Tobacco Documents Online

TESTIMONY BY THE HON. JAMES E. CLYBURN Member of Congress, Sixth District, S.C. Ways and Means Committee - November 17, 1993 Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you concerning the proposed increase in federal excise taxes on tobacco products. I speak today as one who fully supports the efforts on the part_ of the Administration, and on the part of my colleagues in the Congress to address the health care problems of our nation. I speak especially for those Americans whose income levels have denied them adequate health care and whose impoverished living conditions have deprived them of full economic opportunity. The question I raise with you today, however, is this: do we solve the problems caused by poverty in America by creating more poverty? - It may be one thing to look at this proposal in terms of corporate giants and a tobacco industry which can produce sixty- five billion in revenue to support new health care proposals. It is quite another thing to travel the back roads of the Sixth District in South Carolina and see the families who are dependent upon tobacco farming to eke out their living. Tobacco growing is one of the last outposts of family farming in our part of the country. It is a crop which can be grown profitably on small acreage by people who live on the land, and not by syndicates headquartered in the cities of America. Our former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop has been quoted as saying, "Most tobacco farmers know the right thing and the smart thing to do is 1

I to get out of a business that produces disease, disability and death." To Dr.Koop, whose work I have respected for years, I have two responses. One, tobacco farmers should be asked to abandon their business - only as we ask others to abandon their livelihood in operations such as the liquor business, the livestock business, the firearms and munitions business, the business of producing and operating the internal combustion engine, and all the other activities which some may feel directly or indirectly lead to disease, disability and death in our nation today. The tobacco industry is being singled out unfairly and unreasonably. The burden of paying for America's poor health should be shared, and should not be concentrated on an industry which can least afford to absorb it. Second, I would suggest to Dr. Knoop that he may know a lot about public health, but he doesn't know much about farming. If he thinks farmers can change crops as easily as city dwellers change flowers in their window planters, he's sadly misinformed. Farmers grow tobacco because of the economics of it. It's a crop which produces $800 to $1,000 per acre net profit. That means you can make a living and support a family off a small farm year- round. If, as Dr. Knoop suggests, you can change crops, the small ~ farmer is probably out of business. Corn, for example, might make w U1 $15 to $20 per acre, meaning that it would take thousands of acres ~ sA to generate the same living that a hundred acres could do with tobacco. 2

So the issue really goes beyond public health or taxation. It goes to the issue of fairness and equity, and it goes to the core of an entire way of life in our part of the country. These have not been easy times for my section of South Carolina. Four years ago, Hurricane Hugo ripped apart the land and the homes of the citizens of the Sixth District. Priority attention was given to the resorts and tourism areas along the coast. Inland, up the back roads and across the hundreds of thousands of acres of countryside, there had been little or no recovery. Only months ago, an economic hurricane swept across the same area. With the decision to close the naval shipyard and four military installations in Charleston, tens of thousands of jobs were scheduled for termination, many of them held by citizens who live all across the eastern part of South Carolina. And now comes a piece of legislation whose economic damage is targeted for exactly the same area. My friends, the tobacco farmers of South Carolina may not be numerous in comparison with workers in other industries across the nation. They may not represent what might be considered a powerful lobby in the halls of Congress. They number only in the thousands, and their success or failure may not be of immediate _ Q7 concern to the big city, large state interests of this nation. ~ G~3 But I can tell you this. Indifference toward the plight of W O the small farmers and the small-town merchants is what has filled ~ V1 this nation's inner cities with desperate people. Destruction of the family farmer in South Carolina may be only a blip on the 3

F computer screen of the Wall Street financier. But it is a matter of survival for an entire way of life in our state. Tobacco is not just the_largest cash crop in South Carolina; it is the largest by far. It generates.almost $200 million per year; after that it's cotton at around $80 million, tomatoes at around $58 million, and peaches at around $42 million. Corn and grains, by comparison, only generate around $60 million between them. You can see that you're not just dealing with a segment of our farm economy, you're dealing with a huge component of it. So please do not address this piece of legislation with any kind of misunderstanding about its impact. It would be utterly devastating to the economy of a state which has alreadybeen devastated in recent months and years. In my district, where poverty is no stranger, it would only deepen the wounds which have been there for generations. To those of you struggling with the enormous job of trying to find a financing plan for health care reform in our nation, I offer my full understanding and support. I come to you today not as a special interest representing a narrowly-focused constituency. I come to you as a colleague pleading for fairness, and pleading for_ the kind of judgment which would suggest that in trying to solve one problem, you may be creating far bigger ones down the road. CD Addressing the issues created by poverty in America is a C!t laudable and encouraging outcome of this administration and its 0 Congressional leadership. I am pleased to associate myself with that effort. 4

But creating new poverty in the process of solving the problems of poverty is a self-defeating exercise which will have exactly the opposite effect.- Let this be a time when we recognize the value of family life, the value of small town and rural America, and the value of a society which exists far from the inner cities of this nation. Please join me in finding alternative means of financing health care reform, alternatives which do not unfairly single single segment of our economy, and which do not jeopardize an entire way of life in America. Thank you. out a 5