Republican Leaders Outline Low-Budget Tobacco Bill
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
WASHINGTON -- Preparing to leave town for a two-week recess, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives Thursday offered a sketchy outline of the kind of low-budget tobacco legislation they favor.
The Republican plan is meant as an alternative to the ambitious anti-smoking bill that was shelved by the Senate last week. The centerpiece of the plan would be an advertising campaign to discourage teen-age smoking and drug use modeled after the national campaign to encourage people to use seat belts in cars.
The details of the legislation have not been completed. According to a one-page outline distributed Thursday, the bill would not raise cigarette prices and would apparently diminish the authority of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products.
Under the plan, states and communities would be encouraged to penalize teen-agers caught smoking by taking away their driver's licenses.
Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, appointed by Speaker Newt Gingrich to be the party's spokeswoman on tobacco issues in the House, called the Republican approach "strong common-sense legislation" that would "reduce teen smoking without increasing taxes."
Democrats and representatives of public health organizations responded that Republicans' measures would have no affect on teen-age smoking and amounted to a handshake with the tobacco industry.
Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, the Democratic leader, called it a fig leaf.
The inability of the Republicans to agree on such details as how much the advertising campaign would cost and how it would be financed and the antagonistic response of Democrats and public health authorities to Thursday's announcement reinforced the growing view in the Capitol that no tobacco legislation will get through Congress this year.
Last week, Gingrich promised that the party's legislative proposal would be introduced this week, but obviously some details could not be worked out. A lobbyist who has good connections with Republican lawmakers said that the framework for legislation was announced Thursday -- adding little to what Republican leaders had already described as their intentions -- so that Republicans could say at home over the recess that they planned to do something about teen-age smoking.
Democrats hope to make a campaign issue out of the fact that Republicans are the main beneficiaries of political donations by the tobacco industry and the principal opponents of legislation that the industry opposes.
Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the fourth-ranking member of the House Republican leadership, described the Republican philosophy this way: "I think the American people understand that teen-agers are going to smoke. It's one of those rites of passage, if you will. But we ought to make it as difficult as possible, without imposing higher taxes and bigger government on the rest of the American people."
Boehner, a smoker himself, said the leadership intended to bring the legislation before the House under procedures that would not allow amendments.
Friday, June 26, 1998 Copyright 1998 The New York Times
God bless Boehner for stopping the growth of big government. I wonder how he stands on big government subsidies to the tobacco companies. |
