes inefficient bureaucracies . . . or any of the other problems we love to complain about, America--this grand experiment in democracy-- this ongoing work in progress--is still the greatest nation in the history of the world and still a shining beacon of hope and opportunity. People who have been there say you see the world differently from space. You see the ``big picture.'' You see how small and interconnected our planet is. Perhaps it's because he came to the Senate with that perspective that John has fought so hard against nuclear proliferation. As a Wall Street Journal reporter wrote recently, ``He has been the Senate scold who lectured everybody who would listen, and some who wouldn't, about the need to stop the spread of nuclear arms.'' I don't know about that ``Senate scold'' part. But I do know that America is lucky that John Glenn went up the first time and gained that perspective. And the country is very lucky that he is going up again. And those of us who are his colleagues are the luckiest of all, for having had the chance to serve with, and be inspired by him, between his two trips.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I wanted to ask for a few minutes before we enter into that debate. I am not submitting an amendment. I just wanted to have the right to make a comment for 2 minutes.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to join my colleague, Senator Kennedy, in expressing what just happened here in the Senate. We just lost an opportunity to, in effect, begin with a clean bill. The complaint yesterday was that the bill had been too loaded down. The complaint yesterday was that the process had gotten away from us. In effect, what Senator Daschle did was put us back in the place where we began, to a committee piece of legislation that came to the floor by a vote of 19 to 1. And it was a piece of legislation, before the Lugar amendment was put in, before the liability amendment of Senator Gregg had passed, before the marriage penalty, before the Coverdell drug plan, before all of those things that were accused of loading it up. So, in effect, we had an opportunity to really start from scratch learning the lessons that the Senate had learned over the course of the last 3 weeks. But once again that was rejected. As the Senator from Massachusetts said, this will be revisited. This issue is not one that will go away. As I said previously, you can run but there is no way to hide with respect to the responsibility that is expected for our children in the efforts to reduce teenage smoking. That will be revisited. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today I want to call the Senate's attention to Representative Edward LeLecheur and his long history of service to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The citizens of Massachusetts have benefitted from his many years of service and legislative leadership. Representative LeLecheur has distinguished himself as a community leader, an elected official and a family man. Edward LeLecheur started out as the proprietor of Stolphine's Market in Lowell, MA. This small grocery store is located in the part of Lowell know as the Sacred Heart, named for the nearby Catholic church. Ed expanded his role in the community by running for and winning elected office in 1975. Since then, he has served the eighteenth Middlesex District for twenty-three years in the same way he served Stolphine's customers: one at a time, with integrity, dedication, and compassion. Representative LeLecheur's giving spirit has manifested itself in a variety of ways. He drives physically challenged people to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, and purchases turkeys at Thanksgiving and Christmas time which he then delivers door-to-door. Those same people, and countless others, enjoy the baseball stadium which Representative LeLecheur helped bring to Lowell. Due to Ed LeLecheur, our national pastime is now part of the on-going revitalization of Merrimac Valley, bringing prosperity and entertainment to families from all the surrounding communities. As a member of the Ways and Means Committee for the past twelve years and as the current chair of the Committee on Personnel and Administration, Representative LeLecheur has also extended his spirit and service beyond his district. The state has been well served as a result of his leadership. Representative LeLecheur has been successful not only as a state representative, but also as a family man. He and his wife Eileen were married on June 4, 1947, more than fifty years ago. Together they raised six children and are today the proud grandparents of ten grandsons and granddaughters. Mr. President, I would like to thank him for his tireless devotion to his constituents and neighbors. Representative LeLecheur is an inspiration to all of us who work for positive change in our communities. I wish him and Eileen the very best as they embark on this new chapter in life.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, this is a choice between tobacco--and $40 million spent to advertise a tax increase--and a choice between kids; and everybody in the country will understand that. I yield the balance of the time to the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. KERRY. How much time remains?

