Senate Strikes $50 Billion Tobacco Rebate

  • Share
  • Read Later
WASHINGTON: If there's one thing a Congressman hates, it's looking like a tool of big business especially when it's a business as unpopular as Big Tobacco. Although a provision was quietly slipped into last month's tax-cut legislation allowing tobacco companies to use the cost of a gradual 15-cent per pack increase some $50 billion as a credit towards the proposed $368.5 billion national settlement, Senators began to disown the plan once it was made public. Wednesday, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to squash it altogether. "This is the kind of thing that no Congressman wants to go on the record as having voted for," notes TIME's James Carney. The 95-3 vote showed that few did.