Smoke ?em if You got ?em

President Bush told Republican colleagues yesterday that he would not sign any legislation to enlarge SCHIP, a bipartisan bill he vetoed on October 3, if it included any increase in federal tobacco taxes.

The proposed $35 billion expansion of the program would be funded in large part by a 61 cent per pack hike in cigarette taxes.  The Bush administration’s increasingly hard-line stance paints the SCHIP debate in one-dimensional, pro-tax/anti-tax terms.  The president’s position, both in terms of taxes and tobacco, comes as no surprise; the Wall Street Journal recently characterized Republican perspectives on the planned cigarette tax increase as “unrealistic and onerous to the working poor.”

I said the Bush administration’s position was not surprising.  I didn’t say it was logical.

As a funding mechanism for a bill that seeks to improve the health and welfare of (primarily) working class families, please explain to me how a sin tax on a commodity detrimental to human health doesn’t implicitly make sense?

Please explain to me how being taxed for choosing to put fire into your lungs has been spun through the political apparatus as “onerous” to any American social or economic class?

And please explain to me how a healthcare bill with broad political and popular support can be so easily derailed by making smoking less expensive than it might be?