The following is Senator Smith's Floor Speech, given on the floor of the legislature just prior to the passage of the bill:

President:

"Further discussion or debate. Senator for what purpose do you rise?"

Senator Smith:

"To address the bill."

President:

"The Senator has the floor to debate the bill."

Senator Smith:

"Fellow Senators who are here today to talk about the lottery bill, there are two issues here. The first issue is the procedure of how we got here. The second issue is the lottery itself. We were told last week that we were going to adjourn and we were not coming back. In reliance upon that, one member in our caucus went on his honeymoon. Whether he knows we are doing this or not today, I don't know. Another member of our Caucus lies sick at home. As for me, my body is here but my heart is in Philadelphia where my wife lays in a hospital bed after two knee replacements yesterday and I had to get a plane to get here today. I ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, does the end justify the means? How is it that we said we were not going to be here, but yet we are here? Is the almighty dollar that important? Is gambling money that goes into political campaigns that important? Is maintaining power that important that we would prostitute this process so bad? But, nevertheless, we are here and people talk about the lottery and as I have studied the lottery there are three basic arguments against the lottery. You can pick any one or you can pick all of them. The first basic argument against the lottery is its moral aspects. Some people believe that it is morally wrong for the government to be in the gambling business and for the government to be dependent upon an immoral activity to perform its function. Some people believe that it's wrong for the government to teach our children that when tough issues come along, that our moral compass is so out of whack that we will make expedient decisions. You know government should be about proper values and teaching our citizens proper values rather than teaching them to gamble. In our schools we teach character education, we teach our children to be responsible, we teach our children to have self-discipline but we see that we, as government, cannot do that and have to resort to immoral activities to perform a function that we should be performing. So that's the moral aspects of the lottery. Let's move to the social justice aspects of the lottery. Some people oppose the lottery because they believe in social justice. They believe it is a scheme that preys upon the poor and the hopeless. You know a Duke study shows that those in the lowest economic strata spend three times more of their income than the higher economic bracket. It clearly is a tax on the poor. Not only that, but we know that 5% of the people who play the lottery will become addicted which will result in crime, child abuse and domestic violence. What's the real cost on a family in North Carolina if we are going to have a billion dollar lottery? Some people think it is a dollar here and a dollar there, but if we are going to have a billion dollar lottery, we have three million families in this State and half of the families will not play the lottery. That means the other half, the 1.5 million families will invest out of their family budget $700, I will repeat that, $700 per year will go to play the lottery. You know I was doing some research and I found an article by someone I really respect who sits in this Senate and this is what he said and maybe he will remember these words: 'The lottery is built on the backs of the poor. It exploits the people who can least afford it to benefit others who are better off. I can promise you that if North Carolina approves a statewide lottery, food will be taken off the plates of children across the State. This happens now with those who abuse drugs and alcohol. Let's not compound the problem by adding another temptation for the weak and impoverished to have to fight.' I think those words were true in the past and I believe they are true today. Let me read you a letter that I got from a constituent, a Mrs. Lewis Fisher. It says, 'How many innocent children will go to bed hungry if you vote for the lottery? How many children will fear they will have no place to live? I know because I did. I grew up in a family of 13 with a partially disabled father and we had very little. My father became an addicted gambler. He saw gambling as a way to help us but it only made everything worse. I can still see my mother sitting at the sewing machine crying because we were about to lose our house. It is a painful memory. I grew to hate my father and it was years before I could forgive him. A vote for the lottery means that innocent children and families will pay dearly in physical and emotional pain. The State and society will pay, as well, with the increased welfare roles and the possibility of an increase in crime. It also sends a wrong message that you can get something for nothing. The real cost of the lottery far outweighs the perceived benefits. Remember, ill gained money brings no good. Please vote against the state lottery.' You know, a wise man once said that happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied. Righteousness is a fight for social justice. Righteousness is when we do what's best for those who are downtrodden. We need to be passing public policy in this State that's righteous and that helps those who need help. We do not need to be taking advantage of other citizens. And then we get to the third argument for those who oppose the lottery and I call that the good government argument. That's because the lottery is an extremely inefficient tax on our citizens. It is a bad, bad deal for the State of North Carolina. We are going to take a billion dollars out of our economy. Roughly 2/3rds or 65% will go to the gambling industry and for prizes. That leaves 35% for the State, but then we have to figure in the sales tax that did not paid on that billion dollars. That's another $70 million and then we haven't paid for the social costs that we talked about for those 5% who will become addicted to the lottery just as people become addicted to drugs. So at the end of the day, the State of North Carolina will get 20 to 25 cents on the dollar. You know, the State of Virginia, which has a very mature lottery and uses all of the advertising and all of the games, only gets $300 million dollars today from the lottery. So that's all we are going to get. You know the public school debt in this State is $5.7 billion so if we put half of the proceeds what we are talking about is less than 2% of the money that we need to build schools can possibly come from the lottery. My fellow Senators, there is a better way and we have not approached the better way. The better way is for the State of North Carolina to assume the responsibility to pay for Medicaid. If we would just as a state assume the responsibility to pay for Medicaid, then the money left to the schools and especially to our poor low-wealth counties would fund our education and we would not have a leandro problem and would build the schools that are necessary. That is the answer but we don't do that. But what we continue to do is try to find more money and more money for our state budget so that we can fund $150 million in pork barrel spending. You know, education is the most important thing other than public safety that our state government does. We spend 55% of our budget on education and, ultimately, passing this lottery will hurt the educational funding for our children. As my colleagues have stated, other states have seen money moved from education funding to other places as people and states depend upon the lottery. Just as we have done with trust funds in the past, we pass them and we say they are for this use and we need the money and it goes somewhere else. That's what will happen here. Let me quote a person who we honored in this Chamber and who is one of the bright stars of this State, President Emeritus, Bill Friday. He is right on so many issues. I wonder why he can be so wrong on his position on the lottery. President Friday puts it this way. 'I do not want to see my State that has done so much for so many, always manifest strong positive leadership, now to say to its young people, yes, we are going to provide the best educational opportunity possible but we are going to resort to gambling to find the dollars to do that.' So my fellow Senators, I would urge you today to vote against this bill. You know we just passed a budget that has $150 million in pork. The budget we just passed, if you got to the end of it, had $534 million of surplus. If we needed a lottery, how did we end up with the $534 million surplus? You know, at the end of the day I believe what we need to do here is to do what is right for our citizens to seek and stand for the good of society, to uphold and promote that which is best. I realize that Senator Hoyle said in the paper today that this is a bad, bad issue but those republicans who oppose the lottery will somehow have to pay for it. As for me, I am prepared to pay that price because as Grantland Rice said, 'It's not whether you win or lose but how you play the game that counts.' We need to be doing what is good because as the Prophet Micah said, 'He has shown you, old man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercily, and to walk humbly with your God.' I don't know what you are going to do at the end of the day, but I will tell you what I am going to do if this lottery passes with the procedure that we have gone through and with the harm that I think this is going to do for many of our citizens. I am going to go home tonight and I am going to take a good bath and I am going to use a lot of soap."