PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama tax pledge up in smoke


Cigarette Tax Increase Angers Smokers


WASHINGTON (AP) - One of President Barack Obama's campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.
The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama's promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.

This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.

To be sure, Obama's tax promises in last year's campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.


"I can make a firm pledge," he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

He repeatedly vowed "you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."

Now in office, Obama, who stopped smoking but has admitted he slips now and then, signed a law raising the tobacco tax nearly 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes, to $1.01. Other tobacco products saw similarly steep increases.

The extra money will be used to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children. That represents a step toward achieving another promise, to make sure all kids are covered.

Obama said in the campaign that Americans could have both—a broad boost in affordable health insurance for the nation without raising taxes on anyone but the rich.

His detailed campaign plan stated that his proposed improvement in health insurance and health technology "is more than covered" by raising taxes on the wealthy alone. It was not based on raising the tobacco tax.

The White House contends Obama's campaign pledge left room for measures such as the one financing children's health insurance.

"The president's position throughout the campaign was that he would not raise income or payroll taxes on families making less than $250,000, and that's a promise he has kept," said White House spokesman Reid H. Cherlin. "In this case, he supported a public health measure that will extend health coverage to 4 million children who are currently uninsured."

In some instances during the campaign, Obama was plainly talking about income, payroll and investment taxes, even if he did not say so.

Other times, his point appeared to be that heavier taxation of any sort on average Americans is the wrong prescription in tough times.

"Listen now," he said in his widely watched nomination acceptance speech, "I will cut taxes—cut taxes—for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class."

An unequivocal "any tax" pledge also was heard in the vice presidential debate, another prominent forum.

"No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama's plan will see one single penny of their tax raised," Joe Biden said, "whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax."

The Democratic campaign used such statements to counter Republican assertions that Obama would raise taxes in a multitude of direct and indirect ways, recalled Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

"I think a reasonable person would have concluded that Senator Obama had made a 'no new taxes' pledge to every couple or family making less than $250,000," she said.

Jamieson noted GOP ads that claimed Obama would raise taxes on electricity and home heating oil. "They rebutted both with the $250,000 claim," she said of the Obama campaign, "so they did extend the rebuttal beyond income and payroll."

Government and private research has found that smoking rates are higher among people of low income.

A Gallup survey of 75,000 people last year fleshed out that conclusion. It found that 34 percent of respondents earning $6,000 to $12,000 were smokers, and the smoking rate consistently declined among people of higher income. Only 13 percent of people earning $90,000 or more were smokers.

Federal or state governments often turn for extra tax dollars to the one in five Americans who smoke, and many states already hit tobacco users this year. So did the tobacco companies, which raised the price on many brands by more than 70 cents a pack.

The latest increase in the federal tax is by far the largest since its introduction in 1951, when it was 8 cents a pack. It's gone up six times since, each time by no more than a dime, until now.

Apart from the tax haul, public health advocates argue that squeezing smokers will help some to quit and persuade young people not to start.

But it was a debate the country didn't have in a presidential campaign that swore off higher taxation.

reds8n wrote: In the UK you know that the tax on ciggies will go up every budget, is this not the case in the USA then ?

BrotherStynier wrote:

reds8n wrote: In the UK you know that the tax on ciggies will go up every budget, is this not the case in the USA then ?

I think the point he was trying to make was that the Lord of Change, was preaching that he wouldn't tax Middle and Lower class people any more than they had been, yet this bill mainly targets those he promised not to tax due to statistically the lower and middle class people smoking more than upper class persons.

That being said I can't possibly hope to understand Mr. Frazzled.

reds8n wrote:I understand that, I was more surprised at the fact that it was a surprise that tax on ciggies had gone up. Revenue raising aside the exorbitant tax on tobacco in the UK is there also to discourage people from smoking.

How pricy are ciggies stateside anyway ? Pack of 20 marlboror over here cost you a little under £6.00.

Fallen668 wrote:It is just trying to make an issue of a non issue. Please try again when he raises a real tax that effects everyone. This is an optional tax like drinking... which by the way a lot of people at state level are looking at to raise as well.

As for smoke prices. They are going at $5.50 to $8.00 a pack depending on where you buy for marlboro. I still remember when I began smoking that I got pissed off that the place I used to buy from went from $2.00 to $2.25... those were the days.

There are lots of reasons to put an excise on a product, but they don't really work with cigarettes. It isn't a limited resource. They don't have any related externalities (people argue health costs, but that doesn't work because smokers die sooner, saving health resources).

The cigarette tax rate goes from $.39 per pack to $1.0066 per pack;
The tax on snuff goes from $.585 per pound to $1.51 per pound;
The tax on pipe tobacco goes from $1.0969 per pound to $2.8311 per pound;
The tax on RYO goes from $1.0969 per pound to $24.78 per pound (not a typo).
Additionally the definition of RYO has been expanded to include cigar wrappers to address the "blunt wraps" issue;
The tax change to small cigars (cigars weighing less the three (3) pounds per thousand will be :
- $.25 per pack
Cigarette Papers will increase to $0.0315 per 50 papers.

Cigarette Tubes will increase to $0.063 per 50 tubes.

Large cigars will increase to $0.4026 per cigar.

ShumaGorath wrote:A man that dies healthy at 80 will have wasted less of my money than a man that spent 12 years going in and out of cancer therapy on the national dollar and dies at 52. Smoking is a large factor on healthcare costs, and I don't want to pay for the idiotic vices of another for the same reason your insurance is going to make you pay more. Your killing yourself for no discernible reason other than your lack of self control.

It's targeting a demonized minority because it is easy. Those who are ok with it are the same people who all to easily forget that eventually they will get around to something you do that other people may not like. The government will ban fried foods, candy bars, raise massive taxes on beer, liquor, and tobacco. Houses that face east/west save more money on energy so all houses must do it. No cake for childrens birthdays. It's bad for them and Childrens Services will take them away. Give them a pear and a hug.

In debate or rhetoric, a slippery slope (also the thin edge of the wedge or the camel's nose) is a classical informal fallacy. A slippery slope argument states that a relatively small first step inevitably leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant impact, much like an object given a small push over the edge of a slope sliding all the way to the bottom.[1] In broader, especially recent, pragmatic usage, the term slippery slope argument alternately refers to a non-fallacious argument that such undesirable events are rendered more probable. The fallacious sense of "slippery slope" is often used synonymously with continuum fallacy, in that it ignores the possibility of middle ground and assumes a discrete transition from category A to category B.
While the logic in a slippery slope argument is invalid, its conclusion may still be true.

ShumaGorath wrote:A man that dies healthy at 80 will have wasted less of my money than a man that spent 12 years going in and out of cancer therapy on the national dollar and dies at 52. Smoking is a large factor on healthcare costs, and I don't want to pay for the idiotic vices of another for the same reason your insurance is going to make you pay more. Your killing yourself for no discernible reason other than your lack of self control.

Frazzled wrote: In the end you will die of something and it won't be cheap.