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Thursday, September 11, 2014

C-SPAN: U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee 1994 Hearing on Tobacco - Tobacco CEO's Testify Before Congress


Source: C-SPAN- U.S. Representative Ron Wyden, D, Oregon-
Source:C-SPAN

The then Democratic controlled House of Representatives looked into tobacco by investigating the industry and looking at ways of regulating the industry. The famous scene with all of those tobacco executives lying under oath that tobacco isn't addictive. Which no one with a brain who's familiar with tobacco believes, was the big moment during that investigation. People who support regulating tobacco like a drug didn't achieve their goals in the 103rd Congress. But with a Democratic Congress both House and Senate and a Democratic President in Bill Clinton, it was worth the effort.

As far as health care reform and the Clinton Administration's attempt to reform the health care system in America. If it wasn't dead by the spring of 1994, it probably just had a heart attack and needed emergency surgery in order to save it. If you look at the plan that President Clinton proposed and what President Obama was able to get through another Democratic Congress in 2010, both laws are very similar. Expanding health insurance through the private insurance system and helping people who aren't officially poor, but do not make enough money to buy health insurance. And regulating the private health insurance system.

But the problem that President Clinton and his economic council had was that they weren't able to explain what I just did as simply as I did. And the plan was dubbed socialize medicine, even though there was never a plan offered by President Clinton or the Democratic Leadership in Congress to nationalize health care system. Either health insurance or health care delivery. And the Clinton Administration was never able or never did fight back in an effective way. And argue that the Clinton health care plan was mainstream and not some big government socialist takeover.

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John F. Kennedy Liberal Democrat

John F. Kennedy Liberal Democrat
Source: U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy in 1960