Tobacco.org

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As legislation on the industry nears a vote and elections approach, contributions are being watched

The tobacco campaign features reams of postcards and letters generated by tobacco company mailings as well as sophisticated and expensive telephone-bank operations that connect callers directly with their congressional representatives, or send letters for them. . . individual companies . . . have opened their massive databases of smokers and hired telemarketing firms to call and solicit their help.

Senator EDWARD M. KENNEDY persuaded key women's health advocacy groups this week to line up behind his ''patient bill of rights'' legislation, even though it threatened to stall Senator ALFONSE D'AMATO'S bill banning ''drive-by'' mastectomies, a measure they also support. . . Kennedy's ploy halted D'Amato, but only temporarily. The New Yorker got the mastectomy amendment attached to the tobacco bill, which the Senate will take up next week.

Days before the Senate is to vote on comprehensive tobacco legislation, President Clinton is ready to bless a Republican-drafted bill that extends limited protection from lawsuits to cigarette companies, and his aides are busily trying to line up support for the measure from anti-smoking activists.

After several days of negotiations, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and senior White House officials said Friday that they have reached broad agreement on amendments to the McCain-drafted bill that is scheduled for debate as early as Monday. The amendments would increase cigarette makers' maximum liability in civil lawsuits and set terms for how the $65 billion -- the amount the bill is predicted to raise in its first five years -- would be disbursed among states, the federal government and tobacco farmers. The changes, according to senior administration officials, would strengthen the bill sufficiently for Clinton to sign it

Senator Lott will hold out the money from any tobacco bill to force Clinton to give the industry the two things it needs to separate tobacco from non-tobacco assets -- an unconditional cap, and some provision that makes clear that coporate parent assets would be off limits if the domestic tobacco subsidiaires went bankrupt.. This, we belevie, would give the Boards of Directors the protection they need to spin off tobacco or non-tobacco parts without fear of fraudulent conveyance risks

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott Friday said there is "at least a 50-50 chance" that the Senate will pass a tobacco bill next week but he predicted that the Senate would roll the measure back to more closely resemble the deal the industry itself backed last June. "If we get something it will be much closer to the so-called settlement that was agreed to in June of last year," the Mississippi Republican said in an interview taped for CNBC-TV's "Tim Russert" show.

"Obviously we feel we've picked up some momentum," Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., said. "I believe we've enhanced our chances for tax increases of $1.50 per pack" of cigarettes, he added. Republican proponents, including the bill's author, Senate Commerce Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., have been equally optimistic.

"I will not support the excessive cigarette tax increase of $1.50 narrowly approved by the Finance Committee. This amounts to a 40% increase in the amount overwhelmingly approved by the Commerce Committee last month. The action taken today does not treat the states fairly. It eliminates the fundamental concept of the settlement of states' claims against the industry and the reimbursement to the taxpayers of tobacco-related costs."

U.S. Sen. Don Nickles, hoping to kill a comprehensive anti-tobacco bill this week, said Monday he is looking at a less sweeping alternative that may call for teens who smoke to lose their driver's licenses. In addition to existing laws making it illegal to sell cigarettes to minors, the Oklahoma Republican said it was time to consider putting the penalty on the young smoker. . . Meanwhile, the senator said he stopped taking campaign contributions from tobacco interests because he did not want to answer questions from a reporter about it. "Just because I wouldn't want you writing Don Nickles received $2,000 from RJR (R.J. Reynolds), I declined to take it," Nickles said.

Dana Samuelson, manager of a Phoenix Cigarettes Cheaper! store, is trying to make life miserable for Sen. John McCain. Armed with a stack of postcards imploring McCain not to "send us a huge tax bill on cigarettes" and an 800 number that connects to McCain's Washington office, Samuelson is enlisting smokers in a tobacco industry-driven campaign aimed at the Arizona Republican. "We're going to bug the hell out of him," Samuelson said.

The Senate tonight will fire up debate on a tobacco bill that would impose unprecedented restrictions on some 50 million American smokers and the long-powerful cigarette industry. "It is a large thing, one of the biggest actions in a bill Congress will ever have tried to deal with," Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said Saturday on CNBC.

Supporters say they have at least 60 votes - enough not only to pass the bill, but to quash any filibuster attempt. If they succeed, the price of a pack of cigarettes could rise by at least $1.50 over three years.

"It is not about how much money we can extract from the tobacco industry. It's about fulfilling our duties as parents and responsible adults to protect our children, " President Clinton says. . . "It isn' t about protecting kids, it' s about raising taxes." says the punchline of a full-page newspaper ad bought by the five biggest cigarette manufacturers. Americans -- smokers and nonsmokers -- trying to follow the debate will have to wade through the overheated rhetoric. They also will have to sort through a range of proposals on how to spend the revenue from higher cigarette taxes.

Now, with stocks once again languishing, the White House again critical and public health groups launching daily diatribes against it, the industry will be doing all it can to use the debate to try to kill the monster the deal has become.

"If Congress agrees to insulate the tobacco industry from paying damages, you can imagine a line forming," Conrad says. "It's a horrible precedent." . . It is the weaker liability provisions in McCain's bill that prompted the tobacco industry to walk away from the table and launch a vigorous campaign to defeat McCain's legislation. . . Perhaps the most powerful question about liability protection -- and the most difficult to answer -- is the one expressed so frequently by Conrad: Could an agreement prompt many other industries, such as pharmaceutical, asbestos and chemical companies, to seek similar relief from Congress?

For William Van Alstyne, a constitutional law professor at Duke University, no piece of congressional legislation has raised such complex legal issues since the overhaul of the country's campaign-finance laws in 1974. "There is bound up in this one constantly shifting piece of legislation almost an entire course on constitutional law," he said.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and others argue that measures called for in the McCain bill would reduce the potential for a big expansion in the black market. . . Canadian smuggling consultant Stamler, whose work has been supported by the tobacco industry, disagrees. Smuggling could become easy and lucrative, he said, noting that any domestic cigarette label can be counterfeited and millions of dollars' worth of cigarettes can be packed into a single 18-wheel truck.

Forty months after Republicans gained control of Congress with vows to cut taxes and slash government, a reluctant Senate is set to take up a momentous tobacco bill that would impose steep tax increases on 50 million smokers and create a slew of federal programs. . . The momentum to clamp down on the tobacco firms also has been quickened in the past three years by states' lawsuits against the industry, the forced release of damaging company documents, political pressure by President Clinton and a bid to give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) broad controls over cigarette production.

"The Nanny State has opened a crusade to take over the life of any American who uses tobacco," said Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., a leader in the drive to kill the bill. "Predictably there's a tax increase involved in getting us to do what's good for us. The heart of this Washington crusade is -- of course -- bigger government financed with a huge tax increase."

John McCain has angered the industry with his campaign to kill off Joe Camel, but it could help to propel him into the next U.S. presidential race . . . "The only problem I have that is really important right now is that my 14-year-old, like every other 14-year-old girl in America, is in love with Leonardo DiCaprio," McCain says, cracking the slightest smile. "This craze - her walls are covered with pictures of him, her notebooks have his pictures. She's seen the film seven times. "That aggravates me - I can't tell you how much that aggravates me."

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a possible contender for the 2000 presidential nomination and one of the most vocal congressional stewards of campaign finance and tobacco legislation, answered some of the questions submitted by more than 300 users during a live online discussion today. The transcript follows.

The ad, titled "The Hollings-McCain-Clinton" tobacco tax, features a $1,460 bill -- the yearly cost of the increase for a two-pack-a-day smoker -- with a picture of McCain. "The ads were inappropriate, because they were a nasty negative attack on a member of our Republican team," said Walker. "We are absolutely, positively not going to be used as a vehicle by any special-interest group to attack Republicans."

A multi-million-dollar war of words and images is raging between Big Tobacco and health advocates, as both sides launch nationwide advertising blitzes aimed at winning hearts and minds in Congress.

It is hardly new that tobacco companies make a practice of buying goodwill with generous contributions. But few have come to depend on that money as much as the nation's African Americans, Hispanics and other minorities. . . "The U.S. government is hypocritical," said the black newspaper association's Leavell. "If tobacco is causing the kinds of things it is, why don't they make it illegal to use the product? Plus, you sure don't see many organizations taking out anti-smoking ads in our newspapers." . . "There is no question that tobacco companies have tried to buy respectability and legitimacy," Sullivan said. "It would certainly be helpful and very appropriate to have clear statements from more civil rights and civic organizations. . . . I would like to see more of that because they do influence people's positions."

But those smokers will not disappear, and they have a right to flood his office and the offices of every other senator and representative with petitions, letters, telegrams, e-mail and phone calls, as do other Americans. Now that smokers are beginning to push back against the weight of Congress that has been allowed to demonize smoking and smokers, politicians like Harkin are beginning to feel the heat of the burning butt. If the intent of the legislation is to stop teen-age smoking, as congressional backers say it is, then the punitive nature of its taxes and restrictions should be removed, the politicians should sit down to think about practical ways to warn off teen-agers who have not tried tobacco, and they should forget the visions of billions of dollars in new tax dollars.

Strict licensing and marking requirements can help authorities track the movement of cigarettes from manufacturers to wholesalers, distributors, exporters and retailers. Tight Federal regulations have long applied to alcohol distribution, effectively ending illegal sales of wine and spirits in this country. The Senate should ignore the scare talk and approve a strong bill that would reduce smoking by raising prices.

A state that's serious about deterring kids from smoking would . . raise the price of cigarettes to a level that economic research says is effective in discouraging purchases by teenagers. And the state would use that money not to pay for schools and transit, but for other anti-smoking efforts. That way, if the tax works as a deterrent, its proceeds and the need for them would decline in tandem.

For decades, the tobacco industry has buried research that hurt its product. It has marketed to teen-agers, and, God love 'em, the kids have bought the ad pitches that appealed to their independence. These are not outrageous charges made by anti-smoking zealots. Big Tobacco's own papers, stacks of them, said so and were evidence in four state lawsuits that have squeezed $36 billion in settlements out of Big Tobacco. . . Big Tobacco's heyday is over, but it is too rich to go quietly. Its scurrilous ad campaign indicates it won't. Its message may appeal to Texas Sens. Phil Gramm's and Kay Bailey Hutchison's political leanings. We hope they don't buy it -- and support the McCain bill, instead.

A recent survey by Republican pollster Fred Steeper showed that GOP candidates will feel the negative fallout if they block a major bill to control teen smoking. Lawmakers need to be on record as acknowledging that they have a role in discouraging smoking and addressing a serious public health issue that costs the country $100 billion a year. Their input and vote on the McCain bill will be closely watched.

The experience of other countries and individual states shows what can be accomplished when the price of a pack of cigarettes skyrockets - and when it drops. . . A 1987 Philip Morris memo laments, "The 1982-83 round of price increases caused 2 million adults to quit smoking and prevented 600,000 teen-agers from starting to smoke. . . . We don't need to have that happen again." Congress should enact a price increase even larger than that proposed by Sen. McCain for precisely that reason - to protect our children.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, today announced the provisions in the manager's amendment to the "National Tobacco Policy and Youth Smoking Reductions Act." Following is a summary of the major changes. . . * Toughens look-back penalty with a $4 billion yearly cap (previously $3.5 billion) and includes company specific penalty of $1,000 per underage user in excess of yearly reduction target * Raises liability cap to $8 billion (previously $6.5 billion) and eliminates protections for parent companies

`It's very likely to pass, but I don't have any idea what it's going to look like,' says GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell

The Senate, one of the few American workplaces where smoking still is allowed even in the elevators, on Monday night began a history-making and tumultuous debate on a far-reaching package of anti-smoking measures.

Like Godzilla tromping down Fifth Avenue, a monumental tobacco bill stormed the Senate floor last night, seemingly impervious to the obstacles opponents are frantically trying to throw in its path. . . "This bill has a history of getting worse every time somebody touches it," fumed Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Senate Republican leader.

"Tobacco companies have long sought refuge in lies," said the bill's chief sponsor, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "They have lied, no matter the cost to public health. They have sacrificed the truth and our children to their greed."

The Senate late Monday will venture into what Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle says is a "legislative minefield" as it takes up the huge and by-no-means certain tobacco bill. Senators will make opening statements Monday evening but are unlikely to start voting on any major amendments until Tuesday. Senate leaders said the debate will probably take all or most of the week.

Public health and consumer groups are unanimous in their support for an amendment to strip out the special protections for Big Tobacco. Why does the Clinton White House insist on maintaining caps and industry protections . . The cap would give the industry the predictability it so desperately craves to improve its Wall Stree performance, while freeing it to pursue new predatory practices -- at home and abroad -- without the disciplining fear of indeterminate civil liability. The cap would also limit the industry: liability to less than 10 cents on the dollar for the economic harms it causes (based on U.S. Treasury Dept. Figures) -- at the expense of tobacco victims, whose right to collect full and immediate compensation for the harms perpetrated on them by the industry will be curtailed.

Major business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said yesterday that they are intensifying their efforts to derail a Senate tobacco bill in part because they fear it will help their mortal enemies: trial lawyers.

Sen. Mitch McConnell said yesterday he will back a plan to end the 60-year-old tobacco price-support program, creating a historic split between Kentucky senators over tobacco policy. Then, in a related move, the Senate's Republican leadership opened last night's debate on sweeping anti-smoking legislation with a last-minute procedural change putting that plan on equal footing with Sen. WENDELL FORD's competing grower-protection proposal.

Revised proposal offers growers $4 a pound over 3 years

The Senate tobacco debate opened Monday night with a fierce fight over aid to farmers, with Majority Leader Trent Lott putting forth a proposal that would give farmers less than the $28 billion in assistance contained in a bill passed by the Commerce Committee. Instead of the $28 billion, 25-year LEAF Act included in the Commerce bill, Lott used as the starting point the proposal by Indiana Republican Richard Lugar, that would give the farmers $18 billion over five years but end the U.S. tobacco program.

The 68-year-old federal tobacco price support program would end by 2002 and holders of tobacco quotas would be bought out for $8 a pound under an alternative farmer assistance bill unveiled Monday by two Republican senators. Agriculture Committee Chairman Dick Lugar of Indiana and Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell said they would offer their measure as an amendment to the comprehensive tobacco legislation the Senate is debating this week.

Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, sweetened his proposal to end the U.S. tobacco program, offering growers an $18 billion buyout on Monday. Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell split with other tobacco-state senators to support the new plan. The six-decade-old tobacco program was "mortally wounded," McConnell said, and the buyout was the best deal possible for the 120,000 U.S. tobacco growers.

"Congress should pass it and pass it now," Clinton declared to the cheers of 1,400 children in matching anti-smoking T-shirts. He left it to young Emily Broxterman to lay out the implicit political stakes: That the administration will, in this congressional election year, paint any lawmaker who votes "no" as an opponent of children and their health. . . On Tuesday night, the chamber erupted into a debate over what to debate.

California Democratic SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN is considering joining Utah Republican SEN. ORRIN G. HATCH in trying to weaken tough tobacco legislation being debated on the Senate floor. . . Feinstein's name appears with Hatch's on a yet-to-be introduced substitute bill that is similar to the widely criticized proposal to end tobacco litigation announced last June by industry negotiators and state attorneys general. . . Feinstein's support for a more tobacco-friendly bill is but the latest sign that in the smoking wars, the traditional world of Washington power politics has been turned upside down.

Alabama Sen. JEFF SESSIONS is using the Senate debate over a comprehensive national tobacco policy to launch a double-barreled assault on the lawyers hired by states to lead their charge against tobacco companies. Sessions, a freshman Republican and a former Alabama attorney general, joined Sens. LAUCH FAIRCLOTH, R-N.C., and MITCH MCCONNELL, R-Ky., in an unsuccessful bid Tuesday to persuade the Senate to place a $250-an-hour limit on fees paid to any attorney involved in tobacco-related lawsuits.

Virtually untouchable for decades, the nation's tobacco farmers now face the most powerful threat ever to a government program that guarantees them a market and a lucrative income. As it debates legislation aimed at curbing teen-age smoking, the Senate will consider whether to scrap the 68-year-old tobacco-subsidy program in favor of a free-market approach -- and to spend billions of dollars buying out farmers.

Competing proposals in the $516 billion comprehensive tobacco bill that involve grower compensation and the future of the federal tobacco program:

Tennessee Farm Bureau officials met Tuesday with the state's two senators and urged them to fight to keep the endangered tobacco price-support system as part of the national tobacco settlement, and also provide farmers payments as demand falls for their crop. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said after the meeting that he will continue to support the price supports when a conflicting amendment comes to the Senate floor

One plan would keep the price-support program in place and pay farmers for lost quota, or let them sell out at $8 a pound. The $28.5 billion plan is called the LEAF Act, drawn up by Sen. WENDELL FORD, a Democrat from Owensboro. The other, an $18 billion plan, would abolish the price-support program and pay quota owners $8 a pound over three years. It's sponsored by Sen. RICHARD LUGAR, R-Indiana, with backing by Sen. MITCH MCCONNELL, a Louisville Republican.

The Senate yesterday cast its first vote on sweeping anti-smoking legislation amid speculation that a brewing fight over competing proposals to help tobacco farmers could threaten the whole deal.

SEN. CHARLES S. ROBB yesterday denounced a plan that is gaining ground in the Senate to end the 60-year-old tobacco price-support program. Robb, D-Va., said the plan designed by SEN. RICHARD G. LUGAR, the Republican chairman of the Agriculture Committee, would thwart the goals of the $516 billion anti-tobacco bill before the Senate. "The price [of tobacco] will go down, production will go up and it will defeat the purposes of the tobacco legislation as well as the tobacco settlement," Robb said.

The Senate refused Tuesday to limit attorney's fees in class-action lawsuits settled with tobacco companies at $250 a hour, rather than a percentage of the settlement payout, as is customary. Senators agreed 58-39 to shelve an amendment by SEN. LAUCH FAIRCLOTH, R-N.C., in the second day of debate on antismoking legislation.

Senator Trent Lott convinced fellow Republicans to rewrite new tobacco legislation just hours before the bill was brought to the floor. Kwame Holman has the story.

House Republican leaders are drafting a tobacco plan that would be much more limited than the one under consideration in the Senate, a top GOP leader said Tuesday. House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, said lawmakers want to unveil the measure this week as the Senate finishes work on its broad tobacco measure that has come under sharp fire from the tobacco industry. 'We determined we would be taking it in a direction away from a big government cash cow,' Armey said. 'It is our expectation that we will be announcing a framework of a bill that focuses on children.'

From lawyer fees to tobacco farmers to the cost of a pack of cigarettes, the Senate scuffled noisily Tuesday over legislation to reduce teen smoking and regulate the industry that makes and markets cigarettes.

Lawyers representing the states and the cigarette makers have secretly discussed an alternative settlement plan that resembles a scaled-back version of the $368.5 billion deal the two sides reached last June, according to lawyers involved in the negotiations. The proposed settlement would become effective if Congress fails to enact anti-tobacco legislation this year. Unlike the proposal pending in Congress, however, the settlement being discussed would send all the money paid by the tobacco companies to the states and none of it to the federal government, the lawyers said. . . "States that give the tobacco companies immunity through legislation would be able to get more money or other concessions from a separate fund," said a plaintiffs' lawyer involved in the talks.

"They've sold disability and death on every street corner," former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said of the tobacco companies. "I cannot understand why the United States Senate would consider any legislation that takes them off the hook." Koop and former Food and Drug Administration chief Dr. David Kessler used their strongest language to date as they joined a bipartisan team of Senators attempting to strip legal protections from the tobacco bill . . Kessler, though praising many aspects of McCain's legislation, said the immunity provisions are unacceptable. "It will taint this bill," Kessler declared. "This may be one of the most important times in the history of public health."

Eighty percent of those surveyed said Congress should not give special protection to Big Tobacco while only 15 percent said that it should. Six percent of respondents volunteered neither or don't know. The poll was conducted from May 14-17 by Opinion Research Corporation [Nasdaq:ORCI - news] International of Princeton, New Jersey, for the Coalition for Tobacco Responsibility.

Ashcroft's assault came as President Clinton was urging the Senate to "not let this historic opportunity slip away" and swiftly give the bill their approval. The two events -- Clinton's appearance before an estimated 1,400 children on the sun-splashed South Lawn of the White House, and Ashcroft's three-hour marathon on the Senate floor -- served as prelude to a series of showdown votes on the measure to cut down teen smoking.

Less than a year after Senator Judd Gregg accepted his latest $1,000 contribution from the tobacco industry, the New Hampshire Republican yesterday was demonizing cigarette makers as "the devil" that targets children with a "killer" product. Gregg is one of many players in a remarkable new era of tobacco politics on Capitol Hill.

The theory is simple: Raise cigarette prices by a hefty margin and teen-agers with limited financial resources won't be tempted to start smoking. But as the Senate considers a sweeping anti-tobacco measure this week, experts differ radically on whether boosting the cigarette tax will deter young people from picking up the habit.

McCain's bill does too much antismoking good to be stopped over some breaks for Big Tobacco.

Use new tobacco taxes to boost child-care programs.

The tobacco companies are being told to surrender their 1st Amendment rights to advertise and market their legal products in exchange for protection from lawsuits. That is repugnant. . . . A cigarette tax increase can be justified. Research has shown raising the cost of a pack of cigarettes will deter kids from buying. But Congress should narrow the focus of this legislation to do that, without resorting to indefensible tactics such as the coerced surrender of constitutional rights.

The "public-interest" network is already tapping into this bonanza to make sure none of its members will ever have to get a real job. . . In a more honest political process, someone would at least stand up and propose a complete nationalization of the tobacco industry. But we guess it would offend the Beltway's moral sensibilities if it was capturing 100% of the cash flow from a vice. So we get the McCain bill. We hope as the debate proceeds that at least a few Senators will surface the more egregious hidden agendas, and maybe one of them could put in a word for the Constitution. If in the end the Senate votes through the McCain bill, the Republicans can forget the moral high ground on taxes, because they will have just jumped off of it.

I applaud the Senate for taking up comprehensive, bipartisan legislation to dramatically reduce teen smoking. Every day, 3000 teenagers start smoking regularly, and 1000 will die prematurely of smoking-related diseases as a result. I urge the Senate to move swiftly to pass comprehensive legislation that could save those children?s lives.

Olympic star TARA LIPINSKI supports foes of tobacco. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce backs the industry.

Standing beside President Clinton on the South Lawn of the White House, the teen-ager from Sugar Land urged lawmakers to support an anti-smoking measure that would dramatically raise cigarette prices and curb tobacco advertising. "The opposition is very tough and very experienced. But the American people, no matter how far they are from Washington, are cheering for our side," Lipinski told a crowd of officials and about 1,300 young people.

ENACT calls on each and every senator to vote throughout the week to pass the strongest possible tobacco control measures. The key to reducing tobacco use among children continues to be the passage of comprehensive, sustainable, effective, well-funded, bipartisan legislation this year.

Smuggling from Mexico will only occur if the American tobacco companies first export cigarettes made in the United States to Mexico in quantities larger than will be consumed in Mexico so they can be smuggled back into the U.S. The U.S. government has the ability to prevent this type of unlawful activity. Who do you believe -- Big Tobacco or the experts?

Contrary to today's article in the New York Times, Politics of Youth Smoking Fueled by Unproven Data (5/20/98; page 1), there is substantial evidence that the anti-tobacco measures in the McCain bill will reduce tobacco use.

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., spent Wednesday frantically working the phones and lobbying his colleagues to support an amendment to tobacco legislation that would have raised the price of cigarettes by $1.50 a pack. But his efforts failed to win over his junior colleague from New Jersey, Democratic Sen. Robert G. Torricelli.

In the beginning, you could grow all the tobacco and hemp you wanted to grow and even make all the whiskey you wanted to make. No wonder the pioneers thought this place was paradise. The government hadn't arrived.

this newfound concern for the working man, the poor, the economically hard pressed -- so lacking when it comes to minimum-wage legislation, medical coverage or, in some cases, decent schooling -- just exudes the noxious odor of hypocrisy. Don't even get close to it. It's enough to make you sick.

If we want our children to be smart enough to say no to tobacco, then Congress needs to be smart enough to say yes to making child care and after-school programs part of our national strategy for keeping kids healthy and tobacco-free. As a prescription for preventing teen smoking, these programs are just what the doctor ordered.

We must encourage Sens. Warner and Robb to strengthen the McCain bill, and we must tell Congress that a majority of Americans want strong, effective tobacco control laws.

Let people buy health insurance and pay any added premium associated with smoking. That policy would be most suitable for a free society. As the Spanish proverb had it: Take what you want, and pay for it.

It is tenuous at best to lump nicotine in with the kinds of pharmaceuticals the FDA regulates. It does not impair judgment or behavior, and the risks accumulate over time. Perhaps caffeine will also join the ranks of "drugs" the government must control. There is more certainty about government restrictions on tobacco advertising: They're unconstitutional abridgements of the First Amendment. . . . Everyone knows that smoking is an unhealthy habit, and that people can become addicted to nicotine. There are several ways to combat this problem. The McCain smoking bill isn't one of them.

As it happens, Mr. Chafee and his spokesman are right that "no one addicts you." But the whole premise of the tobacco legislation introduced by Sen. John McCain and now being debated on the Senate floor is that someone can "addict" you. That being the case, U.S. veterans have a far stronger claim for health-care compensation than do civilians. . . What's happening to veterans is emblematic of the larger tobacco issue now under consideration in the Senate. No matter what pieties advocates utter in the name of tobacco restrictions, this controversy has never been about protecting children, veterans or anyone else. It's about money, the kind you shake down from tobacco companies or the kind you deny to aging soldiers.

We doubt the tobacco program's prognosis is as dire as McConnell claims. . . That McConnell has embraced such an unbending approach reinforces the notion that he's really out to kill the tobacco bill. By staking out an extreme position, he lessens the chance of compromise with Southern Democrats defending the program.

Mr. Lott's caucus is divided on the tobacco issue. He needs to step on toes if a bill is to pass.

The anti-smoking Bill, which includes one of the largest transfers of wealth from corporations to government and individuals in US business history, is expected to be put to a final vote tomorrow or when lawmakers return from Monday's Memorial Day holiday break. . . But analysts say the chances of getting favourable legislation, or killing an unfavourable bill, appear slim when politicians are eagerly eyeing a new source of revenue while wanting to appear concerned about rising rates of teenage smoking.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Clinton said that he opposed the amendment to eliminate the cap, offered by Sens. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and Patrick J. Leahy, (D-Vt.). "If a cap that doesn't prevent anybody from suing the companies and getting whatever damages a jury awards will get tobacco companies to stop marketing cigarettes to kids, it is well worth it for the American people," said Clinton.

At the same time, the pressure increased on lawmakers to move quickly. "It is a good, strong bill," President Clinton said at a White House anti-smoking event at which he formally endorsed legislation sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "Congress should pass it and pass it now." On the floor, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) appealed for timely votes after Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) and other conservatives talked for four hours in what some called a mini-filibuster. "If the Senate is smart, it will stop this dilatory stuff, and get it done this week," Lott told Congress Daily, adding, "Is the Senate smart? Not if it has an alternative."

