Category Archives: Taxes

S.C. voters back increasing cigarette tax to national average — more than ever

33 Replies

The South Carolina Tobacco Collaborative released its new poll today showing support for increasing the state's lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax to the national average is higher than ever:

Overwhelming
Majority of

South
Carolina

Voters

Favor Increase in
Cigarette Tax

 

New Poll
Shows Overwhelming Support for Cigarette Tax

To Reduce
Youth Smoking and Address the State’s Healthcare
Needs

 

Columbia
(January 14, 2009) – Nearly
three-quarters of South Carolinians (74 percent) favor a proposal to raise the
state cigarette tax by 93 cents per pack to help fund programs to reduce tobacco
use among kids as well as programs to increase access to health care for South
Carolinians, according to a new poll released today. A majority of voters (60
percent strongly favor the 93-cent
increase.

 

The poll found that there is no
difference in support between a 93-cent and 50-cent increase. Support for both
specific cigarette tax increases is broad-based, and cuts across party, regional
and ideological lines.

Danny
McGoldrick

, Vice President for

Research

at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids noted,
“From a political standpoint, it’s clearly
‘in for a penny; in for a pound.’ This is because opposition to the cigarette
tax is low and essentially identical at the two levels, while the revenue and
other benefits dramatically increase with the higher
tax.”

 

The survey
of 500 registered

South
Carolina

voters, who are likely to vote, was released
today by the South Carolina Tobacco Collaborative in conjunction with the
Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and the American Cancer Society. In announcing its results, the
campaign declared the cigarette tax a win-win-win for

South Carolina

. An
increase in the state’s cigarette tax is a win for public health because it will
reduce smoking, particularly among kids; it’s a win for the state’s fiscal
health because it will raise more than $175 million in new annual revenue for
the state; and it’s a win for lawmakers who support it because of overwhelming
voter support.

 

Strong voter
support is evident among virtually every political and demographic subgroup of
voters in the

Palmetto

State

, as large majorities of Democrats
and Republicans, men and women, young and old, and residents of all parts of the
state support the tax. “The cigarette tax is clearly not a partisan issue,” said
McGoldrick. “The proposal has tremendous support across party lines and across
the state.”

 

Tobacco-caused
costs add more than $960 million per year to tax bills in the state – or more
than $560 for each

South
Carolina

household. “By increasing the cigarette tax,

South Carolina


will reduce smoking, save lives and help offset the health care costs caused by
smoking,” said Dr. Anthony Alberg of the Medical University of South
Carolina.

 

“Youth
smoking is an epidemic, and increasing the cigarette tax is a proven strategy to
protect thousands of

South
Carolina

kids from tobacco addiction,” said Alberg.
“

South
Carolina

has the nation’s lowest cigarette tax rate at
just 7 cents per pack and the lowest funding for prevention programs. We have
failed to take this important step to fight the epidemic. Among the options that
are on the table, increasing the cigarette tax is clearly a preferred solution
to making sure the state can balance the budget while funding important
priorities.”

 

 

In this
difficult economic environment, there is no support for any type of tax increase
in

South
Carolina

, with one exception – an increase in the state
cigarette tax. All other spending reductions or tax increases tested fall
flat.

 

Support for
a 93-cent increase in the state cigarette tax crosses party and ethnic lines,
with 73 percent of base GOPers, 86 percent of white Democrats, and 72 percent of
African Americans backing an increase in the state cigarette tax. Regionally,
support for a 93-cent cigarette tax increase is also strong across the state.
Support is stronger in the Lowcountry (80 percent favor) and Midlands (78
percent favor), but is also high in the Upstate (71 percent favor) and

Pee Dee

regions (67 percent favor). The
“weakest” subgroups – African American women and

Pee
Dee

voters, still back a cigarette tax increase by more than a 60
percent level.

 

In terms of
the specific cigarette tax increases tested by Public Opinion Strategies,
intensity is stronger for the 93-cent tax increase (60 percent strongly favor)
than for the 50-cent tax increase (54 percent strongly favor). Both proposed
increases receive strong support across party and ideological
lines.

 

The poll
found that a 93-cent cigarette tax increase is politically safe for legislators.
More than half (53 percent) of voters are more likely to support a candidate who
supports a cigarette tax increase, while just 14 percent are less likely.
Support remains high among base GOPers (50 percent more likely) as well as among
very conservative voters (51 percent more likely). Opposition among these groups
is low – just 12 percent of base GOPers are less likely, as are just 14 percent
of very conservative voters.

 

When asked
to choose, a significant majority of voters agree that revenue from a cigarette
tax increase should be used to reduce tobacco use, especially among children,
and to expand access to health care (62 percent), rather than to reduce other
state taxes (34 percent). Fully 83 percent of the electorate say they are
concerned about the problem of smoking and other tobacco use among young people
in South Carolina, with more than half (55 percent) of the electorate very
concerned about this issue.

