Political Quotes

“I did not plan to speak on this amendment, but I was listening to the discussion back in my office and I thought, how silly do we think the American people are. I think it was 62 years ago, I am 72 at the present time, when my mother and father said, There will be no use of tobacco in this house; it is addictive and it is injurious to your health. That was 62 years ago, and here we stand and we say, boy, people lied to us and we did not know it. Now, my colleagues know that that is nonsense. We have known it for a long, long, long, time. But I am also surprised when we stand down here and we talk about the cost of tobacco. There is not anyone, probably in this House, who is a leading campaigner against the use of tobacco. One of our young Congressmen when I first came here, a diabetic, a chain smoker, I tried and tried and tried my best to help him break the habit, but he could not and he died very young. I am amazed when we talk about the cost, when no one talks about alcohol. My attorney general came to me and said, we have to have this money; we have to have this money, boy, the cost to Medicaid and Medicare. And I said, wait a minute, the cost to Medicaid and Medicare, the cost to veterans health? Talk about alcohol. It is only about 10, 12, 15, 20 times as great in relationship to the cost, but it goes way beyond that. Abusive in the home, physical abuse, mental abuse, and on and on the list goes.”