Mr. KERRY. I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. President, since 1995, we have voted to waive the Budget Act 105 times. Now, we have heard debate here on the floor of the Senate for 3\1/2\ weeks, and $40 million has been spent telling America there is a tax increase in here. Nineteen members of the Commerce Committee--19 to 1--voted to send this bill to the floor of the Senate with a $1.10 price increase in it. That is the revenue that is raised by this bill. The Senator from New Mexico does not tell you that every single penny that is contemplated to be spent in this bill is offset--it is offset. It was the Republican leader who put into this bill the Lugar amendment that competes with the Ford amendment, which everybody knows has to be resolved one way or the other before this bill could finally be signed into law. So this is a charade. This is a charade. We have all learned that you can always find an excuse and a way to use the Budget Act to accomplish your goals. But if you measure what has happened here, there was an effort by Democrats to raise the price. It failed. That should have helped the bill pass. There was an effort to have a cap on the damages, but it was a Republican Senator who brought the amendment to get rid of it. And more Republicans voted to get rid of that cap restraint than Democrats. Once again, the Republicans had their hand and their way. Then there was the look-back amendment. It made it tougher on the tobacco companies, holding them accountable in reducing the level of smoking for kids. If you are interested in stopping kids from smoking, that was an amendment that made this bill better. There was a child care amendment. All it did was restrict spending that was already in the bill. It was no new addition of one penny. It took restricted money, already restricted to the Governors, and it simply restricted within the pot of money that was already restricted somewhat further. No add-on of new money. Not one penny was added on by one Democrat amendment.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me just say quickly, with respect to the chart that was shown, there are almost no new programs in this. Those were existing programs. Most importantly, there is only one board. The flimflam artistry of this is really political. The Speaker of the House and the House of Representatives do not want a vote on this bill. They fear this bill. Newt Gingrich has had a contract out on this bill. And the Republicans on this side, this afternoon, are going to be the ``hit people'' for that contract because they fear voting for this bill. They have said they won't take it up. Every amendment that came to the floor that has changed this and that has supposedly weighted it down are by the very Members who today will vote against this bill because it is weighted down. This bill is a bill that sought to do what 19 members of the Commerce Committee approved. We didn't raise the tax; that fact was agreed to in raising the price of cigarettes by the companies themselves. That price wasn't even raised on the floor of the Senate. The Democrat amendment failed. So what we have here is a choice between kids or the tobacco companies--kids or the tobacco companies. Cloture Motion

Mr. KERRY. I ask unanimous consent that I also have 1 minute of our leader's time.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of our time.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. President, let's understand very clearly what is happening here. To use the word ``tax'' is to use the word that has been the centerpiece of a billion-dollar advertising campaign. If this is a tax, this is the one tax in America that nobody has to pay--nobody--unless you buy a pack of cigarettes. This is a tax that is purely voluntary, and the countertax is the tax that millions of Americans pay for the cost of people who do smoke, who get sick--all of America pays the tax for those who smoke. The tax that our kids pay is a tax called dying-- 30 percent of those who smoke. And those who started since this debate began are going to die as a result of this habit, and the Senate today is refusing to do something about that. Now, every time that a Republican bill has come to the floor of the Senate this year, it has been accompanied by a cloture motion that the majority leader joined in and was prepared to set up a structure in order to close debate. This is the first bill that has gone on for 3\1/ 2\ weeks. Not one Democrat amendment--not one--has added a penny to the cost of this bill. We are going to give a new definition to hypocrisy in the U.S. Senate today, because the very people who brought us the marriage penalty break, who brought us the drug program, the very people who brought us the additions of every penny in this bill are going to come to the floor today and say, point of order, Mr. President, forget about the kids, we are going to turn around and tube the entire tobacco bill no matter what we did before. It was a Republican amendment on each one of those efforts. Not one Democrat amendment has added a penny to this bill. That is critical. I yield 30 seconds to the Senator from Oregon.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I reserve the balance of our time. Mr. NICKLES addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY. I yield 1 minute to the senior Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. KERRY. I yield 30 seconds to the Senator from Delaware.

