Jay Rockefeller: “I am trying to protect disabled American veterans who have been addicted to nicotine and who will be barred from getting…”

“I am trying to protect disabled American veterans who have been addicted to nicotine and who will be barred from getting compensation as a result of this. All I can say is that my amendment seeks to strike $10.5 billion that was put artificially, by trumped-up means, into the veterans' baseline. If there is a study or something to look at it in the future, it will then be too late--my purpose will be dead. I want to return to veterans that $10.5 billion which is ascribed to roads--which we treasure in West Virginia, but which, because of the good work of my senior colleague, we are doing very well with. But I care about veterans. We have approximately 200,000 of them in West Virginia. We have 26 million of them in this country. This is a blatant attempt, under a whole new concept--despite our new understanding of addiction to tobacco in general, and our new understanding of addiction to tobacco by veterans in the service--to take money away from helping veterans and give it to highways.”