Pawlenty proposes 75-cent cigarette 'user fee'

[Thor_MN]

After months of saying he would not agree to any statewide tax increases, Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Friday said he would break the budget stalemate with a proposal to increase the wholesale cost of cigarettes by 75 cents a pack, with the money going to health care and schools.

"I believe it's a user fee," Pawlenty said at a news conference. "Some will say it's a tax. I'm going to say it's a compromise."

The offer is also a bit of a double-edged sword for DFLers. It's contingent on DFLers giving in to Pawlenty on two of four controversial measures: a ban on school-year teacher strikes; an as-yet-unidentified school choice measure; initiative and referendum, which would allow voters to make or repeal laws; and the state-tribal casino/racino partnership, which has failed to gain support in the House or the Senate.

Hey Dumbass, I know you ran on a"No New Taxes" pledge, but calling them fees doesn't change what they are. If you want to argue semantics that fees are based on a person's CHOICE of doing or buying something, how about a "CEO FEE?" After all, no one is forced to become a CEO. Besides with the compensation increases that CEO have received, they can well afford to pitch in and solve the budget woes.

[MADem]

1. Sounds like an IDEA, that CEO fee!!!

How about a warmonger profiteer fee, while we are at it? Or an IRS fee, for those with absolutely convoluted taxes, requiring more IRS verification than us average slobs?

[48pan]

2. A paltry 75 cents isn't enough

Add two or three dollars to every pack. The schools need the money. Our children deserve the best education possible. Every extra dollar a smoker pays for his drug is a dollar we can use to pay our teachers what they deserve.

[Deja Q]

5. Then tax the wealthy who expect services and benefits at no cost to them.

Why make smokers go to the grave so much sooner?

CEOs need to start paying up if they want our future to be prosperous in any way, shape, or form.

[Toots]

11. Why make smokers go to the grave so much sooner?

Your logic escapes me. Seems to me by raising the expense of cigarettes you are more likely to just stop smoking thus living much longer and healthier. The pinch of the pocket book has a lot of power.

[Pepperbelly]

6. why should smokers shoulder a bigger share of ...

educating children?

That responsibility seems to me to rest equally on the shoulders of all citizens. If there is any group who actually causes a cost of disproportionate levels with other citizens in funding this service, it is parents of school age children.

[salin]

7. If that much money is needed, why only tax a portion

of the population? If it is needed by all (eg for an educated community/state), than it should be paid for by all. Don't you think?

[Pepperbelly]

8. Great minds, etc. Friend salin.

How are you today and how is the weather in Indianna?

[salin]

9. The answer to both questions: blue

as in the sky is blue - crisp cool day;

and I am blue - lost my beloved pup Wednesday. Still adjusting.

How are you and how are things in Arkansas? Looks like there are almost daily bits of badnews for that massive corporate entity hqed in your state. For all the years of criticism - I have never seen so many different stories of bad news coming at them so quickly on so many fronts. Very interesting. How is that being received in your corner of the world?

[Pepperbelly]

13. well ...

my peer group at work, young folk for the most part, don't much care one way or the other although almost all hate the company. Most of us here didn't hold the crap much against them until Sam Walton died and the sharks took over. Do you remember when Sam Walton was chairman? Advertised forever that they only sold "made in the USA" which was probably a lie yet it comforted us much like most iconoclastic myths.

I am sorry to hear about you dog. The dog that I have left now, Heidi, is wet from a bath and still shamed over the tongue lashing I gave her last weekend after she stole FOUR POUND OF GRILLED STEAKS! The bitch!

Yesterday, it got up to 95 degrees. And it is just past half-way through May. I shudder to think about the summer. Note, the word "shiver" didn't come up at all.

[salin]

15. Wow - thinking about your comment

I may have come up with a new (albiet silly) theory about the red/blue divide. Not a north south thing (as my state demonstrates)... A humidity mixed with higher temps thing.

Follow me- my response to your post... no shiver, no kidding - oh how I dread the coming heat and humidity of the summer. And oh how I miss the Bay Area (SF region) weather.

