WPLN News Archive; Tobacco Buyout Legislation (PRI Melinda Wittstock) 3 8 04; News Archive 2/27/04-4/21/04

the tobacco buyout made it back in the headlines the moment the speaker of the house started campaigning in kentucky last month for republican race for a vacant house seat dennis hastert promised kentucky voters he breathed new life into the buyout plan the gop candidate lost to a democrat but buyout supporters say a promise is still a promise but i think your average employee wrote about him for four years congressman lincoln davis represents central tennessee the democrat is a member of the house agriculture committee charged with writing the buyout legislation he says it's crucial congress agrees does here to help tennessee's tobacco growers are around we see tobacco leaving leaving the form of course of the list would provide the tobacco buyout we are doing extremely iraq war horror of your

tobacco farmers a buyout would end a federal price support system that's fueled american tobacco since the nineteen forties advocates say it would allow farmers to compete more effectively with cheaper for importers farmers now grow less than half what they did in nineteen ninety seven and the federal government cut quotas by another ten percent last year but before farmers and quota holders give up on the old system they want as much as fifteen billion dollars for their losses is a fairness issue in my view we need to get these so farmers and families who've had these farms for generations a chance to retire with dignity or to compete effectively on the world market elizabeth dole of north carolina sponsored last year's failed effort in the senate the republican hopeful of more success this year but senate majority leader bill frist of tennessee says no buyout plan will make it out of congress without first allowing the food and drug administration to regulate tobacco i personally believe that the tobacco buyout make sense and i also would like it to appropriate fda oversight sensors

smoking kills more people in the world and i think it's appropriate that we have some sort of job cigarette makers with the exception of philip morris oppose fda regulation and in the house the gop leadership is refusing to tie the buyout to the agency's oversight tennessee republican marsha blackburn represents the seventh district stretching between nashville and memphis she says it will be an uphill battle to reconcile differences over fda involvement that will we will have to work on it we try it do are going to find a revelation so they are in a cost effective regulation the issue said of course and that caught the end of gunfire and there i headed to those that had been tobacco growers to make their livelihood from from our growing tobacco very sorry that you think are going to be very important in a day i don't think anybody and big that and i think we are yet to be exactly what it's going to come out supporters from both parties say members are worried about adding to a

budget deficit now surpassing half a trillion dollars many also think it's wrong to make cigarette makers foot the bill congressman davis so having first of all those who complain about a product would absorb most of the court who thought that that reported being used by davis is trying to convince his colleagues to support a fifteen billion dollar buyouts all whistle republicans and democrats that would blithely put a way to attach a fleet of the biker companies that would be used to provide the dollars they do for about a fifteen billion dollar buyout owner appeared in seven years which the abortion for one is others being proposed by earmarking thousands of suspects davis says he's optimistic a buyout can be agreed this year but even if the house does pass the bill the senate action is far from certain the republican chairman of the senate committee that would oversee any such buyout legislation new

hampshire's judd gregg says it's highly unlikely the senate will reignite a buyout plan is here for national public radio i'm linda woodstock on capitol hill right now