Setting up a veto showdown with President George W. Bush, the U.S. Congress has approved legislation to expand a popular children’s health care program and pay for it with higher taxes on tobacco products.
The Senate solidly backed the bipartisan bill on a vote of 67-29. Bush has vowed to veto it and the Democratic-led Congress lacks the votes to override him. The U.S. House of Representatives earlier this week approved the bill on a 265-159 vote, falling well short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto.
Backers said the bill would help provide health coverage for some 10 million children. It would raise taxes on tobacco products to pay for the additional coverage. Taxes on a pack of cigarettes would rise by 61 cents to $1 per pack.
The legislation also would provide dental coverage for the first time and allow states to cover pregnant women.
In order to sign up children from higher-income families, states must receiver waivers from the federal government. That the bill allows higher incomes will be this week’s WMD. If high income levels really are an issue, all the government has to do is refuse to issue waivers.
Forcing a conservative president into vetoes – and using that against the Republican candidate to follow – was a core tactic in JFK’s election. Something that could have forced each critically backwards policy into prominence during every week since the 2006 election. Instead, the Dems leave it to Bush to define the “issues”.
gimme a break — using tax dollars to provide health care for children is horrible thing — watch this thread and you’ll see that conservatives don’t hate children, they just refuse to do anything to help them.
Can’t call you a hack on this one. You correctly identified that the left hasn’t been able to use this strategy effectively.
However, to think a similar strategy to what was used in JFK’s time could work now is questionable as well. Today, it isn’t held against a politician if he does a 180. All Bush would do is let a few measures through, then six months later declare them failures, propose alternatives, and retake the issues.
>>using tax dollars to provide health care for children is horrible thing
Darned tooting! Especially when it may to cut into President Cheney’s War Profiteering Slush Fund.
Fuck the kids…. WE NEED MORE MONEY FOR BLACKWATER!!
The issue of providing health care for children should be a state issue and the role for the federal governement, zilch, because if Illinois wants to have outrageous taxes to pay for their plethora of welfare programs, at least I can escape that state.
Veto this shiat! I love it when ballooning federal welfare programs get the axe and get cut back down to size.
#3 – Now there’s a hack comment. Good job, monkey.
The thing with this bill that no one is talking about is the huge increase in taxes on cigars. Passing this bill would literally wipe out a large majority of the cigar industry in America.
I have a friend that owns a cigar shop, and if this passes he WILL go out of business, because he cannot afford to pay the floor tax on all his existing inventory.
The initial bill called for a 20,000 percent increase on cigar taxes. And no, that is NOT a typo. They have reduced it now to about a third of that it was, but a third of 20,000 percent is still a lot. Imagine if they proposed that type of increase to alcohol, or fast food. People would riot.
Healthcare for kids is a good thing, but not at the expense of outrageous taxes.
Besides if this goes through, and much of the industry tanks, then they won’t be pulling in the money for the children’s healthcare because there will be no one to collect it from…
-Grey
>>Veto this shiat! I love it when ballooning federal welfare programs
>>get the axe and get cut back down to size.
Shit yeah! When you’re pissing away $200,000,000,000.00/yr on losing a trophy war, who has money to take care of American citizens?
As to your “state issue” comment, I thought “vote with your feet” went out of style after bonzo came down with Alzheimer’s. What state can I move to where I don’t have to pay for Little King Georgie to resolve his daddie issues?
#2 – Saying “questionable” doesn’t make it so. Since no one in Congress owns sufficient backbone to confront the White House, the only thing guaranteed questionable is integrity and courage.
>>Healthcare for kids is a good thing, but not at the expense
>>of outrageous taxes.
Our outrageous taxes are NOT paying for kids’ healthcare. They’re paying for Dumbya’s MISSION that has already been ACCOMPLISHED. Yet we keep on paying. And paying, and paying and paying. To the tune of $4,000,000,000.00/week.
For a couple of weeks’ worth of Dumbya’s war, we could fund 100% of the increase in the money to go towards providing decent health care for American children.
what’s so wrong about spending a few billion here, you know – on americans?
i mean iraqi kids get more of my tax dollars than my kids do — how’s that work?
Um, Mister Mustard, I fully agree with you that the war is a money sucking evil mistake. But that is NOT what we are talking about here.
We are talking about this particular bill, which through exorbitantly taxing cigars, makes it’s money.
This bill, IF passed, will decimate an entire industry. That’s not hyperbole, it’s fact.
So yes, I am for healthcare for the underinsured. Yes, I would love to see the money go to that instead of the war. But the war argument has nothing to do with THIS bill.
I’m even okay with a modest tax increase on cigars, but no other product in the history of our country has seen this huge of a tax increase in one shot. And this one shot is basically a bullet to the head of the US cigar industry.
Most people don’t care because they don’t smoke. But if this were to go through, I wonder what congress will come for next. Is it something you enjoy?
-Grey
Personally
If for some reason the U.S. government wanted to hand over money to Blackwater or Halliburton for heath care for Iraqi children, I’m sure there would be no such problem with a veto and in fact, they’d get a lot more money than the amount originally requested.