Wednesday's votes had important implications. The first is that anti-smoking forces command enough votes in the Senate to pass a bill that would sharply raise the price of cigarettes. A second is that there is general agreement that the $1.10 per pack increase favored by President Clinton and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the chief sponsor of the legislation before the Senate, will probably become part of whatever bill comes out of the Senate. The money would be raised by a fee imposed on the cigarette makers, but the effect would be identical to a direct tax.

The vote was a qualified victory for Senate Commerce Committee Chairman JOHN MCCAIN (R., Ariz.), who crafted the bill the Senate is considering and defended the $1.10 price increase as adequate to counter underage smoking. "The $1.10 is part of a package, and it would upset the balance to go higher," he said.

the Senate rejected a proposed $1.50-per-pack tax increase on cigarettes Wednesday, deciding that a smaller increase of $1.10 was enough to discourage teen-agers from smoking. The 58-40 vote was a setback for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and other liberals . . . "This is a massive tax increase, this is a massive expansion of government, this is an affront to the effort of families to provide for themselves," said Ashcroft. He paused in his three-hour marathon only to allow like-minded senators to pose friendly questions and thereby reinforce his arguments.

Senators JOHN F. KERRY and CHRISTOPHER BOND, the Missouri Republican, appeared with HEARD and BEENE at a Capitol Hill news conference to tout a proposed amendment to the tobacco bill being considered in the Senate this week. Their proposal, a variation of a bill they introduced earlier this year, would earmark $6 billion of the state's share of the proposed increase in the tobacco tax for child care, after-school programs and early childhood development.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said Friday that the Senate would resume work on the tobacco bill when it comes back June 1 from a week-long recess. The Missouri Republican said the Senate would also be working on other legislation because of time pressures but he stressed ``that's not intended to take the place of tobacco.''

Hyperkinetic at 61, John McCain rocks on his heels, wiggles his jaw and slaps his fist into his palm as the Senate debates his historic tobacco bill. Around the country, tobacco industry ads are lashing this conservative Republican from Arizona as a liberal big spender, but McCain is having the time of his life. ``Saturation ads! They're making me famous!'' exclaimed McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war with a forceful and relentlessly cheerful personality, and an eye on the White House in the year 2000.

"The country is in the process of this massive, multi-front search for a new status quo [on smoking]," says Christopher Foreman, an expert in the politics of health and safety at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"We are not going to develop a big-government bill because the companies would be in bankruptcy," said REP. THOMAS BLILEY, R-Va., chairman of the House Commerce Committee. "In the House, we are developing a bill (to limit) teen access" to tobacco, he said. Bliley said he has been meeting with House Speaker NEWT GINGRICH, R-Ga., and Rep. DEBORAH PRYCE, R-Ohio, who is heading up the House tobacco task force. He said details of the legislation were not ready to be unveiled

The conservatives joined antitobacco senators to take a step toward stripping out the legislation's sole legal protection for the tobacco industry. . . Another vote is required to formally approve the amendment and remove the cap, but by keeping the amendment alive, the bill's opponents won a substantial victory.

'This (the vote) is something in my view that is unfortunate for the entire bill,' said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the primary author of the tobacco bill. 'We will revisit this issue again.' . . 'The immunity issue is really at the heart of this bill,' Gregg said.

Sen. John McCain said the Senate will not be able to complete work on his tobacco bill this week but will take it up again when the Senate returns in early June after a weeklong recess. The Arizona Republican said he expects "no further substantive votes" on Thursday.

Attacked on two fronts, tobacco legislation stumbled badly Thursday as the Senate signaled opposition to special legal breaks for the industry and conservatives fought the bill's tax increases.

The Senate voted on Thursday to eliminate all legal protections for cigarette makers from a major tobacco bill, throwing the whole legislation into doubt. The surprise vote, 61 to 37, forged an unlikely alliance of the most ardent anti-tobacco Democrats, who wanted to punish the companies, with some of the Senate's most conservative Republicans who oppose the overall bill.

An effort by conservative Senate Republicans to gut landmark tobacco legislation went down to defeat yesterday, starkly revealing how thin the ranks of the tobacco bill's opposition have become. The bill's opponents, led by Sen. John Ashcroft, a Missouri Republican, did manage to slow the legislation's progress, virtually assuring that the Senate will not pass the legislation until after a weeklong Memorial Day recess.

What a travesty it would be to pass this legislation! "To punish American families with $755 billion in new taxes... "To reward the big tobacco companies with special protection . . . "To line the pockets of the country's wealthiest trial lawyers

SEN. JOHN W. WARNER, R-Va., embraced yesterday provisions in the anti-tobacco bill to continue the 60-year-old federal tobacco price support program and to compensate growers.

Democratic senators are angry with the White House for ignoring their concerns while negotiating with Republicans on the tobacco legislation. Sens. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Joseph Biden (Del), Edward Kennedy (Mass.) and Frank Lautenberg (N.J.) were among those who vented their anger at a closed meeting of the Democratic caucus with White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles on Thursday.

One of the plans would abolish the 60-year-old federal program, which guarantees farmers a market and keeps prices high. If that happens, it wouldn't be the only landmark change for Kentucky agriculture this week. For the first time, two Kentucky senators will be on opposite sides in a key tobacco policy debate.

A coalition of Pennsylvania tobacco prevention organizations praise Pennsylvania's U.S. Senators Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum for voting against special legal protections for the tobacco industry. . . "This is in our view the most important amendment to the McCain Bill," said Jeffrey Barg, president of the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Pennsylvania.

Sen. Fred Thompson, a longtime supporter of federal price supports for tobacco farmers, said Wednesday the program faces a dark future. So he is leaning toward a bill offering buyouts for farmers and ending price supports over three years.

We agree with the good doctors. Today, we call on Speaker Gingrich to bring strong legislation to reduce teen smoking to the House Floor. . . And finally, we want to hold the industry responsible for its actions -- we don't reward them with caps on liability that they do not deserve. I understand the Senate is voting this morning on the Leahy-Gregg amendment to keep the industry accountable for its past misconduct. I strongly support this effort."

What is certain is that the 46-year-old analyst continues to be an influential voice in the Clinton administration's attempt to sharply regulate smoking in this country and use higher cigarette taxes to fund its domestic agenda. Gotbaum's economic analysis of the tobacco industry has muted one of the industry's most potent arguments against comprehensive anti-smoking legislation.

The truth is tobacco use drains the U.S. economy by more than $100 billion per year. Health care expenditures attributed directly to smoking totaled $50 billion in 1993, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Forty-three percent of these costs were paid by government funds, including Medicaid and Medicare. At the same time, lost economic productivity caused by smoking cost the U.S. economy $47.2 billion in 1990, according to the Office of Technology Assessment. Lost productivity includes lost wages and lost workdays due to tobacco-caused illness. Adjusted for inflation, the total economic cost of smoking is more than $100 billion per year. Current tobacco exise taxes only yield $13 billion to $14 billion combined per year in federal, state and local taxes.

we are asking you to take deliberate steps to ensure that comprehensive tobacco control legislation moves forward quickly and decisively when the Senate returns after the Memorial Day recess.

Today's vote shows that an overwhelming majority of the Senate agrees that we can curb teen-age smoking without shielding the tobacco industry with unprecedented legal protections.

The American Cancer Society believes it is time for the United States Senate to get on with the process of moving comprehensive national tobacco control forward. The ongoing debate taking place in the Senate is doing nothing to move the bill forward. The current proposal should be strengthened and voted on -- not filibustered.

CITIZENS FOR A SOUND ECONOMY (CSE) will host a PolicyWatch lunch titled, "Tobacco Legislation: The Economics, Politics and Law" on Thursday, May 28 (11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.) in room B-338 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

It was a deceptively bad week for America's anti-tobacco forces -- not in the Senate, where legislation to discourage smoking made some progress, but in the House, where Republican leaders are developing a meager approach more to the liking of cigarette makers.

The tobacco bill came to the Senate floor last Monday with momentum but uncertainty. It finished the week only with uncertainty.

How the Texas congressional delegation voted on selected issues last week:

The American public would consider itself at war and demand that its leaders take action if a foreign power was responsible for the toll in lost lives and health costs exacted every day by tobacco products. . . The industry is now launching a multimillion-dollar campaign that will attempt to divert the public's attention to "big taxes" and "big government." We cannot allow the industry to sidetrack or dilute tobacco-control legislation with other issues.

WASHINGTON (May 22, 1998 09:32 a.m. EDT http://www.nando.net) -- To paraphrase an old cigarette commercial, the tobacco bill hit the floor this week all round, firm and fully packed not only with mega-dollars, but world-class anomalies. After a day, senators were yearning for the simplicity of Ira Magaziner and the health care reform bill. . . "The tobacco companies are bad guys: the trial lawyers are bad guys," said a disgusted Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., a former actor who usually played good guys in the movies. Therefore, Thompson said he was opposed not only the bill to punish the tobacco companies but the amendment to limit the trial lawyers' fees. Figure it out.

Backers of the tobacco bill say they will keep trying to reach an agreement. But even with a tax hike on cigarettes, even with a huge settlement payment, the tobacco companies are likely to be the winners in the long run. As long as they can find willing customers--in this country and increasingly overseas--they will continue to sell addiction, illness and death at a profit.. . . Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) is widely quoted as saying, "We are making a deal with the devil and the devil walked away from the table. Now, we have the unseemly situation of the United States Congress chasing after the devil, pleading with the devil to take our plan."

To those who argue that the proposed national tobacco settlement and/or Sen. John McCain's tobacco legislation is government gouging of a legal industry, the VA's situation assigns a real cost from tobacco to all taxpayers. . . "They paved roads on the backs of sick veterans" would be a cruel legacy for the 105th Congress. But that's what it might be, if the highway bill passes in its present form. e

At present a workable, bipartisan middle is allied behind the legislation that conservative Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain sponsored and President Clinton supports. . . And by the way, if heavy cigarette taxes hit the poor the hardest, then it's today's poor children whom they will benefit the most.

Oddly, people who revere freedom of speech ignore the fact that this bill denies the right to advertise a legal product. . . Congress should have been done extorting Big Tobacco by now, but it got greedy. Major tobacco companies were ready to pony up $370 billion this spring but walked away from negotiations when lawmakers kept bellowing: more, more. Dollar signs, not smoke, got into the politicians' eyes and blinded them to this bill's hazards.

Smoking is a habit that harms people in its grip. The hypocrisy and greed of public officials violates the body politic. And a witch hunt is an ugly thing, even when there may be real witches involved. . . Yes, but I also value a certain amount of vice. It's the canary in the mine shaft of a free society. They can come for the tobacco people today and most of us won't care. But who will they come for next? We all do or believe something that could eventually cause us to huddle like fugitives in cold doorways.

"When you have Ted Kennedy and Phil Gramm together on an issue, I think that sums it up best," said Kentucky Farm Bureau lobbyist Tim Cansler. He was referring to the liberal Kennedy of Massachusetts and the conservative Gramm of Texas, who both cast votes Thursday against giving tobacco companies some legal protections. But for Kentucky and its 60,000 tobacco farmers, the real surprise in last week's far-reaching tobacco debate wasn't who was together. It was who was apart.

Raising the price of cigarettes by $1.10 a pack would cost smokers an extra $17.5 billion a year, a critic of the tobacco legislation said Tuesday. Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., said the proposed increase would hurt poor people the most. Low-income Americans with a one-pack-a-day habit would pay at least $10.4 billion more each year, he said. Ashcroft, a GOP freshman considering a White House bid in 2000, used the same argument last week in battling the per-pack price increase on the Senate floor.

"A lot of people are calling in and they don't know where they have called," said Jennifer Cutshall, an aide to Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. "And some callers are saying, 'I'm supposed to say I'm against a tax increase' or 'I'm supposed to say I'm against the McCain bill,'" named for sponsor John McCain, R-Ariz.

RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. wrote recently to Vera McDonnell of Rutherford, a longtime smoker who was on the company's customer mailing list. The letter asked McDonnell to write to her two senators, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Torricelli, and her representative, Steve Rothman, to protest Congress' plans to enact stiff tax hikes on tobacco. But Vera McDonnell is not around to write any letters. She died in February after "a long and horrible struggle against emphysema," her son, Jack, wrote in an e-mail that he sent to Lautenberg, Torricelli and Rothman. "My father, another ex-smoker, has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer," he wrote. "My family understands the real costs involved here, and the cost of smoking far exceeds the costs of this legislation."

The tobacco lobby has pulled off a surprising public relations coup, and won a round on Capitol Hill this week, thanks in part to the televised image of a harried, sweaty waitress with earrings the size of onion rings who leans into the camera and sighs: "I'm no millionaire. I work hard. Why single me out?" That commercial, sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is part of a major advertising and lobbying campaign that has been remarkably successful in turning what tobacco opponents view as a bill that would discourage teen-age smoking into a tax issue and an assault on working stiffs who cannot afford to pay more for cigarettes. . . lobbyists on both sides say it was a big factor in the decision to postpone a Senate vote on the bill, originally scheduled for Thursday. And both sides describe the delay, until after Congress returns next month from recess, as at least a short-term gain for the tobacco industry.

Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon speaks with former surgeon general C. Everett Koop.

U.S. Sen. John McCain's bill to raise the cost of a pack of cigarettes by $1.10 by the year 2003 ``still is a tax bill,'' the Idaho Republican said Saturday in Lewiston.

The legislation will be back on the floor next month, after lawmakers return from the Memorial Day recess, and Democrats served notice Friday they will insist it remain the first order of business. Democrats are ``determined not to do anything else until we get it done,'' said the party's leader, Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Republican critics are no less determined. ``I've not yet begun to fight the tax increases,'' said Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri, who held the Senate floor for more than three hours one day last week to dramatize his opposition.

Last week, the U.S. Senate adjourned for the Memorial Day recess without taking final action on comprehensive tobacco control legislation sponsored by Sen. John McCain. While the Senate did vote on two amendments, meaningful progress was stymied because of a series of delaying tactics by the tobacco industry's Senate allies.

"He is a solid conservative with the stature of one who is principled and respected, and that includes respect from his adversaries on the center and left," said Bob Carolla, communications director of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action.

Right now, he's the White House point-man for the tobacco bill on which the Senate will resume debate when it returns Monday. At least once a day, Mr. Clinton's tobacco team gathers in Mr. Bowles's West Wing office to deliver updates and get instructions. Quietly, Mr. Bowles visits Capitol Hill to confer with lawmakers and calls them frequently. "Erskine has convinced people he is serious about achieving results without regard to partisanship," says Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who sponsored the Senate tobacco bill.

Two rival law enforcement organizations have teamed up to lobby Congress for additional funds to combat an anticipated black market in cigarettes that would result from a sharp increase in cigarette prices mandated in Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz) tobacco bill. In an unusual alliance, the FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE (FOP) and the INTERNATIONAL UNION OF POLICE ASSOCIATIONS (IUPA) are leading the effort to encourage senators to include specific funding for additional law enforcement in any bill that would significantly raise the price of cigarettes.

The landmark tobacco-control bill pending in the Senate contains little-noticed provisions that would crack down more on cigarettes than on smokeless tobacco, cigars and pipes. The disparities have prompted concern among some health advocates, who argue teens might switch from cigarettes to other tobacco products. "We're calling for equity for all tobacco products, because the danger is that as you crack down on one, you push kids to another," says Greg Connolly, who directs the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program.

So when the Senate's tobacco-control bill initially proposed a much smaller price increase on smokeless tobacco than on cigarettes, he met with the bill's author, Sen. John McCain. Garagiola argued that smokeless tobacco, which he says ought to be called "spit tobacco," is just as addictive and harmful. "What I wanted was for spit tobacco to be treated the same as cigarettes," recalls Garagiola, the national chairman of Oral Health America's National Spit Tobacco Education Program. He could get much of what he wanted.

The current bill under consideration in the Senate to regulate the tobacco industry is too big and complex and should be broken up in order to be debated, said U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi. . . He was one of only 26 senators who unsuccessfully pushed recently to eliminate the $1.10 per pack increase in cigarette taxes in the bill, but the attempt was defeated. "Right now what it is a huge tax increase. It's a tax increase on the poorest members of society, and they don't get any benefit for it," Enzi said.

Raising the price of cigarettes by $1.10 a pack would cost smokers an extra $17.5 billion a year, a critic of the tobacco legislation said Tuesday. Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., said the proposed increase would hurt poor people the most. Low-income Americans with a one-pack-a-day habit would pay at least $10.4 billion more each year, he said. Ashcroft, a GOP freshman considering a White House bid in 2000, used the same argument last week in battling the per-pack price increase on the Senate floor.

After numerous price increases, he now pays almost double that, $1.87 a pack, for Salem Lights. A shock may lie ahead. Anderson could pay almost $3 a pack if a big tax increase remains part of tobacco legislation. "Every time it goes up, I say I'm not going to pay this, I'm not going to pay this," Anderson said. "But I keep paying it anyway."

Economists predicted Tuesday that proposed legislation projected to raise cigarette prices by $1.10 a pack over five years will reduce teenage smoking rates by 27 percent. WILLIAM EVANS of the University of Maryland and LYNN HUANG of the NATIONAL OPINION RESEARCH CENTER used information from several surveys of teenagers to determine just how price-sensitive youths are. They compared surveys done in states where taxes went up to states where they did not. "A 10 percent increase in the price of a pack of cigarettes will result in a 5 percent reduction in teen smoking," Evans said in a statement. "The evidence is overwhelming -- higher taxes reduce teen smoking."

The record of dysfunction and irresponsibility is reminiscent of the last Democratic Congress. It, too, began by passing a strong budget, then bollixed up practically everything else and ended up being tossed out by the voters. "Perhaps the Worst Congress," we called it in an editorial that fall. This one is on a path to a tie.

Cigar smokers must not delude themselves. The risks are real, and the habit is too dangerous to glamorize as children watch. Congress and the White House should heed Satcher's advice. Cigars should be treated just the same as cigarettes and smokeless tobacco -- as a killer.

Now, I want to save the children as much as I know you do. But anyone who thinks about this for a minute knows something funny is going on. The vast majority of smokers are adults, not children. Almost every penny of new taxes the bill imposes will be paid by adults, not children. The logic of the bill, therefore, is that forcing adults to pay higher taxes will stops kids from smoking. That's nonsense. . . But you're missing something if you don't appreciate that politics frequently involves lies that are noble. So go ahead. Forgive yourself. And root for the lies that help deliver the results you like. In the real world, there is no alternative.

Liberals live to tax . . There are four things seriously wrong with the National Tobacco Policy and Youth Smoking Reduction Act under consideration in the Senate. First, there is no evidence that its provisions will achieve the stated goal of reducing teen-age smoking. Second, McCain and friends are proposing an enormous tax increase that otherwise never could win either House or Senate passage. Third, the Congress will be encouraging a massive new criminal enterprise -- the smuggling of contraband cigarettes -- that will dwarf Al Capone and the criminals of the Prohibition era. Finally, herewith begins yet another assault on the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.

I was reminded of this irony while listening to the Senate debate on the National Tobacco Policy and Youth Smoking Reduction Act, commonly known as the John McCain, R-Ariz., tobacco tax bill. As I listened, I heard irony after irony. Rarely, I suspect, did a majority of the Senators notice them. For instance, the McCain tobacco tax bill is designed to raise the price of cigarettes so smokers will have "sticker shock" and quit. But it also phases in the price increases -- specifically because the Senators want to avoid "sticker shock."

But economists and legal scholars who generally share the public's distaste for cigarette pushers still wonder whether a tax-based fix for tobacco is good public policy. In some cases, their concerns could be resolved with a little more care in the division of the spoils. There is a more fundamental drawback, though, to any political consensus that turns on enormous increases in the retail price of tobacco: it punishes the victims.

Now its corporate cohorts in the [U.S. Chamber of Commerce] are backing a television advertising blitz to divert the public's attention from the tobacco industry's deadly misdeeds. The ads, based on lies and innuendoes, seek to scare the public into thinking that the proposed tobacco legislation creates a new "tax" that would hurt taxpayers earning less than $30,000 a year only to benefit the anti-tobacco attorneys.

The ads follow classic lobbying and public relations rules: * When your side is unpopular, as the tobacco industry is, seek to redirect public ire toward other villains - in this case, trial lawyers, taxes and big government. . . * When you are losing the argument, change the subject. . . * Obscure your own economic interests and present a more sympathetic face. . . * Sound authoritative.

"It's become an unrestrained political gold rush, with politicians of both parties racing to accommodate extremist points of view while imposing huge taxes on millions of Americans," said RJR Nabisco chief executive STEVEN GOLDSTONE in a Phoenix speech.

STEVEN GOLDSTONE, chairman of RJR Nabisco, said Washington had become obsessed with punishing the industry and raising extra revenue for government. "What we are seeing today is how politicians can lose their way when confronted with extreme and destructive rhetoric about a disfavoured industry coming from interest groups hoping to destroy the industry, aided by those politicians who see an opportunity to tax and spend with no real accountability," he said.

the confusion has left North Carolina's politicians silent and tobacco organizations divided. The TOBACCO GROWERS ASSOCIATION OF NORTH CAROLINA backs the $18 billion buyout, known as the LUGAR plan . . . The N.C. FARM BUREAU says that the Lugar plan could cause chaos, but opposes the $28.5 billion proposal that would keep a price-support program. That plan, known as the FORD plan . . . is backed by the FLUE-CURED TOBACCO COOPERATIVE STABILIZATION CORP., which runs the price-support program.

And, in doing so, he has made enemies in politics and the public health community. They say Congress should be tougher on an industry that lied about its products for decades and contributed to the deaths of millions of Americans. "Orrin Hatch has been the tobacco industry's strongest ally in Congress," says Bill Godshall, an anti-tobacco activist based in Pittsburgh. "It's outrageous. He has done more to help the tobacco industry than [North Carolina Sen.] Jesse Helms." The Utah Republican bristles at the suggestion. "Anybody who says I'm on the side of tobacco is nuts," says Hatch, a longtime leader of the Senate committee with jurisdiction over health issues. "I'm on the side of getting [a tobacco-control bill] done."

Durbin has offered one of the first amendments to be considered after the Senate begins meeting today. It would impose bigger penalties on individual tobacco companies that fail to keep young smokers from using their brands. . . Ashcroft . . plans to offer an amendment this week to reduce other taxes on those who would be hardest hit by the price increase.

The Senate will return to debate the bill today, but Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi -- a critic of the bill -- has threatened to pull it from the floor if supporters can't muster the 60 votes required to limit debate. A key vote is set for Tuesday.

Leading the House effort is REP. JAMES GREENWOOD, R-Pa., who says a bill requiring tobacco companies to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars a year to pay for the ad campaign could be ready by the end of the week. . . "It has been clear to me in discussions with the leadership that it would be difficult to move something like the Senate proposal through the House and it is also clear to me that most members of the House do not want to be on the side of big tobacco," said Greenwood, a longtime ally of House Speaker Newt Gingrich. "They very much want to take steps to discourage people, particularly young people, from smoking." The central feature of the House proposal is a provision eliminating the industry's tax deduction for tobacco advertising. That would generate as much as $1.7 billion a year to pay for public service advertisements warning teen-agers of the dangers of tobacco, he said.

House Republicans are crafting a far different plan that targets teen-age smoking without big tax increases, an expanded role of government or legal protections for cigarette makers. The House plan likely will emphasize public-service ads and programs to reduce teen smoking and illegal drug use. The plan is being drawn up by a group of committee chairmen and caucus leaders, including REP. DEBORAH PRYCE of Perry Township. Members are keeping tabs on Senate deliberations to determine the level of support there for a variety of proposals and to see how the Senate's bill will play with the public.

Last spring, a group of smokers offered to give their 2-cents' worth to a Senate hearing on the proposed tobacco settlement. But a Senate aide dismissed them, saying their testimony would be irrelevant. "It's as if smokers themselves do not exist," said WANDA HAMILTON of Miami, vice president of the Florida Smoker's Rights Association. . . The Senate is considering charging tobacco companies $516 billion over 25 years, paid directly by smokers through price hikes of at least $1.10 a pack. "They are about to give us the biggest tax increase in history, and what we have to say is irrelevant?" Hamilton said incredulously.

Large tobacco growers are lining up behind a proposal to eliminate a federal program that has kept leaf prices high for almost 60 years. . . Different circumstances have caused a split among tobacco farmers' views on the price-support legislation pending in Congress. They're choosing sides behind two proposals attached to the overall tobacco bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

The Senate on Monday debated raising penalties on tobacco companies that miss youth smoking reduction goals and also weighed taking billions of dollars from a tobacco bill to pay for tax cuts for married couples. The Senate did not vote on either proposal, and Senate Majority Leader TRENT LOTT, a Mississippi Republican, said the timetable was uncertain for resumption of work on the landmark tobacco bill drafted by Arizona Republican JOHN MCCAIN.

"The Congress needs to hear from the American people that this is important," Shalala said during a visit with Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to Miriam Hospital. Shalala was responding to comments made by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott earlier in the day in Washington. Lott said the legislation is "teetering in the balance" because of amendments that would raise the amount of money cigarette companies would pay the government. Shalala said Lott and the Republican leadership will have a lot of explaining to do if they allow the bill to die.

"The bill is teetering -- teetering in the balance here -- as to whether or not it's just going to collapse of its own weight," Lott, R-Miss., told reporters Monday. "I mean, how much is enough? I mean, greed has just gone hog-wild here." . . "If (Durbin's) amendment passes, that, coupled with the Gregg amendment that passed, could be the death knell of the whole bill," Lott said. "If those that want to keep enlarging this bill continue to do that, then I think that the bill will sink of its own weight."

After one week of debate, several multibillion-dollar policy disputes remain on the tobacco bill -- and there is no time agreement or other path to a final vote. Before long, Lott will be pressured to move to other measures, including appropriations bills, and he has suggested he might eventually give up if the debate shows no signs of abating. But Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said he is prepared to fight to keep the bill on the floor "until we finish it."

Utah SEN. BOB BENNETT, up for re-election this year, feels the heat over the tobacco industry bills now before the Senate. The Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids has started advertising campaigns in the home states of half a dozen senators.

But the Senate debate won't settle the issue for voters in Kentucky. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., calls tobacco farmers "the innocent victims" of the drive to curb smoking.

Preaching to his own party, President Clinton again called on Congress to pass a bill aimed at curbing teen smoking. Clinton made the appeal while going through a litany of his agenda items at a fund-raising luncheon today in Houston

Hoping to end the delays that could drag down his tobacco bill, Sen. John McCain said Tuesday he was open to a compromise with his foes on using some of the money the bill would raise to pay for a tax cut. The Arizona Republican wants to devote most of the billions of dollars his bill would generate to public health and anti-tobacco programs but said he would consider a tax cut "of some modest proportion" if it benefits low-income Americans and gets the legislation moving more swiftly through the Senate.

But regardless of how tough the Senate decides to be on Big Tobacco, there will not be any new tobacco law unless the House and the Senate can agree on something. And House Republicans are quietly preparing a radically different and far more modest proposal, one limited to forcing the industry to finance a nationwide advertising campaign to combat teen smoking.

The negotiations began with an amendment sponsored by Republican Sens. Phil Gramm of Texas and Pete Domenici of New Mexico that would eliminate the penalty for couples who make less than $50,000 a year. The proposal's cost was estimated by sources close to Gramm at $50 billion, to be paid for by the money tobacco companies would give the government under Sen. John McCain's tobacco bill. The White House bristled at the amendment's price tag, saying it would take money away from research and advertising programs aimed at stopping kids from smoking.

