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The Spectacle Blog

If You Take A Sip, They'll Tax Your Drink

By Philip Klein on 5.13.09 @ 4:05PM

Eager to find ways to finance health care legislation that, according to some estimates, will cost roughly $1.5 trillion over 10 years, Congress is mulling taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and even soda. To proponents, such moves are a win-win situation, because they raise revenue and make people more healthy. For now, let's set aside the debate over how effective they are, or the fact that they are regressive taxes, because I think there's something more fundamentally important here. This is another indication of how more government begets more government, and specifically, how increasing the role of government in health care adds a societal dimension to individual behavior, and thus gives the state an opening to regulate people's consumption of sugary beverages in the name of fiscal prudence.

Sadly, states have increasingly leaned on such taxes to fill budget shortfalls because smokers and obese people have been villanized by the media. Congress already hiked the cigarette tax to finance S-CHIP earlier this year, and down in Florida, Charlie Crist is poised to sign a $1 a pack increase in the cigarette tax, though we'll see if he buckles under pressure from conservatives.

Meanwhile, it would be really nice to hear from some of those libertarian Obama voters given the prospect of federal nanny state taxes to pay for national health care.

Alan Brooks| 5.13.09 @ 7:13PM

the title of this piece is a reference to 'Taxman'
by the Beatles:
"If you drive a car I'll tax the street"
if you get too cold I'll tax the heat"...

Remember how I got the reference to the Godfather ("you're out Tom" Daschle)? if I keep it up you'll award a t-shirt with Palin's picture on it, right?

Eric Dondero| 5.13.09 @ 11:25PM

Give it a rest Phillip. There ain't no such thing as a "libertarian Obama supporter." Any libertarian who even dreamt of supporting the guy lost their right to use the term libertarian, the very second they decided to do so.

It's like some term like "Libertarian-Fascist." You cannot be a libertarian, and support authoritarianism. Such an animal simply does not exist.

Stan Redmond| 5.14.09 @ 2:15AM

BUT JUST THINK how much money we'll all be saving when government run healthcare is free. We'll easily make up for our increased taxes, um I mean value added food benfit offsets, with our savings in healthcare and shorter life span. With rationed health care we won't be forced to endure those expensive and long autumn years.

Jim| 5.14.09 @ 8:40AM

As one who supported/voted voted for Barack Obama I admit to being deeply dismayed at seeing the administration’s embrace of special interest groups whose apparent purpose is the elimination of tolerance for individual life choices in the interest of improving the public health. It is unfortunate that the zeal for taxation/behavior modification has coincided with so the present financial crisis the resulting and the many budget shortfalls, but it has been recognized by politicians by seeing the public’s tolerance for ever higher taxes on smokers that if you can demonize a particular subset of the population: stupid, addicted smokers or lazy fat people, you can tax them without fear. One of the leading voices for product taxation/behavior modification is the Center for Science in the Public Interest which was a participant in the recent Senate Finance Committee roundtable on Financing Comprehensive Health Care Reform. The Deputy Secretary for Health and Human Services. Mr. William Corr, is a board member of that organization. See: http://www.cspinet.org/ for Senate testimony and the list of Board members. Additionally, he is former Executive Director of The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, one of the key forces behind pending legislation to put the tobacco under the regulation by the FDA. See 05/12/09 Blog Dr. Michael, Bill Corr Should Have Refused HHS Nomination, http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/, and the Wall Street Journal referred to within. In addition to the taxation schemes afoot, there are moves by Senators Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Finance Committee, and Tom Harkin of Iowa to allow employers to ‘encourage’ employees who may exhibit less than optimal health indicators [to be defined by whom?], BMI, lipid profiles, blood sugar, smoking, etc to join wellness programs and to penalize them if they are not receptive to joining. In addition to questioning the efficacy of special taxes and ‘incentive’ programs, I question the motives of those who put forward such measures. Just what are they getting out of their efforts vis a vis the public trough and just what sort of society are they trying to create when any action by an individual might be defined to effect or ‘Harm’ another or society in the aggregate. A must see: 05/10/09 New York Times article: Congress Plans Incentives for Healthy Habits. The individual is reduced to a machine apparently obligated to maximize his or her utility for the benefit of the State.