George Miller: “our national effort to hold the tobacco companies responsible for their criminal behavior of the past, of intentional…”

“our national effort to hold the tobacco companies responsible for their criminal behavior of the past, of intentional efforts to hook our children on tobacco and nicotine, was dealt a major setback when the Speaker of the House has indicated that it may be difficult for the House to pass tobacco legislation. It will only be difficult if the Speaker of the House does not schedule the bill. It is the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Newt Gingrich), who has the power to schedule the bill or not to schedule the bill, and then the House can address the outrageous behavior of the tobacco companies toward America's children. The Speaker spent the last 2 weeks traveling in America talking about lessons learned the hard way. Maybe the lesson learned the hard way is if they take their money, a million dollars of tobacco money, the Republicans cannot find it in their hearts to get America's children off of tobacco. If Members take a million dollars of tobacco companies' money, they try in the middle of the night, as the Speaker did last year, to put a $50 billion tax break for the tobacco companies in the Tax Code. Mr. Speaker, the lesson learned the hard way is that children need tobacco out of their lives.”