Then... wait... think about it... the humidity makes us cranky... add higher heat areas and those without lake effects (eg Ill., Mich, etc) which blows the humidty - when at its worst - out more quickly rather than having it linger for endless weeks in a row... perhaps makes more people perpetually cranky and prone to being mean (and the current GOP seems to have an unbridled mean streak to it these days.) So central south and eastern south... heat and high humidity... check. Some central midwest... high humidity with peaks of heat... check. Go east still humid but the further north you go it doesn't combine as much with the levels of heat and swelter of its southern counterparts (eg Mass compared to Ga)...

Maybe there is something to this?? ;-)

[Pepperbelly]

17. You may well be on to something ...

I, too, live in the Bay area in the late 70s ... Alameda ... and then went back to Arkansas just in time for the summer of 1980, a truly egregious period of discomfort in which we experienced a mild spring with lots of rain, even on Memorial Day. It stopped raining on June 1 and we didn't see another drop until well after Labor Day. The temps were at 105 or higher for 60 days. Some days hotter than that. And through the whole thing, we had very high humidity. It was as though the world wanted to piss us off. Every afternoon, the clouds would build and tower and darken and do everything EXCEPT rain.

I was still in college then and we had one small room air conditioner in a two bedroom farm house that we rented for a song. We LIVED in that room.

Yep. It does exacerbate whatever is going on. If there is anything good about it at all, it is that it is so energy sapping making it hard to just breathe, that rage consumes far too much energy and people, while very touchy, are just plain too hot to do anything except complaion. That is a blessing.

[48pan]

10. Because...

"If that much money is needed, why only tax a portion"

They can obviously afford it. They have no problem spending their money to pollute my air. If they can't afford it, they can stop smoking. It's their choice.

[Pepperbelly]

14. That is silly ...

it is discriminatory and it is not a fee. A fee generates when a government service is used and there is a price. There is no connection between ability to pay or anything else. If ability to pay was the issue, why not tax just the richest on whatever?

[salin]

16. reminds me of old gop in the eighties

dont tax you, dont tax me, tax that guy behind the tree.

You want better pay for teachers - than be willing to pay for it yourself. If you aren't willing to pay, then don't ask someone to carry the burden for you.

[Deja Q]

3. All the smokers I know of, sans one, are repubbies.

Not only is this "fee" a tax, Timmy No-Tool lying once again, but Timmy is going against their right to smoke.

So when 2006 comes, who will they vote for? You guessed it: Timmy No-Tool.

[Mojorabbit]

20. I smoke

and am not a republican. I don't pollute your air. I smoke in my home.
I also have no children. If you are going to tax for education tax everyone fairly.

[katinmn]

4. Shhh. Its a fee and a compromise, but never a tax.

Karl Rove would not approve.

[hobbit709]

12. In my book

any "fee" involuntarily given to the government is a tax. our city government didn't raise taxes but came up with all sorts of fees instead.

[CatholicEdHead]

18. Very ironic

considering he just veteoed a DFL Senate bill talking about raising gas taxes by 20 cents.

The MN Taxpayers League is not happy with Pawlenty, unless there is more to this story behind the scenes.

[PurityOfEssence]

19. "sin taxes" are just more greedy abuse of puritanical assholes

For one thing, call it a damned tax; that's what it is.

Sure, it's better for all if nobody smokes, and unlike many other types of sinful behavior, there's a waste product that affects peoples' health, but the goody-two-shoes little greedheads are consistently out of line. Liquor and cigarettes are very heavily taxed as they are. Why not tax religion? That's a disturbing vice that wreaks widespread social ruin if there ever was one.

How about a luxury tax? How about an extra tax on extra heavy personal vehicles that degrade the roadway more quickly? There are many ways to gin it up to force others to pay more than we do, and that's the cynical heart of most tax policy. Doing it from a prissy, moralistic feeling of superiority just makes me gag.

[Jamison]

21. I agree, more luxury taxes would be better.

The rich & those who have to keep up with the Jonses can afford it, and they're more addicted to status items than any smoker is to their cigs IMO.