Tobacco legislation is teetering on the brink of failure as lawmakers add provisions to punish cigarette companies for marketing to minors, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott warned on Monday. But the White House signaled it would step up pressure on Congress to take action against the tobacco companies, and Democratic congressional aides asserted that chances for Senate passage remain strong.

"I think the president feels that the Republican leadership of Congress would have a very difficult time explaining to the American people why this badly needed legislation that has bipartisan support could not advance on their watch," Mr. McCurry said. But Mr. Lott said the "health care extremists" in the Senate have so loaded the tobacco bill with amendments that they risk killing it.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, under siege from conservatives, said he would work to incorporate in tobacco legislation a proposal curbing the so-called marriage penalty. The Mississippi Republican, while raising concern that the bill is already top-heavy, suggested that a package of tax cuts could shore up support. "The tax cut proposals, if they could be added, they would actually improve its chances," said Sen. Lott. He embraced an amendment advanced by GOP Sens. Phil Gramm of Texas and Pete Domenici of New Mexico to eliminate the so-called marriage penalty for couples making less than $50,000 a year.

"The president feels that the Republican leadership of Congress would have a very difficult time explaining to the American people why this badly needed legislation that has bipartisan support could not advance on their watch"

Keeping tobacco price supports in place would mean more money over time for a typical Kentucky burley farmer than buying out production allotments, a University of Kentucky agricultural economist says. But the review by UK's WILL SNELL, one of the first independent looks at competing proposals on tobacco farming due to be debated in the U.S. Senate this week, doesn't account for income that farmers could make on tobacco or other crops after selling their price-support "quotas." Snell concluded that a tobacco farmer with a 10,000-pound quota would have $15,000 more under Sen. Wendell Ford's plan to keep the price-support program than under a plan to pay farmers $8 a pound to buy up quotas and end the program.

Uncertainty over tobacco's future could lead to further destabilization of markets for the commodity and threaten existing price-support programs, farmers and agricultural officials from state and federal governments said Friday. "The worst thing, in my opinion is for no bill to go through this year," said Bruce Flye, president of the Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization Corp., during the group's annual meeting at the state fairgrounds here.

But a spokeswoman for the freshman senator said the group is wasting its money: Torricelli is already in agreement. The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids has taken out ads in some of the state's largest newspapers urging Torricelli to support a bill that would force tobacco companies to combat teen smoking, raise the price of cigarettes, and reimburse states for the costs of treating smoking-related illnesses.

The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids is pleased to join today with U.S. Sens. John McCain, Kent Conrad, John Kerry and John Chafee and others who are leading the way in legislation to protect children from tobacco," said Bill Novelli, campaign president. . . "Opponents of this bill have engaged in the tactics of deception and delay in order to stop it from passing," said Matthew Myers, executive vice president and general counsel of the campaign. "But make no mistake about it -- failure to move swiftly toward final passage of this legislation will represent capitulation to the tobacco companies and a failure to take advantage of this historic opportunity to protect children."

Big Tobacco says a tobacco tax increase will put tobacco farmers out of business. The truth is tobacco farming is in decline because of ever-increasing tobacco imports.

The tobacco industry keeps raising the specter of a huge, new, unfair tax burden on working Americans when talking about tobacco taxes. Yet the tobacco industry doesn't seem to have any qualms about taking money from smokers to fill its own pockets. As a matter of fact, in the last 12 months, tobacco manufacturers have raised their prices five times.

"We are in danger of knocking this thing way out of balance, if we haven't already," the Arizona Republican said in an emotional speech on the Senate floor. McCain and other sponsors, though, were negotiating with critics to sweeten the bill by using some of the tobacco revenue for a tax cut. "There is probably a majority view that some kind of tax relief for low-income Americans is in order, whether that be the marriage penalty or some kind of other thing," McCain told The Republic. He said such a provision could help neutralize some of the opposition to the bill.

"This is one of several pieces that you have to get in place to fix the bill for most Republicans," said Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, whose amendment to eliminate the "marriage penalty" is set for debate on Thursday.

Rather than risk defeat on the popular issue of eliminating the marriage penalty for moderate-income couples, Senate Minority Leader THOMAS DASCHLE of South Dakota is negotiating a compromise that could erode the tobacco bill's funding for antismoking and health initiatives. Mr. Daschle's efforts distanced him from the White House, which is skeptical about using tobacco money to trim the marriage penalty. But he acknowledged that many Democrats support the notion. "It's not my first choice, but I can count votes," Mr. Daschle said. "Dealing with the marriage penalty is a popular issue."

The fate of the Senate's stalled tobacco bill likely will be decided next week, when its sponsor tries to limit debate and bring the issue to a vote. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) . . said it should be put aside if the effort to shut off debate fails. That would require 60 votes. "I don't think the Senate can afford to have extended debate forever," said McCain, who plans to file his motion this week to limit debate. "We have other pressing issues."

The Senate refused yesterday to take up a fiercely contested bill to create a temporary nuclear waste storage facility in the Nevada desert after critics charged that debate over it would interrupt and possibly thwart action on the high-priority tobacco bill.

Rather than a bill to reduce the pediatric epidemic of youth smoking, taken together, these three amendments create a bill to fund the social agendas of members of Congress who complained when the President tried to do the same thing last February. Congress needs to lay partisan politics aside and focus its efforts on promoting good public health policy. The McCain bill is a tobacco control bill. Any money it generates should be used for tobacco control programs designed to reduce youth smoking rates and save kids' lives. The Senate should vote down each of these amendments and pass the McCain bill. Time is running out.

U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) said today that he will push for tax cuts equal to at least one-half of any of the "soak the poor" tax increases in the Senate tobacco legislation. Ashcroft has opposed any tax increases by the federal government, and earlier sought to strike all tax increases from the tobacco bill.

The Senate should end debate so that this initiative can move forward. But supporters of costlier cigarettes need to remember that the political appeal of the original tobacco deal was that it was a compromise endorsed by an industry whose product Congress steadfastly has refused to outlaw. Take away the compromise, and all that may be left are some Joe-Camel-bashing sound bites.

If there is a tax cut, reducing the marriage penalty is the wrong way to give it. Republicans earlier in the year accused the president, with cause, of trying to use the tobacco bill to finance other parts of his budget unrelated to tobacco. The effect, they said, was to overload the bill and squander the opportunity to reduce smoking. They now threaten to do themselves what they earlier deplored.

Take away price supports and you hurt farmers, but the cigarette companies gain $1 billion a year . . . Sen. Richard Lugar's argument that it's morally and economically wrong for the federal government to sponsor tobacco production, marketing and warehousing is appealing and, on the surface, seemingly irrefutable. Why should the government be involved in any way with an enterprise that kills millions of people? But Lugar's argument collapses under close examination. The tobacco program protects small farms from the tobacco industry, just as most Americans want to protect children from that same tobacco industry.

But the ultimate payers are other smokers. It's a massive shell game in which trial lawyers skim 30 to 40 percent of the take. Congress need not bless this tribute. It could end it with two steps. First, curb the tobacco companies' legal liability. Whatever the industry's deceits, smoking's hazards have long been public. Smokers knowingly assumed the risks. Congress could justifiably limit liability to smokers who started before 1966, when federal cigarette labeling began. Second, recognize that the states' suits aim to capture the federal cigarette tax.

In former POW John McCain, Big Tobacco has met its matchHe is a stranger to the Tobacco Boys, because the senators they know are craven, boot-licking, lily-livered, cash-sucking, yellow-bellied political warblers. McCain has been in tougher spots than having Big Tobacco blackmail him in Iowa or New Hampshire. If his fellow senators abandon him on this one, they deserve the craven reputation they have earned.

The amendment, offered by Sen. RICHARD DURBIN, D-Ill., was adopted by a voice vote after a motion to table the amendment failed by a vote of 29 to 66. But the amendment is attached to other amendments that must be passed before the Durbin amendment is finalized.

The problem involves differing rate schedules and standard deductions for married couples and single people, and eligibility rules for the earned-income tax credit for lower-wage earners. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), 20.9 million couples paid an average $1,380 more in taxes in 1996 than they would have if single. On the other hand, 25.3 million couples paid an average $1,300 less in taxes in 1996 than they would have if single, creating a marriage "bonus." Overall, 42 percent of couples paid marriage penalties, 51 percent got bonuses and 6 percent were unaffected. Further complicating the issue, marriage penalties and bonuses are not spread evenly. When each spouse earns about the same amount, couples are most likely to pay a marriage penalty. When one spouse earns the bulk of the income, the couple is likely to receive a bonus.

"Hatch and Bennett: Tobacco puppets," one sign proclaimed. "Speak for Utah, not tobacco," another read. The eeriness of the scene came from the contrast between the demonstrators' quiet presence and their jarring costumes. Although they avoided conversation with people walking to lunch, their clothing said it all. Loud-colored felt eyebrows, mouths and ears covered the five-gallon plastic buckets the protesters wore over their heads. The only things missing from the puppets' outfits were the puppet strings. "We think that Sens. Hatch and Bennett are wrong," said one puppet, who identified himself as Michael Zakowski, spokesman for the Citizens Against Tobacco Corruption.

Maneuvering on tobacco legislation, Senate Democrats today countered a Republican election-year tax cut proposal with one of their own to ease the "marriage penalty" and grant relief to self-employed workers who buy health insurance. Democratic leader Tom Daschle told reporters his proposal would drain far less money from the tobacco bill than a proposal by Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, thus leaving more for the states, for federal health research and for tobacco farmers.

In politics, as in football, it's a lot easier to stop the opponent's big play than to complete your own. With that in mind, the cigarette manufacturers are making headway in their campaign to kill the far-reaching tobacco control legislation in the Senate. With one difference, the tobacco industry's strategy parallels that taken by the insurance industry in 1994 to kill President Clinton's national health insurance plan. The difference: The cigarette companies are prepared to spend millions of dollars more than the insurance industry ever contemplated. . . Their formula is sophisticated, yet simple: Use a broad-based ad campaign to make people worry that the government is going to take away their choices and raise their taxes, vilify the bill's sponsor and organize a deluge of calls and letters to congressional offices.

One Democratic lobbyist puts it this way: "If you get a baseball stadium, you can get all the people in." Others agree, saying it's easier to say who is not playing in this game than who is. Virtually every major law firm in the city with a lobbying practice has a stake in the outcome. The fees that five tobacco companies paid to VERNER, LIIPFERT, BERNHARD, MCPHERSON & HAND -- some of which got passed along to other consultants -- alone accounted for nearly half the total. But there is enough action here for almost every firm from COVINGTON & BURLING, which has long represented the Tobacco Institute, the industry trade group, to HOGAN & HARTSON, which represents the American Cancer Society.

The move to link tobacco legislation and tax cuts could put in place the elements for the biggest legislative compromise of the year. . . Senate Minority Leader THOMAS DASCHLE of South Dakota and the tobacco bill's author, GOP Sen. JOHN MCCAIN of Arizona, are trying to work out a scaled-down version of the GRAMM-DOMENICI proposal that would be acceptable to the White House and public-health groups.

"Smoking-related illnesses kill more people every year than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, murder, suicides, and drugs combined," Mr. Clinton told young volunteers who have completed a year of community service. Three thousand children start smoking every day, the President said. "We will never have a better chance to save a thousand lives a day and a million kids in the next few years," Mr. Clinton said.

In an emotional appearance at a convention of young volunteers, President Clinton challenged Congress on Wednesday to act quickly on a bill to reduce teen smoking and chided those trying to "stall, stop or kill" it.

Now lawmakers on both sides are using a cadre of calculator-toting number-crunchers - also known as economists - to aid them in their arguments. Among the fundamental issues for the dueling economists: Do higher taxes discourage people - especially teenagers - from smoking? Will the tax hike be borne primarily by the poor? Will the bill, if it passes, boost cigarette smuggling?

McCain too has come under suspicion from conservatives for his backing of campaign-finance reform and the tobacco deal, with the latter being seen by many as a huge tax increase and sop to trial lawyers -- Clinton's natural constituency. A war hero and noted budget hawk, McCain is being given the loving media attention normally accorded only to Republicans who break ranks with conservative colleagues. Thanks to his maverick ways he already may have won what Washington Post columnist Mark Shields calls the "press primary."

And imagine what the trial bar would do to American politics with all of these new riches. Most of their political contributions go to Democrats, who tend to oppose even the smallest legal reform. . . Senator TRENT LOTT is the leader we'd hold most responsible for such a debacle, since he has allowed the MCCAIN bill to move along without limits on tobacco fees. Is Mr. Lott carrying water for his brother-in-law RICHARD SCRUGGS, one of the tobacco billionaires-in-waiting? We hope not. But a party that enriches its political opponents in this way will soon lose its majority, and will deserve to.

The Republicans are rightly concerned that a cigarette tax is still a tax that takes money from families, but this way of giving back some of the money would do what the previous plans did, make the government a virtual tobacco-industry shareholder. It would also do less to alleviate smoking than the Act Two plan. If the proposed cigarette tax is too high, Congress should reduce it, not make taxes still more complicated and once more get off target with the bill.

Congress is back from its Memorial Day recess, so let the summer games begin! Whoever comes up with the most ways to kill campaign reform wins a gold medal for outstanding achievement. . . Then there is the amendment game, which consists of loading up a bill with irrelevant amendments. Any day now, some senator will be reprimanded for adding an amendment to the tobacco bill that has something to do with tobacco. Sen. Trent Lott put an amendment in the tobacco bill to abolish the marriage penalty. Huh? I guess it's aimed at people who smoke out of wedlock.

The already drawn-out debate in the Senate over the tobacco bill bogged down for most of yesterday in an openly partisan squabble over proposals to use some of its $516 billion in revenues for an election-year tax cut. Debate stopped and started while senators wrangled off the Senate floor over two competing tax-cut provisions and when to vote on them. The dispute spilled onto the floor in mid-afternoon when a frustrated Sen. TOM DASCHLE, the Senate Minority Leader, filed a petition to demand a vote that could end debate on the bill. "We're simply playing the clock because if you play it long enough, guess what? You run out of time, and then you don't pass a bill," he said.

An amendment [DURBIN's] that has been characterized as a possible "death knell" of the tobacco bill passed easily yesterday after a day of contentious debate and backroom wrangling.

Tobacco legislation is moving haltingly in the Senate, where the controversial amendments are piled high and the partisan edges growing sharper. "It really comes down to this: Do you want a tobacco bill or not?" Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said during one testy exchange on Thursday. "We get a resounding no from the other (Republican) side."

Democrats unveiled a plan Thursday as an alternative to a plan offered by Sen. PHIL GRAMM, R-Texas. Senate Minority Leader THOMAS DASCHLE, D-S.D., said his plan is less expensive than the Gramm plan and is targeted to eliminating the marriage penalty for those earning $60,000 a year or less.

"I'm trying to prevent 3.1 million Texans from having their taxes raised overnight," Gramm said, referring to the number of adult smokers in Texas who would pay more for cigarettes.

[Daschle's] motion to force a Senate vote on cutting off debate, known as cloture, caused Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R., Miss.) to rush to the floor to denounce the Democrats. "I do think the well has been poisoned by what has happened here," Lott said. After the angry exchange, all the senators stormed off. Their staffs began furious negotiations over how to bridge their differences, and bargaining appears to be headed into the weekend.

The plan, outlined by Minority Leader Tom DASCHLE of South Dakota, would use a portion of the hoped-for revenues from the bitterly contested $516 billion anti-smoking package now on the Senate floor to ease the so-called "marriage penalty" tax bite for lower-income couples and give tax relief to self-employed persons. "Democrats are not willing to be on record as having opposed every marriage-penalty proposal that comes from the other side," Mr. Daschle said. "We want to demonstrate that you can do it and do it right."

Kentucky's two senators -- on opposite sides in this fight -- traded barbs, while health advocates appealed for some compromise. "The needs of tobacco farmers must be addressed, but the dispute over how to do so must not block the passage of legislation designed to reduce tobacco use among our children," a coalition of public health groups wrote in a letter circulated yesterday to lawmakers.

Three different anti-tobacco-tax ads began running last week in the Memphis, Nashville and Knoxville markets. The tobacco industry, whose pack of powerful lobbyists includes former Tennessee senator Howard Baker, would not disclose how many other markets around the country are being targeted. . . "We're up in markets across the country, including the tobacco region," said tobacco industry spokesman Steve Duchesne. "The tobacco region has a great stake in what happens here in Washington. If this legislation passes there's a good chance that the tobacco companies will be put out of business."

The industry and public health advocates are both wooing the state's senior senator, Christopher Bond (R), who is viewed as a swing vote. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has also identified Bond as one of a half dozen vulnerable incumbents up for reelection this year. His expected opponent, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon (D) -- one of the 40 attorneys general who sued the cigarette makers -- is itching to make tobacco an issue. So far, that's tough. Even those who strongly favor the measure say a vote against the bill would not, in itself, turn them against a candidate. The nature of that indifference may help to shape the tobacco bill's fate, especially in the House

"What preoccupies Washington these days is politicians of every stripe lining up to take credit for the strength of our economy," said William G. Little, chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. . . "If a disfavored industry like the tobacco industry can be ganged-up on and attacked and taxed as this one is, who's next?" Little asked. "What industry will fall into disfavor and become a pot of gold for politicians?"

The truth is there are no new agencies and committees formed by the current national tobacco control legislative proposal. Although the original version of S. 1415 did establish several temporary commissions and workgroups to help implement the bill and allocate resources, on May 18, 1998, the McCain Manager's Amendment eliminated most panels, commissions and centers.

Congress is back from its Memorial Day recess, so let the summer games begin! Whoever comes up with the most ways to kill campaign reform wins a gold medal for outstanding achievement. . . Then there is the amendment game, which consists of loading up a bill with irrelevant amendments. Any day now, some senator will be reprimanded for adding an amendment to the tobacco bill that has something to do with tobacco. Sen. Trent Lott put an amendment in the tobacco bill to abolish the marriage penalty. Huh? I guess it's aimed at people who smoke out of wedlock.

Today I say to them the delay has gone on long enough. You are not just trying to kill the tobacco bill, you are standing in the way saving one million children's lives. The American people will not stand for it. The Senate should do nothing else until it passes tobacco legislation and it should pass it this week.

Countering Clinton, Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., said it should be up to parents, not the government, to discourage children from smoking. Sponsors of the legislation ``think that they are going to accomplish something they absolutely are not going to accomplish,'' Helms said on CNN's ``Evans and Novak.''

Across the Rotunda, a campaign finance bill -- as distasteful to Republican leaders as the tobacco measure -- awaited action in the House despite yearlong efforts by the GOP to bottle it up. Senior Republicans instantly set about trying to regain the offensive, angling to turn the tobacco bill into a debate over their calls for election-year tax cuts and laying plans to force Democrats into embarrassing votes on amendments to the campaign bill. The skirmishing underscores a struggle for control of the legislative agenda in an unusually truncated congressional session. The outcome not only will determine what legislation passes this year but also help shape results of midterm elections in which the two parties will labor to maximize turnout of their voters.

The Senate tobacco bill has been pulled to the left, yanked to the right, and dragged into parliamentary quicksand. After two weeks of meandering but acrimonious debate, the only thing certain is that the Senate is stuck and a lot of people are mad at each other.

An insider at RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. said Chairman Steven F. Goldstone views a return to all-out war with the industry's adversaries as a viable option. "Given the strengthening record of how these cases are being disposed of, that's not the worst alternative," this person says.

As of yesterday, Republicans were pressing to add amendments that would: Reduce the so-called marriage penalty, the increased taxes some couples pay after they marry. Beef up drug interdiction programs. Stem drug-related violence in schools, in part with a proposal that would pay for private education for students who are victims of school violence. . . Democrats . . charged that GOP conservatives were loading amendments with "poison pills." For instance, school vouchers, which are strongly opposed by liberal Democrats, were part of an amendment, introduced by Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), to use about $16 billion in tobacco revenue over five years for anti-drug programs.

'I'm here to say at this point it looks like it's over because of games being played,' Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. said Friday before he angrily walked off the Senate floor. 'It could take forever for this bill to be completed.' Lott was upset after Democrats filed two petitions that will force senators to vote sometime next week on whether to stop debate on the bill.

"At this point, it looks to me like it's over because of the games that are being played," Lott said Friday from the Senate floor. "It's counterproductive, and it's killing this bill." . . . "Republicans continue to block and obfuscate and come up with a myriad of different ways with which to ensure that we make no progress on tobacco," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. "That way they don't have to vote. They don't have to vote to kill it."

Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner DAVID A. KESSLER said today he wasn't concerned if anti-smoking legislation forced one of the big tobacco companies into bankruptcy. "Do I care? No," Kessler told an audience of financial analysts and Wall Street investors as the Senate debated the legislation. "I have an agenda, and it's to stop kids from smoking." Kessler . . . was in town for a luncheon debate on the tobacco legislation with J. PHILIP CARLTON, a lawyer who represents the major tobacco companies. The debate was sponsored by SANFORD C. BERNSTEIN & CO., a Wall Street investment firm.

The Senate sent mixed signals on its tobacco legislation, ensnaring the bill in a huge partisan fight over tax cuts while also voting in favor of even tougher penalties on cigarette makers who market to teens.

Democrats, frustrated by conservative Republicans' delaying tactics, turned from accommodation to confrontation. They backed away from allowing Republicans to festoon the bill with tax cuts and beefed-up drug enforcement and demanded a vote early next week to limit debate on the bill. "It's an uphill battle," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) in a turnaround from his stance of several weeks ago, when he predicted that the measure would win overwhelming approval. "It's death by amputation," he added, referring to Republican proposals

Frustrated by Republican efforts to shift the focus of the debate from smoking, where Democrats are comfortable, to taxes, where Republicans feel on solid ground, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, moved to force an end to the debate and to bring the measure to a vote early next week. "It really comes down to this: Do we get a tobacco bill or not?" Senator Daschle declared. "And we're getting a resounding 'no' on the other side of the aisle." Apparently taken by surprise, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican leader, called Senator Daschle's move counterproductive, saying, "The well has been poisoned tremendously."

The strategy, if it unfolds as Sen. Daschle hopes, will force a series of votes. Sen. Daschle doesn't expect to prevail on the first, which could come as early as Monday. But as conservative Republicans resist, he expects moderate GOP senators to peel off and join the Democratic campaign. "I think we're in good shape," said Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, who is working with Sen. Daschle. "I expect we will have the vote and I expect we'll have a series of votes after that, and in the end, the bill will be approved." . . "It's just going to collapse out here in a great big humongous pile of nothingness," Sen. Lott said. "The well is being poisoned tremendously by what's going on here."

In a number of respects, the McCain Committee bill reflects a greater sensitivity to the protection of state and local autonomy in the regulation of tobacco products then did prior legislative proposals or the original proposed settlement agreement. However, at a number of key points, S.1415 continues to pose serious threats to state and local regulatory and enforcement authority, and at a number of other points the statutory drafting raises problematic questions concerning its purpose and effect.

Working Paper #8 in a Series on Legal Issues in the Proposed Tobacco Settlement

The Bipartisan No Tobacco for Kids Act recognizes the vital role played by local governments and the important health responsibilities they have borne. The bill acknowledges those responsibilities and meets local government concerns in the following ways.

For more than 60 years, we have avoided a black market in alcohol by closing the distribution network for these products to licensed or registered persons and providing a financial incentive for the industry to comply. . . Packages of tobacco products can be marked differently to enable law enforcement to track their distribution and to determine quickly whether they were intended for sale in the United States. Moreover, penalties for trafficking in contraband tobacco products can be strengthened. All of these tools are included in the Senate bill.

The American Cancer Society has issued estimates that an earlier and less expensive tobacco settlement between the companies and the states would cut teen smoking by 60 percent and save 1 million children from early death. . . The cancer society conducted no analysis to support the number. A Cornell University study actually found that higher cigarette prices have little effect on teen smoking.

Could eastern North Carolina become the tobacco-growing capital of the country? . . A N.C. State University economist says that if the current anti-smoking push causes the demise of the 65-year-old tobacco price support program, the sandy, flat terrain of eastern North Carolina will be an economic mecca for free-market tobacco operations. . . The lure is the Lugar plan . . . That sort of forced changeover gives older farmers incentive to get out entirely. It helps younger farmers to either find new crops, or make plans for the challenge of a free-market system. That¹s appealing for both human and economic reasons. It would hasten the day when eastern North Carolina can successfully adapt to a new agricultural future.

The "real addiction" is the Congress' compulsion to find more ways to tax Americans and spend money, Lott, R-Miss., said on CNN's "Late Edition." "Right now it's dead in the water unless the attitude changes," he said. "It has become a cookie jar, and every vote that's taken it gets worse."

"At this point it's dead in the water and there may never be a vote on the McCain bill," Lott, a Mississippi Republican, said on CNN's "Late Edition" program.

Well, somebody who's smarter than I am may figure out a way to bring in the responsibility of the mothers and fathers in the raising of their children, and not expect the federal government to do it for them.

"Like every other 13-year-old in America, she's in love with Leonardo DiCaprio, who I think is an androgynous wimp," he barks. "You know what he does throughout the whole movie 'Titanic'? He smokes."

Twenty-one Alabama residents who own federal allotments to grow tobacco would receive more than $100,000 each under the proposed tobacco settlement now being debated in Congress, federal records show. By far the largest payment would go to Wayne Kervin, a 53-year-old Georgiana farmer who has accumulated nearly 200,000 pounds of quota over the past two decades. If the proposed $8-per-pound buyout becomes law, Kervin would be in line for a $1.58 million payment over the next decade. "I can understand how a person working at a factory might wonder about the federal government paying a fellow that kind of money," Kervin said in a telephone interview. "But I feel like it's something like eminent domain. The government is taking something that we own."

"We are moving very slowly in many, many areas and it's obviously tremendously difficult to battle this out on a county-by-county and city-by-city basis," Banzhaf said. "People want uniformity, and the amount of protection that you have should be uniform not only because people feel they are entitled to that protection, but also to avoid confusion." . . [T]he pending bill will do little to create a uniform law on when and where it is legal to smoke. The bill's exemptions for restaurants, bars, hotel rooms and other areas leave it to state or local authorities to determine how restrictive each area should be, and the evidence is that such laws will continue to vary greatly around the nation.

At a recent closed-door meeting between Senate Democrats and the White House chief of staff, Erskine BOWLES, Senator Edward M. KENNEDY yelled his displeasure so loudly that his voice thundered off the walls of the Capitol's ornate LBJ room, according to several people present. Senator Joseph R. BIDEN Jr., Democrat of Delaware, accused the White House of conducting secret negotiations with McCain and demanded that Bowles immediately inform Democrats of the private deals he cut with Republicans. Other senators quickly followed in kind.

Critics of the proposed tobacco legislation see them as "absolutely outrageous." Plaintiffs' attorneys such as Cincinnati's Stan Chesley view them as a fair return for the considerable entrepreneurial risk and expense put forth by law firms such as his own. . . The $92,000-an-hour figure is what critics have estimated Texas lawyers will get as a result of their settlement. "The national tobacco settlement has turned into the national lawyer-enrichment deal," Mr. McConnell contends. . . Mr. Chesley added, "You don't hear these same Republicans criticizing entrepreneurs who get stock options."

