Word: tobacco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pushy. Always wanting to change things, even bedrock traditions like due respect for the marriage of money and power. 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...
...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? McCain's landmark tobacco bill would have raised at least $516 billion over the next 25 years from higher cigarette taxes while increasing regulation, capping liability and fighting teen smoking. President Clinton was staking the finale of his presidency on moving the bill--not to mention the $65.5 billion worth of education and health programs in his budget that were pegged to new revenues. A majority...
Certainly the breathtaking $40 million ad campaign by the tobacco industry left its mark on those voters who were paying attention; just as the health-insurance industry recast Clinton's health-care initiative four years ago as a bureaucratic monster, the tobacco industry successfully reframed the legislation as a Big Government, big-spending, tax-hiking mess. But that effort alone could not have worked if a lot of politicians had not sat down and done the math and found that the poll numbers did not add up the way they had long expected. In the months leading...
...Tobacco Wars are far from over. Following the defeat of a critical anti-tobacco bill last week, President Clinton directed the Department of Health and Human Services to begin documenting which brands of cigarettes kids smoke. "It's a clever move," says TIME White House correspondent Jay Branegan. "This helps Clinton back up his claim that he's really interested only in keeping kids from smoking and not in punishing the tobacco companies...
...perfect Clinton initiative -- small, focused and inexpensive. Best of all, it provides political air cover to renew the fight for tobacco legislation. "Democrats on the Hill want an issue; Clinton wants a bill," says Branegan. "The hope is that the White House can maximize the political pressure, giving Democrats an issue for the fall elections." Better that than teen...