Why is it the President and neocons only ever object to benefits for Americans – and especially the sick, the elderly and children?
Is this some sort of ‘American-only, survival of the fittest’ policy that was never announced to the general public?
Just curious….
Watch the PrezDuh fight tooth and nail for the additional $190 Billion for supporting the war for one more year, yet veto a US healthcare program expansion that everyone except the insurance companies want, and which would cost $30 Billion over 5 years.
The choices of what “conservatives” can support:
$30 Billion over 5 years for healthcare.
$1000 Billion over 5 years for a military action that is accomplishing nothing.
Yeah, but the first choice might accidentally allow some of them dirty Mexicans children to get get medical care.
In reply to comment #4 by Mr. or Ms. mxpwr03:
You, like many Americans, have got to be among the most brainwashed people in the galaxy.
You readily throw around phrases like “ballooning federal welfare programs” and “outrageous taxes” to imply that a completely private health care system is better than a government financed and supervised one.
Does your cleansed mind never consider the possibility that corporate bureaucracy and waste might be even be more costly than that of the government — which can at least be monitored by the public?
Corporate waste and ripoffs are very private. They are hidden — most often as tax deductible “business expenses”. Stuff like stock options, ridiculously high expense accounts, company resorts, planes, yachts, junkets, dinners, parties, “retreats” and the like, all fit into that category. And that’s not to mention $12,000 an hour(!) salaries, multi-million dollar bonuses and scandalous pension benefits for the upper echelons of the corporate elite. Add all that up and see what kind of numbers you get. And that’s still doesn’t include the cost of actual thievery by some of the same corporate leaders who are so unbelievably greedy that, even at the risk of going to prison, are driven to grab even more from their shareholders, their employees and the public.
Yet, many American taxpayers like you are dumb enough to tout the benefits of having the folks that invented that kind of chicanery running your country’s infrastructure and essential services. To top it all off, you have the chutzpah to insist that the rest of the world buy your smelly bag of BS. You’ve even privatized much of your f—ing armed might in an ongoing attempt to impose that barbaric setup on the rest of the world.
Oh, well, you do have X-boxes, stupid TV shows and American Idol to keep you amused.
>>I wonder what congress will come for next. Is it something you enjoy?
Well, if it’s something optional like likker, gambling, courtesans, or tobakky, BRING IT ON.
I’m sorry about your friend, but he IS peddling carcinogens. I fully support the right of people to bring cancer upon themselves, but to think that they’re not going to be taxed? nfw. Maybe he should get into selling drugs. At least that money is under the table, and no taxes need to be paid until you get caught.
Besides, cigars stink like shit. Truth be told, we’d be better off without them. Maybe not as offensive as cell phones, but pretty bad. I’m just glad that most places have had the good sense to ban lighting up indoors.
>>Corporate waste and ripoffs are very private. They are hidden
Not so well hidden, with the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley.
Simple question: They want to fund this with a smoking tax. Fine, the program is set up and has its funding. Now that the program is running, it is dependent upon this funding. What happens next if the sin tax actually works and people quit smoking? Who gets hit next when they need to find another source of money?
Completely aside from the merits of the health care plan, sin tax funding is nothing but a subterfuge and a time delay from the real long term funding.
>>Completely aside from the merits of the health care plan, sin
>>tax funding is nothing but a subterfuge and a time delay from
>>the real long term funding.
Right, IGW. It’s a short-term solution. The long term solution would be to get dimwitted fuckheads like Little King Georgie out of office. How many worthwhile programs do you imagine could have been funded with all the hundred$ of billion$ of dollar$ he has pissed away to bolster his ego?
Todd, businesses could achieve that same benefit by just dropping their health care coverage to begin with. The reason they are giving the coverage is because of tax breaks that make it better to do so.
Doesn’t anyone care that this bill cuts coverage for children’s health care in 2013? Spending will be less than it is now under this bill.
#20 – I know that in MustardWorld Bush is the source of all problems, but you didn’t answer my question.
Do you really believe we wouldn’t have the same type funding problems had Algore or Frankenkerry gotten in? For example, look at the I35W bridge collapse. The day it happened some fine MN Dems were already suggesting that it happened because we didn’t pass a tax increase. Turns out there was a TON of money in a bridge fund, but the Dem legislature had raided it for bike trails and light rail. So sure, the war costs a ton, but don’t for a minute, believe that the Democrats wouldn’t have found some other way to piss away money. That’s what policitians do: waste money.
In general, tax increases should be a very last resort, not a first choice. In “specificness”, sin taxes are nothing but a delay and distraction tactic. Get someone looking to the right, wait a little and start pickpocketing their left.
Look, I’m not for no tax whatsoever, but the tax cap is going from 10 cents a cigar to three dollars a cigar. That is the most exorbitant tax increase in our countries history. Hell initially they wanted to jump it to 10 dollars a cigar.
You can bitch that cigars should be outlawed, but I think that an adult in their home or outdoors (where not affecting others) should be able to smoke if they so choose. Pretty much everything is non-smoking nowadays anyway, so it’s not affecting everyone else.
