Where Fun Comes to Die

I know this is old news, but there’s something about the recent SCHIP expansion that bothers me. Unlike the Republicans, I don’t care about SCHIP’s impact on the private health insurance market. If the US healthcare system is an example of capitalism in action, well then, maybe that Mao fellow wasn’t entirely wrong.

What bothers me about the SCHIP expansion is not what it does, but how it’s paid for. The bill is estimated to cost $32 billion over the next 4 1/2 years, and that’s being paid for with an increase on tobacco taxes.

Full disclosure: I love smoking. At the right time and place, a good cigarette is one of life’s great pleasures. I oppose smoking bans in bars on the grounds that people who don’t like smelling smoke while they drink should avoid taverns altogether and seek out places more suited to their tastes, such as yoga clinics or candle shops. 

But this is about more the fact that I like spending time in flavor country.  This is about basic fiscal sanity.

The smoking rate in America has been in a steady, gradual decline for years, and many government officials have made anti-smoking efforts into a centerpiece of their public health campaigns. Given the draconian smoking bans that are being adopted in some parts of the nation (and the American public’s insatiable love for drug wars), it wouldn’t surprise me at all if possession of tobacco was a criminal offense before too long. To keep up with the Depression-are analogies that are so popular nowadays, Obama funding SCHIP with a tobacco tax is like Roosevelt funding social security with taxes on laudanum and cocaine-flavored sodas.

I understand why Obama would rather tax smokers than pay for SCHIP out of general revenues.  Smokers are an easy target politically, and voters always prefer raise somebody else’s taxes.  But as the tobacco well gradually dries up, one of three things has to happen:

(1) The government, realizing that gets more money from cigarette sales than the tobacco companies do, starts up a major ad campaign encouraging everyone to smoke “for the children’s sake.” 

(2) The government sets its tax receipts and public expenditures at sustainable levels.

(3) The government finds some exciting new way to push the buck along, like selling organ-backed securities to the Chinese or imposing a mullet tax.

I’d love to see #1, because I think it would be hilarious. I think we’ll probably see #3, because I’m cynical. #2, which would require people to think about the future and live within their means, is fundamentally unamerican.