Florida GOP didn’t quite get the message
posted at 7:15 pm on April 16, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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So with all of the tax-day Tea Parties, all of the outrage at the explosive growth of government, and all of the opposition to the inevitable demand for more taxes on middle America, one might think that the Republicans might start paying more mind to their smaller-government rhetoric. Not in Florida. The Republican-controlled state Senate unanimously passed a budget that includes new cigarette and gambling taxes, as well as higher fees for motorists and lawsuits:
The Florida Senate passed a stitched-together $65.6 billion spending plan Thursday that pays the bills with a huge infusion of federal stimulus cash, higher taxes on tobacco and fees on motorists and court-filers, along with a dramatic expansion of gambling.
The Republican-controlled Senate voted 39-0 to send its budget plan to the House, where GOP leaders are proposing higher fees, deeper cuts, and no trace of higher tobacco taxes or the gambling expansion favored by senators.
With the House budget debate getting rancorous across the hall, senators from both parties congratulated each other for turning to higher taxes and fees to avoid deeper cuts for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The state’s budget was $73.7 billion in the peak of the housing boom in 2006, but has been slashed by $8 billion in a procession of special sessions and regular ones as revenues from the sales tax and real estate sales plummeted.
Florida plans to get an extra billion dollars through tobacco taxes, which include cigarettes, cigars, and chewing tobacco. As we have noted endlessly, tobacco taxes are the worst class of regressive taxes. Florida Republicans say that they need it to have those who put a burden on the state health care system to reimburse the state — but if we didn’t have the state funding health care, they wouldn’t need to worry about the personal habits of their citizens. Make no mistake about it — elitist, autocratic government comes through the health-care excuse that government has the right to take away your personal choices based on the preferences of a few bureaucrats looking to conduct social engineering through punitive taxation.
Florida Republicans are patting themselves on the back for cutting the budget 11% over the last two years, and they deserve some credit for that. Instead of putting more burden on taxpayers, especially those who can least afford it, perhaps they can find other spending to cut from a $66 billion budget.
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Look, it’s simple: Cigarettes are physically addicting, as is alcohol and other drugs. While heroin is illegal, tobacco and alcohol probably should be too, in my opinion.
It’s not moral to encourage self-destructive behaviors, such as drugs, alcohol and tobacco. I have no problems with taxing the legal ones. But I do have a problem with the government using it for general revenue–taxes on cigarettes, etc. should be spent on rehab and other ways to help people kick the habit. Same with alcohol.
The problem with these things is that they aren’t “choices.” Sure, the first couple of times, maybe. But then people get hooked, and they lose much if not most of their power to choose to stop. That is what makes them morally wrong.
Vanceone on April 17, 2009 at 11:47 AM
Time to vote some of the bums out.
thmsmgnm on April 17, 2009 at 11:56 AM
Using your own logic, food is also an “addictive” product that should be “illegal”.
No one has a problem with taxing the “legal ones”, the rate of tax was the issue.
You advocate government-enforced “rehab” paid for by taxpayers?……good grief!
Drinking/smoking are “choices” just like food or any other activity that you would personally demonize as an “addiction”. Even a nanny-state socialist like yourself would have to admit to that.
nottakingsides on April 17, 2009 at 1:47 PM
They just can’t stop at one tax. This is other people’s money, not potato chips
Control freaks, do gooders and pocket-pickers
I don’t smoke but I know this is rank injustice unless we are going to charge diabetics a sugar tax and promiscuous people an AIDs surcharge on their Blue Cross. People who ski whould pay a ski tax for their medical risk factor etc
Once we create a sub class of acceptable victims they cannot stop milking them to death
The main result of the tobacco taxes in my state will be an uptick in petty crime. I wonder at what point the smoker in the lower income bracket switches from legal cigarettes to illegal cannabis to fill the void
entagor on April 17, 2009 at 2:02 PM
Uh.. no, stopping may be hard.. but it’s not impossible. Addiction is not a disease, it’s a failure of will. If it was a real disease then how could anyone ever go ‘cold turkey’?
Freedom should include the freedom to fail. Using the power of the state to protect folks from drugs is the same impulse that the left uses to protect some folks from guns.
Partisan on April 17, 2009 at 3:51 PM
That article/research will end the “smokers burdon the health care system” issue.
nottakingsides on April 17, 2009 at 5:39 PM
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