Political Quotes

John Shadegg: I find it stunning that the pay-for in this bill contemplates an additional 22 million people who are nonsmokers today…

On the recordOctober 30, 2007
I find it stunning that the pay-for in this bill contemplates an additional 22 million people who are nonsmokers today needing to take up the smoking habit so they can pay the 61-cent per pack tax in order to have enough money to pay for the bill. So I did this graphic. I created all these cartons. There are 22 cigarette cartons sitting in front of me, representing 22 million, a million for each carton, new Americans who don't smoke now who would have to take up the habit to pay for the bill. I think that is a little deceitful. I certainly can't believe that the proponents of this bill would walk down here and say they think it is a great idea to have 22 nonsmokers in America start the habit.
Said by
John Shadegg
Arizona

Editor's note · Context

Discussing concerns about a bill's funding mechanism involving nonsmokers taking up smoking.

Share

More from John Shadegg

Mar 16, 2010

Oh, the cost went up. Wait, the cost went up? They have forced everybody in Massachusetts, like this bill would do, to buy a health insurance plan on the premise that the cost would go down. But in Massachusetts where they did it, the cost…

govinfo.gov
Mar 11, 2010

That's what we call defensive medicine, which means a doctor defending himself in advance or practicing defensive medicine because he is afraid he's going to get sued and has to be able to respond to that suit.

govinfo.gov
May 27, 2010

I have spent a great deal of my life advocating for the victims of crime. It seems to me this is an outrage that exists in current law. The victims of crime should not be revictimized. In this case, American law does revictimize those…

govinfo.gov
Sep 16, 2010

The underlying legislation creates a $5 billion government loan program to assist people in purchasing energy efficiency devices. Anytime we spend that amount of money, we ought to be very careful about the spending of that money…

govinfo.gov

Other voices in this conversation