Smokes and Healthcare

The Seneca Indian Nation is planning to collect a $2 per car toll for the stretch of the New York State Thruway that runs through their land. This is due to Governor David Paterson cracking down on native Americans selling untaxed cigarettes to non-native Americans.

This has been tried before and ended badly. Politicians keep believing they can raise revenue by increasing taxes on cigarettes. New York has a $2.75 per pack tax (it’s higher in New York City). If they didn’t raise the tax so high, maybe smokers wouldn’t go out of their way to buy untaxed cigarettes on the reservations. It’s simple common sense, yet for some reason politicians just don’t get it.

Now Barack Obama and the Democrats plan on a new cigarette tax to raise money to fund increases in enrollment in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Michelle Malkin calls it a tax on the poor and points out that in some states SCHIP covers childless adults and those earning up to 300 times the poverty level! Tax the poor to pay for the well off. Brilliant!

This morning Nancy Pelosi was all smiles (I think, it’s hard to distinguish a smile from a grimace) on Good Morning America (video), saying we can afford to expand SCHIP coverage. Easy for her to say. It’s not her money!

Chris Cuomo reminded her that soon there will be no more “pointing [blame] at the administration” after she noted that everything that’s ever gone wrong is George Bush’s fault. She replied that (paraphrasing) Bush is mean and doesn’t care about children and Barack Obama will do whatever Congressional Democrats want him to do.

More people will quit smoking, which isn’t a bad thing but less smokers means less money for SCHIP. We’ll just be left with even more Americans (and possibly some illegal immigrants) on the government dole. That’s hardly the way to dig the country out of a recession.