Richard Daynard, head of the tobacco products liability project at Northeastern School of Law in Boston, told CNN the bill may have more of a chance of passing than indicated by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.). . . "Lott is desperate to give the tobacco companies their immunity," Daynard said. "If it's dead in the water, it's only because he's harpooning it. "I'm not sure the Republicans dare oppose it," Daynard said.

Democrats, meanwhile, vowed to use any arcane Senate procedural rules at their disposal either to keep the Senate tobacco debate alive or to attach the whole tobacco bill to other legislation, such as a defense spending bill. "As it stands now, it's a matter of when," Lott, a Mississippi Republican, told reporters who asked if he plans to "pull" the tobacco bill sponsored by Arizona Republican John McCain without a final vote on it.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott suggested canceling debate on the troubled tobacco bill and moving instead to a narrower measure that would combat teen smoking and drug use. "This bill has lost control. It's just a spending bill. It's lost its focus and it should be pulled," Lott said Monday of the measure by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "I would like to see us have a bill that does deal only with teen-age smoking and drug abuse."

After pushing hard for a tobacco deal, a peeved Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss) said in an interview that he may kill the legislation altogether. "It's dangling by a skinny thread,"Lott said in his Capitol office Friday afternoon. "Unless Democrats change their conduct, tactics and rhetoric, I will work to defeat it." In defiance of Lott, Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) filed a second cloture petition on Friday in an effort to force action on the stalled tobacco bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz). In a telephone interview before he filed the petition on Friday, Daschle also threatened to force Lott to face the tobacco issue in September -- on the eve of the fall election -- if Republicans block McCain's bill this month.

Whether they love it or hate it, so many senators are lining up with amendments to the tobacco bill now before Congress that it may not survive.

Breaking a two-week impasse on tobacco, the Senate Tuesday struck a tentative deal on tobacco-financed tax cuts and voted to take billions of dollars earmarked for public health and devote it to the war on drugs. Backers of the bill by Arizona Republican John McCain say the drug and tax plans water down its public health components, but enhance chances the overall bill will finally pass after weeks of arguments and delay. "I can see getting a bill -- there's an outside chance, this week," said Sen. John Kerry

``Reports of the death of this legislation are premature,'' Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared at the end of a long day during which the bill seemed to hover between breakdown and breakthrough. Still, McCain cautioned, ``We certainly by no means have total confidence that we will reach a successful conclusion.''

But the 42-56 vote fell 18 votes short of the 60 the Democrats needed. Two Democrats from tobacco growing states, Charles Robb of Virginia and Wendell Ford of Kentucky, voted with the Republicans.

The U.S. Senate late on Tuesday broke through the two-week impasse on the tobacco bill, scheduling votes on key amendments and raising the possibility that the Senate could actually pass the bill within days.

The House of Representatives will move ahead with its own tobacco legislation that will focus on curbing teen smoking, regardless of what the Senate does, House Majority Leader Richard Armey said on Tuesday. ``One of the problems with the Senate side is that it's not properly focused,'' Armey said. ``They (Democrats) think this is a big cash cow for big government.''

With Daschle¹s vote on cloture failing by a wide margin (42-56) today, we expect investors to finally start to believe that the McCain bill will either never come to a vote as written, or be replaced by a narrower drug/tobacco bill by next week. The House will wait until the Senate completes its work to proceed with an even narrower drug/tobacco bill that eliminates deductibility of advertising, and has no excise tax increase. If Senator Hatch can convince Republicans or President Clinton to offer legal protections that permit the industry to spin off non tobacco assets without fraudulent conveyance risks, valuations could move sharply higher

Despite the bill's apparently gloomy prospects, President Clinton told reporters efforts were under way to ``get this thing back on track.'' Imminent developments ``might make that possible,'' he said at a White House news conference. Clinton spoke shortly after Senate Democrats lost, 56-42, in their bid to cut off debate and move toward a vote on the measure. That was 18 votes shy of the 60 required, and the results fell almost completely along party lines. At the same time, Republicans indicated they were ready to scale back the size of their proposed tax cut in hopes of winning acquiescence from the White House and congressional Democrats.

[A]n unusual cheering section pushes for major legislation: Kentucky farm leaders. The bill, which is aimed at reducing teen tobacco use, would almost certainly mean less tobacco income for Kentucky's 60,000 burley growers. But state farm leaders are calling for Senate action for one main reason: It would help eliminate the uncertainty that for the past year has shrouded the future of burley as a cash crop.

Republicans are expected to band together today to prevent Democrats from getting the 60 votes they would need to invoke cloture. A second cloture vote could occur later today or tomorrow and more cloture votes could follow as Democrats seek to keep pressure on GOP leaders.

GOP opponents are already gearing up to blame the bill's failure on Democratic efforts to add unrelated spending measures. . . Democratic supporters of the anti-smoking bill, which would raise the price of cigarettes, restrict advertising and give the government authority to regulate tobacco like a drug, have vowed to use the potential collapse of the bill against Republicans in elections this fall.

Here's what is expected to happen today: The Senate will resume debate this morning . . Then, in the afternoon, the Senate is expected to vote on a cloture motion

An anti-tobacco activist said Monday his criticisms of Sen. Orrin Hatch apparently have prompted an investigation by the Utah senator's Judiciary Committee. Committee spokeswoman Jeanne Lopatto rejected that claim and said Judiciary Committee staff members merely wanted more information about Bill Godshall's ``Save Lives, Not Tobacco Companies Coalition'' after Godshall was quoted criticizing the senator in the Salt Lake Tribune. ``We are not investigating,'' said Lopatto. ``We have made a contact with him because we want to learn more about his group.''

The American Public Health Association today calls on the U.S. Senate to pass national tobacco control legislation without delay to protect public health from the ravages of tobacco. . . "We urge the Senate to take immediate action on Senator McCain's bill," said Akhter. "We cannot wait to protect the health of the 3,000 children in the United States who start smoking each day."

Ashcroft said: "A vote for cloture (which would limit debate) is a vote for a massive tax increase. It is a vote against tax relief for Americans who are hurt by the marriage penalty in the tax code. It is a vote against stepping up the fight against illegal drugs.

The leading ladies of agriculture are in Washington to express their concerns about fair treatment for farm families. Of primary concern to W.I.F.E. (Women Involved in Farm Economics) is the devastating tax increase proposed in the tobacco bill put forth by Senator McCain (R-AZ). Scores of WIFE members -- easily identified by their bright red blazers -- have come from around the country to express their views on this bill and other matters. ``We do not support the massive tax increases and other draconian parts of the bill. Some say farmers are 'protected' by elements of the bill, but if this measure passes, and the tobacco companies go overseas, or go bankrupt, who is going to buy the tobacco that supports these farmers and their communities,'' said Sheila Massey, WIFE's national president.

The vast majority of tobacco cases that would have been settled under the 1997 accord are still in the courts. But some of them, in particular a number of class-action cases, risk being pre-empted by federal tobacco legislation or are given little chance for success at trial. Fears that the fees will be scaled back has inspired intense lobbying by trial lawyers from more than 65 firms nationwide, who are spending millions of dollars in an effort to insure that the fees are paid.

Then the tobacco companies started putting their millions -- $25 million to $50 million, according to the Los Angeles Times -- into drumming up a "grass-roots'' movement against the bill. . . This trumped-up outpouring of "public'' opposition, along with the wrangling over tax cuts, has provided enough cover for the elected minions of Big Tobacco to resume the position in which they feel most comfortable -- deep in the pockets of the cigarette-makers. . . Without McCain, or some comprehensive package that includes a cigarette tax increase, tobacco communities will be at the mercy of the cigarette-makers as the demand for U.S.-grown leaf declines.

What has happened to the anti-tobacco legislation offered by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., is insulting. After the bill, S 1415, sailed through the Commerce Committee, 19-1, in April, Big Tobacco launched a $100 million campaign, including advertising and political donations, to destroy it. The bill now is weighed down by amendments, such as one to cut taxes attached by Texas U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, that are designed to build opposition to the bill, not improve it. . . the license-to-kill lobby is winning.

As the debate progresses over the next several days the politics of big tobacco money and of industry deception will place tremendous pressure on our elected representatives to water down this bill or prevent its passage altogether. We must not allow that to happen. If we could set aside time to purchase our Powerball tickets and watch the final episode of ``Seinfeld,'' then surely each of us can make the small effort to pick up the phone and call our senators to urge support of the tobacco legislation and the amendments designed to strengthen it. The telephone numbers are: Sen. McCain (202) 224-2235 and Sen. Kyl (202) 224-4521. Tell them you want strong legislation to protect the lives of our children. Do it today.

If the cigarette bill were truthfully labeled, it would be called ''The National Tobacco Policy and Lawyer Enrichment Act.'' . . The better approach is to halt the serial lawsuits. . . First, curb the tobacco companies' legal liability. Whatever the industry's deceits, smoking's hazards have long been public. Smokers knowingly assumed the risks. . . Second, recognize that the states' suits aim to capture the federal cigarette tax. When Texas wins a ''settlement,'' the industry raises prices in all 50 states to pay.

Mr. DeWine voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga., that would redirect monies in the $516 billion bill toward anti-drug efforts. Groups such as Effective National Action to Control Tobacco and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (ENACT) said the drug efforts would divert at least $2 billion of the $2.5 billion to $3 billion that was originally supposed to go toward efforts such as smoking-cessation programs and public-education efforts aimed at youth smoking. . . Officials at Campaign for Tobacco-Free-Kids said the vote was especially disappointing considering Mr. DeWine's previous comments that the tobacco bill was an unprecedented opportunity to address youth smoking.

What is not altogether clear to his colleagues is whether Lott has a carefully plotted strategy, that he sees around corners and anticipates where he wants to be three amendments from now. Characteristically, as he deals, the buttoned-down 56-year-old Lott has kept his ultimate intentions to himself. Even his closest aides refuse to guess whether he will push the bill to completion. But how he maneuvers the Senate and judges the needs of his sharply divided Republican conference in these coming days will help determine whether Congress ends the year with bipartisan legislation or a campaign issue.

For-29/Against-66. The Senate raised financial penalties on cigarette companies if youth smoking fails to drop to levels specified in a pending tobacco-control bill

With the tacit approval of the White House, Republicans muscled an election-year tax cut through the Senate on Wednesday night, attaching a break for lower- and moderate-income couples to legislation designed to reduce teen smoking.

By 55-43 -- 17 votes short of the 60 required -- lawmakers refused to set a time limit for consideration of Sen. John McCain's tobacco bill and pending amendments. A third such vote is set for Thursday.

The White House says it could ultimately accept a reported compromise on a Senate Republican plan for cutting the "marriage penalty tax" as a condition for passing anti-tobacco legislation, but is vowing to keep fighting it in the meantime.

White House spokesman Mike McCurry said a plan to reduce the so-called "marriage penalty," a tax code quirk that raises some married couples' tax burden, was "in effect a fairly targeted approach to middle-income tax relief."

In defeats for the tobacco industry, it will have tougher penalties for cigarette makers who market to the young and will give companies no legal protections in civil lawsuits. But in setbacks for anti-tobacco forces, about half of the $65 billion available in the first five years will either go to tax cuts or drug programs.

Faced with seeing the measure choked to death by procedure, Democrats and Republicans reached agreement on amendments dealing with drug programs and tax cuts that likely will be incorporated into the final bill.

The Senate yesterday ended the deadlock that has held up action on the national tobacco bill for two weeks, reaching agreement to vote on major amendments after days of angry partisan rhetoric. The bill came out of legislative limbo late yesterday, when key Republican and Democratic senators announced that they had tentatively agreed on a GOP proposal to use expected tobacco revenue to reduce the so-called marriage penalty tax.

President CLINTON and Sen. John MCCAIN struggled through the day yesterday to salvage the massive anti-tobacco bill that had been declared all but dead by both Republican and Democratic leaders the day before. By the end of the day, the bill seemed to be back on track, heading toward a final vote by the end of this week or next week.

The Senate appeared on the verge of a breakthrough on the stalled tobacco bill Tuesday as legislators agreed to use some of the money generated by the measure on fighting drugs and paying for tax cuts -- including reducing the so-called marriage penalty. Both amendments were demanded by Republicans as the price of allowing the legislation to proceed. The sharp change in the bill's fortunes -- on Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., had said he thought it was "dead in the water" -- came after intense negotiations between legislators, White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and President Clinton.

As the tobacco debate rages in the U.S. Senate, an opponent of raising tobacco taxes, Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., says Utahns who smoke will be paying $64 million a year in increased federal taxes. It actually will be much more than that, says a spokesman for Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who has a competing tobacco bill to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. ‹ the bill that's being debated this week. The McCain bill may topple of its own weight, Senate leaders say. That could open the way for Hatch's measure or some other compromise. Ashcroft, in mailings to all 50 states, analyzed what the McCain bill will mean to smokers, especially to low-income smokers, who he defines as those making less than $30,000 a year.

SEN. CHARLES S. ROBB roundly criticized the tobacco bill before the Senate for the first time yesterday, saying the legislation has become too harsh on tobacco companies and workers and won't do much to reduce teen smoking. "In the end, I cannot support this legislation that brings great and . . . unnecessary economic harm on working people, and does not effectively achieve the benefit of preventing young Virginians --and young Americans --from becoming young smokers," Robb said in a floor speech.

"I only wish there was as much energy invested on illegal substances as there is in this legal substance called tobacco," [U.S. Senate candidate Charlie] Crist said. But he added later that he supports restricting how tobacco companies can advertise and, unlike Graham, he opposes giving the industry protections against future lawsuits.

Meanwhile, on another legislative front, the Senate is struggling with landmark tobacco legislation, and that doesn't bode well for the House acting soon on the issue. But if it does, debate will be over another bipartisan bill, co-sponsored by Meehan and Representative James Hansen, a Utah Republican. The measure - tougher than the Senate bill - sets targets for reducing youth smoking by 80 percent in a decade and raises cigarette prices $1.50 a pack over three years.

The signatories of the letter -- LAMAR ALEXANDER, STEVE FORBES, SEN. JOHN ASHCROFT (R-Mo.) and JACK KEMP -- wrote that "All true fiscal conservatives should feel compelled to speak out against any legislation that would raise taxes by three-quarters of a trillion dollars, create 17 new federal bureaucracies, intrude into the personal lives of Americans to an unprecedented degree, and serve as cover for billions of dollars in pork barrel spending. . . . If Congress can target one industry or activity for tax oblivion, who will they shoot at next?"

Only 22 percent of the funds in S. 1415 are earmarked to help reduce tobacco use. This means that before Gramm or Coverdell-Craig, only about $2.6 billion a year is allocated in S. 1415 for all of the programs designed to reduce tobacco use, such as community prevention, public education, FDA enforcement and tobacco cessation, during the first five years.

The Coverdell drug amendment that was added on Tuesday strips the bill of important funding for comprehensive tobacco control. We all agree that the drug problem is a serious issue in the United States, but this bill is a tobacco bill, not a drug bill. . . The Senators' votes on Tuesday were a vote for Big Tobacco and against America's kids.

Seeking a voice in critical tobacco negotiations in Washington, GOV. JIM GILMORE will join about two dozen labor leaders today in urging Congress to protect the state's leading crop and workers in the cigarette industry. The unlikely alliance between the Republican governor and organized labor comes amid their shared fear that efforts to raise cigarette taxes by $1.10 a pack could cripple Virginia's $5 billion-a-year-tobacco industry.

About 500 tobacco industry workers and union leaders who complain of being shut out of the debate over tobacco legislation gathered today at a national summit. "We are here to remind Washington about the working men and women of Virginia and the nation," Gov. Jim Gilmore said in opening remarks at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Gov. James S. Gilmore III appointed his economic brain trust today, choosing high-technology leaders from Northern Virginia along with representatives of the downstate tobacco industry, which he will showcase at a day-long summit here Thursday. . . Labor leaders from across the Southeast will converge here Thursday for Gilmore's summit to highlight the importance of tobacco growing and cigarette manufacturing jobs. Not coincidentally, he named Daniel G. LeBlanc, president of the state AFL-CIO and a newfound ally in the tobacco debate, to his economic strategy team this afternoon. "We're not struggling to survive in the marketplace, but in the body politic," LeBlanc said, recalling his own days working at a cigarette plant just south of here. "People need to think about the significance of all sectors of the economy," he said.

Anti-smoking organizations said yesterday that Gov. Jim Gilmore is blowing an opportunity to focus public attention on the hazards of cigarettes by shutting them out of his tobacco summit tomorrow. . . "That's not what this is all about," said Gilmore spokeswoman Lila E. Young when asked why health groups had not been invited to participate in the meeting. "We want to bring to the attention of Congress the plight of tobacco workers."

Moderate Republicans are deserting the anti-tobacco package proposed by GOP Sen. John McCain in droves now that a $50 million-plus tobacco industry campaign has managed to shift the focus from curbing teen smoking to raising taxes. Look for lawmakers to take smaller parts of the bill and throw them into an omnibus drug bill now being pieced together in the House.

Instead Newt Gingrich is busy plotting against campaign finance reform, while Lott seems to have been trying to protect the rights of children to get their hands on guns and cigarettes. At least no one can accuse them of pandering to the soccer moms.

Because each of these tobacco farmers, like the majority of Kentucky's tobacco farmers, recognize what McConnell has forgotten: The tobacco program, which my LEAF Act would preserve, keeps small, family farms in business. . . I'm deeply troubled by McConnell's abrupt change of position. After all, as original co-sponsors, we worked together to develop the LEAF Act last year. He chose to abandon this bipartisan, cooperative effort . . . The future of the tobacco program rests squarely on the shoulders of McConnell and his tobacco-state Republican colleagues. It's a program our small, family farms in Kentucky rely on, and a program I'll continue fighting for.

"I think it's a problem that the Senate is using price to reduce consumption," said Feldman, who spoke Thursday at the Tobacco Workers' Unity Summit at Virginia Commonwealth University. To support his skepticism, Feldman cited 1987-94 cigarette consumption figures from England. In 1987, 8% of 11- to 16-year-olds smoked in England. Despite a 20% real price rise in the cost of cigarettes, he said that 13% of the same age group smoked in 1994. "It's clear that there's no relationship between pricing and the amount of cigarettes consumed by people under 18," Feldman said.

Hailed as heroes after muscling the tobacco industry into paying the medical bills of sick smokers, attorneys are suddenly being called the bad guys for trying to collect fees that lawmakers say run into billions of dollars. Now, many senators are talking about limiting lawyer fees in the cases to $1,000 an hour.

The Senate approved tax breaks for millions of married couples and self-employed workers in an election-year gambit by Republicans designed to improve the prospects of major tobacco legislation. . . "Stayin' alive, stayin' alive," Sen. John McCain, sponsor of the tobacco bill, declared with a grin and both fists in the air as he left the Senate chamber following the vote.

Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about the awarding of a punitive damages in a cigarette lawsuit misstated restrictions on such suits in some tobacco bills pending in Congress. Those bills would bar the awarding of punitive damages and class-action lawsuits. They would not bar all tobacco lawsuits.

But despite being hailed as an aisle-crossing compromise, the sudden revival of the tobacco bill's prospects in the Senate is proof that Tom Daschle and the Democrats are occasionally able to beat Lott at his own game.

The Senate Wednesday voted to use money raised by a tobacco bill to pay for tax cuts and the White House signaled it could accept some tax breaks if that is what it took to get the bill through the Senate.

Once little more than a GOP campaign slogan, a proposal to soften or eliminate the so-called marriage tax penalty has emerged in recent days as the single most popular plan in Congress and is assured of being approved in some form before the fall elections, according to lawmakers from both parties.

The passage of two amendments on the Senate floor this week has rendered the McCain tobacco control bill virtually ineffective in the effort to reduce youth tobacco use. Amendments from Sens. Coverdell (R-Ga.) and Gramm (R-Texas) have stripped out $1.9 billion and $0.9 billion, respectively, from funding for the public health provisions of the legislation. The Gramm amendment also reduces funding from all components of the bill, thereby reducing biomedical research, funds going directly to the states and farmer support programs.

The public health community knows what Sen. Lott is up to. He is working to drag this out and dilute this bill so the public health community will decide to walk away. But we are not going anywhere. Our resolve is stronger than ever because this bill is about protecting America's kids from tobacco. Who else is standing with Big Tobacco on this bill? How about the senators who voted for Coverdell and Gramm, two amendments that gut this bill of its important public health funding.

And Lott boasted about his strong relationship with Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), despite the fact that the two leaders have been fighting over tobacco legislation . . . Lott said the key to the two leaders' ability to work together is the fact that they talk regularly, sometimes several times per day, and added that the Senate has run into trouble when he and Daschle don't talk. . . The tobacco imbroglio has also frayed nerves among Republicans. Lott and Majority Whip Don Nickles (R-Okla) have been on opposite sides, with Nickles adamantly opposed to the bill while Lott has been quietly urging Republicans to go along with some kind of legislation.

Republican Rep. Bill Archer of Texas said he wants Congress to address the issue in a separate tax bill this year, which would be funded by spending cuts that House-Senate negotiators are currently working out in a budget bill. . . "I'm convinced, within the budget, that we'll have significant tax reduction," said Mr. Archer, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. "That's the appropriate time for us to consider what relief we want to give on the marriage penalty."

The discharge petition allows a majority of House members to force floor consideration of a measure without going through the House Rules Committee . . "Moderate Republicans who are rightfully concerned about their own reelection want something on health care, education, campaign finance reform, and tobacco," said Gephardt. "They are getting tired of the right-wing extreme agenda." "We could win back the House on those three issues," said Meehan, referring to tobacco, campaign finance, and health care.

MINNEAPOLIS, June 12 /PRNewswire/ -- The state's leading wholesale business organization representing Minnesota's candy, grocery and tobacco wholesale companies, the MINNESOTA WHOLESALE MARKETERS ASSOCIATION, . . . called the McCain bill "an unprecedented attack on American industry ... representing historically unheard of levels of taxation." The Association said this legislation "could easily trigger an impact in the industry resulting in the potential loss of more than one million jobs in the United States ... including job losses for family-owned wholesale distributors and retailers."

The nation's governors sent an urgent message to the Senate‹"We urge you to restore the $196.5 billion reserved for the states while the bill is still on the floor of the Senate." . . . "States sparked the first lawsuits against tobacco companies to reduce youth smoking, secure public disclosure of tobacco documents, and recover state health care costs, among other goals. The state leadership and years of effort that went into these lawsuits brought us to the brink of passing landmark tobacco legislation. Because states began this fight, and stayed with it despite overwhelming odds, states must be at the core of the final resolution. The Senate legislation under consideration today ignores this reality."

By stymieing or diluting a succession of bills, from stiff tobacco regulations to patients' rights to campaign finance reform, Republicans on Capitol Hill have compiled an impressive string of victories. But Democrats, analysts, and some GOP rank and file believe that these warm-weather victories may spell doom for Republicans in the autumn elections. Republicans, many say, are increasingly projecting themselves as the party of inaction -obstacles to popular proposals rather than agents of change.

Antidrug provisions the Senate approved this week claim the 22% of revenues that were allotted to health programs such as quit-smoking efforts. Sen. McCain assures health advocates that he and the White House will protect their share.

An effort to impose a $1,000-an-hour cap on legal fees for attorneys who sued tobacco companies failed in the Senate, leaving the lawyers free to collect billions in fees.

As part of a possible Congressional tobacco settlement, Republican senators attached an amendment earmarking $46 billion in tax relief for married couples and self-employed. For the 10.5 million workers who are their own boss, the bill would let them deduct 100% of health-insurance costs from federal taxes, a break already afforded incorporated businesses. For a person paying $5,000 per year in premiums in the 28% tax bracket, that translates into $770 of direct savings over current rules, which allow for just 45% deductibility.

Gilmore brushed aside most questions about tobacco-related health issues as he reveled in the attention of Democrats such as Reynolds and the participation of labor leaders from across the Southeast. They hailed him for drawing attention to what they say is a long-ignored aspect of the tobacco debate.

Gov. Jim Gilmore, shoulder to shoulder with major union leaders, brought hundreds of tobacco workers and growers to town yesterday to say: Don't forget about us. His daylong Tobacco Workers' Unity Summit, an unprecedented collaboration between a Virginia Republican leader and the state AFL-CIO union federation, drew more than 500 people to the smoke-free ballroom and hallways of Virginia Commonwealth University's student commons.

Gilmore is using the assault on cigarettes to forge an unlikely alliance with the Virginia AFL-CIO, a bulwark of the Democratic Party. Labor leaders say that, when it comes to tobacco, Democrats are subordinating a traditional concern for workers to a politically correct impulse to bash an unpopular industry. "He's reaching to a core Democratic constituency," Todd P. Haymore of Danville, a former Democratic operative-turned-tobacco executive, said of Gilmore. "He's doing a very smart thing."

Gov. James Gilmore of Virginia, who convened what was billed as a tobacco workers unity summit, said the extended "tobacco family" -- from growers to plant workers and retailers -- has effectively been shut out of the tobacco debate on Capitol Hill. "We are here today to be the voice for those who have been kept silent," Gilmore said. "Legislation that puts them out of work won't better the lives of their children nor make their schools and communities better places."

The NATIONAL TREASURY EMPLOYEES UNION says a Senate amendment to the proposed tobacco tax bill would hamper, if not destroy, collective bargaining in the U.S. Customs Service. The amendment, approved 52 to 46, would give the Customs Service commissioner discretion to modify or cancel certain collective-bargaining agreements if they interfere with the agency's mission. NTEU says the change is unnecessary and would have an adverse effect on morale within the agency.

Combined, the Coverdell and Gramm amendments diverted virtually all of the funds in the bill for the public health programs designed to reduce tobacco use.

The trial lawyers who whipped Big Bad Tobacco are now trying to collect fees that run into billions of dollars. . . This explains why investment bankers, toilers in the stock markets and captains and pirates of global industry . . . have private jets and 35-room weekend estates. Thinking about it makes me purple with rage, green with envy, blue about my own personal red ink, and sullen enough to kick a lawyer.

My new girlfriend smokes. I really, really like her, but I wish she would stop. . . .A. If you are concerned about your own health, say that you do not want to be around her when she smokes. Be prepared. If you take a firm stand, it could lead to arguments that you can't reconcile. Smoking is one of the biggest health problems facing young people today. If you can help to influence your girlfriend to quit, it could save her life.

Kenneth Starr may be asking the Supreme Court for a ruling he does not really want (news article, June 9). If the Court holds that the death of a client ends a lawyer's obligation not to disclose what the client said, the death of a tobacco-executive client might require Mr. Starr to disclose information incriminating other tobacco executives. MANLY W. MUMFORD

I know which way the wind is blowing on smoking, but Johnson strikes that libertarian chord in me that dislikes laws requiring seat belts and motorcycle helmets for adults. . . What hangs me up is the health of bar workers, whose protection from secondhand smoke was one selling point of the new law.

Congress shouldn't balk at discouraging the destructive smoking habit by a major increase in tobacco product prices. . . . The Clinton administration asked for a $1.50-a-pack hike. That, according to economic studies, could prompt a 50 percent reduction in smokers 17 and younger.

