CARROLLTON, Ky. — President Clinton traveled to the tobacco belt Thursday to make a case for landmark legislation likely to shrink the region's lifeblood industry, and he was greeted by an avalanche of anxiety from farmers and employees of tobacco companies.
Tobacco farmer Mattie Mack gave the president an earful, telling him that tobacco had paid a lifetime of bills for her family and that she opposes the legislation.
"We shouldn't be penalized on account of children smoking," said Mack, who raised four children and 38 foster children. "It's parents' responsibility to teach their children not to smoke, not tobacco farmers' responsibility not to grow the golden leaf."
Although she also raises livestock, Mack said: "They don't bring nothing, and the only thing that we look forward to is tobacco, end of the year, so we can have a little Christmas, have the grandkids come down and play Santa Claus."
Legislation that passed a key Senate committee last week would impose sweeping new costs and regulations on the tobacco industry, raise the cost of a pack of cigarettes by $1.10 over five years and decrease demand for the tobacco that Mack and tens of thousands of farmers like her grow.
The president and many lawmakers from both parties in Congress support the legislation as a vehicle to counteract the surge in teen smoking.
For farmers and other tobacco workers, Mack declared in her lively, down-home lecture, "tobacco ain't only bad, it's good."
While Mack made her protest inside, hundreds of other farmers and tobacco workers demonstrated outside, carrying signs with such messages as "My tobacco job pays my bills" and "Don't tax us out of jobs."
They chanted, "No more taxes," when the president's motorcade passed.
Enacting tobacco legislation is Clinton's domestic priority this year, and many of his other initiatives--from day care to school construction--depend on the $516 billion that would be raised from the new taxes on cigarettes.
The president's foray into tobacco country came just a day after the nation's major cigarette manufacturers announced that they were pulling out of tobacco-control efforts by state attorneys general, public health groups, Congress and the administration, and would fight the Senate legislation.
But Clinton stressed that he is determined to push Congress to adopt legislation this year, whether or not the tobacco industry is on board.
