Psst! Dems Hint They Haven’t the Votes to Override SCHIP Veto
From the Blog: Big Lizards
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Haight-Ashbury, 95%) has as much as admitted yet another Democratic failure: They don’t have the votes to override President Bush’s veto of the bloated and metastisized Democratic version of renewal of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP.But let’s not start backways-round; before we jump into the current Democratic travails, let us dress the stage…We commence with the first oddity: In the current bill, the massive Democratic expansion of SCHIP into a middle-class entitlement program would be funded by an increase in the federal tax on cigarettes and cigars — which, funnily enough, would be a very regressive tax that primarily hits the poor. Thus, under the new Democratic plan, the poor are taxed to subsidize the middle class.
Worse, if smokers respond to the tax hike by cutting back on smoking, the feds lose the revenue stream that is supposed to pay for the expansion; this would turn the federal government into a cheerleader for increased smoking.
This element fits a growing Democratic-Party pattern: The use of taxes to force social change. Now, this is not the exclusive property of Democrats; consider the home mortgage interest tax deduction, the purpose of which is to get more people to buy homes instead of rent. Its origin in shrouded in mystery, but no Congress or president since, Democrat or Republican, has actually pushed for its abolition (several have talked the talk).
However, rather than use tax incentives to encourage good behavior, Democrats have made a fetish of using punitive taxation to punish behavior they don’t like, such as smoking. But not just cigarettes.
More reading, Michelle Malkin has this: S-CHIP and the Democrats’ human shield campaign
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