By Marty Meehan As long as soft money is allowed, our election finance system will continue to invite corruption. Consider the tobacco legislation now being debated. The tobacco industry is the Republican Party's single largest soft money donor. . . Is anyone surprised that the fate of the tobacco bill in the Senate is uncertain, and the House Republican Leadership is refusing to act altogether on the important matter of protecting our children and future generations from becoming addicted to the deadly product?

The key is for Gore to step up to the plate and show that he can be president. Clinton's strategy of giving Gore issue after issue so that he looks, acts, feels, and talks like a president must be ratified in the ultimate test - can he deliver like a president? Gore has to step into the Senate debate and cobble together a majority with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's (R-Miss.) help. If he is passive and lets the liberals sink the bill, he will suffer a massive blow to his credibility.

The month-long Senate tobacco debate has become the legislative equivalent of a long family car ride, with everybody asking, "Are we there yet?" Even if the Senate does get "there" and vote on Sen. John McCain's landmark legislation this coming week, it will not have necessarily reached any meaningful destination.

The mushrooming tobacco bill has grown so unwieldy in three weeks of Senate debate that in the end any meaningful changes in the nation's smoking policy will be the work of a small, cloistered group of decisionmakers, backers of the bill said. Proponents are pinning their hopes on the "conference committee," a panel of senators and representatives who often meet behind closed doors to settle differences between legislation that comes out of both houses. The theory goes that the conferees, perhaps working alongside the White House and even the vilified tobacco industry itself, can more easily pare down the bill without the television cameras rolling.

Now choking and gasping for life, the bill still shows vital signs, thanks to some fast-footed compromises that resulted in the approval of a number of election-year goodies: a tax cut for married couples and an amendment aimed at fighting illegal drug use. The extra baggage gave the gasping legislation a quick Band-Aid that gives some Republicans ample political cover to support the sweeping anti-smoking legislation originally authored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

"It's a big issue, but I haven't kept up with it as much as I'd like to," said Kevin Frick, whose 10-year-old son Michael plays for the Astros in a South Lexington baseball league. "Ball games and church activities ..."

"If the tobacco companies don't comply with marketing restrictions to protect kids' health, Congress shouldn't subsidize their advertising costs," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the chief sponsor of the amendment. "If they market to kids, then they lose their tax deductions."

The plan pushed by Ford and Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) would give $6 billion worth of aid to farmers hurt by the tobacco control legislation over the next three years and would cost $28.5 billion over 25 years. Lugar's plan, in the near term, would be much more expensive, buying out farmers for a total of $18 billion over three years. Public health groups have argued for some sort of compromise, but Lugar has said it is impossible to reconcile the two plans.

An association of Arizona Indian tribes is outraged over a proposed amendment to Sen. John McCain's tobacco bill that would enforce the reinstatement of state sales tax on reservation tobacco sellers. . . The Arizona Indian Business Association, representing people from 11 Arizona tribes, strongly opposes the amendment, sponsored by Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash. Roger Smith, a member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community who owns a reservation convenience store, said the Gorton amendment would seriously damage his tribe's ability to support itself.

The Senate took aim at Joe Camel yesterday by debating an amendment to the tobacco bill that would end the industry's tax deductibility of any advertising targeted at children. "If the tobacco companies don't comply with marketing restrictions to protect kids' health, Congress shouldn't subsidize their advertising costs," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the chief sponsor of the amendment. . . Reed showed the Senate a blowup of a Kool cigarette ad that featured a rock band to dramatize his charge that the industry is still trying to entice teens. "Why should we not deny a tax deduction to an industry that's involved in this kind of shameless activity?" he asked.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich accused Senate Republicans Thursday of participating in a tax-and-spend "feeding frenzy" on the tobacco bill that he said would be dead on arrival if it reaches the House. "It's dead because we won't take it up. There is no chance, none," Mr. Gingrich said in an interview with The Washington Times. He accused Senate Republicans of trying to strengthen and pass a "big-government, big-tax, big-bureaucracy bill" that violates fundamental party principles.

Christina M. Martin, Gingrich's spokeswoman, confirmed last night that, if the Senate passes the McCain bill on the Senate floor, then Gingrich will refuse to negotiate in a conference committee, a panel of members appointed from both houses to resolve differences between bills. "We will exercise our right not to take up the bill in conference," she said.

Earlier this week, Gingrich stunned many on Capitol Hill by pressuring the Congressional Budget Office to come out with rosier budget estimates. . . Also this week, Gingrich said the House may not have time to take up consideration of tobacco legislation, similar to a $516 billion bill struggling through the Senate. Daschle called the remarks "highly irresponsible" and "wrong." He added, "If (Gingrich) would just throw fewer temper tantrums and stick to legislative businesses, there's a chance we might get things done."

Political freeloaders are tacking on ideological decorations to a once-promising tobacco bill that inevitably -- and mercifully--will collapse of its own weight.

But many senators, soon to be joined by their House counterparts, seem more interested in financing tax cuts on which incumbents can campaign this fall. Such sticky-fingered debates could doom the whole settlement -- and they already have diverted attention from the focus on teen smoking. Before doing a deal with tobacco companies, Congress needs more answers than questions. It is high time to work more consistently toward those answers

His Beltway buddies will forgive him, as they've forgiven his other gaffes, his temper, his membership in the Keating Five. I'm sure they're already making excuses for him. . . Personally, I can't, and won't, say anything about John Sidney McCain III's children. I know this, however, Admiral and Mrs. John Sidney McCain Jr. sure had one ugly boy.

Instead the settlement money, to be generated by taxes which will push the cost of a pack of cigarettes up by $1.10 during the next five years, should be targeted for health programs, and, as Sen. Bob Kerrey suggests, programs to help addicted smokers kick the habit. Under the proposed settlement, smokers not only are required to pay hefty taxes, they also are losing some of their rights to sue tobacco companies. In return, smokers should get most of the benefits.

The editorial "Filtered tobacco bill" (Inquirer, June 6) argues that my proposal to reduce teen smoking falls short . . . I believe that my legislation, which would deny the tobacco companies' advertising deduction and use the revenues to appeal to the hearts and minds of all Americans, particularly young people, is straightforward, uncomplicated and effective. It might not be all we should do, but it is certainly something we ought to do.

The Senate has deadlocked over a plan that would deny tobacco companies tax deductions on their advertising expenses if they do not comply with Food and Drug Administration regulations. Senators voted 47-47 today on an proposal to force the amendment off the floor. The Senate will vote on the amendment itself Tuesday, when members whose planes were delayed by stormy weather will be back in town.

The Senate wrestled inconclusively Monday with a plan to cut tax breaks for tobacco companies that advertise to children as President Clinton and Majority Leader Trent Lott sparred at a distance over a bill to curtail teen-age smoking.

"I urge the Senate to act now. Every day the Senate delays plays into the hands of the tobacco industry, which wants desperately to kill this bill," Clinton said in a speech to Presidential Scholars on the White House lawn.

At a White House ceremony for outstanding high school students, Clinton said the industry's message that "this is nothing more than a big government tax increase to create huge big government bureaucracies" is "absolutely false." He said he had gotten an earful of the polished industry commercials on his recent trip to California and Oregon, "and I thought to myself, 'It's not true but it sounds good'." "They basically say, 'Forget about the fact that we didn't tell the truth to the American people for years about our efforts to recruit teen-agers to smoke illegally'," Clinton said. "'Forget about the fact that we covered up for years the fact that we knew tobacco was addictive. Just channel your well-known hatred of government and taxes against this bill'."

"Every day the Senate delays plays into the hands of the tobacco industry,which wants desperately to kill this bill and which is spending millions and millions of dollars on an advertising campaign designed to convince the American people this is nothing more than a big government tax increase, to create huge, big-government bureacracies," the president said. "It is absolutely false." He said he listened to the tobacco industry's ads over the weekend "and I thought to myself, it's not true but it sounds good."

"I've tried to find a way to move it forward, but I cannot see a way to get it to a conclusion. ... I don't think the votes are there to pass it or end it," the Mississippi Republican said yesterday on the ABC-TV program "This Week." "We're going to have to either find a way to go to a much smaller bill or I don't think it's going to be brought to a conclusion," he said.

It is the size of an epic novel, it opens with scenes of death and disease and it hints of a grand conspiracy against children. But do not look for it on any best-seller list. . . Here is a sample paragraph no reader would stumble across in a Grisham page-turner: "All payments made under section 402 are ordinary and necessary business expenses for purposes of chapter 1 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 for the year in which such payments were made, and no part thereof is either in settlement of an actual or potential liability for a fine or penalty (civil or criminal) or the cost of a tangible or intangible asset of other future benefit."

In the recent trench warfare over the Senate's tobacco-control legislation, one casualty has gone hardly noticed: funding for programs to help smokers quit, to prevent nonsmokers from starting and to keep children from buying cigarettes. . . Now, with the bill facing further Senate action this week, there is no money dedicated exclusively to public health. "This is typical of what politicians do when they get their hands on money," said longtime tobacco foe Michael Pertschuk of the Advocacy Institute. "Public health invariably takes a back seat."

"The problem is it continues to get bigger, worse," Lott said. "It's become a massive tax bill now ... with incredible spending, and we still haven't resolved some of the stickiest problems."

The giant anti-tobacco bill in the Senate is about to collapse under its own weight and cannot pass as it is currently written, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said Sunday. "This bill is so bad right now, I just don't think it should be passed in this form," Lott, a leading critic of the legislation, said on ABC's "This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts." "Everybody that has touched it has made it worse," he said. "It's become such a massive tax bill now, such a massive government program with incredible spending, and we still haven't resolved some of the stickiest problems of all, and that is what do you do about these massive attorneys' fees and what do you do about how the farmers are compensated."

Last week, Washington was just one front in the war on tobacco -- and things were not looking good for the industry on most of them.

So far, the tobacco companies appear to be winning. "If you go out and look at the polls right now, people think this legislation is more about taxes and ineffectual government programs than it is about stopping kids from smoking," said House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., who supports the original Senate proposal. "Tobacco, which has billions and billions of dollars, is running very effective ads, which are not countered by anybody. There's nobody that's got this kind of money. "They're running ads telling people that this is a grab by government, to take their money, raise taxes, to fund ineffective and stupid government programs. And the public, who has no other dialogue going on that's effective, is believing the ads."

Looking at such data, some Clinton political advisers and Democratic lawmakers want an election-year clash with Republicans. They remember how adept Clinton was at casting GOP lawmakers as bad guys in the 1995 government shutdown and believe a repeat performance might make the difference in their drive to retake control of the House on Nov. 3. The easiest way for that to happen would be to let the tobacco bill fail after weeks of debate -- then pin the blame on Republicans.

What the bill does not have is what the cigarette makers and the state attorneys general wanted most last June . . . It would not give the tobacco companies immunity from lawsuits filed by or on behalf of people with smoking-related illnesses. In addition . . . little money would be left for the states to spend on anti-smoking campaigns and other public health programs. So no one is happy.

The tobacco bill and Clinton's upcoming trip to China were hotly debated on Capitol Hill this week. Our political pundits, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot and syndicated columnist Mark Shields discuss why.

Regardless of whether Congress passes or rejects tobacco legislation, a bunch of lawyers are going to get rich -- even grotesquely, incomprehensibly rich. The only question is which lawyers and how much money.

Independent pollsters said the survey of tobacco farmers by the Tobacco Fairness Coalition was seriously flawed. The coalition did not follow commonly accepted methods of polling and the results cannot be said to represent the views of Kentucky farmers, the experts told The Courier-Journal. "It definitely is not scientific in any sense," said Marc Maynard, assistant director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut.

"The other side has a very simple strategy: Raise as much money from as many groups -- like the tobacco lobby -- as possible, and spend that money defaming and tearing down Democratic candidates," she said. "And if that doesn't work, because of negativity, just make the whole idea of voting so distasteful that people stay home." . . With pals Barbra Streisand, Sidney Poitier and Quincy Jones gracing dinner tables at Clinton's fund-raiser Saturday night, the president decried tobacco lobby ads aimed at killing anti-smoking legislation stalled in the Senate.

Congress' goal should be to enact a tobacco bill that protects kids from smoking and reduces the toll that tobacco takes on public health. The bill is turning into a vehicle for election-year tax cuts that will siphon money from public health and farmers, and a windfall for trial lawyers.

There remain many worthwhile ways to improve the tobacco legislation that has suddenly lurched back to life in Congress, but turning it into a tax-cut bill is not among them. . . As discouraged as the industry may be by the Florida decision, its opponents should be buoyed. The decision is another signal that the public is prepared to hold tobacco companies responsible for misrepresenting the dangers of smoking and will support laws that sharply limit their ability to do further harm.

Congress is now considering a grossly unfair and poorly conceived piece of tobacco legislation (the McCain bill) that, if it becomes law, would be a devastating blow to convenience stores and other retailers around the state. . . With a massive loss in jobs and the creation of a black market, the bill's hazardous ripple effects will make no one a winner except the criminals.

Republican Senate leaders have called a special meeting of their divided party Wednesday in an attempt to decide once and for all whether to try to pass tobacco legislation, kill the bill, or find some kind of parliamentary sleight of hand to make it go away. "It may very well be gone by tomorrow," said Indiana Republican Richard Lugar Tuesday. "They may stop the train and get off."

Republican senators will gather in Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's office this morning for a showdown on how to proceed with the anti-tobacco legislation. That meeting comes a day after the Senate capped attorney fees and then took up the final contentious issue in the legislation: aid for tobacco farmers.

Majority Leader Trent Lott is poised to announce the fate of the Senate's national tobacco bill after a private meeting planned for today with Senate Republicans.

"Tomorrow's meeting will be important," the bill's sponsor, Sen. John McCain , R-Ariz., told reporters on Tuesday. "I don't know what is going to happen." Lott's options include trying to cut off debate to hold a final vote on the McCain bill. He also could abandon it entirely by forcing a procedural challenge to the measure that could be stopped only with 60 votes.

Majority Leader Trent Lott, his intentions a closely held secret, called fellow Republicans to a closed-door meeting on Wednesday. Lott's move overshadowed Tuesday's events on the Senate floor, where Republicans, on their third attempt, won approval for a provision to limit fees for lawyers in lawsuits against the tobacco industry. The vote was 49-48 on a proposal by Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., to establish a sliding scale of sorts -- up to $4,000 an hour for older cases -- designed to give greater compensation to lawyers who had invested their own assets in a protracted legal battle.

Kentucky tobacco farmers would lose an estimated $178 million to $300 million a year, economists predict. As many as half the state's 60,000 tobacco farms could get out of the business . . . And big tobacco companies could see a windfall -- a billion dollars a year by some estimates -- by paying lower prices for leaf. With such high stakes in the offing, the U.S. Senate began debate yesterday on ending the tobacco price-support program that for 60 years has helped stabilize tobacco income by limiting production and setting leaf prices.

With virtually every other tough fight off the table, the Senate yesterday finally turned to the contentious question of how to help tobacco farmers as part of sweeping anti-smoking legislation.

By a one-vote margin, the Senate yesterday imposed a $4,000-an-hour limit on legal fees for trial lawyers as part of the the half-trillion dollar tobacco legislation, removing a big obstacle to passage of the bill. The 49-to-48 vote was a crushing blow to trial attorneys. By some estimates, a handful of law firms involved in tobacco litigation had stood to win a staggering $100 billion in legal fees over 25 years.

Richard D. Hailey, president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, criticized the decision to limit fees to plaintiffs' attorneys, but not to lawyers for the tobacco companies. "Sadly, a bare majority of senators chose to violate the U.S. Constitution, abrogate legitimate contracts and put American taxpayers and consumers at an even greater competitive disadvantage with the tobacco industry," he said.

"What they've done is to essentially make tobacco litigation [uneconomical]," Daynard said. "They've carried out the basic goal of the tobacco companies, which is to make it as a practical matter impossible to get competent attorneys to bring actions against them that will have a good chance of succeeding." . . The limit on payments was tucked into an amendment that nominally was designed to control the fees of the private lawyers who filed the cases of the state attorneys general and class action suits that the McCain bill was designed to settle. In Senate debate, little was said about the provision, which was spelled out in a single line capping fees at $500 per hour "for actions filed after June 15, 1998."

The amendment added to the extensive tobacco bill provides that lawyers who took the greatest risk and were involved in cases before 1995 could collect as much as $4,000 an hour. But the allowable fee would drop on a sliding scale so that those who enter cases after Tuesday could not charge more than $500 an hour.

The Senate voted 49-48 Tuesday to limit lawyers' fees in suits against cigarette makers. The vote came shortly after Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., scheduled a meeting of Republican senators this morning to decide whether to stop debate on the tobacco bill and bring the legislation to a final vote

'We have pretty well resolved outstanding issues on this bill with exception of issues surrounding payments to tobacco farmers,' said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, the main sponsor of a $516 billion tobacco bill the Senate is currently considering.

we urge the Senate to immediately restore the $196.5 billion reserved for the states to settle their lawsuits. Further, we urge the Senate to ensure that state settlement dollars are not subject to federal claims of recoupment. This should apply to those states that have settled, those who choose to participate in any settlement under federal legislation and those who choose to continue to pursue their litigation.

In a letter to Sen. Shelby, Chamber President and CEO Thomas Donohue called the bill "an outrageous money and power grab by government and a handful of plaintiff's attorneys...," and said that a vote against this bill will "distinguish those who stand up for taxpayers, entrepreneurs, and private enterprise, with great clarity, from those who just talk about it."

In a letter to Florida's senators, Democrat BOB GRAHAM and Republican CONNIE MACK, Chiles wrote: "We pledged to use the money to improve health care for our children. Unfortunately, the legislation the Senate is considering threatens these important initiatives." Chiles said he was concerned that costly amendments to the bill "are not related to the public health goals that were a fundamental part" of a proposed national tobacco agreement entrusted to Congress, and Florida's own settlement.

Chiles said in a letter that amendments to a federal tobacco deal could strip as much as 35 percent off the state's settlement. Chiles said federal lawmakers, who in June 1997 reached a conceptual agreement with the industry on a national accord, are proposing a $514 billion settlement that funnels money away from states to fund federal priorities.

In a sequence as muddled as the lengthy debate on the tobacco bill itself, lawmakers tentatively adopted an advertising proposal by Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., by voice vote after an attempt to kill it failed on a 47-47 tie. The provision would deny tobacco companies regular tax deductions for advertising, promotion and marketing expenses unless they obey Food and Drug Administration rules designed to curb sales pitches to underage smokers. But with six senators missing because of thunderstorms that delayed the arrival of their flights to Washington, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the bill's chief sponsor, said the vote may be reconsidered today.

I just came back from California and Oregon, and I traveled around a lot in automobiles and had the chance to hear some of the advertising being run by the tobacco companies. And I thought to myself, it's not true but it sounds good. . . And, unfortunately, the cancer society, the heart association, the lung association, the people who stand with us on this legislation, don't have anything like the money that the tobacco companies have to put on ads that answer that.

There are at least 43 Democrats and nine Republicans in the Senate who support ending debate and approving the bill. Both supporters and opponents foresee a fierce fight over the votes of about 10 other undecided Republicans. Before such a vote can occur, two contentious issues must be resolved. Conservatives want to limit the fees trial lawyers receive for helping states sue tobacco companies, and tobacco-state senators are holding out for relief for farmers who would be hurt by a drop in demand for their product.

"Those of us in politics know that unanswered ads can sometimes be fatal," Clinton said during a South Lawn ceremony to congratulate young people given presidential scholarships. "Well, if they're fatal this year, they will be fatal to young children who continue to be seduced and sold illegally cigarettes that will shorten their lives."

Remember Harry and Louise? . . "The tobacco companies have spent millions and millions of dollars to change public opinion, and they've done it," the House Democratic leader said at a news conference last week. "I've read the polls."

Behind the multibillion-dollar war over tobacco--a battle that's roiling Washington and has lawyers scrambling for a payday

ENACT, a coalition of 50 public health organizations, released a new poll today showing continued strong support for the comprehensive tobacco control legislation currently under consideration in the Senate.

Plaintiffs suing tobacco companies have variously accused them of marketing a defective product, of conspiring to cover up tobacco's hazards, or of failing to warn consumers that nicotine is addictive. Whatever the charge, the claims are fatuous. The smokers knew their habit was bad for them; now they want someone else to pay for their bad judgment. . . But disregarding the law is dangerous. Much more dangerous than smoking. Cigarettes threaten only those who use them. Tear up the legal rules that codify ethics and common sense, and we are all at risk.

I remember well my first cigarette, smoked four years ago when I was 14. . . .The choice whether to smoke ultimately will be an individual's, not a national campaign manager's. But that is no reason to surrender. Education of young people is the only way to prevent an epidemic and the many illnesses which ensue from smoking. Whether through announcements or even intervention in schools, education must always be an option.

INCREASINGLY, you will hear President Clinton talk about values. His programs and initiatives will more and more center on issues like the environment, tobacco, drug use, gun controls, TV violence, family leave, child care, education and a host of values issues.

The public has a compelling interest in preserving legal ethics, including that rule that fees must be reasonable. The higher the fees tort lawyers get, the greater the share they take of injured clients' recoveries. Moreover, the higher the fees, the more tort litigation and the more costs that are imposed on society. The civil justice system, which generates the fees that Mr. Daschle does not want curbed, exists to serve citizens. Lawyers are not businesspeople; they are professionals entrusted with the people's business.

"Today will be the last day," Sen. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican who opposes the bill, predicted after a Republican strategy session on whether to make a last-ditch effort to pass legislation or to drive a procedural stake through it.

Capping a high-stakes election-year battle, Senate Republicans today moved toward killing the anti-smoking bill despite last-minute pleas from President Clinton to ``protect the children and not the tobacco lobby.'' Supporters of the bill conceded in advance that they were unlikely to prevail on two key procedural votes that would keep the bill alive.

With Republican senators threatening to kill anti-tobacco legislation, President Clinton blamed the ``awesome influence'' of the industry's massive campaign contributions. . . Clinton insisted he already has moved ``more than half way'' to meet every major objection offered by congressional leadership. . . "Now, if there is a move to kill or gut this legislation, there can be no possible explanation other than the intense pressure and the awesome influence fueled by years of huge contributions of big tobacco.''

Senate Republicans talked privately today about how to kill the anti-smoking bill as PRESIDENT CLINTON pleaded with them to ``protect the children and not the tobacco lobby.'' . . "The tobacco companies' advertising campaigns have had a significant effect on (senators') constituents,'' MCCAIN told reporters shortly after a Republican caucus on the fate of the bill. Senate Majority Leader TRENT LOTT announced no decision, but was expected to do so as soon as this afternoon, numerous participants in the caucus said.

Republican lawmakers remained divided on whether to support comprehensive tobacco legislation during a meeting to discuss the bill's fate Wednesday, but a decision is expected soon on how to proceed with the measure. A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said he will make a decision later Wednesday.

Speaking in the Rose Garden following remarks on education policy, Clinton gave the GOP a taste of the politics it can expect if it sinks the anti-tobacco legislation. 'I have been working for six months to craft a comprehensive, bipartisan bill to protect our children from the dangers of tobacco... As we speak, the Republican caucus in the Seante is meeting behind closed doors to discuss or pehaps even to decide the fate of the tobacco bill. I urge them not to turn this meeting, literally, into a smoke filled room,' Clinton said.

He or she is in the same position as any other entrepreneur or investor. The possibility of outsized returns if the case is successful is what keeps lawyers doing this work. The GORTON amendment has eliminated all of the financial incentive for lawyers to take these risks. It has been largely through the speculative efforts of plaintiffs' lawyers that so much information about the decades of conspiracy, fraud, and malice that the tobacco companies have perpetrated on the public has recently come to light. ``There are no limitations on attorneys' fees for plaintiffs' lawyers suing any other industry and there is no reason why the tobacco companies should be granted this unique and unprecedented protection by Congress, particularly in light of their uniquely egregious past conduct,'' Professor DAYNARD concluded.

The promise of the tobacco legislation before the U.S. Senate has been, from the start, a sweeping national campaign to cut back on smoking and dramatically reduce the toll it takes on American health. But funding for that ambitious public health goal has become a big loser in the fierce political struggles surrounding the measure, as funding for programs to get Americans to stop smoking and to persuade children not to start has been cut back by changes made on the Senate floor.

This much is clear: The industry's effort to defeat the bill has been enormous. Now in its ninth week, the ad blitz has far surpassed other campaigns to defeat congressional action, including the well-known "Harry and Louise" campaign that helped kill the Clinton health plan in 1994 and cost the Health Insurance Association of America about $14 million. Sources familiar with the tobacco industry's strategy confirmed the $40 million figure. An ad buy of that size in a few weeks rivals that of such giants as Toyota or Honda, who, according to a top ad executive, spend about $300 million a year on television spots.

It is difficult even to find teen smoking in the behemoth tobacco bill that is creaking forward in the U.S. Senate. . . All of this amounts to a bloated legislative package that has lost sight of its original intentions. Congress has wasted the opportunity to make progress on a critically important public health issue, teenage smoking. The tobacco deal might as well be declared dead.

The main cache of anti-smoking money has been depleted, in part to pay for a tax cut that Mr. Gramm proposed, in part to finance an anti-drug program on which opponents also insisted. The opponents complain that the bill lacks a focus, but they themselves have helped to blur it. The child-care vs. federalism fight is a further distraction. The bill still has the potential to do some good -- tax up the price of smoking, tighten regulation, including of the marketing of cigarettes, discourage kids from starting and help people quit. But a lot of people are using it for other purposes.

Public health advocates, including former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, don't want the uncontrolled increase in U.S. tobacco production and the corresponding drop in raw tobacco prices that would follow the abolition of quotas. . . These unlikely allies of Kentucky's small farms understand the need for a more orderly economic transition than the Lugar-McConnell plan would give rural communities. . . It's becoming increasingly clear that small farms will be better off if Congress enacts a comprehensive tobacco bill. It will be interesting to see if, in the end, McConnell comes down with the cigarette companies or rural Kentucky.

Thus abused, the industry this spring pulled out of the settlement offer and is waging a $100 million campaign to obfuscate McCain's bill and buy legislators' votes. The combination has worked. Sadly, the bill is now larded with items that are unrelated to smoking, regulating tobacco and the original cash- for-legal-protection deal. . . The McCain bill should be reduced, and perhaps the tobacco industry should have some legal protections. Moreover, Big Tobacco should return to the negotiations. It may kill the McCain bill, but doing so won't reduce its legal liability.

The question right now is whether Majority Leader Trent Lott will bring his influence to bear on putting the measure before his Senate colleagues for that vote. . . The jam-packed bill sponsored by Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., has something for everyone to loathe and love. . . The Senate GOP leader should stop wavering on a tobacco bill that could save many lives.

Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, may not be the most reliable observer . . . But one comment he made about the bill's progress in recent weeks is astute: "Everybody that has touched it," he said, "has made it worse." . . Unless Congress finds its spine, the best hope for reducing youth smoking may be back with the states, which are still winning settlements with big tobacco in court.

