Thomas Daschle: “Can we stop kids from smoking? Can we turn this around, or not? And can we find a way with which to address the concerns…”

“Can we stop kids from smoking? Can we turn this around, or not? And can we find a way with which to address the concerns expressed to us by many of our colleagues? We believe we can address the marriage penalty for a whole lot less than $52 billion. But our objective is not to gut the bill. Our objective isn't to say we are going to use up all that money because we don't want to spend it on stopping kids from smoking; we don't want to spend it on research; we don't want to spend it on tobacco farmers; we don't want to recognize what has already been achieved in the State-by-State negotiations on this issue and the tremendous effort put forth by attorneys general all over the country in an effort to resolve this at the State level. The Federal Government didn't do that. For whatever reason, we didn't go to court. The States did.”