Opponents of Tobacco Buyout Add Rider to Bill

Source from:  MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE WASHINGTON 07/15/2004

House members say taxpayers shouldn't have to foot costs The House of Representatives signaled unhappiness yesterday with a proposed $9.6 billion federal buyout of tobacco farmers that had cleared the chamber as part of another bill last month. Foes of the buyout condemned the "fleecing of the taxpayer" and "a new welfare program for the tobacco industry" in approving by voice vote a rider to bar spending for U.S. Department of Agriculture salaries to make buyout payments. Yet the vote's ultimate effect remained highly uncertain, given a shortened congressional schedule this election year and politics in the Senate over tobacco issues. "This tobacco buyout is a rip-off for taxpayers," said Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a sponsor of the amendment. He said that the House had been denied a chance last month to strip the tobacco buyout from a corporate-tax overhaul bill. "We're asking taxpayers to foot a $10 billion bill for a tobacco bailout. Talk about misplaced priorities," Flake's leading ally, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said. They attacked the proposal, passed by the House last month, to scrap the government's Depression-era tobacco price-support program and pay farmers to get out of it. The critics emphasized yesterday that they were not opposing a buyout - as some other legislators have proposed it - that would be paid for by tobacco companies. A bipartisan parade of legislators from Virginia, North Carolina and other tobacco-growing states lined up in opposition to the amendment by Flake and Van Hollen attached to an Agriculture Department spending bill. "This is a devastating amendment," Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., said. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., predicted that the rider would not survive the legislative process. That typically includes a conference with House and Senate negotiators to reconcile differences in their chambers' bills; the Senate has not passed an agriculture spending bill. "This was a purely political vote, that the opponents of the tobacco buyout wanted to make," said Rep. Eric I. Cantor, R-Va. A member of the House GOP leadership, Cantor said he understands that the leaders want to keep the "balance" on tobacco now set in the House-passed corporate-tax bill. But Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., a smoking foe, said that the vote showed that "there is a strong bipartisan majority in the House against a taxpayer-funded bailout for tobacco growers." In the Senate, a number of legislators are insisting that a buyout be linked with proposed Food and Drug Administration authority over tobacco manufacturing. The Senate-passed corporate-tax package has no buyout attached. Senate leaders have been working to reach an agreement on how to proceed to a conference with House negotiators. Enditem