http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/editorial/97/09/12/smoke.01.html

ASH TRAY
Right to try snuffing out tobacco tax break

The proposed tobacco settlement pending before Congress has all the
clarity of cigarette smoke. Citizens for the most part haven't got a
clue whether it will be good or bad, though House Speaker Newt Gingrich,
RGa., says his litmus test will be simply asking who benefits in the
end.

It's still a way from the end in the case against the tobacco industry,
but the taxpayers already have had smoke blown their way on at least one
issue, tax breaks for tobacco.

A $50 billion tax break for the industry was quietly inserted at the
last minute into the massive tax bill last July (under Gingrich's eye,
it should be noted). That measure lets the industry subtract the $50
billion to be raised by new tobacco taxes that would be earmarked for
children's health from the $368.5 billion the tobacco companies would
have to pay over 25 years under the proposed settlement.

Fortunately, the Senate voted this week to do away with the windfall
which one senator said, "shines and stinks like a rotten mackerel in the
moonlight."

The House should now do the same.

Also worthy of support is a measure to be filed by Sens. Connie Mack,
RFla., and Tom Harkin, DIowa, that would bar the industry from taking
eventual settlement payments as a tax deduction. Instead of saving the
industry an estimated $100 billion, the money would go to the National
Institutes of Health.

The idea that the Congress would reach a $368 billion settlement with
the industry and then allow $150 billion of it as a tax break is
ludicrous. Who would be paying a penalty here? The taxpayers, in
essence, would be paying a good portion of it.

Congress and smokefilled rooms have always been a concern. Congress and
tobacco money may be, in this instance, the political equivalent of
secondhand smoke.