Mr. KERRY. First, I yield 1 minute to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. KERRY. I yield the 1 minute remaining of the time in the original agreement to the Senator from North Dakota, and I reserve the remainder of the time for myself.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me speak for a moment to the question of where we appear to be, although no final decision I know has been made by leaders. But it is clear that at some point today, if events flow the way they have been discussed, the majority of the members of the Republican Party are going to try to kill this bill. And they are going to try to kill this bill either through a cloture motion--depending on what decision is made as to when that vote might be able to take place-- or through a tricky little budget point of order parliamentary procedure that should have, in fact, taken place at the outset when this bill came on the floor. The notion that, 3 and a half weeks into a debate, to try to reduce our kids from smoking, that all of a sudden somebody thinks, ``Oh, my gosh, there is a budget point of order we ought to bring,'' is rather extraordinary in and of itself. There is no way to hide. The old saying is, ``You can run, but you can't hide.'' You can run from the tobacco bill, but you can't hide from the effect of the vote. The effect of the vote today, or tomorrow, or whenever it occurs, will be either to side with children in order to reduce smoking in this country or to side with the tobacco companies. I know that there are colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are running around with polls that have been taken, and those polls show, ``Gee whiz, some people in the country are beginning to see this bill differently.'' And that is because millions of dollars have been spent by the tobacco companies to present a rather one-sided point of view. But the fact is that most people in America understand that they want their kids to be able to stop smoking. They want their kids to not be exposed to the increasing number of pressures that are applied to young people with respect to smoking, and they know that in States like Massachusetts, Arizona, California, and others there are very effective outreach efforts that are being made with young people that are reducing smoking. In the State of Massachusetts, we have seen a reduction of some 30 percent over the last few years because of a very intensive State program which needs more help. The people in the State know that they can change that 30 percent into 70 percent or 80 percent if they have adequate capacity to be able to do that, adequate resources for materials, for outreach, adequate cessation programs, and adequate counteradvertising to the impact of the millions of dollars that the tobacco companies spend. All of these things are critical to the ability of kids to be able to make up their mind. I think most of us in the Senate understand that kids are most impressionable with respect to something like smoking at the ages of 11, 12, 13, all the way through their teens. No one here disputes the fact that every single analysis shows that 86 percent of all the smokers in America began when they were teenagers. Eighty-six percent of the adults who today are hooked on nicotine, on tobacco, began as teenagers. Ninety percent of the kids in America recognize Joe Camel more than they do--or equivalent to--Mickey Mouse. And the statistics show that of those cigarettes advertised, Newport, Marlboro, and so forth, the brands that have the highest level of advertising, are the brands that kids smoke but not the brands that adults smoke, which tells you a story--that when they become adults, they make a different set of choices than just the bombardment of advertising. But when they are kids, the cigarette they pick up is the cigarette that is most put and shoved in front of them by the advertising. There isn't anybody who doesn't understand. The Senator from Arizona has talked about the impact on his 13-year- old daughter of movies--the ``Titanic,'' for instance, Leonardo DiCaprio, who spends his whole time in the movie smoking when he isn't fighting water. I mean that is basically the heart of what the Senator from Arizona has said affected his child. And all across this country, Mr. President, those are the kinds of influences. There isn't a parent in America who doesn't understand that. There isn't a person of reasonable common sense who doesn't understand that. So why don't we try to do something about affecting the impact of those role models and the impact of the pressures of young people. We have had testimony from a young woman--and she is not alone, this is just one example--who talked about when she was a teenager, she thought it was going to make her look older if she smoked. She thought it was going to make her more acceptable to teenagers who were older than her; she could run in a group that somehow made her feel better. So she started smoking. Today she is in a wheelchair and raising a couple of kids because she developed a smoking-related disease in her lungs. She has had a lung transplant, and she looks older. She tells people of the impact of smoking on her life. Are we going to just ignore that in the Senate--all of the evidence of what the tobacco companies have done through the years saying they targeted kids? They know they have got to have replacement smokers. Here we have an opportunity to vote, and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have