Word: tobacco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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WASHINGTON: If anyone's wondering what middle-class married couples have to do with the crimes of Big Tobacco, Texas Republican Phil Gramm is the man to ask. "If we're raising taxes for tens of billions of dollars for spending, then why not give part of it back?" Gramm said after his amendment to the tobacco legislation passed the Senate Thursday. It would use a slice of the $516 billion that John McCain, the bill's sponsor, envisions collecting from the industry to finance dropping the "marriage tax" penalty for couples earning less than $50,000 a year...
WASHINGTON: Majority Leader Trent Lott likes to run the Senate his way -- and he usually succeeds. 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...
...Democrats are using an old gambit that couldn't save John McCain's last effort -- campaign finance reform -- but may well work this time around: threatening to attach the tobacco bill as an amendment to every piece of legislation that Lott touches. "The Republicans are under some pressure to keep the bill alive because they're in charge," says TIME congressional correspondent John Dickerson. "They don't want to be a do-nothing Congress, and they don't want to get tagged with a pro-tobacco label." So they budged, and both Daschle and the White House seem...
...looks too much like tax-and-spend liberalism; they want to add tax cuts. Democrats like the bill as is; they're trying -- so far in vain -- to close debate and force a vote on the existing version. It's a good old-fashioned Senate stalemate, and suddenly the tobacco industry has something to chuckle about: An ugly Beltway bill is headed for an ugly Beltway funeral...
...Right now the bill looks awfully close to being killed," said TIME congressional correspondent John Dickerson. "There are procedural battles, political battles, even parliamentary battles -- precious few of them actually have to do with tobacco itself...