 

Large bodies
of economic research, numerous expert panels, experience in other states, and
even reports from the tobacco industry have concluded decisively that price
increases effectively reduce smoking, especially among youth. The U.S. Surgeon
General, in the 2000 report, Reducing Tobacco Use, concluded that raising
cigarette taxes is widely regarded as one of the most effective tobacco
prevention strategies and that cigarette tax increases would lead to
“substantial long-run improvements in health.”

 

According to
the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a 93-cent increase in

South Carolina

’s cigarette tax would prevent more than
63,600

South Carolina

kids alive today from
becoming smokers and prompt 33,500 adult smokers to quit, saving 29,200

South Carolinians

from a premature,
smoking-caused death. The additional revenue from 93 cents per pack would
provide the state with an immediate boost of more than $175 million in revenue
in the first year alone.

 

“The
evidence is clear that increasing the price of cigarettes is one of the most
effective ways to reduce smoking, especially among children and pregnant women,”
said Jim Bowie, Executive Director of the South Carolina Tobacco Collaborative.
“Preliminary evidence confirms that every state that has significantly increased
its cigarette tax in recent years has enjoyed substantial increases in revenue,
even while reducing cigarette sales.

South Carolina

has nothing to lose and
everything to gain from raising its cigarette tax.”

 

The South
Carolina Tobacco Collaborative is a coalition of health, education, community,
business and faith organizations dedicated to raising the state excise tax on
cigarettes and other tobacco products to protect our kids. The Collaborative’s
more than 30 member groups, including the American Cancer Society, American
Heart Association, American Lung Association of South Carolina, South Carolina
Cancer

Alliance


and American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, support the 93-cent increase
in the cigarette tax to help prevent kids from starting to smoke and to fund
healthcare programs.

 

The survey
was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies. The statewide poll has a random
sample of 500 registered likely

South
Carolina

voters and was conducted December 9 and 11,
2008.  The poll has a margin of error of
+/- 4.38 percentage points.

So I guess I'm not the only one getting impatient on this.

Meanwhile, we had our lunch with the governor today. This subject came up, and basically he backs the idea of going a third of the way to the national average — if it's offset with a tax cut he wants. If it's NOT offset by the tax cut, he'll veto it again. But you probably knew that without my telling you.

Lunch was nice, by the way. Joel saw to it I had a nice grilled fish fillet with salad, and that the dressing didn't do me in. I appreciate it.

Video: Ed Gomez vs. Nikki Haley

8 Replies


First, I apologize for the length of this video clip, but I think it gives a pretty fair glimpse of what our interviews were like with the two candidates in S.C. House District 87.

You have newcomer Democrat Edgar Gomez challenging Rep. Nikki Haley. Four years ago, Nikki was the longshot going up against a very Old School incumbent in Larry Koon. If anything, Mr. Gomez is probably a longer shot, if only because Rep. Haley is hardly the symbol of entrenched seniority that Mr. Koon was; hers is still a very fresh face on the S.C. political scene.

On the video, you will see the candidates’ respective remarks about or answers to questions about several issues, starting with an open question about what they consider the top issues to be, then moving on to taxation, school "choice" and payday lending.

And yes, I will still be doing separate posts on these two interviews, just not today. In the meantime, you have the video.

Loving me some planet

4 Replies

Pooge_002

Ya gotta love this: So I’m going through my snail mail IN tray, something I do every month or so whether I need it or not (please, please don’t send me anything urgent or important via snail mail), and I run across this tabloid-sized publication called Environment & Climate News, and of course my usual move with anything unsolicited that is printed on something like newsprint is to toss it in the newsprint recycling bin.

But I can’t, because IT’S WRAPPED IN PLASTIC.

So who in the world who’s so interested in the environment be so utterly clueless as to send something so grotesquely incongruous to a crack, trained observer such as myself?

Well, once you know the answer you say "of course:" It’s our old friends Joseph L. Bast and his Heartland Institute, which is an organization that, like our governor, would never ever want gummint to do anything about climate change or anything like that.

Oh, and you say the picture above is hard to read on account of the glare? Well, that’s because IT’S WRAPPED IN PLASTIC!

But before you walk away chuckling, I should point out something that probably would never have struck me if not for my habit of saving up the mail to go through all at once: A few minutes before, I had dispensed with (by which I mean I had passed it on to Cindi because I noticed there was an item related to S.C. state policy) a publication called Health Care News, which as it happens is also put out by The Heartland Institute. Three guesses as to what the Institute wants us to do about health care. You got it: Nothing. (Mainly because the concept of "us" is anathema to such groups.)