Having read both sides of the dispute, I'm willing to dismiss the Cornell findings as aberrant. So where does this confused columnist end up? . . I have sympathy for the position of Frank Chaloupka, an often-cited economics professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who says, "We don't have the perfect evidence, and we probably never will. But I'm comfortable with the evidence that there will be a significant decline in consumption if the tobacco bill passes." Policy-making, for all our pretensions of objective rigor, is a notoriously inexact science. . . That's why I am willing to gamble that the tobacco bill will someday save enough lives to justify its harsh financial burden on smokers.

The stuff the tobacco Gestapo are blowing our way could be hazardous to your health. . . The longer the tobacco bill sticks around, the more it stinks. . . And here's the beauty part, if you're one of the evil tobacco companies: We still would have lots and lots of smokers, because the government must keep a certain number of Americans addicted to fags to enable the tobacco companies to make the profits to pay the $516 billion settlement.

The reality is that both the Lugar bill and the Ford bill need improvements, a view shared by both the health groups and the farms organizations inside and outside of Kentucky. My message to the people of Kentucky is to try to separate out all of the political rhetoric and games-playing and to demand of your politicians that they seek to do what is right, to work out a plan of action that serves the farmers -- all of the farmers-- and protects public health. I think it can be done.

But it is only the trial lawyers who get lambasted. Corporate America is replete with executives who, having created nothing, invented nothing and made the world not one bit better by their being there, have become richer than people who actually made a difference. . . But if greed such as Catacosinos's is, as we are forever being told, the engine that powers our wonderful economy, then why should the rules be changed just for trial lawyers? Maybe, in fact, they are being underpaid since, as now seems clear, they will ultimately level the cigarette companies -- a public service, no matter what the cost.

While urging Congress to reconsider its opposition to sweeping anti-tobacco legislation, President Clinton reiterated his vow to hold Republicans ``personally responsible'' for its defeat. Clinton declared, ``I've never quit on anything this important in my life and I don't intend to stop now.''

A Democratic effort to attach tobacco legislation to an appropriations bill was rejected by the Senate today as the minority party continued to portray Republicans as in league with cigarette companies. ``We will not let the issue die,'' Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle . . President Clinton also pledged to keep the issue alive in Congress and in this fall's election campaign, declaring, ``I don't intend to stop fighting for this.'' Daschle pledged: ``We are going to continue this fight in whatever vehicle, whatever form, whatever opportunity we have.''

On Wednesday, in a series of two votes, Senators ended debate on tobacco legislation, by failing to invoke cloture in the first vote and send the bill back to the Commerce Committee by voting not to waive the Budget Act in the second. Read roll call results on tobacco legislation:
• First Vote
• Second Vote

MR. BOWLES: The industry has spent $40 million advertising. We have tried to do the best we could with the limited resources we had to come forward and get the message across to the American people. We have used the bully pulpit. The public health community has come forward with some ads, as you know, in order to educate people about this. We simply could not compete with that $40 million that the industry chose to spend. . . We're going to try to attach it to every major piece of legislation that comes forward. We're going to make this a fight to the finish.

President Clinton declared the anti-tobacco legislation 'isn't dead' and bluntly warned the Republicans of 'political consequences' if the Senate fails to take up the issue again. Clinton's comments, made in the briefing room of the White House, came just minutes after the Senate failed to free up the legislation on two procedural votes. 'This fight is far from over,' Clinton declared.

"This is not the end of this issue -- it may very well be the beginning," Kennedy railed on the Senate floor. "It may be that the final vote on this issue happens on Election Day."

C. Everett Koop, the former surgeon general, said: "I hope that the senators who derailed this bill today lose sleep every night listening to the sound of children taking their first puff and the sound of emphysema and cancer patients gasping for their last breath." Koop, who served under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, added, "I hope it keeps the Republican leadership awake, too."

Arizona Republican Sen. JOHN MCCAIN, the chief author of the bill, credited the industry's "very wise investment" in a multimillion dollar advertising campaign which had portrayed his legislation as a huge tax hike by a greedy government masquerading as a teen smoking initiative. "It's not about taxes," McCain said after two procedural votes went against his bill and killed any chance of a final vote. "This bill is about whether we are going to allow the death march of 418,000 Americans a year who die early from tobacco-related diseases and do nothing." "The losers are America's children," McCain said, noting that 3,000 start smoking every day, 1,000 of whom will die prematurely.

The bill's advocates couldn't, in two votes, muster enough support to keep the measure alive, although 14 Republicans joined Democrats in voting to move the bill toward final passage. These Republicans repeatedly had opposed such efforts, and Democrats accused the Senate GOP leadership of orchestrating Wednesday's votes to allow the 14 to get on record in favor of the bill.

Big Tobacco won big, no butts about it. In what Democrats hope will be a defining moment of the 1998 election season, Senate Republicans emerged from what President Clinton derisively called a "smoked-filled room" and moved to kill a tough-on-tobacco bill Wednesday. In retrospect, it should come as no surprise. The victory for tobacco can be traced to late April, when RJR Nabisco chairman Steven Goldstone said the industry would launch a national advertising campaign to turn public opinion against the anti-smoking legislation. The strategy: Portray the bill as a big-tax, big-government boondoggle. . . . "Big Tobacco won. That's one headline. The other headline is Republicans kill the tobacco bill," said Clinton aide Rahm Emanuel. "But this is just the first day of breaking eggs."

The death of the tobacco bill in the U.S. Senate sent a tremor through the South Carolina tobacco-farming community Wednesday, as growers strained to see what their future might hold. Both senators from South Carolina, Democrat Fritz Hollings and Republican Strom Thurmond, voted to send the bill back to committee, effectively killing it. . . "What do you think my tobacco barns are worth today?" asked Marty Easler, who farms about 250 acres of tobacco in Williamsburg County. "I'm worth nothing today. Before this started, I was worth something."

Sens. Herbert Kohl and Russell Feingold, both D-Wis., voted to keep the bill on the Senate floor. . . Kohl called the death of the legislation "a tragedy."

"Obviously, they're trying to influence outcomes in their favor," said Patrick Harvey, director of the Missouri Alliance for Campaign Reform, which tallied and examined the contributions. The alliance is a coalition of 37 groups, including the League of Women Voters and state chapter of the America Association of Retired Persons. . . The Legislature's two top recipients of tobacco-related donations, Sen. MIKE LYBYER, D-Huggins, and Rep. DON LOGRASSO, R-Blue Springs, say the money did not affect their votes. Tobacco firms, like most special interest groups, "tend to give contributions to the people who (already) agree with them," Lograsso said. "They don't give money to people who don't agree with them."

SEN. ORRIN HATCH voted to end debate on Arizona Sen. John McCain's measure to force the tobacco industry to pay $516 billion over the next 25 years and accept new curbs on advertising and regulation. SEN. BOB BENNETT resisted GOP leaders by voting to keep discussing the bill. "I had to make it clear I was not on the side of big tobacco," said the first-term senator, who is seeking re-election to a second term.

"It's a war. An absolute war," said Linda Crawford, a vice president of the American Cancer Society. "The tobacco companies are so powerful you don't see them. They can push buttons from their offices and send a thousand letters to a senator." The war room is their newest weapon to balance that power. It's staffed by the Effective National Action to Control Tobacco (ENACT), a coalition of 50 public health organizations including the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Two days before the first day of Senate floor debate, ENACT decided to create the war room, a nickname thought up by Crawford.

The tobacco bill may be dead, but the fight against the industry is still very much alive. Indeed the cigarette companies escaped a hefty, multi-billion-dollar tax that would have damaged future earnings when the U.S. Senate officially killed the controversial measure Wednesday night. But as observers pointed out Thursday, that just moves the eye of the battle against Big Tobacco out of the House and into the courtroom.

The demise of anti-smoking legislation in the U.S. Senate signals the reemergence of the tobacco industry as a political force and sows doubt over whether any comprehensive federal bill will ever emerge.

But blame for the bill's demise also reaches back a year, beyond the Capitol -- to negotiators in a luxury hotel limousine ride away who underestimated their ability to sell the deal to members of Congress who had no part in it. ``All the participants in the June 20 settlement bear some responsibility in maybe underestimating that component of it,'' acknowledged industry spokesman Scott Williams.

Here's a look at the fallout from the Senate vote Wednesday to pull the bill off the floor:

"I'm a bit disappointed, but not discouraged," said Michael Moore, the Mississippi attorney general who brought the first state lawsuit against tobacco companies in 1994. "I think we still have a very good chance of reviving this thing and getting something done."

As comprehensive anti-smoking legislation hit a wall on Capitol Hill, Clinton for now had lost the most important item on his domestic agenda, and was already implementing a fall-back strategy of trying to make Republicans pay for their opposition in the 1998 congressional elections. . . But such a strategy is by all evidence not fine with Clinton. . . And, perhaps most importantly, he will have a far harder time deflecting speculation that his ongoing legal woes have diverted his policy agenda. . . "They made a fundamental miscalculation," said one Democratic consultant who did not wish to be named. "It was the same lesson they should have learned from health care: Strike when the iron's hot. They thought time was their friend, time was their enemy."

It decided to drop out of the deal it had helped forge with government and begin assaulting Washington's taxing and spending ways. Big Tobacco's TV and radio ad campaign on CNN and local stations around the country urged the public to get on Congress' case immediately to stop a tax increase and a grab for the smoker's wallet. It was a gamble, but it paid off -- for now. . . The anti-politician ads proposed in 1970 were part of an aborted industry offensive called "Project A." References to that project have turned up among the industry documents posted on the Internet by Tom Bliley, chairman of the House Commerce Committee.

Tobacco control legislation is almost certainly dead for this Congress, a "tragic" outcome that could have been avoided, U.S. Sen. John Breaux, D-La., said Wednesday after the U.S. Senate sent a tobacco bill back to committee. . . "Both sides are to blame to some extent" - anti-tobacco Democrats and anti-taxation Republicans - for overloading the tobacco legislation reported by the Commerce Committee, he said. It was generally Democrats who sponsored committee and Senate floor amendments that stripped tobacco companies of some protections against lawsuits and that increased penalties on tobacco companies if youth smoking rates do not decline.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal believes that the possibility of a federally negotiated agreement with big tobacco companies is no longer in the cards. "I don't think there is any hope of further negotiated settlements, nationally speaking," he said in an interview with CNBC Thursday afternoon. "Each state will be on its own."

The tobacco industry spent $40 million in false advertising to kill this bill, and they won. The cigarette companies have lied and lied to the American people about their products and about this bill. Today one special interest, Big Tobacco, defeated the interests of our children and grandchildren."

There is no greater culprit in the tobacco bill's demise than Senate Majority Leader Lott, who months ago declared that he would recuse himself from consideration of tobacco legislation, yet actively maneuvered to defeat it. If President Clinton will exert aggressive leadership -- so far lacking -- on behalf of a strong bill that does not grant special protections to the tobacco industry, there is still hope for passage of a positive tobacco bill this year.

Throughout this war, public health communities came together and rallied to save lives," said Novelli. "The battles that were waged galvanized Americans and increased their collective determination to make tobacco control legislation a reality. Today's disappointment has not defeated us and will not drive us away. Rather, it deepens our resolve to continue this critical fight."

The Senate figured out that, in the end, the American people aren't stupid enough to believe that Washington's $700 billion tax increase was for the children."

The tobacco industry would like America to believe that this issue is dead. But the American Heart Association will prove that that's another tobacco industry lie. We're in this fight for the long haul. The American Heart Association won't stop until we never see another cigarette in the hands of our children.

Hatch says his bill would raise prices by 70 to 90 cents a pack, if costs are passed on to consumers. He said that is high enough to discourage smoking without creating a black market, would avoid challenges about the bill's constitutionality and would provide money for research and treatment of smoking-related diseases. Hatch said he voted not to cut off debate on McCain's bill because he wanted to keep alive consideration of his alternate bill ‹ and did not like the idea of others to pass McCain's bill and send it to a House-Senate conference where it might be improved.

'There is no such thing as a slimmed-down bill that protects kids from tobacco smoking. We know that you need to get the kind of price effect that deters smoking that was contained in the McCain bill.... In short, you need to have that per-pack price increase of at least $1.10,' White House Spokesman Mike McCurry said.

Foiling a last-ditch push for anti-tobacco legislation, the Senate rejected Thursday a Democratic effort to attach the bill to an appropriations bill.

One day after tobacco legislation died in the Senate, Speaker Newt Gingrich said House Republicans will soon unveil a separate bill to curtail teen smoking and predicted that President Clinton ``is going to sign it.'' The White House and its allies in Congress dismissed the effort in advance. ``He's going to bring up a fig-leaf bill. Maybe a better word would be a tobacco-leaf bill,'' retorted Rep. Dick Gephardt, one of many Democrats who spent the day depicting Republicans as eager to do the bidding of Big Tobacco.

"Yesterday it became entirely clear that, in this merger era that we're in, [tobacco giant RJR Nabisco] merged with the GOP," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, premiering what promises to be the Democrats' refrain on the issue. "The GOP is a subsidiary of RJR." . . "Good luck," said Majority Whip Tom DeLay, Texas Republican. "I'll pay for them to come to Houston to talk about tobacco. That's like Hillary taking her health care plan to the campaign trail."

What would the world look like without a tobacco bill? Five-dollar-a-pack cigarettes are out. The Marlboro man gets to keep his job. And tobacco companies can boast that it was the politicians, not the industry, who blew the chance for a settlement.

As one scans the list of the Republicans who voted to block the McCain bill and who must face voters on Nov. 3, it's hard to find any who'll be hurt by their vote. Either they represent tobacco-growing states, . . . or they don't face fearsome Democratic opponents . . . The Democrats have little chance of regaining control of the Senate this year, whether they use tobacco or any other issue. If all the breaks go their way, the best result the Democrats could manage would be a net gain of five seats, putting the new Senate evenly balanced at 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans.

But Republicans are betting that while tobacco has replaced Monica Lewinsky as the hottest Beltway topic this summer, it's no burning issue in the hinterlands. By the time November rolls around, they calculate, voters will have forgotten the big tobacco bill, which even legislators didn't fully understand. "The sense now is a general shrug," said a top Senate GOP aide. "People never understood it or believed in it much to begin with. Most members are not worried."

while the tobacco bill killed by the Senate Wednesday was not as focused on public-health measures as the one introduced last year, its demise did doom new funding for programs health officials say are urgently needed for treating smoking-related diseases in the uninsured and poor and preventing youths from starting to smoke. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop called the Senate's action "public health malpractice."

But even Julie, an activist in the anti-tobacco world, was unaware the U.S. Senate shot down a bill that would have raised cigarette prices by $1.10 a pack over five years and imposed stiff fines if the tobacco industry failed to reduce youth smoking. "I do things at the local level," Julie said. "I haven't heard anything about it." It seems the Senate lost track of teens like Julie when it killed the bill on Wednesday, repeating an all-too-familiar pattern when it comes to teen issues, said Faith Wohl, president of the Childcare Action Network.

Republican leaders predict they will pass a smaller measure to curb teen smoking and drug use this election year and that President Clinton will sign it. He denounced the notion as "a charade." Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott told reporters: "What I want is a result that is fair that will deal with the problem, that will restrict, limit and fight teen-age smoking and, in fact, discourage smoking as a whole. That's all."

Florida didn't seem to have lost much when the U.S. Senate killed sweeping tobacco legislation. . . But there are some things even Florida's tobacco money can't buy. Like a national increase in the price of cigarettes -- which supporters say could go a long way toward stopping teen-age smoking, the original thrust of the bill. Or a national crackdown on advertising that tobacco foes say targets the next generation of smokers.

"Here, you pretty much have an issue on which there is no dissent," said Ted Arrington, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

The California Division of the American Cancer Society applauds Senators Boxer and Feinstein for voting against Big Tobacco and for America's children during the recent debate on national tobacco control legislation that took place on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

The nation is better off without the bill, because Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's congressional henchmen thoroughly sabotaged it, adding amendments than would have weakened the war on cigarettes, many activists say. . . "I don't see this (legislative defeat) as the end of the world because the fact is, we're now back to where we were -- litigation on a state-by-state basis, which I actually think is a better way to do it," said the Bay Area's best-known cigarette-hater, Dr. Stanton Glantz, a UC-San Francisco professor of medicine. "The real (anti-smoking) progress has always been made at the local and state level."

State Attorney General Peter Verniero reacted angrily on Thursday to Congress' failure to pass tobacco legislation, saying lawmakers wasted a year debating while 1 million more children nationwide became addicted to cigarettes. "A year has gone by. There's been a heavy human cost in that period," Verniero said. Verniero said it could take New Jersey another year to go to trial.

"I would hope the president would join with us ... now that the liberal effort to write a big-government, big-tax bill has failed and clearly failed," House Speaker Newt Gingrich said.

"They, by spending upwards of $50 million, they framed the debate to a significant degree, and they won. And my congratulations to them," McCain told CNN. "Unfortunately, it's the children of America who lose."

The tobacco industry's heavy advertising campaign is credited with giving Republicans cover to kill the bill. The industry is ready to spend more, hinted Scott Williams, a tobacco spokesman. "Clearly we will not allow critics to misinform people about the issues," he said.

Without offering many details, House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that he would put forward next week a low-budget alternative to the Senate bill, a measure that would be tightly focused on discouraging teen-agers from smoking. Gingrich said the bill would go before the House for a vote in July. . . "I hope the president will join us on behalf of children," he declare

House Republican leaders announced yesterday they will bring up a narrowly focused bill aimed at curbing teenage smoking and drug use next month, setting up an immediate confrontation with Democrats and public health groups who decried the approach as "worse than nothing at all." One day after Senate Republicans killed a comprehensive national tobacco bill, the anti-smoking battle grew noisier and nastier, with GOP leaders promising alternatives to the broad-based measure and Democrats intensifying their invective.

But picking up on what they say will be a campaign theme, the Democratic congressional leadership tried to link the Republican Party to the tobacco industry. "I think yesterday it became entirely clear that, in this merger era that we're in, RJR merged with the GOP," said Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., referring to one of the largest tobacco companies. "And for $50 million, it was a good buy."

Daniel L. Nelson, who farms tobacco in Forsyth County, said that the failure of the bill still leaves farmers' livelihoods in limbo. "Something is going to take place on tobacco in just a short while," he said. "We can't keep continuing like we are, not knowing from one day to the next. If there's going to be a settlement, we want to make sure we're included in it."

For Ford, who closes out a 24-year Senate career this year, it is a crucial piece of unfinished business. But he made plain yesterday that he still is working to finish it. "I have seen a lot of things that have been pronounced dead and it has more lives than a cat," Ford said. "If I would give up, it's gone for sure. But we're not going to give up. ... There's just a lot of things that can be done, and I don't intend to quit."

Sen. Richard Lugar said he has no intention of renewing his effort to kill the tobacco program this year. Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said there won't be enough money available to compensate farmers for their losses. "The context under which I raised the issue was that there would be money available for the farmer," Lugar said. "With no money available budget-wise, it seems that possibility is not there."

The 57 senators voting in favor of the tobacco bill received a total of $552,694 during the years between 1987 and 1997. The 42 who opposed the measure and effectively sank it, received $1,375,770.

a spokesman for state Attorney General Mark L. Earley (R) said his boss "is not mourning the death of the tobacco bill." Spokesman David Botkins said Earley "stands with Gov. [James S.] Gilmore to keep the focus on those whose livelihood depends on tobacco."

Any celebrations in the country's largest tobacco-producing state were muted, however -- tempered by the sobering reality of a mountain of unresolved lawsuits against cigarette companies, a declining U.S. tobacco market and ever-increasing hostility toward smoking.

Indeed, this Congress is the very best that tobacco money can buy.

TOBACCO companies won another one, but a short-term victory for the deep-pocketed industry and Senate Republicans could well come back to haunt them. . . McCain's bill had flaws, but they could have been repaired in a House-Senate conference committee. Lott and company ensured that no such opportunity will occur.

THE DEFEAT of the tobacco bill represented a nice return on investment for Big Tobacco, which has lavished about $30 million in contributions on Washington politicians over the last decade. . . Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott has called unlimited political contributions "the American Way." Voters who disagree with Lott should let their elected leaders know that they have a very different view of the role of special-interest money in a representative democracy.

If there's a moral to the tobacco bill's death, it's the power of money. The bill was grotesquely larded down, and we doubted it would have stopped significant numbers of teen-agers from smoking. But none of that is why it died. It died because cigarette-makers poured $40 million into an advertising campaign that gave Republicans cover to kill it. It will be interesting to watch the cigarette money pour into campaign coffers this fall.

If the late Senate tobacco bill were really about halting teen smoking, why did it tax all smokers, all but a fraction of whom are adults? . . it is still not too late to heed the advice of former Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan, who argued in 1990 that parents, not just educators, legislators and health officials, "still do not take the problem of smoking among our children as seriously as we should." Mr. Clinton thinks politicians should aspire to parenthood. Maybe parents should too.

"Why not make it criminal for a young person for possessing [tobacco]?" he said. "Deal with driver's licenses, deal with other things that are important to young people." Do you mean arrest them or just give them tickets? somebody asked. "Every time I got a ticket, I was arrested," Ashcroft replied. "Young people need a sense of responsibility." They will not get it by watching the U.S. Senate. In defeating McCain's anti-cigarette bill, the Republican-led Senate followed a script that was laid out for them, publicly, by Steven Goldstone, head of RJR Nabisco. . . But the height of this new two-prong conservatism must be Ashcroft's views on cigarette smoking: He would rather arrest children than raise cigarette taxes. How's that for family values?

Big Tobacco and Senate Republicans won the battle this week in denying landmark legislation to regulate tobacco -- but, in doing so, they may have lost the war. As Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said: "It may be that the final vote on this bill occurs on Election Day." Or Judgment Day.

By their votes they were able to reward the tobacco companies for generous campaign contributions, past and no doubt future, while at the same time declaiming against a tax increase. They managed as well to protect the House from having to deal with an issue that leaders there feared could cost the Republicans some seats they can ill afford this November. That's the altar on which they sacrificed the chance to stop some kids from smoking. Maybe the public will forgive them, as their pollsters currently suggest. We hope not.

Eat your heart out Kenneth Starr It was Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott who drove the fatal dagger into the heart of the Clinton presidency. . . So what we are in for is not so much know-nothing posturing as nothing-new politics. Clinton will continue to revel in the ceremonial aspects of his office, jetting to foreign lands, pretending that minor $100 million programs will remedy major national problems. But there is no greatness to be found in merely presiding. Clinton, make no mistake, was on the side of the angels with the tobacco bill. But as the president has just learned to his permanent regret, sometimes virtue is no reward at all.

My father was a heavy smoker until his heart and lungs gave out I was seven when he died We didn t sue the tobacco companies. . . The settlement might have worked, had no one gotten greedy. Just about everyone did. The tobacco deal became a cash crop.

The same money that buys the ads buys the politicians. . . That's why you can't look to deck a behemoth as big as the tobacco industry with a single roundhouse right. The heck with David and Goliath. You have to stick and move, a strategy made popular by the attorneys general who are the only ones leaving the scene with their reputations intact. Take little victories, like advertising bans. Keep adding on and be patient. Sooner or later the little victories amount to a big victory. Now the battle appears lost and hubris has just as much to do with it as anything. Blame the industry, blame the public, blame Phil Gramm if you want. But as Billy Conn likely would tell the proponents, it's your own doggone fault.

[T]he administration and too many senators instead were engaged in an attempt to wring every dime -- more than $800 billion in new taxes -- they could from the American people. The bill was bad for another reason. If any lawyer had become wealthy working for government in a tobacco case, which would have happened under the Senate bill, the lawsuits wouldn't have ended there. Beer and liquor companies would have been next, or the coffee and cola industry, or the restaurant industry.

[A] group of luminaries from the American Civil Liberties Union has broken with the organization's opposition to the principles underlying the bill. . . "We believe that the First Amendment is designed to safeguard a functioning and fair democracy," the statement declares. "The current system of campaign financing makes a mockery of that ideal by enabling the rich to set the national agenda, and to exercise disproportionate influence over the behavior of public officials."

Accepting an obligation to protect our children and taking care of others who can't care for themselves is not the definition of the Republican Party. That description clearly is a reflection of the Democratic Party. And if Senator McCain has any ambition for becoming president, a move across the aisle would serve him well.

The tobacco deal went up in a puff of you-know-what. It pays to advertise.

AN incredibly cruel joke made by Arizona GOP Sen. JOHN MCCAIN to a Republican fund-raiser in Washington last week may have cost him any hope of his party's presidential nomination, and may even have torpedoed his anti-tobacco legislation on Wednesday. . . "I'll tell you why Chelsea is so ugly," McCain announced to the fat cats. "She's the child of Janet Reno and Hillary Clinton." . . "In this case, I think the joke was sufficiently crude and hurtful not to print it - although, of course, you leave the readers scratching their heads," he added. . . . Nancy Ives said the senator deeply regretted his remark and had written a letter of apology to the Clintons. . . But decent Republicans are disgusted by the "joke" and are questioning McCain's judgment and his qualifications for higher office.

Every now and then, exactly the right person gets the right job. Take, for example, Randolph Smoak ("SMOKE") Junior...a trustee of the American Medical Association. It was he who trotted out yesterday to lambaste the Senate for rejecting the big anti-tobacco bill. As Smoak put it, "Big Tobacco is practiced at one thing: Creating smokescreens." You think maybe the AMA picked this spokesman for his name?

"The tax bill would have hit (minorities) especially hard," Goldstone said in a speech prepared for delivery to African-American newspaper publishers. "Eighty-five percent of African-American families have incomes of under $30,000 and this group was targeted to pay $50 billion of the new taxes (that were to be raised by the legislation.) "Hispanics in the same income bracket would have been forced to pay almost $20 billion," Goldstone said. "In all, over half the tax bill would have been paid by Americans making less than $30,000 per year."

The tobacco bill failed in Congress because lawmakers tried to demonize a legal industry and impose billions of dollars in new taxes that would fall heavily on minorities, RJR Nabisco' chairman said today. "Well, the American people noticed, and they wouldn't stand for it," Goldstone said in remarks prepared for a luncheon speech to the National Newspaper Publishers Association in Memphis.

Goldstone's spoke at a gathering of black newspaper publishers, the National Newspaper Publishers Association, two days after a tobacco bill aimed at reducing teen-age smoking was derailed by Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate. He blamed the collapse of the legislation, which would have settled three dozen state lawsuits against the industry seeking to recoup the cost of treating sick smokers, on rabid anti-tobacco activists and politicians looking for "a pot of gold" filled by cigarette taxes. . . When asked, "How can you ignore the fact that tobacco products are responsible for many of the health problems in the black community?" Goldstone said selling cigarettes is a legal business, and adults should be free to smoke if they choose to. The object of tobacco legislation, he said, should be "making sure you don't have underage people making decisions whether to smoke."

"I'm against anything that provides no lifesaving to kids and is designed to save the political life of the people who vote for it, to provide cover, but won't save the lives of the children," Clinton said. "I don't see why we should participate in a charade."

"If you have the right issue, you can get people riled about it. In this case, I didn't see the advertising working because you never heard people talking about it." Which is why the tobacco industry advertising, which depicted the legislation as a "tax giveaway to lawyers," may have been more effective in Washington than anywhere else. . . "People form their opinions based on television," said Alan Pilkington, president of DDB Needham Chicago. "It has turned into a very useful surgical tool."

