House Blocks Tobacco Buyout

Source from:  WKYT 07/14/2004

The House has voted to prohibit a nearly ten-billion dollar government payout to tobacco farmers. Saying cigarette makers, not taxpayers, should pay for any buyout, conservative Republicans and anti-tobacco Democrats combined forces to upset a carefully orchestrated effort by G-O-P leaders and the White House to have the government pick up the cost. The measure blocking the farmer buyout was included as an amendment to an agriculture spending bill. Supporters says it's in reaction to Republican leaders including a nine-point-six billion dollar payout to tobacco farmers in a corporate tax bill passed by the House last month. House leaders put the buyout in the tax bill in part to win the votes of Southern lawmakers. It would pay farmers, using existing taxpayer dollars, to leave the Depression-era federal system that sets price and production controls on U-S leaf. Enditem