This organization now has my attention. Ubiquity will do that. This group may be better funded, and operating on more fronts, than its spiritual brother Howard Rich.

Amazing the amount of money people will spend rather than pay taxes, isn’t it?

Pooge

Chip Huggins, S.C. House District 85

11 Replies

Photo_091008_002

Sept. 10, 2 p.m. — Chip Huggins has represented this Irmo-Chapin district since 1999. And folks there must like him pretty well, because in all that time he hasn’t had opposition for re-election. And in that area (think District 5 school board, the battles over development in northwest Richland County), not many officeholders can say that.

Since he’s the Republican in this race, given the district, I suspect he’s about to get elected again.

But perhaps because he hasn’t had occasion to explain or defend his positions on issues in past election years, he doesn’t communicate very well where he stands, or where he is likely to stand in the future. It’s difficult to tell at times for certain whether he’s just not all that good at communication, was having a bad day (nervousness, which is common enough in a first interview, could account for some of the mangled syntax that kept posing a barrier for me) or he just did not want to be pinned down on anything. Unfortunately, by the end of the interview, I felt quite sure that that last explanation was most valid — he seemed to have a tremendous aversion to taking definite stands.

The most definite thing he said to us — the most specific, helpful fact that he provided with regard to his record — had to do with how he voted on Mark Sanford’s video of the cigarette tax increase. He indicated that he favored the tax increase (which contrasted with his general belief, also clearly stated, that he believes South Carolinians are overtaxed), and indeed voted for it. In light of that, I asked him, what were we to make of the charge by his challenger, Jim Nelson, who told us Mr. Huggins had supported the governor’s veto of that legislation? He said quite clearly that what Mr. Nelson said was incorrect — that in fact he had voted to override. He offered to get the clerk’s office to back him up on that, but I said no need. Of course, Cindi will check that out to confirm, but it seems highly unlikely that he would assert that so definitely were it not the case — especially since he was so loathe to be pinned down on much else. (Cindi speculated that this could have been an honest mistake all around, because she had noted that the VoteSmart organization, which she normally swears by, had reported that vote in a confusing way. She noted that she has informed VoteSmart, and they’re supposed to be doing something about it.)

As for the rest of the interview — well, I deeply regret that I was having multiple technical difficulties today. I had lent the camera with which I usually shoot video to one of my daughters; I didn’t realize the memory in my digital sound recorder was full until after the interview started, and after shooting three still photos and three short, low-quality clips with my Treo, it refused to record any more, claiming that it, too, was full. (And my dog ate my homework.) But let me try to give you a sense of what it was like.

Early in the interview, he indicated that he favored Gov. Sanford’s campaign to restructure state government, which was fine by us, of course: The governor’s positions on that subject are almost word-for-word straight out of our "Power Failure" agenda. But later I asked him to be a little more specific, and ran into a wall of reluctance: He had no specific ideas about how the government’s structure could be improved, beyond a vague desire to avoid "duplication." So I asked him to tell me, specifically, which of the constitutional officers did he think should be appointed rather than elected? When none seemed to be forthcoming, I started listing them: The commissioner of agriculture — should that be appointed (that seemed like the easiest on to start with)? How about the adjutant general? The attorney general?

He wasn’t saying. "There’s just a lot of duplication," he said. "Going to continue to look at that. I’m not going to be specific about that." When I looked for this quote in my notes, at first I started to copy from the wrong page, because on the page before that, talking about education, he had said, "I don’t have any direct answer on that… continue to look at that."

Mr. Huggins is hardly alone in his fondness for the phrase "look at that" — it’s a favorite among candidates (especially incumbents) who don’t want to take a position, as in "We’ll continue to look at that." It may be a defensible way to talk about a complex issue that’s just come up and you haven’t had time to study in adequately. But there’s no excuse to answer that way about issues that you yourself cite as important, and which have lain more or less unchanged on the table before you for years on end. And Mr. Huggins did that repeatedly. When candidates do that, I tend to think What do they think this is, a weather report? I don’t want their predictions of what the Legislature will continue to look at, I want to know what they think the Legislature should do.

The more frustrating exchanges, for me, were later in the interview, after my Treo was full. But I think you can get the idea if you watch the phone video clip below (again, I apologize for the quality). About halfway in, we get to the subject of the state’s automobile sales tax cap. Mr. Huggins seems to want the cap changed in some way, a way that would be "fair," but when we try to find out what he believes would be fair (simply tax the full value of cars at the rate at which we currently tax the first $6,000? exempt the first $6,000, but charge the full rate on the value over that? some other approach?), but he avoids answering.

And, as I say, that was the pattern of most of the interview. I came away knowing that he disagrees with his opponent’s politically suicidal assertion that we don’t pay enough taxes, but not much else.

