Cigarette Taxes and Democrat Hypocrisy

So, I read in the paper the other day that the Democrats intend to extend SCHIP coverage (medical insurance for kids) to another 10 million children. Let's set aside for the moment that this is yet another payoff to the insurance industry, that it is another fix for Governors addicted to Revenue Sharing, that it will cover mostly Illegal Immigrants, or that it is intended as a Trojan Horse to eventually nationalize Health Care.

No, what's interesting to me is that the major funding for the initiative will come from yet another buck per pack tax on cigarettes. By my last count, the Feds and State governments had already imposed a Google of taxes on cigarettes, for everything from education to funding of sundry Health Care programs. Everything, it seems, but funding of efforts to end smoking.

This is another moment of surreality brought to you courtesy of the Democrat Party. Out of one side of their mouths, Democrat politicians damn Smokers for smoking. The Scarlet Letter's got nothing on the disapprobation dealt out to people who desire to light a cigarette. They're banned from smoking indoors; they're banned from smoking outdoors; they're inundated with commercials telling them how irresponsible they are; they are castigated by the Second Hand Smoking crowd, effeminately waving even the most transient wisp of smoke away from their sensitive orifices. Hell, there's even a booming trade in Class Action lawsuits against Second Hand Smoke, so nefarious is its impact on the precious piehole of the Nonsmoker.

Out of the other side of those pieholes, Democrats propose the imposition of taxes on cigarettes with the gleeful abandon with which Toddlers fill a clean diaper, oblivious of the fact that, if their efforts to tax cigarettes out of existence are successful, the revenues will die, and all of those programs will be unfunded. You know the outcome of this scenario, since it's already happening. The "shortfall" in "funding" for all of these boondoggles will then need to be met by increases in other taxes, or further borrowing by the already critically overleveraged Federal and State governments.

It has ever been thus with Democrats and their tax policies. Milton Friedman said that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program. The same holds true with the sources of funding. "Temporary" tax increases are always permanent. The most transient of funding sources is exploited as if it will go on forever.

What causes one's head to explode is the breathtaking hypocrisy of it all. Democrats damn something. Democrats then tax that thing and design spending programs in the hope that it flourishes. Democrats then fail to take notice of their hypocrisy.

There is only one program that makes any sense when it comes to taxing cigarettes: to encourage people to stop smoking. Not only does it make sense, it would be fiscally responsible to boot. As people stopped smoking, we would need less and less money to fund anti-smoking efforts, and the revenues available to do so would match the need. That program would be flawless in its execution and a tribute to responsible governance. It would also be that rarest of things: a self-regulating confiscation of wealth with a built-in Sunset mechanism.

I wonder how Obama feels about that, seeing as how he's a Smoker? I wonder how Nancy Pelosi feels about Obama being a Smoker?