Today, April 26th, the House of Representatives will vote on HB 2201 -- The Healthy Kids Plan. (To see the text of the bill click here.) The bill is basically universal health care for almost all children in Oregon. Of course, to fund this, the plan taxes cigarettes. I am always opposed to new tax increases, as we have $$$ falling out of our ears. We could have easily funded this out of the general fund (which I would also be opposed to, the role of government is to establish justice, not to illicitly redistribute wealth). But this tax increase is much worse then normal, because of the fact that it is not sustainable. If you double the tax cigarettes or if you substantially increase it, you will obviously higher the total cost of cigarettes. If the price of Oregon cigarettes are substantially higher then the price of other states cigarettes, or of online retailers, why would someone buy Oregon cigarettes? They will simply cross the Oregon border and buy them in different states or they will simply click two or three times on a computer, and buy them online. Now, the total amount of cigarettes sold in Oregon will diminish. And in doing so, so will the tax revenues that normally would be gained by the sales. So, if this plan passes -- it will do nothing but hurt the Oregon economy, hurt Oregon business, and then it will kill itself.
Defiantly not a good bill.
The bell is ringing now, session starts in 3 minutes, after the bill fails four votes short, I will post again and let you know. (As always, click to zoom in)
1 comments:
Wow, no good, no good.
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