Usually I find these interviews quite helpful in forming an impression of a candidate. This time, not so much. If anyone has any further information to offer regarding Mr. Huggins or his opponent, now would be a good time to bring it to my attention. Because we’re continuing, as one might say, to "look at that…"

   

However we pay for it, we all need a better transit system

120 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

On Wednesday, my truck was in the shop. This sort of situation may mean slightly different things to different people. Here’s what it meant to me:

Wednesday morning, I needed a way to get from home — out west of West Columbia — to work, if for no other reason than I needed the paycheck to pay for getting my truck fixed.

Fortunately, my eldest daughter was staying at our house with her children — her husband is remodeling their home — and she works downtown. So she drove me way south of downtown to my office, before turning around and going back to her office.

(My wife couldn’t take me because she had my daughter’s six-month-old twins, and her car isn’t set up to accommodate the Apollo-capsule-type arrangements that they call baby carseats these days.)

From that point, I was stuck. I knew I was going to have to stay late at the office that night — later than anyone in my department — because I was going to be off Friday and needed to get at least a week’s worth of work done in the four days available. Besides, no one in my department lives anywhere near me. In fact, I started writing this column on Wednesday to get ahead, and as I typed this sentence at 5:23 p.m., I had no idea how I’d get home.

As it happened, my daughter got me at 8 p.m. Fortunately, she and her children had to go back into town anyway; otherwise picking me up would have involved a long round trip for somebody, with gasoline at $4 a gallon. I wasn’t quite at a stopping place when she arrived, so she waited downstairs for me with, as near as I could tell over her cell phone, at least one of the twins screaming.

Then, on Thursday morning, my truck still wasn’t ready. So we improvised a whole new plan, in which I drove my wife’s car into town, and my daughter left work at midday to take her car out to my wife so that she could go to work in the afternoon. But at least I was covered in case the job required me to be somewhere else in the course of the day, which sometimes happens.

This is ridiculous, folks.

Yes, I know: Poor me. These are decidedly spoiled American, middle-class problems.

But never mind me. The truth is, if you are less fortunate, you have a harder time owning a vehicle, fixing it when it’s broken, filling it with gasoline, or paying to park it. Nor can you afford to do without that job that the vehicle would take you to.

There are many places in this country where folks don’t have these problems. I have a New York subway card in my wallet from my last trip there, which I can’t bring myself to throw away because of the wonderful thing it represents: freedom from driving and pumping gas and finding a place to park, simply ducking down a few steps, and moments later finding myself in whatever part of town that I need to be in.

In the Columbia metropolitan area, we have our own sort of mass transit system, in theory. But it isn’t fully adequate to anyone’s needs. It doesn’t go from enough places to enough places often enough, and it’s tough for someone who just needs it occasionally to find out quickly and easily how to use it.

What we need is a better transit system, but what we’re in danger of having now is a worse one, or none at all. That’s because Richland County — the one local government that’s done the most to step up to the challenge of funding said system — is going to stop stepping up in October. That’s when the vehicle tax the county levied for that purpose runs out.

Last week, the County Council ditched a plan to hold a referendum asking voters to approve a 1-cent sales tax increase to fund the buses and other transportation needs and wants. I don’t blame the council. As we said in an editorial before the action, the Legislature has jacked up our sales taxes too high already. And besides, some of the things in that transportation proposal were more wants than needs, and only in there to get people who don’t ride buses to back the proposal.

No one knows where we go from here. The County Council doesn’t know. The citizens group that put together the plan the council rejected doesn’t know.

And just in case we got the notion that the city of Columbia would be taking up the slack, I got a preemptive call from Mayor Bob Coble Thursday morning to tell me that the options range from few to none. (While the mayor didn’t say so, that’s largely thanks to the Legislature’s tireless efforts to make sure local governments can’t pay for any local need that they aren’t paying for already.)

About the only person offering new ideas last week was regular contributor “bud” on my blog, who suggested using the city’s and county’s shares of the “hospitality tax,” a lot of which currently goes for things a whole lot less essential than a mass transit system.

As I write this, I don’t know what the best way to pay for a better transit system might be. What I do know is that Midlands governments need to find a way, for the sake of:

  • Those who have no other way to get to work now.
  • Those of us who would like a better way to work than we have now (and sometimes need one).
  • Those “knowledge workers” who are supposed to make the planned Innovista work, and who have the option of working instead in a community where it’s easier, and cheaper, and cleaner to get around.

For more, visit my blog at thestate.com/bradsblog/.

