All Things Considered - Transcript

National Public Radio (NPR)

SHOW: All Things Considered (8:00 PM ET) - NPR

July 16, 2004 Friday

HEADLINE: Tobacco quota buyout bill joins initiative to give FDA broad regulatory powers over tobacco products in Senate

ANCHORS: ROBERT SIEGEL

REPORTERS: DAVID WELNA

BODY:
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

After spending most of the week debating and then blocking a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, the Senate performed another kind of marriage yesterday. By a vote of 78-to-15 it approved a piece of legislation uniting a very odd couple, a tobacco quota buyout bill being pushed by growers and a bill backed by anti-tobacco forces that gives the Food and Drug Administration broad powers to regulate tobacco products. What's not clear is whether this legislative marriage will last or go up in smoke. From the Capitol, here's NPR's David Welna.

DAVID WELNA reporting:

It was Senate Republican Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky who escorted one half of the tobacco bill to the Senate chamber, the half calling for the tobacco industry to buy out farmers who hold tobacco-growing quotas issued by the government since the Great Depression. These rights for certain ancestral growers would cost $12 billion. Such a buyout has never mustered enough support on its own in the Senate, but then neither has a very different tobacco proposal, giving the FDA the authority it currently lacks to regulate the sale, advertising, labeling and manufacture of tobacco products. McConnell admitted he was not at all in love with this other half of the bill.

Senator MITCH McCONNELL (Republican, Kentucky): This was a marriage of convenience. I can recall as recently as in 1996 when I was running for re-election in my state, we were all wearing these T-shirts that said, 'Keep the FDA off the farm.'

WELNA: Ohio Republican Mike DeWine, who was a chief sponsor of the FDA tobacco regulation, said he agreed with McConnell's assessment.

Senator MIKE DEWINE (Republican, Ohio): Yes, it is a marriage of convenience, but I happen to believe it's going to be a good marriage.

WELNA: But the honeymoon may already be over. Some tobacco state senators who voted for yesterday's measure issued a warning, that it will seek to shrink FDA regulatory authority over tobacco in a conference report both the House and Senate would have to agree on. Here's Virginia Republican George Allen.

Senator GEORGE ALLEN (Republican, Virginia): I'm voting for this because of the quota buyout. I hope that the conference report-I know Senator DeWine may not have the same hopes, but I'll express my views is that I hope that the conference report will knock out or diminish the harmful impact of FDA on convenience stores and advertising consistent with First Amendment rights.

WELNA: On his side, regulations proponent DeWine was not ready to yield any ground.

Sen. DEWINE: I hope that this marriage continues. He hopes for a divorce. I hope that the marriage will be a long-lasting one, and, as I've said earlier, I think it will. I think it is a logical marriage, and I think the FDA regulation will not be onerous. I think tobacco farmers will not in any way be burdened by this.

WELNA: Tobacco state legislators like Virginia's George Allen will have a chance to reduce the regulations when Senate negotiators sit down to deal with their House counterparts. The tobacco deal is attached to a much larger corporate tax bill. But while the House bill includes a tobacco buyout, it does not include FDA regulations, which House leaders strongly oppose. The senators backing FDA control over tobacco did not get any promises from Republican leaders that the measures approved yesterday would be kept intact in the final compromise version of the bill. As an aide to one Democratic senator put it, 'We're going to have to fight like hell to keep the regulatory provisions from being watered down.' If they are, he warned the marriage of convenience that raised hopes for regulating tobacco could be short-lived. David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.