The question for Carter Eskew was as basic as they come: If the big tobacco companies put their names on television commercials, would anyone believe them? . . The campaign underscores the continuing clout of the cigarette industry, which turned to a longtime Democratic operative to mastermind its big-bucks campaign. It also marks a personal odyssey for the 43-year-old Eskew, who has had to endure whispers that he's become just another highly paid hired gun. . . To save money, Eskew's firm avoided Washington, New York and Los Angeles media buys as too expensive. This also had the effect of keeping the campaign low on the Beltway radar screen, since most political reporters never saw the ads.

The Senate's sweeping antismoking bill may be dead - but the tobacco industry remains in deep legal trouble.

The tobacco industry hoped to win protection from burgeoning litigation with its unprecedented June 1997 settlement with state attorneys general, but instead, it now faces more lawsuits than ever, with no chance of immunity on the horizon.

The tobacco industry will now have to contend with an increasingly critical American public. Two out of three Americans back the government in its efforts to rein in the tobacco industry, according to a poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Consumer activist Ralph Nader called the scrapping of the bill a "Pyrrhic victory for Big Tobacco" that will inevitably prompt even more lawsuits by states and private citizens. The Clinton administration and Democrats, meantime, are expected to keep tobacco in the public eye in the months ahead by making the deal's failure an issue in the 1998 congressional elections. Courtrooms, in which tobacco companies have for years gone undefeated, have also grown more hostile to tobacco makers.

Will the GOP's rejection of tobacco legislation have a similar effect? "I think it is a modestly mobilizing issue, but only modestly mobilizing," Gans said.

Without the McCain tobacco bill, a lot of Clinton's budget plans are up in flames

The tobacco industry has demonstrated in its $40 billion advertising campaign that, having decided earlier this year it would rather fight than switch, it is ready, willing and able to pour what it takes to help those Republicans who are willing to help them in their hour of need. Thus the stage is set for a fall campaign with tobacco use and tobacco money as a centerpiece.

Because, these analysts contend, anti-smoking forces spent more energy on beating up the tobacco industry and trying to drive up the price of cigarettes than on developing a comprehensive - and comprehensible - national policy on smoking. As a result, the legislation grew so expensive and so unwieldy that it lost support from longtime tobacco industry foes such as Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "The anti-smoking people played right into the hands of the tobacco industry," Mr. Hatch said. "They made the legislation so expensive and so onerous that the industry was able to get enough votes from senators who didn't like something in the bill that it died under its own weight."

The continued skirmishing is part of a saga rich with legislative infighting, political intrigue, and competing presidential ambitions. And though the antitobacco plan's official cause of death was listed as a one-two parliamentary punch by Senate Republican leaders and their allies, an examination of the plan's brief, tumultuous life showed many other factors contributed to its demise.

The collapse of the antitobacco crusade this week was more significant as a lesson in political science than as one in public health. Although proponents of the bill spoke gravely about tobacco's costs, the proposal failed largely because of fears, stoked deftly by the tobacco industry, that the bill's new taxes would provide money for new government spending..

President Clinton says he's "prepared to accept" limits on tobacco company legal liability if it would help win a congressional package of anti-smoking legislation. In an Oval Office interview with BUSINESS WEEK, Bloomberg Business News, and the Los Angeles Times on June 19, the President expressed willingness to consider anything to combat youth smoking except "some slimmed-down bill" that won't solve the problem. "We're exploring every conceivable alternative for how we could come up with a bill that could eventually pass the Congress," Clinton said.

President Clinton is denouncing Republican attempts to come up with a slimmed-down version of anti-smoking legislation, calling their efforts a "charade" aimed at giving them political cover.

The Senate's rejection of anti-smoking legislation looks unlikely to burn incumbents this election year: About half the public favors the action, and Americans overwhelmingly say other issues are as likely to decide their vote, an ABCNEWS poll has found.

While Republicans such as Mack complained that the bill had become a huge tax-and-spend boondoggle, Democrats argued that the Republicans had stuffed it with unrelated provisions such as a tax-cut for lower-income married couples and several measures to combat drug abuse. "Who added all this stuff to the bill? It's not like God added it," Shecter said. "The best way to kill a bill is have it die by its own weight. I think part of this was strategic."

House Speaker Newt Gingrich said a new, slimmed-down tobacco bill will include provisions that aim to block marketing of tobacco products and will include provisions that give the Food and Drug Administration authority over the manufacturing of tobacco products. Gingrich said Friday that House lawmakers are in the process of crafting a bill that "blocks tobacco companies from marketing to kids."

The death of the McCain tobacco bill in the U.S. Senate Wednesday sent outrage rippling through much of the country Thursday and prompted a harsh rebuke from Utah Attorney General Jan Graham. "Everything we dreamed of one year ago today has been shelved for the sake of dishonest politics," Graham said in a written statement.

Nick O Teen is the progeny of Butt Man, a two-metre cigarette who began attending Bob Dole's campaign rallies after the Republicans' presidential hopeful expressed doubts about the addictiveness of nicotine. . . And, in a demonstration of breath-taking cynicism, Republicans first loaded the legislation with unrelated elements, such as a tax cut for married couples, new anti-drug programs and a cap on fees for lawyers who sue the tobacco industry, and then attacked their own creation.

He said the bill "lost its focus" because it was overloaded with amendments that had nothing to do with tobacco. Those amendments reduced the money available for medical research, which had been Mack's top priority. The bill, written by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also had been stripped of liability protections for the tobacco companies. That made it impossible to get the companies to agree to the bill's strict advertising restrictions, Mack said.

"Using the same parliamentary tactics they used to kill campaign finance reform this spring, the Republican leadership thwarted the will of the majority of the Senate and killed legislation that could have reduced the harmful effects of smoking on children."

U.S. tobacco policy will have significant effects on tobacco control efforts worldwide. International concerns should be carefully weighed as Congress considers tobacco legislation and should be addressed to the extent possible. A responsible U.S. policy should include the following measures:

The House demonstrated yesterday what a long shot that was. Instead of keeping a commitment to deal with campaign-finance reform, it passed a nutty bill to abolish the federal tax code in 2003. Too bad, because today's campaign law enables Big Tobacco to keep buying friends in Congress who will vote to kill stricter tobacco regulation.

Most senators and representatives are smart enough to realize they would not solve the teen smoking problem with the legislation they put together, but they were political enough to assume that looking as though they were getting tough on tobacco would strike a responsive chord with the electorate. Perhaps it's time that those same senators and representatives realized what the electorate wants is sensible legislation that fulfills its goals, not politically correct legislation that does nothing to solve a growing problem but does raise taxes.

In the end the Republican leadership' s appraisal of the ill-fated tobacco bill was 100 percent accurate Laden with amendments it had become unwieldy. . . Maybe that wasn't really the strategy. But can you think of one that would have been even half this effective?

The tobacco industry proved again this week that it is very adept at marketing. Its $40 million barrage of advertising helped to kill the McCain tobacco bill. . . They simply needed to provide some public-relations cover for their friends in Congress who take their money and are inclined to vote with them anyhow. . . The Senate had the power to ensure that none of the problems identified by the industry actually occurred.

"Isn't it our obligation -- shouldn't it define the Republican Party that we should do everything we can to handle this scourge, this disease that is rampant throughout young children in America? Doesn't that define the Republican Party?" So saying, he put down his microphone and walked off the Senate floor, at which point the Democrats, in a rare gesture, stood and applauded, while his fellow Republicans sat silently in their seats. John McCain is not going to be the president of the United States. He is too honest and decent a man to be nominated by his party, let alone elected by the nation. And that, perhaps, is the saddest message of all to emerge from Congress Wednesday.

There is a good conservative reason for this: our marketplace is dependent on the free flow of accurate information . . if a product can be legally sold, it has commercial free speech rights to permit the most aggressive marketing possible. Is there no middle ground between societally damaging prohibition and the societally damaging promotion of smoking? Why isn't it reasonable to permit tobacco to be obtained with the least promotion possible - even counter-advertising . . . So, don't let the tobacco executives off the hook because of the weaknesses of individual smokers. After all, in the end, most of them are going to pay a much bigger price.

In fact, tobacco companies may now be worse off, since they now face major lawsuits with no protection from liability (a major component on their 1997 deal with the states). Plus, a flood of incriminating documents has made tobacco executives out to be liars for all their denials of wrongdoing. Bad choices made by free people should not be the basis for a massive government squeeze of a legal industry.

Government, in short, has nicotine-stained fingers. It preaches against tobacco addiction, but it can't break its own addiction to tobacco tax revenues. . . The point is that any realistic American has learned the hard way that sending more money to Washington is no way to deal with a problem that can only be dealt with in individual family settings. America doesn't need X-ray eyes to detect political smoke. . . And when it comes to blowing political smoke, Washington is the only town left in America without a no-smoking section.

Americans may yet get a tobacco bill. After the Republican-controlled Senate defeated such a bill on Wednesday, some GOP congressmen are wary of a potential backlash as the president and congressional Democrats go on the attack. And that means it is still possible the "narrow" bill GOP leaders say they intend to frame to curb teen smoking could end up being fattened before members adjourn in October to seek re-election.

Politics: Debt is almost gone, and money is flowing in at record pace. Backlash against Starr is seen as motivator. . . Democrats are hoping that the GOP-led Congress' resistance to Clinton priorities--like legislation to reduce teen smoking that the Senate killed last week--will keep its base interested in sending money.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., says the biggest scandal in Washington is what the tobacco industry has done to anti-smoking legislation, not the alleged sexual affair between the president and Monica Lewinsky. Speaking on CBS's "Face the Nation" today, Kennedy said the tobacco industry was only "interested in the political lives of those senators that supported their position, rather than the lives of children that are really at risk."

But even as the Senate sent the anti-teen-smoking measure to its grave last week, Lott was under pressure to formulate some kind of alternative legislation to keep Republicans from being tagged as protectors of big tobacco. . . Lott, 56, has taken $100,000 in tobacco political donations over his 25-year congressional career, if you include both personal contributions and those to his political action committee, according to the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause. The Center for Responsive Politics, a similar group, says he has received $30,850 from tobacco companies since 1994.

But three days ago, a Republican minority in the Senate bowed to enormous pressure by the tobacco industry and voted to kill this legislation. They voted against protecting our children from tobacco, against our families, and they voted against increased cancer research and against saving lives. The American people shouldn't stand for it, and I'll keep fighting to reverse it.

Lott, reached at a hospital where he's awaiting the birth of his first grandchild, was outraged at Clinton's political shot. Noting that three Democrats voted against the GOP budget that contained a $15 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health, Lott said, "Just as no one honestly believes those Democrats ... voted to kill fathers and grandfathers with terminal diseases, no one honestly believes the president's rhetoric today."

"The longer I serve in public life, in many ways the more idealistic I become," Clinton mused, "but I see day in and day out that the world is composed of builders, wreckers, and idlers. And most people in politics are either builders or wreckers." . . His once-bright hopes for building a significant domestic policy record this year now look decidedly dim, according to a variety of administration and congressional officials and policy experts.

The president also used his weekly radio address to take one more swipe at Republicans for killing an anti-smoking bill that would have devoted cigarette price increases and tobacco industry fines, in part, to biomedical research. "They voted against increased cancer research and against saving lives," he said. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was enraged. "For the president to denigrate Americans' celebration of Father's Day to try to score political points is outrageous," said Lott. He was reached at a hospital outside Washington, where he awaited the birth of his first grandchild.

Republicans can usually win when they can position themselves as the guardians of low taxes and small government. By the same token, Democrats have the advantage when they can frame an issue as one involving the protection of children. The tobacco bill, the most ambitious measure before Congress this year, lay across that political fault line

But the proposed settlement -- just short of a confession that nicotine addicts, that cigarettes kill, that children were targeted and that the companies deceived the public -- set in motion a process that has altered the fortunes of Big Tobacco, making the once invincible industry vulnerable in Congress, in the courts and in the arena of public opinion.

The tobacco industry has assembled a formidable lineup of lobbyists and representatives to further its agenda during the battle over federal tobacco legislation. And while they don't have many of the big names, anti-tobacco forces have also assembled a powerful team. On tobacco team Bob Dole . . .

James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general, was optimistic yet cautious a year ago, when state attorneys general announced their $368 billion settlement with major tobacco firms. . . "I'm quite convinced Congress is going to feel the wrath of the American people on this," Tierney said. "I don't think they fully understand the depths of the American people on this issue."

Attorney General Philip McLaughlin is impressed with the efforts of attorneys general and public health officials to regulate tobacco use and advertising. But he can't say the same for the U.S. Senate, which failed to pass tobacco legislation this week.

The Kennelly and Rowland campaigns spent some time last week bashing each other verbally over the U.S. Senate's failure to act on landmark anti-smoking legislation. Kennelly penned a letter to the governor, jabbing at Republicans for taking contributions from the tobacco industry. "Although you have received substantial support from the tobacco industry, I urge you to demonstrate your independence and publicly call on the Senate to reconsider the McCain bill," Kennelly wrote.

Most Ohioans polled supported tightening restrictions on the sale and use of tobacco products to curb smoking by youths. However, most of those polled were not in favor of raising the tax on cigarettes substantially over the next five years. Seventy-four percent of those interviewed for the Ohio Poll said they favored making it illegal for anyone under age 18 to use, possess or attempt to purchase tobacco products, while 25 percent opposed such a law and 1 percent had no opinion, the poll reported Sunday.

"I have said since this debate began almost one month ago that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to save lives -- young lives -- from the life threatening effects of tobacco and drug use," DeWine said.

The Philip Morris Cos. tried to hire one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists a few months ago, but Vin Weber's gut told him to say no. Instead, the former Minnesota congressman and his lobbying firm signed a less lucrative contract to fight the tobacco industry as representatives of the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids.

The political fallout predicted for Republicans who voted against the anti-tobacco bill is already happening for Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo. The three candidates in the U.S. Senate race, two Democrats and one Republican, said they would have voted differently from Campbell on the bill aimed at curbing teen-age smoking. Campbell, who is seeking a second term, voted with the GOP majority to defeat the legislation. . . Campbell said he voted to shelve the bill because it would have allowed unlimited fees for attorneys and would have raised taxes.

Republicans Mike ENZI and Craig THOMAS decried the tobacco bill as a highly politicized tax-and-spend measure, and reiterated their preference for a narrower effort to curb teen smoking without hiking cigarette taxes.

And so, after a year of trying to dictate the shape of national tobacco policy, the cigarette companies are back in court, hoping to avoid the verdict that spells disaster. Perhaps that's what it will take to stop this industry from denying the nation the tobacco policy it needs.

THE anti-smoking legislation that died in the U.S. Senate last week started as a noble attempt to address a deadly problem. But it grew into a tax and spend bill that gave Republicans the excuse they needed to kill it. The only winner was the tobacco industry, which for years has lied about the harmfulness of its product and its efforts to target teenagers.

The McCain tobacco bill failed for a number of reasons, the first of which is the least defensible: election-year partisan politics. . . Without congressional approval the cigarette companies are fully exposed to smoker liability suits and state medical cost suits. The trend is not in the companies' favor. If the law is left to take its course, the industry can expect to see its shareholders leave in droves before much longer. That's probably a better solution than anything Congress can devise.

Once again, freedom of speech is threatened in the U.S. Senate, and once again, newspapers must take the unpopular position, resisting these attacks while understanding the motives that give rise to them. . . Efforts to forbid advertising by tobacco companies also represent a threat to freedom of speech. Congress is forbidden by the Constitution from passing any law that abridges this freedom, and a ban on advertising certainly does that. This attack on freedom of speech is less ominous than the flag amendment only because it doesn't focus on the Constitution. In this way, it leaves open the likelihood that courts will strike down the law.

It was money that killed the tobacco control bill last week. . . Perhaps the biggest surprise was that the White House seemed shocked that a megabucks ad campaign might actually have its intended effect. Surely someone there must remember the first Clinton term and how Harry and Louise trashed Hillary's health care plan.

Tobacco and its bought tools in Congress have twisted this bill in every fashion imaginable, claiming that it will result in an uncontrollable black market for cigarettes, that it will help wealthy trial lawyers, that it's a "big government" solution and -- my personal favorite -- that it is a regressive tax on the poor. That last bit of blatant hypocrisy, coming from legislators who have never cast a vote to help poor people in their lives, caused Ted Kennedy to go into one of the finest rants heard in the Senate for years

If the Democrats needed an issue that would enhance their chances of winning control of the US House in November, the Republicans last week may have handed it to them on a silver ash tray. . . The Democratic strategists will have to effectively counter what is expected to be a massive and expensive campaign blitz by Big Tobacco in the coming months. Although Democrats will not have the funds to launch a counter-campaign as expensive as the tobacco lobby's, they will have one thing on their side that can cut through any campaign built on a foundation of deception and ongoing greed - the truth.

Even if Congress passes legislation this year that bans the use of human images in tobacco advertising, the Marlboro Man will continue riding high in the Third World, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union -- unless, that is, Congress also takes the unprecedented step of extending tobacco control measures overseas. . . This legislation, if enacted, would go a long way toward insuring that the Marlboro Man would truly ride off into the sunset, and not to Moscow, Nairobi and Beijing.

Beatitudes For Fathers, 1998: . . Blessed are the fathers who do not abuse tobacco or alcohol or drugs, for they will strengthen their children against the hazards they will surely face as they grow up.

If I could, I would find a way to make every kid in the country quit or never start. But I doubt the tobacco bill just defeated by Congress would have done the job. A better bill to discourage teen smoking can and will be designed. We can only hope that it can provide a way to save our young people without ruining our farmers -- and that won't be easy.

By Mary McGrory Children are all very well in their way, but Republicans don't see any reason to make too much of them. Do they make campaign contributions? No, they do not. Do they vote? Not until they are 18.

The House bill also was expected to cap lawyers' fees on the state settlements and restrict vending machine placement. But House GOP leaders have said they were dead-set against granting the industry the lawsuit protection it has demanded. Nor was it likely to include a per-pack increase on cigarette prices, the sources said. . . "Forty-three senators followed the bidding of the Republican leadership and the tobacco companies," Clinton said Monday in Nashville, Tenn. . . "No one doubts that this came about, in part, because of an unanswered $40 million advertising campaign by the tobacco companies which could not be matched by the Cancer Society, the Heart Association, the Lung Association or most of you in this room."

"I come to you today a bit depressed," McCain said at a luncheon attended by several journalists at the Inn at Harvard hotel. McCain, who is running for reelection to the Senate from Arizona this year and says he won't decide until after the election whether to seek the White House, swore off insulting jokes in the future and vowed to continue pushing for restrictions on tobacco companies.

"No McCain tax," said a red-and black lapel button worn by many delegates to the state's GOP convention. "Oppose the McCain tobacco tax," blare the television ads, more than a dozen times a day. And displayed in Iowa's convenience store windows: "Defeat the McCain tax." The widely admired war hero is the most visible Republican champion of anti-smoking legislation and personifies the potential political fallout from that intense debate.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, are co-sponsoring a $428.5 billion anti-smoking bill to replace the $516 billion tobacco measure that was killed in the Senate last week. "We hope to present it sometime this week," Mrs. Feinstein said yesterday on CNN's "Late Edition." . . Mr. Hatch said his bill would impose a $5.5 billion-a-year liability cap on tobacco companies. The initial McCain bill had an $8.5 billion cap, but it was removed by a Senate vote. The Utah senator sees a liability cap as essential to winning Big Tobacco's support for his bill. "They want to know what their liability is," he said. Another provision would "do away with class-action suits"

"I'm continually surprised by what Democrats think is going to be a great issue for them," National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Mitch McConnell (Ky) said in an interview . . . That view was reinforced by an ABC News poll released Friday that showed the public virtually evenly split on the outcome of the vote, with 47 percent supporting the bill's defeat and 46 percent opposing it. In that survey, 15 percent said they were more likely to support a Senator who voted to kill the bill and 20 percent said they would be less likely to support that Senator, but 60 percent said the vote would make no difference in how they cast their ballot.

Several hundred people gathered at the Surry County Courthouse to warn that higher tobacco taxes would threaten the livelihoods of untold numbers of people. . . About 35 companies -- from banks to insurance companies -- set up exhibits to show how they would be affected by higher tobacco taxes. U.S. Rep. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who opposed the bill drafted by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told the crowd he and others in Congress, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, are working on a bill focused on reducing teenagers' access to tobacco.

Raising taxes on cigarettes won't cut teen smoking -- that was one message sent to U.S. Congressman Rob Portman from those who came to talk policy and politics Saturday. Jeff Learman of Loveland waits to ask Rep. Rob Portman a question. (Tony Jones photo) | ZOOM | More than 40 attended a "town hall" meeting held by Mr. Portman, R-Terrace Park, at Anderson High School.

So why can the administration wage full-scale war on cigarettes, which kill slowly, but not against physicians who want to kill quickly? What¹s the key moral difference between the two events? The chief variance is this: Tobacco companies make a great target for lawsuits. Depressed people who contemplate suicide don¹t.

For a money-hungry politician, feeding at the table of Big Tobacco can be quite tasty. The 46 senators who obliged their cancer-peddling patrons by voting to kill the anti-smoking bill last week have taken in more than $1.3 million in tobacco money since 1993. Not surprisingly, of the 15 senators who pocketed the most, 13 were on the industry's side in the final vote. Among the biggest beneficiaries are senators from Michigan, Pennsylvania, even Montana - far from tobacco country. It's the latest sordid example of the links between politics and special-interest money.

The reform agenda USA TODAY advocates stifles speech and participation by citizens, candidates, groups and parties, and it is stymied by the Constitution. Tobacco is a convenient nemesis, but USA TODAY's reform agenda extends far beyond that industry, as it silences the voices of anyone not fortunate enough to control a newspaper.

The biggest fallacy of all was that the legislation would reduce teen smoking by 60 percent. . . Another fallacy was that the big, bad tobacco companies would be the only ones paying plenty, when, in fact, those doing much of the paying would be the one-quarter of American adults who happen to smoke. Except for the occasional columnist, hardly anyone bothered to note that these smokers are people, too

Meanwhile, as the clock ticks toward the fall election season when nothing much gets done in Congress, the House waits and watches the Senate. And even if Congress passes legislation extracting a huge cost from the tobacco companies and the tobacco consumers, a further debate and dispute looms as to how best to use those billions. If it all doesn't go up in smoke first. If it does, liberals who really want to strap tobacco can blame themselves for falling in with conservatives. Conservatives who really see such a deal as unfair and unfounded can thank themselves for finding such willing accomplices.

But a tobacco deal still could be signed into law before the November elections. Here are three reasons why: THE ELECTIONS: . . BIG TOBACCO NEEDS A BILL: . . WASHINGTON WANTS A DEAL: . . When Congress returns from its July 4th recess, look for the House to pass a narrow tobacco bill. Then, the Senate will adopt a modified version of McCain's plan. And sometime in October, Congress will have one more chance to pass serious tobacco legislation -- just in time for the November elections.

It isn't hard for Americans to get cynical about Congress, and the tobacco reform charade only adds to the cynicism. First, the Senate kills legislation that was supported by doctors and health officials; then the House offers new legislation, knowing that it hasn't got a chance and wouldn't do much if it did pass. . . While every American parent can be disgusted with Clinton's alleged activity with a 20-year-old intern, 3,000 kids start smoking every day -- and dancing to Big Tobacco's tune won't play well in Peoria -- or South Texas.

They created the campaign that ultimately convinced many senators that they could get away with letting tobacco get away with it. . . The commercials redefined the McCain bill as a regressive tax on the working class. . . This was a voluntary tax. Anybody who didn't want to pay didn't have to smoke. Were the ads actually suggesting that nicotine was addictive? But the campaign allowed some of the very senators who favor "personal responsibility" to recast themselves as friends of the working-and-smoking class

With respect to Gramm's purported concern for smokers, there are, appar-ently, three times as many nonsmokers who will not be affected by the proposed tax increase on cigarettes and yet will get the same additional $3,300 under Gramm's bill while single smokers, who will get socked with the higher prices, will get nothing. Therefore, the true nature of the proposed new deduction is simply a tax cut of fixed size provided to all married couples with adjusted incomes less than $50,000, and, whatever the merits of that, standing on its own feet, it should not be slipped through by reference to a nonexistent marriage penalty at that income level or the proposed increase in cigarette taxes.

U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona will speak to the Reagan Forum at 6 p.m. on Friday, July 10 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum.

So when the deeply scarred, highly disruptive Republican John McCain stood on the Senate floor last Wednesday, stared down his colleagues and accused them of honoring their debts to Big Tobacco over their obligations to "those who can't care for themselves in this society, and that includes our children," the few G.O.P. statesmen present sat silent while Democrats across the aisle stood and applauded. McCain walked out of the chamber. How did it happen that one of the decade's most ambitious pieces of legislation, which had so defied the odds that it seemed on the brink of passing, could have died so suddenly last week?

But the bill's demise is as much the story of an odd de facto alliance between tobacco-friendly Senate conservatives and passionate industry foes, who together made the bill appear so radical that it could not pass. Driven by vastly different agendas and never uniting in any formal way, these strange bedfellows nonetheless combined to make passage impossible and to preserve the status quo.

"I was in Idaho over the weekend, and there was a lot of applause out there for killing a big-tax and big-government bill," said Republican Sen. Larry Craig, a member of the Senate leadership. "The average person doesn't believe that tripling the price of cigarettes will keep them out of the hands of teenagers." . . "About 25% of the people in Arkansas smoke, and I think 20% called me," said GOP Sen. Tim Hutchinson. "The intensity of feeling on this issue was on the opposition side ... objecting that the bill was a gigantic tax increase that would create a lot of new bureaucracy."

After the tobacco companies pulled out of the agreement, were the Republicans drawn to their side because of large campaign contributions or did the growing scope of the bill really offend the GOP members' belief in small government? The answer probably lies somewhere in between. And the debate on blame continues.

A day after the Senate effectively killed the year's major anti-tobacco legislation, the stage for the Great Tobacco Debate of 1998 officially moved from Congress to the political campaigns. Faxes and quips were flying faster than airplanes in and out of Reagan National Airport.

The U.S. Senate's drip-drip, water- torture assassination of the tobacco bill shows how far the majority of members are out of step with average Americans. There's room for disagreement about how to solve the nation's most pressing problems, but the public is fed up with leaders who are unwilling to take the political risks necessary to reach solutions. . . If the Senate bill was overkill, the House's approach so far smacks of timidity. If the Senate takes enough heat for doing nothing on tobacco, House members may decide to do more.

The nation's most serious attempt to curb cigarette smoking was doomed from the moment the Senate's Republican leaders got their hands on the measure. . . It is now up to the American people to respond. If they let their voices be heard at the polls, there will be a tobacco bill after next year's congressional election.

The nominations are pouring in for the "Cave-In Award," designed to honor politicians who've demonstrated the courage to go down that long, lonely tobacco road, despite all obstacles. . . And to make sure he got the hint, the tobacco industry held one of the year's biggest fund-raisers for the Republican National Committee and its House and Senate campaign committees at the Washington Convention Center, just one night before the bill was to be voted on. . . Yes, Ashcroft's a terrific candidate for the Cave-In Award. But coming close on his heels is Missouri's senior senator, Christopher Bond. . .