RichCo Council agrees with us on sales tax hike

12 Replies

The proposal to put a local penny sales tax increase for Richland County transportation needs on the November ballot presented us with a dilemma as an editorial board. Some of the main points to consider:

  • With the vehicle tax expiring in October, some way to continue funding the Midlands bus system was needed.
  • The road work identified in the plan a citizen study group came up with DID identify real needs — although the road construction, along with bike paths, etc. — were in our minds mere sweeteners (in this plan, that is) to draw more votes for the bus funding. There is indeed a need for some road construction, and MUCH road maintenance, not only in Richland County, but across our state. That has been neglected by our Legislature, which has also refused to reform the DOT, making us reluctant to see any additional funding passed, since it would pass through such an inefficient and unaccountable agency.
  • With the tax swap of last year, the Legislature has already put far too much stress on sales taxes, and too little on other mechanisms such as property and income. Another penny would exacerbate an already serious problem. It’s not as bad here yet as Tennessee, but we’re getting there.
  • The Legislature — see how often the Legislature is the source of problems? — has given local governments no better options for funding local needs.
  • Putting the question on the ballot is not the same thing as supporting it.

So, faced with all that and more, we noted the problems with a sales tax increase in our Tuesday editorial, although we reluctantly granted that at this point, perhaps the only way forward was to go ahead and have the referendum. Then, when it failed, the council would know it had to find another way to fund the buses.

Now that it has voted down even having the referendum (which we did not think the council would do, or I  didn’t anyway), the county has reached that point even more quickly.

The best option at the moment would seem to be continuing the wheel tax, while looking for a longer-term solution to paying the county’s share of operating the inadequate transit system that we have.

Sales tax polar opposites (heads-up, Paulistas: This post mentions Ron Paul!)

19 Replies

One of our regulars sent this from out of town (I’m not identifying him for now on account of his being out of town):

Brad,
    We’re up in New Hampshire visiting my mother.  Thought you’d be interested to  hear what I have observed — in four days of driving around the small towns of NH, I’ve yet to see a yard sign for McCain.  But I’ve seen at least ten for Ron Paul.  No Obama’s either. 
    And I don’t know if you’ve ever been up here but it’s a somewhat unsettling experience to go into Wal-Mart and buy $99.75 worth of stuff and pay ZERO sales tax.   And on top of that, NH has no income tax either.   How do they manage to survive without taxing everything?  (yes, higher property taxes but with much less government also).  If it weren’t for the snow, I think my wife and I would consider retiring here.   I hate snow almost as much as I hate taxes.

This message reminds me of something I meant to pass on from my recent trip to Memphis, which is the polar opposite of New Hampshire when it comes to sales taxes.

The first day we were there, I was driving to the new home of one of my wife’s kinfolks — way out past Collierville, I believe, to the very limits of suburban development, which if you know Memphis means way out East — and traversing all that sprawl caused me to work up a powerful thirst. So we stopped at a new Kroger (right across from a new Starbucks, of course), and I got a bottled water, and a diet Pepsi for my youngest daughter.

It got my attention when the total was exactly $3.00, so after I fed the three ones into the self-checkout apparatus, I looked at my receipt: Yep, 22 cents of it was sales tax. (See the receipt below.)

The reason Tennessee has such outrageous sales tax rates is that the state has no income tax, and none on the horizon (when ex-Gov. Don Sundquist tried to get one enacted, he had his head handed to him). We do have an income tax, but we are hard on Tennessee’s heels when it comes to sales tax. If Richland County manages to pass the penny for local transportation needs, we won’t be far behind.

The reason, in our case, is the severe restrictions placed by the state on local governments’ ability to raise revenue through other means, combined with South Carolina’s utter failure to come to grips with road construction needs at the state level. In the Volunteer State, local governments have wheel taxes and the like to fund roads and other transport needs and wants. (Also, local governments build and maintain far more of Tennessee’s roads; the state of South Carolina reserves to itself the right to mismanage most of our roads.) Or at least they did back when I lived there. If someone has more up-to-date info, it will be welcome.

Memphis_sales_tax

 

How they voted on cigarette tax

26 Replies

Trying to catch up with messages and such, I have no time to comment right now on the inexcusable, unconscionable, reprehensible vote to uphold Gov. Mark Sanford’s indefensible veto of the cigarette tax (beyond reminding you of what I’ve said over and over — how the money is spent is secondary, far secondary, to cutting teen smoking by raising the price, and there was NO excuse not to do that). But until I DO have time, here’s how those no-account cusses (and the rest of them) voted:

{BC-SC-XGR-Cigarette Tax-Roll Call,0405}
{Cigarette Tax-Roll Call}
{By The Associated Press}=
   The 54-57 roll call by which the South Carolina House voted to sustain a veto on a 50 cent-a-pack cigarette tax increase. A two-thirds vote was required to override the veto.
   On this vote, a "yes" vote was a vote to override the veto and "no" vote was a vote to sustain the veto.
   Voting "yes" were 40 Democrats and 14 Republicans.
   Voting "no" were 4 Democrats and 53 Republicans.
   Not voting were 7 Democrats and 6 Republicans.