decided they are going to side with the tobacco companies. That is what the vote before the Senate will be, plainly and clearly. You cannot make it into some sort of subterfuge. You cannot run and hide by a budget waiver. You cannot create some parliamentary trick. And you certainly cannot duck with one cloture vote and suggest that this issue, which we have spent 3\1/2\ weeks on, is going to go away. Who is for this bill, Mr. President? Well, there are more than 40 Democrats prepared to vote for this bill now. So there will be no question if this bill doesn't move forward as to why it can't move forward. But every single public health group in America is for this bill. The lung and cancer associations are for this bill. All of the surgeon generals of our country are for this bill. Teachers are for this bill. Child care and day care specialists are for this bill. Forty attorneys general across the country want this bill. Who is opposed? Who is opposed? The tobacco companies. The tobacco companies and some number of Republicans who choose to be with them. That is who is opposed to this bill--the tobacco companies. No one else is spending millions of dollars trying to characterize this bill on a daily basis in the Nation. No one else is out there suggesting that somehow what the tobacco companies agreed to do, which is raise the price of cigarettes, is a tax increase. I hear these Senators who come to the floor and say, oh, this is a tax increase; we can't do that. That is a phony argument, Mr. President. That is looking for an umbrella to hide under. That is a way of running around and trying to find something to hang your hat on, not wanting to do what most health care advocates--teachers, child care specialists, surgeon generals, attorneys general, and others of this country--want to do. The only beneficiaries if this bill does not go through are the tobacco companies, plain and simple. The fact is that we have never heard anybody be able to dispute the notion that of the 60,000-plus kids who in the course of this debate have begun smoking, somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000 of them are going to die early. And they are going to die at the expense of every other citizen in America. We have heard a lot of concern by the people who come to the floor and talk about how terrible the raising of a pack of cigarettes is going to be for the blue-collar worker who is going to buy the pack of cigarettes, but no one in the Government is telling them they have to go buy the pack of cigarettes. But that very same person who is buying the pack of cigarettes, or all of those families who do not buy a pack of cigarettes are paying a lot more of their hard-earned tax dollars to cover the costs of those people who get sick-- Medicare and Medicaid, Government dollars paid, tax dollars paid out to the tune of $25 billion a year because of people who are sick because of smoking. The cost of smoking is far greater to the average taxpayer than the cost of the rise in the price of cigarettes. You cannot hide under that one. That is not what is happening here. That is not what this is all about. What we are seeing is a fear by some in the House of Representatives that they might have to actually vote on this bill. What we are seeing here is that Newt Gingrich and some of those in the House have put a contract out on this bill. They do not want this bill. They want their friends in the Senate to kill this bill so they do not have to vote on it. But this bill will not go away. It will not go away for the next months in the election. It will not go away even on the floor of the Senate, because somewhere, sometime, somehow it is going to keep coming back. You cannot run away from a bill that has most of the people in this country believing it is a good bill, who believe it is an important objective. Now, if it isn't good--I heard one Senator say, ``I can't vote for that bill; it's all loaded up.'' Who loaded it up? Mostly Republican amendments that have been passed for things that have nothing to do with smoking. There were Republicans who came to the floor and said, ``We have to have a bill that has a tax cut in it; we can't vote for a bill without a tax cut.'' So almost one-third of the money of this bill has now been voted to go to a tax cut. So the Republicans got their tax cut. Then a Republican came to the floor and said, ``I can't vote for a bill that doesn't have a drug plan in it.'' So we had a big debate and now the bill has a drug plan in it. And then we have three different attempts to try to curb attorneys' fees. People said, ``I can't vote for a bill that is going to have a whole lot of money that wasn't earned going out to attorneys,'' notwithstanding the fact that not one penny has been paid to attorneys, nor will the money be paid out of the bill because it is being paid by the companies. But leaving that reality aside, the Senate nevertheless passed a curb on attorneys' fees. So our friends on the Republican side of the aisle are not going to say no to this bill because it does not have a tax cut. They are not going to say no to this bill because it doesn't have a fat and firm clamp on attorneys' fees. They are not going to say no to this bill because it doesn't have a drug plan. They are going to wind up saying no to this bill because that is what the tobacco companies want them to do. So that is the choice. That will be the choice today--very, very