If California lawmakers don’t want people to smoke, why are they
tying the state’s budget to smoking? Democrats seek to close the
state’s $24 billion deficit through the servitude of smokers.
Democratic Party leaders proposed this week a steep increase in
cigarette taxes — from 87 cents to $3.
The Democrats, you see, hate smoking so much that they are
planning to make it the state’s golden goose. They of course see no
contradiction between discouraging smoking and depending on it.
Indeed, given their prodigal spending habits, they can only hope
that Californians’ nicotine habit grows.
The Democrats’ cynicism is impressive. They know that smokers
are a reviled political class with little freedom over their habit.
So why not jack up the cost of a pack to $7.50? If they complain,
who cares? No one will listen. And the addiction ensures that they
will keep buying packs well into the future.
Governor Gray Davis sees the cigarette tax proposal as a
political winner. For one, it would spare him the embarrassment of
having to raise taxes on motorists. He had made a great show of
reducing the vehicle licensing fee a few years ago. He spent
millions in state money to send out an utterly unnecessary notice
telling motorists that he had cut their fees. He made no such plans
to inform them that he intended to raise those fees this year.
“The speaker’s proposal to swap the vehicle license fee increase
for an increase in the cigarette tax is something I can support,” a
grateful Davis says.
Will Republicans let Davis get away with this? Probably. The
Democrats are dangling state pork before on-the-fence Republicans.
And liberal Republicans don’t object to Davis’s tax-and-spend
ways.
The Republicans should make the resolution of the budgetary
impasse revolve not around higher taxes, but lower spending. Why
require already overtaxed Californians to pay for Davis’s blunders
and outrageous statism?
Legislative analysts note that Davis increased state spending by
36 percent, even though the state population has only grown by
around 5 percent. State Senator Tom McClintock points out that
“California now spends nearly $3,000 for every man, woman and child
in the state, compared to $1,800 in Arizona.”
Had Davis simply restricted himself to budget growth
commensurate with inflation and population, he says, California
would be awash in surpluses. In a speech earlier this year,
McClintock said, “This year’s budget would still reflect a 20
percent increase over the last four years. Twenty Percent. I think
very few families outside of government have seen a 20 percent
growth in their income over the last four years. But instead of a
$24 billion deficit, we would in fact have a $38 billion cumulative
surplus.…If these numbers are accurate, it means that the
discussion we would be having today would be, ‘how do we rebate an
average of $4,500 to every family in California.’”
Instead, the debate is, who can we tax the most with the least
political pain? The cowards at the Capitol select smokers.
Meanwhile, Davis, after bankrupting the state, finds himself
with more campaign money than he can possibly spend. His anti-Bill
Simon television ads are appearing with absurd frequency (Davis can
max out on television advertising and still have money left
over).
Davis said that he would run on the issues. But most of his ads
don’t even mention Simon’s stand on the issues. The ads are just
personal attacks, breathtakingly petty given Davis’s own screw-ups
and corruption.
Davis particularly likes the formulation: If Simon can’t run a
business, how can he run California? Never mind that Davis has
already demonstrated he can’t run California. Simon’s business has
made significant profits. All Davis has done is turn a surplus into
a deficit. You can’t run California by blowing smoke.