{Democrats Voting Yes}
   Alexander, Florence; Allen, Greenville; Anderson, Georgetown; Anthony, Union; Bales, Eastover; Bowers, Brunson; Branham, Lake City; Brantley, Ridgeland; Breeland, Charleston; G. Brown, Bishopville; R. Brown, Hollywood; Clyburn, Aiken; Cobb-Hunter, Orangeburg; Funderburk, Camden; Govan, Orangeburg; Hart, Columbia; Harvin, Summerton; Hodges, Green Pond; Howard, Columbia; Jefferson, Pineville; Jennings, Bennettsville; Kennedy, Greeleyville; Knight, St. George; Mack, North Charleston; McLeod, Little Mountain; Miller, Pawleys Island; Mitchell, Spartanburg; J.H. Neal, Hopkins; J.M. Neal, Kershaw; Ott, St. Matthews; Parks, Greenwood; Rutherford, Columbia; Scott, Columbia; Sellers, Denmark; F.N. Smith, Greenville; J.E. Smith, Columbia; Stavrinakis, Charleston; Vick, Chesterfield; Weeks, Sumter; Williams, Darlington;

{Republicans Voting Yes}
   Ballentine, Irmo; Cotty, Columbia; Crawford, Florence; Dantzler, Goose Creek; Gullick, Lake Wylie; Hiott, Pickens; Huggins, Columbia; Mahaffey, Lyman; Owens, Pickens; Pinson, Greenwood; Rice, Easley; Scarborough, Charleston; Skelton, Six Mile; Whitmire, Walhalla;

{Democrats Voting No}
   Battle, Nichols; Kirsh, Clover; Moss, Gaffney; Neilson, Darlington;

{Republicans Voting No}
   Bannister, Greenville; Barfield, Conway; Bedingfield, Mauldin; Bingham, West Columbia; Bowen, Anderson; Brady, Columbia; Cato, Travelers Rest; Chalk, Hilton Head Island; Clemmons, Myrtle Beach; Cooper, Piedmont; Daning, Goose Creek; Delleney, Chester; Duncan, Clinton; Edge, North Myrtle Beach; Erickson, Beaufort; Frye, Batesburg-Leesville; Gambrell, Honea Path; Hagood, Mt. Pleasant; Haley, Lexington; Hamilton, Taylors; Hardwick, Surfside Beach; Harrell, Charleston; Harrison, Columbia; Haskins, Greenville; Herbkersman, Bluffton; Kelly, Woodruff; Leach, Greer; Littlejohn, Spartanburg; Loftis, Greenville; Lowe, Florence; Lucas, Hartsville; Merrill, Daniel Island; Mulvaney, Indian Land; Perry, Aiken; E.H. Pitts, Lexington; M.A. Pitts, Laurens; Sandifer, Seneca; Shoopman, Greer; Simrill, Rock Hill; D.C. Smith, North Augusta; G.M. Smith, Sumter; G.R. Smith, Simpsonville; J.R. Smith, Langley; Stewart, Aiken; Talley, Spartanburg; Taylor, Laurens; Thompson, Anderson; Toole, West Columbia; Umphlett, Moncks Corner; Walker, Landrum; White, Anderson; Witherspoon, Conway; Young, Summerville;

{Those Not Voting}
   Democrats: Agnew, Abbeville; Coleman, Winnsboro; Hayes, Hamer; Hosey, Barnwell; Moody-Lawrence, Rock Hill; Phillips, Gaffney; Whipper, North Charleston;
   Republicans: Davenport, Boiling Springs; Hutson, Summerville; Limehouse, Charleston; W.D. Smith, Spartanburg; Spires, Pelion; Viers, Myrtle Beach;

You might think I should praise those who voted to override, but I won’t — anyone, regardless of political philosophy, should do what they did. To vote to sustain the veto was beneath contempt.

Lindsey pandering for McCain

32 Replies

Grahammccain_2

Someone pointed this out to me yesterday, but I was having so much trouble getting ANYTHING to post I gave up on the blog for the day. Now that things seem to working again…

We know that Lindsey Graham’s best buddy in the Senate is John McCain. And predictably (but sadly), Lindsey is walking point for his party’s presumptive presidential nominee on his worst idea ever — the summer-long gas tax holiday:

Gas tax holiday to be introduced by Graham
By Doug Abrahms
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said he will propose suspending the federal tax of 18.4 cents a gallon for the summer in a measure on the Senate floor as early as next week.
    "On a very short-term basis, I think Sen. (John) McCain’s got a really good idea — relieve that tax," said Graham, R-S.C.
    The idea also has been widely touted by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Democratic candidate Barack Obama has dismissed it as a political gimmick that will not solve the real problems of soaring demand and dwindling supply.
    Although presidential candidates have been talking about the gas tax holiday for weeks, there has been no vote yet.

