William Helms: “we have taken on the air of a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera here tonight and all this week. I heard on the radio, I…”

“we have taken on the air of a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera here tonight and all this week. I heard on the radio, I say to my colleague from North Carolina, on the early morning news, several days ago, I heard a Senator say, ``Yes, we are going to give umpteen hundred million dollars to children''--he didn't say children, he said ``chillin,'' and, oh, how benevolent he was-- ``because we are going to raise the cigarette tax,'' we are going to sock the tobacco companies. Well, he is not going to do any such thing. But that is what he wants the folks back home to think. Speaker after speaker has pointed out that you are not taxing the tobacco companies; you are taxing the lower income people of this population of the United States. If you don't believe it, look at the record. Yet, they say, we are socking it to the tobacco companies--the evil tobacco companies--and they have all sorts of statistics that they pulled out of their hip pocket, saying how many lives it is going to save. They are not going to save any lives. The point is, I say to my friend from Kentucky, it is so much hot air. They know it is hot air, but they have nothing else to say. And they want a headline back home that Senator Joe Blow really socked it to the tobacco companies. No, Joe Blow is not socking it to the tobacco companies. He is socking it to the low-income people of this country who do something that maybe Joe Blow doesn't do--enjoy cigarettes. I don't smoke.…”