We've said before that cigarette taxes aren't a smart way of funding things, and the Governor is parroting this line precisely:
In vetoing the cigarette tax hike, Sanford said he was concerned about funding health-care programs with a revenue source that would decline in future years as fewer people smoke.He's right. However.
If anyone should be hiking their cig tax, it's South Carolina, which now still has the nation's lowest tax at 7 cents per pack.
In addition, the sad truth is that in South Carolina's political climate, there's no willingness to talk about raising a more sustainable tax (like, say, the income tax or the sales tax). So for right now, it's either the cigarette tax or nothing. This makes the legislature's failure less obviously good, since the designated funding source for the vetoed hike was health care.
In another reminder of political realities, however, the speaker of the House asserted that their failure to overcome the vetoed tax hike is probably a good thing because too much of that government health care would be a bad thing:
House Speaker Bobby Harrell, in arguing in favor of sustaining Sanford's veto,Gosh. Sure wouldn't want government to do that.
expressed concerns about expanding Medicaid and promoting an "entitlement
society" that teaches children that "it is the government's job to care for them."
There are no good outcomes from a debate of this kind. The Palmetto State is pretty far from having the sort of open tax policy debate it needs. So, the glass-half-full way of looking at it is that maybe this failure will prompt state lawmakers to take a fresh look, in 2009, at options for true reform.
One can hope.
