Moe's bill, however, would earmark half of the money for efforts to keep kids from smoking, including a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that Ventura doesn't support. Low-income senior citizens straining to pay for prescription drugs may have been the biggest winners during Friday's four hours of debate, by far the longest in the Senate this year. The debate is over how to spend the nonrecurring payments from tobacco companies to the state, which are to be paid over the next five years.
All sides agree that the recurring payments can be built into the state's regular spending.
But Republicans, especially in the House, want to distribute it to taxpayers. . More debate on tap Nine Senate Republicans joined a solid DFL majority in Friday's 46-14 vote in favor of Moe's bill. He said he was pleased by the outcome, but he noted that much more debate lies ahead on what he has called this Legislature's defining issue. The dollar amounts are fluid. This is all negotiable.