Also, if you do some research you’ll find that cigar smoking is far less destructive than cigarettes. For one, you don’t inhale the smoke into your lungs, and two, there really aren’t the additives you find in cigarettes, it’s basically just tobacco.
Now I don’t think that cigars are all filled with vitamins, I do know the risks (I don’t smoke around my kids, inside my house etc.) but I do think that as an adult, I should be able to enjoy an occasional cigar. I don’t find that an unreasonable request in a supposedly free country.
Heart disease and obesity are far more of a problem in the States, but if you tried to tax a Big Mac at that rate people would go ape-shit. And a Big Mac IS “optional.” You don’t have to ingest those many calories or grams of fat. There are healthier alternatives.
It’s just that I see our freedoms slip every single day due to this administration and the Patriot Act and everything similiar. Now we want to tax something out of existence? Seems shortsighted, and not really something sustainable or that will work long term.
And trust me, if they decimate the cigar business in this country, it won’t stop me from smoking. I’ll just give my money to other countries, and it won’t be going to children’s heathcare. That’s where this whole thing fails. It puts an industry out of business, which in turn destroys the revenue stream for the law itself.
-Grey
iGlobal… the wrong kinds of things are being taxed. Remove taxes on the progressive and healthy, and put them on the regressive and sickly.
Grey, Also, if you do some research you’ll find that cigar smoking is far less destructive than cigarettes. For one, you don’t inhale the smoke into your lungs
Please don’t take this as preaching or any suggestion that you are stupid. From experience and from what you posted above, I can tell you that you are hopelessly addicted. Your (probably excellent ) logic is clouded. Tobacco can destroy your life, and whether you inhale it right away, or breathe it in a second later as second hand smoke, or chew it, is immaterial.
The information you have chosen to ignore is widely available and proven. Search the web for tobacco smoke and you’ll find statement from health officials like this…
“All cigar and cigarette smokers, whether or not they inhale, directly expose the lips, mouth, tongue, throat, and larynx to smoke and its carcinogens. Holding an unlit cigar between the lips also exposes these areas to carcinogens. In addition, when saliva containing smoke constituents is swallowed, the esophagus is exposed to carcinogens. These exposures probably account for the fact that oral and esophageal cancer risks are similar among cigar smokers and cigarette smokers.”
Greg, don’t get angry, get help or pull all your self control together and just stop. Good luck.
>>In general, tax increases should be a very last resort,
>>not a first choice.
You’re right. What we need is not to have some dickwad in office who pisses away $2,000,000,000.00/week on daddie issues.
Imagine how many children’s health care plans and cigars we could buy with two billion a week.
No tax increase required.
>>I do think that as an adult, I should be able to enjoy an
>>occasional cigar.
Me too. And as long as you can affod it, knock yourself out Go buy a Maserati while ou’re at it.
But as long as we have a dickwad in office pissing away TWO BILLION DOLLARS A WEEK on a trophy war, the money’s got to come from somewhere.
Better from nicotine addicts than from people who are buying food for their children.
Hi Jim, not angry at all. But hopelessly addicted? Really? I smoke maybe a cigar a week? I’ve been known to go for months at a time without smoking. Addiction could not be farther from the truth.
I do not want, nor do I need to quit. Like I said, I know it’s bad for me. But trust me, cigarettes, with all of their additives and preservatives are far worse for you than a cigar. And yes, smoking a cigar does expose all those parts of your mouth and throat to smoke, but its relatively tame to your lungs in comparison to cigarettes. Also, its tobacco smoke, not smoke from unnatural additives. The additives (and ADDED nicotine) in cigarettes are far more carcinogenic.
Now, you say tobacco can ruin your life. So can video games, gambling, big macs, alcohol etc. But as an adult in this country, I think you should have the freedom to choose to do any of those things as long as you are not hurting anyone else. I wouldn’t want to see any of those taxed out of existence.
And I agree Mr. Mustard, I would love to see the money come from the war effort instead of from tax payers. But your next line about “better from nicotine addicts than from people who are buying food for their children” is erroneous.
If this bill passes, there will be no cigar industry to collect money from. That’s the whole point I’m trying to get to.
I don’t see why we couldn’t raise taxes on fast food, alcohol, tobacco all very marginally and still raise enough money.
Or, remove the troops and take one day of the war to pay for it…
And trust me Jim, I HAVE self control. If I didn’t this discourse wouldn’t be so cordial 🙂
-Grey
Which is most important? :
War in Iraq,
Haliburton’s dividend
Cigar Shops
Children’s health.
Rudy Giulliani’s $9.11 fund raiser.
ANSWER
Gee, seems like a no brainer to me. High Definition TV of course !!!
>>Or, remove the troops and take one day of the war to pay for it…
That would be nice. Unfortunately, we don’t have a “commander” in “chief” with the brains, or representatives with the balls, to accomplish such a thing.
I wish your friend all the best in his cigar business, but this is dog eat dog. Dumbya has forced us to choose between the cigar industry and kids getting medical care, and the kids win (unless Dumbya gets involved, then the kids lose).
#30 – Bull. The answer is Cold Beer.