Word: tobacco
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...gave Big Tobacco much of a chance on April 8 when it declared war on Congress. Least of all John McCain. The Arizona senator was the good guy, after all, a war-forged Republican rebel with an unsold conscience and an unassailable cause: saving America's children from the demon's weed for just $1.10 a pack. And for a while, most Republicans were too scared to argue...
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...
...gives the Republicans cover." The GOP, after all, is supposed to cut taxes, not raise them. Gramm is happy because it's a tax cut. McCain is happy because his bill is still alive. But more than a few Democrats are starting to worry that the money in the tobacco kitty, which was supposed to save our children from Joe Camel, is being handed out in all the wrong places...
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...