Long-term, short-term, it’s a horrible idea, that goes precisely in the wrong direction.

CORRECTION TO PREVIOUS: Earlier at this point in the post, I said Jim DeMint was with Graham and McCain on this. Wesley called from DeMint’s office Wednesday to say that’s not true. So I’m sorry about that. It just goes to show, I guess, that you can’t believe everything you read. More about that later.

Remember, of course, that Hillary Clinton’s on their side on this. The only presidential candidate talking like a grownup on this issue is the youngest of them all, Barack Obama.

How they voted on the cigarette tax

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Here’s the Senate vote to pass H.3567, which increases cigarette taxes by 50 cents per pack, with half the revenue going to expand Medicaid coverage, and half to give tax credits to low-income workers to help them purchase medical insurance.

Passage of the bill (H.3567):
Ayes 33; Nays 11; Abstain 1

AYES
Alexander          Anderson               Ceips
Cleary               Cromer                  Drummond
Elliott                Fair                       Ford
Gregory             Hayes                    Hutto
Jackson             Knotts                   Land *
Leatherman       Leventis                Lourie
Malloy               Martin                   Matthews
McGill                O’Dell                    Patterson *
Pinckney            Rankin                  Reese
Scott                 Setzler                  Sheheen *
Short                 Thoma                  Williams
Total–33

NAYS
Campsen            Courson                Grooms
Hawkins             Massey                 McConnell
Peeler                Ritchie                  Ryberg
Vaughn               Verdin
Total–11

ABSTAIN
Bryant
Total–1

*These Senators were not present in the Chamber at the time the vote was taken and the votes were recorded by leave of the Senate, with unanimous consent.

Cindi, whom we can thank for looking up the above while I was in yet another candidate interview, says other votes that might interest you would include:
1. Amendment P-1, to raise the cigarette tax by $1; tabled 31-13
2. Amendment P-4a, remove the provision that automatically increases
the tax each year by the rate of medical inflation. The Senate refused
to table that amendment 24-18, and then passed it on a voice vote.
Senators who voted "aye" voted to eliminate the inflation index.
    These votes can be found in the Senate Journals of May 7 (P-1) and May 8 (P-4a). Go to http://www.scstatehouse.net/html-pages/sjournal.htm to find the Journals, and then search for the amendments.)

Hillary joins McCain in pandering on gas tax; Obama stands up to them both

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This has been a busy day and I’m just getting around to some basic things now. But I couldn’t let the day pass without noting how right Obama is about this:

