WASHINGTON, July 14 (UPI) -- Following earlier proclamations of the death of the issue for the year, proponents of giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco have been somewhat emboldened by a House vote blocking a proposed $9.6 billion buyout of the federal tobacco-growers subsidy program.
However, the prospects for gaining approval for such a move remain pretty slim in the current legislative environment.
The House previously adopted a buyout of the depression-era quota program as part of the now-stalled corporate tax bill, the provision added by backers of the bill as a means to ensure support from a group of 40 lawmakers from tobacco districts.
The amendment to the 2005 agriculture appropriations bill sponsored by Reps. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Christopher Van Hollen, D-Md., would block the U.S. Department of Agriculture from paying agency officials to implement the buyout plan, although it does not disallow tobacco-industry revenue from paying for the program.
Flake and Van Hollen railed against the buyout as a rip-off of taxpayers.
"There's never a good time to spend $10 billion bailing out the tobacco industry, but in the midst of a war, a deficit and an economic recovery, this is the worst time," said Flake, a fiscal conservative who typically opposes expansions in government spending.
Vince Willmore, communications director at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told United Press International that Tuesday's vote shows the only way the proposal can gain congressional approval is by linking a corporate-sponsored buyout and taking taxpayers out of the buyout equation.
"This vote sends a strong signal that the way to pass a buyout is to link it with FDA regulation and have tobacco companies pay for a buyout instead of taxpayers," said Willmore. "A taxpayer-funded buyout clearly cannot win an up-or-down vote on its own."
The idea of linking a tobacco-subsidy buyout with providing the FDA with the ability to regulate tobacco products is nothing new and has long had some lawmaker support, mostly in the Senate, but requiring tobacco companies to pay for the buyout as well has gained limited support on Capitol Hill.
Given the power the cigarette lobby has with tobacco-state members from both parties and within the GOP caucus, the prospects for a corporate buyout, which has been floated by several lawmakers, is not great, according to House and Senate aides.
However, a more likely scenario that may possibly reopen the debate over the issue this year is linking a government-sponsored buyout of farmers with Congress giving the FDA the ability to regulate the drug.
President Bush has said that he does not favor a buyout, leading Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to come out in favor of pairing a tobacco buyout with an FDA regulatory scheme.
While opposed by a myriad of tobacco-industry interests, the move to regulate tobacco has the support of the nation's largest cigarette manufacturer, Phillip Morris, and a host of public-health and advocacy groups like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
But these endorsements have not been enough to ensure Senate action or gain significant support for the move in the House.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the second-largest tobacco firm in the United States, and Brown and Williamson, the third largest, have supported the government buyout efforts.
The effort on the part of Sens. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and others to gain Senate approval of providing the FDA with the power to regulate tobacco by linking it to a buyout this year was met with skepticism by prominent Senate conservatives.
The plan was given what was thought to be a death knell by the announcement last month by Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., that he would not allow his committee to examine legislation providing the FDA with tobacco-regulating authority nor negotiate with proponents of the move.
In the House, the subsidy enactment ban -- though dismissed as purely political by some Republican House and Democratic aides who said they believe it will ultimately be struck from the appropriations bill in conference -- has changed the tune of some tobacco lawmakers who have long opposed linking a buyout with providing the FDA the ability to regulate their product.
While Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., also predicted Wednesday that the amendment would not survive House-Senate negotiations, some tobacco-state lawmakers, including Reps. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., and Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., have indicated that they would at least look at a proposal linking a buyout with regulation if it means enactment of a buyout.
In addition, the National Tobacco Growers Association and tobacco-farming interests have previously said that they would support an FDA regulation if coupled with a buyout.
While the House's move has given proponents of the federal regulation of tobacco clear hope, the concept still faces difficult odds.
For one, the buyout is only included in the House version of the corporate tax package, and Senate Democrats have refused to allow the bill to go to conference discussions with the House over a final bill without assurances that they will be included in the negotiations.
Although Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has said he may attempt to force the Senate to move to conference through a series of little-used procedural moves as early as Wednesday, it remains unclear if such a move would be successful.
GOP aides told UPI that the move would at least give Republicans the ability to paint Democratic leaders as obstructing the bill.
Frist has in the past backed the general idea of combining a tobacco-quota program buyout and an FDA regulation but has not indicated support for the effort to do so on the part of DeWine and others.
If Democrats are successful in getting their wants for the conference, it is conceivable that they can push for the inclusion of FDA regulation powers to ensure that a bill containing a buyout can get through in the Senate, but there is little incentive for Senate Republican leaders to allow this to happen.
In addition, any such proposal will not face strong opposition from House Republican leaders, who are on the record against providing the FDA with, in the words of powerful conservative Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, any new regulation of a "legitimate" product like tobacco.
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