Frank Lautenberg: “I join my colleague from Ohio, Senator DeWine, and call attention to an unseemly lobbying effort to discredit one of our…”

“I join my colleague from Ohio, Senator DeWine, and call attention to an unseemly lobbying effort to discredit one of our Nation's most revered public safety organizations, the Mothers Against Drunk Driving, MADD, and one of our Nation's largest automakers, General Motors. Each year, General Motors donates money to MADD to support its campaign against drunk driving. In response to this, the alcohol special interest lobby is spending $10 million to finance a lobbying campaign--or as some might call it, a smear campaign. This campaign is aimed at scaring and intimidating corporate donors like GM so they will stop giving money to safety organizations like MADD. Apparently the alcohol lobby thinks it is bad for its business to crack down on drunk driving, which kills 17,000 Americans each year and injures over 500,000. Ten million dollars is not an insignificant amount of money. After all, the Federal Government only spends $30 million each year on public law enforcement campaigns to educate people on drunk driving awareness and prevention. What a shame. Imagine if the alcohol lobby would spend $10 million to educate people and prevent drunk driving, instead of bullying GM. Many of the customers they lose each year to drunk driving crashes could probably be saved, along with thousands of innocent Americans. That sounds like a much better investment than financing a smear campaign that will cost lives.”