What then can be done to reduce the horrendous cost of smoking? Pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale and distribution of cigarettes and other related products. It didn't work for booze, but it is worth a try. Cigarettes still would be manufactured here for sale overseas and there would be the same black market generated by a high tax and it probably would be impossible to police, but it would be a far more honest approach. . . And it might induce a lot of law-abiding adults to find some other, less harmful crutch.

Let them ban booze - the great journalist H.L. Mencken quipped at the beginning of Prohibition in the U.S. - and next they'll want to ban cigarettes, jazz and custard pies. If you stayed awake in high school English, you'll recognize Mencken's jape as an example of reductio ad absurdum. Once upon a time, the reductio was a splendid method of demolishing crank nostrums. No longer.

Big Government in the abstract loses the argument. But specific programs -- health care, child care, medical research and fighting teen smoking -- are popular. "The key issue is whether people consider these programs a compelling and important reason for raising tobacco taxes," Mellman says. They do, according to his polling. But until the battle on this question is joined, Big Tobacco will keep fighting the Washington bogeyman, hoping he distracts attention from everything else at stake.

Anti-smoking lobbyists argued that the bill's $1.10-a-pack tax was a way to discourage children from smoking. But the legislation's real impact would have come from allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the toxic content of cigarettes and forcing companies to market them less seductively and package them more truthfully. . . The anti-smoking lobby should have understood that regulating tobacco, not punishing the industry, was its primary goal. Instead, it became caught up in ancillary issues, like the cigarette tax and liability from lawsuits. . . Now, if there is to be a tobacco settlement at all, Congress must cut some legal slack for the cigarette companies; otherwise, they will continue to wage their so-far successful public relations war, calling the legislation a Draconian tax measure.

What Lott then has to do is muster either a majority to set Kennedy's initiatives aside each time or a minority of at least 40 to block a vote on the merits. More often than not - for sure on tobacco and possibly on the others - it will have to be a minority of almost entirely very conservative Republicans. . . In the case of tobacco, for example, the comprehensive measure drafted by Commerce Committee chairman John McCain of Arizona had 57 senators officially ready to vote on it.

Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga) and House Republicans today plan to unveil a scaled-back, anti-smoking bill that Members predict will spark a fierce, partisan brawl over teen smoking . . . The GOP's "seven principles," according to the sources, will: launch a national effort to reduce teen smoking; contain no legal protections for the tobacco industry; and grant the Food and Drug Administration carefully defined authority to regulate tobacco. The legislation will also limit tobacco advertising and provide the Federal Trade Commission the authority to police advertising; push a national advertising campaign to reduce teen smoking and drug use; encourage states to enact laws that punish young smokers with parental notification and suspension of their driver's license; and steer proceeds from lawsuits to states as long as lawyers receive "reasonable fees."

I mean, we basically know that the three elements involved here are advertising and access and then the general culture . . . If there is no advertising -- excuse me, and price, the fourth thing is price. And so if advertising can be isolated and we can see that in brand preference, I think it will help us quite a lot to forge some good policies.

New anti-smoking legislation should carry a dramatically lower price tag for the industry than the bill shelved last week in the Senate, lawmakers trying to revive comprehensive tobacco legislation say. House leaders are considering a measure that would charge tobacco companies somewhere between nothing and $4.3 billion. Two senators on Tuesday proposed a bill that would cost the tobacco companies $428 billion over 25 years, some $88 billion less than Sen. John McCain's bill, which was killed last week by the Senate.

Trying to revive anti-smoking legislation a week after its demise, Sen. Orrin Hatch Tuesday unveiled another big tobacco bill closely modeled on the deal cigarette makers negotiated with states suing them last year.

Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) said the bill's price tag is still too high to comport with the GOP's promise to lower taxes and shrink government. "I don't see the Senate getting bogged down in any bill that spends hundreds of billions of dollars," he told reporters. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass), one of Congress's foremost anti-smoking activists, said the bill did not do enough to discourage kids from smoking. "It's totally and completely inadequate," he said.

The Philip Morris Arena, formerly the U.S. Capitol Building, was the site of the defeat of the tobacco bill last week. . . As a reward, the tobacco companies should name cigarettes after their supporters: "For satisfying smoke-blowing pleasure, light up a Newt." "There's a lot to like in Lott Lights."

U.S. SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL is making a couple of misleading assertions about tobacco. But just as noteworthy is the venom with which he's spreading the disinformation. . . Adults generally do not take up smoking. So if we could keep children free of tobacco until they reach adulthood, the overall smoking rate would plummet, and so would smoking's death toll. We suspect McConnell is wrapping himself in opinion polls as political insulation. He took a risk in his home state by abandoning the price support program that's enabled small farms to survive.

But the public didn't count on a serious public health issue being turned into a political charade. When there was finally an opening for government and the tobacco industry to craft a settlement that would at long last address the human destruction caused by smoking, both sides gambled away the opportunity. Come Election Day, voters must send a clear message to those who have shown themselves to be so greedy and irresponsible at the expense of the citizens they represent. All bets are off.

Meanwhile, due to the demise of my bill, the elimination of the marriage penalty will be delayed indefinitely. An aggressive war on drugs will probably be postponed for lack of the $2.5 billion annually provided for it in the bill. Veterans who were robbed to fund highway pork projects this year will receive no compensation, whereas the tobacco bill included $3 billion to help pay for the costs of their tobacco-related illnesses. Furthermore, some Republican candidates might be vulnerable to the charge that their party is in the pocket of tobacco companies. And every day, another 3,000 kids will start smoking, one-third of whom will die early.

Those senators who believe Congress should adopt legislation closer in scope to the tobacco settlement of June 20, 1997, hammered out by state attorneys general and the tobacco companies must reckon with the political fact that there is little support on the right or the left for any liability protections for the tobacco industry. . . The companies will lose or settle every one of the state suits, just as they have lost the four state suits that have been decided, because the evidence against them is overwhelming. . . Many of our bill's critics opposed the increase in the price of cigarettes as an unfair tax on Americans with modest incomes. However, not a single one of the critics could explain how the burden on cigarette consumers will be any lower under the results of litigation. . . Contained in company documents is their concession that a steep increase in price is the most effective way to curtail underage purchases of cigarettes. . . Republican critics declared that the vote to kill the tobacco bill defined the Republican Party. I hope he didn't mean that Republicans are now defined by support for a marriage penalty tax and indifference to children smoking.

David Nyhan, Boston Globe In his home state and elsewhere, tobacco company ads savage McCain as a big-government liberal, a big-tax man who has it in for smokers and people who like small government and low taxes. It's the crudest kind of advertising, unanswerable at anything like that volume, and it has turned voters against him, even back home, where he's up for reelection. After November, McCain decides if he'll hazard a presidential primary run. He knows now that he'll have the tobacco lobby after him, as well as the soft money industry, a shadowy collection of special interests, whose nefarious influence is magnified by the surreptitous supply of soft money to sycophantic senators.

Still, we are kin, these smokers and I. Brothers and sisters of imperfection. Had the Tobacco Bill passed, my fellow imperfects would have borne the cost. In the spirit of solidarity, then, I opposed the Tobacco Bill. But why did Sen. John Ashcroft stand shoulder to shoulder with us? During his eight years as governor of this state - it only seemed like 16 years - he never gave a single signal that he was with us. He doesn't drink and he doesn't smoke.

"House Republicans are leading the effort to reduce teenage smoking by producing strong, common sense legislation that helps teens, without coddling the tobacco companies with limited liability and protection from lawsuits. "Our goal is to reduce teenage smoking, not increase taxes on millions of Americans. "The time has come to say NO to drugs, NO to teenage smoking, and NO to tax hikes on hard-working Americans. "Congress can do that by saying YES to strong legislation to reduce teenage smoking and drug use." Below is the Framework for Tobacco Legislation containing the principles Republicans are using to write legislation.

It contains neither provisions to dramatically drive up the price of cigarettes, as public health groups favor, nor the limits on lawsuit liability that the tobacco industry favors.

Setting up an election-year showdown with Democrats, House GOP leaders on Thursday outlined tobacco policy goals rooted in an anti-smoking ad campaign whose cost and funding source they have not yet determined. "The time has come to say no to drugs, no to teen-age smoking and no to tax hikes on middle Americans," said Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio. Far more narrow than Sen. John McCain's $516 billion measure that was killed in the Senate last week, the House GOP bill also would hold teens accountable for smoking by revoking their drivers' licenses.

An anti-smoking advertising campaign aimed at teens headlines the House GOP's tobacco bill, but officials close to the talks acknowledge Republican leaders have not decided how to pay for it.

House Republican leaders have made the same wrong choice as their Senate counterparts: to do what the tobacco lobby wants, not what America's parents want

"The Republicans aren't serious about this problem. Their proposal fails to address any of the eight steps called upon by C. Everett KOOP and David KESSLER to stop kids from smoking. Instead of listening to what public health authorities say we need, Republicans are proposing only what the tobacco companies will allow.

Even if the House Republican leadership does not include a tobacco price increase -- one of the most important elements of any comprehensive tobacco control program -- today's proposal does far less than what is even minimally needed.

It is hunting season for the tobacco industry. Last week, they convinced the Senate to kill the McCain bill, which would have protected millions of kids from the ravages of tobacco products. And today the industry successfully used the House of Representatives to place a decoy on the floor, hoping the American public will be duped.

We applaud the proposed amendment by the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific Caucus and the Congressional Native American Caucus as an important, constructive proposal to more effectively address the concerns of their constituencies in tobacco control legislation . . . We believe that the tobacco control proposal put forth by the congressional minority community today is a positive step forward, and should be seriously considered and discussed as work on national tobacco control legislation continues

But nonsmokers were not particularly enthusiastic about it. Only 42 percent of nonsmokers thought it should have passed. Why? Because more Americans though the tobacco bill was aimed at raising taxes and spending, than at curbing teenage smoking. The message got through from the tobacco company ads. Democrats plan to argue that the tobacco tax would have been used for things the voters want, like child care and cancer research and smaller class sizes. But at the moment, almost 80 percent of Americans say the tobacco bill will not affect the way they vote in the fall -- Judy.

"I love San Francisco," Goldstone told a gathering of tobacco opponents and members of the Commonwealth Club of California, sponsors of the luncheon. "We'll just have to let the lawsuit play out. That doesn't affect my view of The City."

Speaking at a meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California, the executive said he has not yet seen the full text of the newly introduced House bill and would have to wait and see what the bill looks like. But he said from the little he knows of the bill, it appears that it is focused on the issue of youth smoking. "The country needs to have a reasonable and realistic policy to deal with teen-age smoking," said Goldstone. "We need to keep working to resolve this issue."

RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. Chairman Steven Goldstone said on Thursday that anti-tobacco activists' stubbornness and a lack of leadership by the Clinton Administration helped kill landmark anti-smoking legislation last week. "The self-appointed leaders of our public health community, to whom politicians ceded their responsibility of office, turn out to have an agenda which excludes mutual resolution, at any cost, whatever the public health consequences," Goldstone said in a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California.

On the day the Senate killed comprehensive tobacco legislation, Sen. Mitch McConnell stood up at a closed-door meeting of Republican senators to deliver good news: The tobacco industry would mount a television ad campaign to support those who voted to knock off the bill. . . .But a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that Americans, by 56% to 39%, think the Senate should have passed the tobacco legislation. . . And by 33% to 16%, the poll finds, Americans blame Republicans rather than Democrats for the bill's demise, while 17% say both parties are equally to blame. By 58% to 25%, the public thinks the bill was defeated because the tobacco industry used its political power rather than because the measure included a huge tax increase.

I believe that the central reason the tobacco companies pulled out was not so much the money but was the uncertainty as to whether there would be some liability cap. And there was an unusual coalition of liberals and conservatives, for an unusual set of reasons, who voted against that; which is why, after consultation with Senator Lott, I came out and clearly said that I would be prepared to accept one and I thought they ought to vote for it. . . Whether your philosophically opposed to a liability cap or not as part of the settlement, under prevailing Supreme Court decisions I think it's clear that if we want the tobacco companies to limit their advertising and marketing, in order to do that they're going to have to understand to some extent what their financial exposure is in the future. So for me, I have no problem with that, and I think if you talked to anybody who really wants a bill, they will tell you that in the end, if we're going to get a bill, it will have to have some kind of liability cap on it. So it ought not to be too generous to tobacco companies. It ought to be something they still feel, if they continue to do the wrong thing.

New measure would punish teens and drop many items opposed by cigarette firms. Critics say it would do nothing to fight underage smoking.

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. . . 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.

During the past few weeks McCain's comprehensive tobacco legislation went down up in smoke in the Senate; he had to apologize for an off-color joke he told at a GOP fund-raiser about Chelsea Clinton and Janet Reno; and the Supreme Court struck down the line-item veto law that Congress passed in 1996. McCain, R-Ariz., was one of the law's original sponsors. McCain, speaking with reporters Thursday following the court's ruling, said, "I would like to point out that this has been a wonderful two weeks for me personally. I really haven't had quite so much fun since my last interrogation in Hanoi."

Unreported, when BILL ARCHER said the words, was whether his lip quivered. . . Surely the Republican congressman is steeled when the subject is "intense lobbying from special interests." Heaven knows Capitol Hill Republicans try to insulate themselves. And when the going gets too rough for a congressman besieged by special interests, the tobacco industry can always supply a condo and a jet to get away. . . It's a good thing there's always someone to turn to, some champion of the underdog, say, Big Tobacco, to which a congressman can phone in his getaway reservations.

Recent actions of Congress on campaign finance reform and the tobacco bill are clearly in the interest of Corporate America, which provides millions in "soft" campaign contributions. This leads me to conclude that we should privatize Congress and have the special interests that benefit from its action pay their salaries, expenses, and pensions. Americans would save a great deal of money, and the charade would end. Then everyone would see that we had the best Congress money can buy.

Their papers show exactly that they know their product is poisonous and that they lied and lied, and lied some more to keep going. To make money. At the highest levels, many get rich from the killing of us. Somehow they can look themselves in the mirror. . . The politicians in their employ don't even get rich out of doing tobacco 's dirty work. . . They just get to keep their jobs for a while longer. That is so very important to them that they spring an ambush when a John McCain comes up with an effort that would save lives, lots of lives. Small wonder that people think of politicians the way they do.

A Florida court has overturned the only recent legal victory won against a US tobacco company. The Senate has struck down the proposed tobacco settlement. But these are just battles. Richard Tomkins argues that, more worryingly, the wider war against smoking is being lost . . The agreement was emasculated by Congress, which stripped away much of the detail and contrived to turn it into a thinly-disguised tax-gathering measure. But Mr Clinton now has an opportunity to revive it. Realistically, Mr Clinton will not: a deal that gave the tobacco industry something it wanted would be too controversial. It is a missed opportunity because, just as realistically, the evidence suggests that a tax increase will not stop many people smoking, and cigarettes will remain the number one killer of Americans.

Will Democrats be able to use the Senate's rejection of the McCain tobacco bill against Republicans in this November's elections? Ashcroft: No, because people understand that this was not a measure that would have had a real capacity for preventing smoking by teen-agers. They understand that this is a massive tax increase and a massive expansion of government.

Clinton is continually stretching his executive and regulatory authority to put his stamp on policy. . . In the summer of 1995, Clinton authorized the Food and Drug Administration to declare nicotine an addictive drug, clearing the way for the most significant government regulations in the history of the tobacco industry. Last week, after the Senate killed a big anti-tobacco bill, Clinton ordered a survey of cigarette smoking among teen-agers as a way to identify those who market most effectively to underage smokers. Such market research was a key part of the bill that died in the Senate.

Thus, the objective should not be merely to take money from the tobacco companies but rather to regulate tobacco like the dangerous, if legal, drug that it is. . . * Give the companies only limited protection from smoking lawsuits. All this can be done within the general confines of the earlier $368 billion settlement agreed to by many states and the tobacco companies. It is not only as much as can be expected from Congress, but it also would constitute a great leap forward in controlling a major threat to American health.

Sen. JOHN MCCAIN (R-Ariz.) is ubiquitous in the press these days -- a little too ubiquitous for the Wall Street Journal. A top editor called McCain's spokeswoman to complain that his Journal op-ed piece on the defeat of his tobacco bill bore a striking resemblance to his Washington Post piece the same day. "It's a question of having pitched two similar pieces to two different newspapers at the same time," said Journal spokesman Richard Tofel.

Panic has gripped the House leadership. One sure sign is the way Speaker Newt Gingrich and his team try scheme after scheme to block campaign-finance reform. . . Last week The Wall Street Journal also reported that House Republicans were assured they need not worry about killing off comprehensive tobacco legislation because the industry would pay for television ad campaigns to support those who stood by it. Were reform to pass, such ads would be subject to strict fund-raising limitations that govern direct donations to candidates, as they should be. With each revelation of naked Congressional greed, Americans grow more disgusted by a legislature that puts its conscience out for bids. When Congress returns from its recess in mid-July, it has no higher priority than listening to the public's demand for change and, perforce, finding the spine to stand up to the bully from Georgia.

Big Tobacco and its political stooges are chortling because a drive to curb industry excesses, regulate tobacco as a drug and ban advertising aimed at youthful smokers, has been sacrificed on an altar of partisan cynicism and anti-White House rhetoric.

"You run for Congress, in part, out of ignorance," said Stephen Hess, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank. . . For example, Meehan is at the center of the fight over tobacco legislation and campaign finance overhaul. . . Gingrich bowed to the pressure - nominally. Since the speaker also controls the Rules Committee, he decides the parliamentary procedures for voting on all bills. Meehan and Shays's bill is currently facing 11 substitutes to the proposal and 250 non-germane amendments, meaning that lawmakers could cast as many as 2,750 votes.

If politicians truly care about underage smoking, they can enforce existing laws against smoking by minors. Of course, that approach does not give them more money and more control over people's lives, which is why it's almost a sure bet politicians will resuscitate some form of the tobacco-bill monstrosity before the year is out.

But some significant bills crashed and burned. A comprehensive tobacco bill perished after four weeks of Senate debate. And conservative Republicans managed to stymie campaign-finance reform in the upper chamber. Both issues are still alive in the House, where passage could reignite Senate debate. TIME could be the biggest problem

Corporations are expressly forbidden under federal election laws from making "contributions" or "expenditures" in connection with federal elections and candidates are expressly prohibited from knowingly accepting contributions made by corporations.

According to an account by Time magazine, the Louisville Republican told his colleagues that the industry was promising to run ads on behalf of GOP Senators to defend them against charges that they'd killed comprehensive tobacco legislation. . . And a spokesman for a Republican campaign committee that McConnell heads said comments attributed to the Kentucky senator by unnamed sources were inaccurate. . . Steve Duchesne, a spokesman for the tobacco industry, said the companies plan to continue advertising against legislation they see as harmful to the tobacco industry. Duchesne said they will not allow the record of this debate to be distorted. But he said the advertising is intended to make clear the industry's position -- not to benefit senators who cast votes favorable to the companies.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an advocacy group that favored the tobacco bill killed by Senate Republicans earlier this month, yesterday asked the Federal Election Commission to stop the tobacco industry from running ads supporting senators who voted against the bill and are running for re-election.

An anti-smoking group complained to the Federal Election Commission Monday after reports that tobacco companies may be planning illegal campaign contributions. But no such ads are in the offing, tobacco industry spokesman Scott Williams said.

An anti-smoking organization plans to file a complaint Monday with the Federal Election Commission accusing the major tobacco companies of making illegal corporate campaign contributions by promising to run political advertisements on behalf of Republican senators. . . The complaint, prepared by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, refers to news media accounts of a comment made by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to his Republican colleagues at a private meeting on June 17.

Public Citizen correlated pro-consumer scores for the votes on S. 1415 with the amounts received from tobacco PACs from 1993-1997 (the last three election cycles). The analysis shows that those 34 Senators who voted most of the time with Big Tobacco (scores of 0% - 20%) received over 7 times the amount of tobacco PAC money on average than the 40 who voted with consumers most of the time (scores of 80-100%). Senators voting with Big Tobacco most of the time received an average of $22,049 in tobacco contributions from 1993-1997, while Senators voting against Big Tobacco most of the time received an average of $3,195.

We are not particularly fond of the tobacco industry, whose products and prevarications have caused so much pain to so many people. But we wish public discussion of what to do about that industry were being held on a higher level. And we wish recently defeated anti-tobacco legislation itself were not such a glaring example of how not to draw up a piece of legislation.

The McCain bill would have saved lives. . . Having sabotaged the McCain bill, Sen. Trent Lott seems to think he can get away with some anti-tobacco tokenism to be announced later, something probably weaker than the settlement state attorneys general extracted from the industry last year. No way. Going soft now would reward Big Tobacco and betray America's children.

Republicans acknowledge that their tobacco plan is a weak cousin of the Democrats'. Though it would penalize teens (by taking away their drivers' licenses) rather than tobacco companies (by threatening their profits), GOP leaders will try to make a virtue of the very modesty of the plan. Most important of all, they have a plan - and maybe a shield when their rivals suggest in the fall that they were conscientious objectors in the war against youth smoking. Republicans don't like Clinton, and they're eager to disparage him. And though the common wisdom is that the GOP doesn't respect Clinton, the truth is far different. Clinton may not get much support from Democrats, but he sure knows how to lead the Republican Party.

Supporters of a strong anti-tobacco bill are rightly deriding Republican plans to pass a fig leaf or two against tobacco. But playing defense now is not enough. Anti-tobacco forces need to shift the debate back to higher taxes on the tobacco industry and other strong steps needed to coax teenagers away from addiction. That will require a higher level of political savvy, a greater willingness to compromise -- and tens of millions of dollars for a TV barrage against this dangerous industry and its political lackeys.

Robert J. Caldwell Now that Washington's great smokeout, legislation transferring half a trillion dollars from Big Tobacco to Big Government, has been snuffed in the Senate, the political blame game is on with a vengeance. Evil Republicans, cry the Democrats, voted for the demon weed and against kids. Democrats vow to make tobacco a priority issue in this fall's congressional elections. . . A Wall Street Journal-NBC poll conducted in April found that 70 percent of those surveyed thought the McCain bill was mostly about "additional tax revenue." They were right, which is why it failed and why most Republicans opposed it.

Our top national political story of the previous week--the defeat of the McCain tobacco legislation--continues to dominate the political world. Last week, the U.S. Senate GOP thwarted the efforts of Republican Senator John McCain, President Clinton and Congressional Democrats to bring tobacco legislation to a vote on the Senate floor. This week, President Clinton began to take actions of his own.

The state House on Tuesday passed a pre-emptory tax break for North Carolina's tobacco farmers and workers, warehouse owners and allotment holders who could receive compensation in some tobacco settlement measures pending in Congress. The bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Rex Baker of Stokes County, would exempt from state income taxes any federal payments that growers, workers and warehouse owners get as compensation for losses due to federal legislation.

The -- CNN-USA TODAY, Gallup poll taken this week shows that the American people think that the Senate tobacco bill was mostly an attempt to tax and spend 50 percent and only 41 percent thought it was to reduce teen smoking. You have really lost that fight, haven't you? KENNEDY: No. You know, I can give you the other -- the NBC-Wall Street Journal has entirely different figures and show that over 50 percent of the people thought that it was outrageous that we lost that fight and 30 percent think we should have lost the fight.

In a letter to Reno, the South Dakota Democrat based his request in part on a complaint filed Monday with the Federal Elections Commission by the National Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. . . "I fear that these practices will constitute a trend and result in yet another loophole in our campaign finance laws," Daschle wrote. He said the National Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids' complaint "makes a persuasive case that this next phase of advertising is solely intended to affect the outcome of federal elections, not public policy."

One way to hold down the crime rate is to stop passing laws against stuff that isn't crooked. Congress is off on two such toots. To cover their tails after killing comprehensive anti-smoking legislation for the tobacco lobby, Republicans are proposing a bill that would ticket youths caught smoking, take away their license to drive if they have one and force them to do community service. The earlier bill pushed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would have held the tobacco companies to costly account if they continued to pitch children. McCain's GOP colleagues instead want to make kids liable for falling for the companies' advertising. House Speaker Newt Gingrich has declared the new approach just right. He would.

June 21 The demise of the federal tobacco bill is bad news for Oregon. . . Oregon voters can do their part by keeping a close eye on political donations this year to see what candidates and causes are backed by tobacco interests.

Some politicians can only imagine the negative ads that will be aired against them if they run for president. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has already seen them. . . "On talk shows, people would call up and they would unwittingly parrot those [ads]," McCain said. " 'What's happening to you, John McCain?' " There wasn't "any doubt" in his mind, McCain added, that the tobacco battle has had a "significant effect" on his image as a conservative.

On Jan. 7, 1988, I signed the then-toughest anti-smoking legislation in the country. Nonsmokers were given relief from smoke in restaurants, in confined public spaces such as elevators and in the work place. At the bill signing, a spokesman for Philip Morris said that the company "feels that any kind of legislation that restricts smoking is intrusive, is unfair to smokers and is unnecessary." Ten years later, that statement sounds silly. . . In the latest battle, the cigarette companies ‹ with the unabashed support of Newt Gingrich in the House and Trent Lott and others, mostly Republicans, in the Senate ‹ defeated an effort to bring the McCain bill to a vote. . . We can still defeat these enemies of the people ‹ the cigarette CEOs and their lackeys in Congress : . . In the best of all possible worlds, we'd have both the increased cigarette tax and higher insurance premiums. But life is full of compromises, so I'll accept as victory the imposition of either proposal.

The problem for Clinton is that the Republican majority shows little interest in passing his Democratic priorities and last month it killed one of the key elements of his agenda -- broad tobacco legislation. Clinton Monday called for legislative action to reduce classroom size, boost the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) resources by $18 billion, give consumers a "Patient's Bill of Rights" to aid them in negotiating with health care providers, revive tobacco legislation and crack down on juvenile crime.

"Surprise, surprise, I'm a conservative. Did you miss that?" Lott asked by way of explanation at a news conference as he pulled the tobacco bill from the Senate floor June 17. He acted after efforts to produce a filibuster-proof majority failed amid mounting Republican demands that the bill be dropped. . . But it is his handling of the tobacco bill that appears to be most revealing about Lott as he heads into his third year as Senate majority leader with strong support among his colleagues but scant notice from the American public.

In a town where influence equals power, the lobbying industry can boast of some big numbers -- registered lobbyists outnumber the members of Congress by a 27-to-1 margin. . . The king of the lobbying crowd in 1997 was the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, which reported spending $17.1 million. High on its agenda: Giving patients and doctors more freedom under managed care health plans, and reducing teen smoking. Also lobbying on anti-smoking legislation was tobacco, beer and food giant PHILIP MORRIS, the second-biggest spender at $15.8 million. . . Overall, major tobacco industry players reported spending $31.65 million lobbying last year.

A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken after the tobacco bill was killed showed that fully 15% of Americans weren't even familiar with the measure, let alone following it day to day. And of those who were familiar, a plurality (44%) said it should not have passed; 36% said it should have. . . Meanwhile, the same "elites" in Washington who were puzzled by Reagan's success can't figure out what happened with the tobacco bill. But Everett Ladd of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research says it's easy: "When there's a big disjuncture between the elites and the general public, the elites are talking to each other too much."