clear--a choice between kids and the tobacco companies. And anybody who suggests, oh, no, I am not for the tobacco companies; I just want to make a good bill, let's make a good bill. Let's vote on the amendments the way we have been doing to make a good bill. And there is not anybody in the Senate who does not understand that this bill is going to go to a conference committee if the House ever voted on it, and it has the ability to be rewritten in that conference committee and to come back to the Senate differently. In the 14 years I have been here, I have seen plenty of legislation leave this floor where one side or the other disagreed bitterly with some component of it but everybody knew it would be fixed in conference committee. Why is it suddenly they do not want this bill, of all the bills, to go to the conference committee? They do not want to let it be fixed. They do not want to give it the opportunity to come back to the Senate in a shape that might be voted on, because that is not what the tobacco companies want. They do not want a bill. They walked away from all of this. It was fine. I know there are Senators on the other side of the aisle who were ready to vote for this bill only a few weeks ago, or even a few months ago, when the tobacco companies were part of the process. It was a good idea. Oh, yes, it is inevitable; we are going to do that; we are going to fix it up for our kids. But all of a sudden after the money has been spent, after all of the flow of those tobacco dollars, there is a different attitude in the Senate about what is possible and what is not possible. I respectfully suggest that no one is able to pull a curtain down over that reality. If people want to fix this bill, we can fix this bill. Every piece of legislation that came to the floor this year came to the floor with a Republican cloture motion attached to it--every bill. Every bill has had limited debate, except for this bill. Every bill we had to push through here rapidly, except for this bill. This is the one bill where there is one identifiable group that does not want it, and that identifiable group has enlisted soldiers in its army. The question is going to be whether or not the Senate has the courage to stand up and say: We are going to fix this bill; we are going to work on this bill; we can bring this bill together. We could have had any number of discussions about how to fix any number of difficult components of the bill, but the bottom line reality is that every study shows in order to keep kids from smoking, you have to raise the price of cigarettes. Even the tobacco companies agreed to that. Even the tobacco companies agreed to that. They came to an agreement in a global settlement, where they agreed to raise the price of cigarettes. But it is only when that rise in the price of cigarettes was geared to be something meaningful, that would actually have an impact on kids smoking, and only when they began to see that there were still going to be some lawsuits they would have to defend, that they began to see the balance differently. Frankly, there were some of us in the Senate who thought we understood that there was a legitimacy to trying to create that balance and hold it differently. But I think most people in the Senate understand that anything that is to go to the conference committee will come back with an ability to try to find that balance again and find the ability to pass a good piece of legislation. I know there are some colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are very uncomfortable with what is happening. There are friends of mine, members of the Republican Party, who want to vote for a bill, who want to do something for kids, who want to be able to help out. I know there are some feeling the difficulty of what is happening right now. My hope is that people will simply recognize the reality. This is not an issue that grew up spontaneously within the Democratic caucus. This is not an issue that became the brainchild of some political strategy on behalf of Democrats. This is something that grew up out of kids and parents and teachers and doctors and health care specialists and surgeons general and scientific evidence, and even the tobacco companies' own documents, which gave birth to the notion that raising the price of cigarettes is a critical component of reducing teenage smoking. I read those documents on the floor of the Senate a number of weeks ago--I guess maybe last week. It is all somewhat of a blur at this point. But the Senate knows the tobacco companies have acknowledged that they lost business when they raised the price of cigarettes. They know, as all evidence shows, that no group in America is more price sensitive, more subject to the pressures of how much cash they have in their pockets and what they spend it on, than young people. So we have the ability to make a difference. The choice before the Senate is really going to be very clear. My hope, obviously, is that the Senate will act responsibly. If we are not happy with the bill in its current form, notwithstanding the fact that there are 40-plus Democrats prepared to vote for it in its current form, then we should continue to work and continue to be serious, rather than to continue an effort that just wants to kill it for the victory for those individuals and entities who want that victory, rather than putting together a meaningful piece of legislation. Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.