Obama says rivals Clinton, McCain pandering on gas tax
By MIKE GLOVER and BETH FOUHY
Associated Press Writers
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Democrat Barack Obama dismissed his rivals’ calls for national gas tax holiday as a political ploy that won’t help struggling consumers. Hillary Rodham Clinton said his stance shows he’s out of touch with the economic realities faced by ordinary citizens.
    Clinton and certain Republican presidential nominee John McCain are calling for a holiday on collecting the federal gas tax "to get them through an election," Obama said at a campaign rally before more than 2,000 cheering backers a week before crucial primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. "The easiest thing in the world for a politician to do is tell you exactly what you want to hear."
    Clinton, who toured the Miller Veneers wood manufacturing company in Indianapolis, said "there are a lot of people in Indiana who would really benefit from a gas tax holiday.
    "That might not mean much to my opponent, but I think it means a lot to people who are struggling here, people who commute a long way to work, farmers and truckers," Clinton said. She has called for a windfall tax on oil companies to pay for a gas tax holiday.
    "Senator Obama won’t provide relief, while Senator McCain won’t pay for it," Clinton said. "I’m the only candidate who will provide immediate relief at the pump, with a plan."
    With his comments, Obama continued a running dispute over whether ending collection of the gas tax is the quickest and best way to help consumers. Leading in delegates and the popular vote, Obama in recent days has focused on McCain, but he broadened that criticism Tuesday to include Democrat Clinton.
    "Now the two Washington candidates in the race have decided to do something different," said Obama. "John McCain started it, he made the proposal, and then Hillary Clinton said ‘me too.’"
    The plan would suspend collecting the 18.4 cent federal gas tax 24.4 cent diesel tax for the summer.
    He said drying up gas tax collections would batter highway construction, costing North Carolina up to 7,000 jobs, while saving consumers little.
    "We’re arguing over a gimmick that would save you half a tank of gas over the course of the entire summer so that everyone in Washington can pat themselves on the back and say they did something," said Obama.
    "Well, let me tell you, this isn’t an idea designed to get you through the summer, it’s designed to get them through an election," said Obama. He said his call for middle-class tax cuts would be far more beneficial than suspending gas tax collections.
    Obama took a different view on the issue when he was an Illinois legislator, voting at least three times in favor of temporarily lifting the state’s 5 percent sales tax on gasoline.
    The tax holiday was finally approved during a special session in June of 2000, when Illinois motorists were furious that gas prices had just topped $2 a gallon in Chicago.
    During one debate, he joked that he wanted signs on gas pumps in his district to say, "Senator Obama reduced your gasoline prices."
    But the impact of the tax holiday was never clear. A government study could not determine how much of the savings was passed on to motorists. Many lawmakers said their constituents didn’t seem to have benefited. They also worried the tax break was pushing the state budget out of balance.
    When legislation was introduced to eliminate the tax permanently, Obama voted "no." The effort failed, and the sales tax was allowed to take effect again.
    Responding to Obama’s criticism, McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said the Illinois senator "does not understand the effect of gas prices on the economy. Senator Obama voted for a gas tax reduction before he opposed it."
    Bounds was deliberately echoing one of Democrat John Kerry’s most troublesome missteps of the 2004 presidential campaign. Kerry said of funding for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
    Obama and Clinton both opened their campaign day in North Carolina. Clinton toured a research facility and collected the prized endorsement of Gov. Mike Easley.
    "It’s time for somebody to be in the White House who understands the challenges we face in this country," said Easley, in announcing his backing of Clinton. She then promptly headed for a string of events in Indiana.
    "The governor and I have something in common – we think results matter," said Clinton.
    Easley is popular with white, working-class voters that have formed the base for Clinton’s success in recent primaries.
    Clinton also collected an endorsement from Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, who praised "her support in rural America, her commitment to national security and her dedication to our men and women in uniform."
    Skelton, a conservative Democrat who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, was among a half-dozen Democratic House members called to meet with Clinton after she won the Pennsylvania primary last week.
    While Obama is favored in North Carolina, the race in Indiana is very tight, and Obama was heading there Wednesday.
    Obama collected endorsements of his own during the day: In Kentucky, Rep. Ben Chandler, son of former Gov. A.B. "Happy" Chandler, gave Obama his backing ahead of that state’s May 20 primary, and in Iowa, Democratic National Committee member Richard Machacek – a supporter of former Sen. John Edwards before he dropped out of the presidential race – switched his support to Obama.
    Interest in the two primaries next week has been high. Officials in Indiana said nearly 90,000 people have cast early ballots, far outpacing absentee turnout in 2004.
    At stake Tuesday are 115 delegates in North Carolina, and 72 in Indiana.
Beth Fouhy reported from Indianapolis. Associated Press writers Christopher Wills in Springfield, Ill., and Sam Hananel in Washington contributed to this report.

Obama’s the only one acting like a responsible grownup here. He’s also the only one speaking up for Energy Party values.

What McCain and Clinton are both doing on this is appalling. They’re treating us like two-year-olds, and proposing to act in direct opposition to the nation’s interests.

Folks, paying your taxes isn’t some kind of big, freaking deal. It just isn’t

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Trying before leaving tonight to get through all the pooge that came into my e-mail account over the last couple of days, and am struck by the releases from various ideologues, from libertarians to our current GOP Chairman, Katon Dawson, going on and on what they call "Tax Day," which normal people with a healthy sense of perspective call "April 15."

Let me tell you something, folks: First, paying your taxes is no big, freaking deal. It’s a thing that grownups do without thinking much about it, understanding that it’s just something you do because you live in a place that has more public, civilizing amenities than, say, Somalia.

Second, I don’t know about you, but most of us pay our taxes through payroll deduction. And I’ve never had any trouble getting the bean-counters to take out a little more from my paycheck than necessary each payday, and so my tax return gets filed in January, and by this time of year, I get a nice little check back. It’s kind of nice.

In other words, it’s called a clue; look into it.

Here’s the problem with John McCain

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I‘ve been watching and listening as Democrats start cranking up ways to trash John McCain (while moaning about the evil "Swift-Boating" that they’re sure will come their nominee’s way). None of it has been particularly imaginative — equating him with Bush is a favorite, although it certainly stretches credulity.

For the most part, they miss the one thing that bothers me most — and no, it’s not his age. It’s his having bought into the Bush tax cuts, after having opposed them so strenuously in 2000, and for good reasons (he did favor cuts at the time — just not nearly as deep). Sure, once the cuts are part of the tax structure for several years, I can see how someone might accept them as a fait accompli, but I don’t. (Call me wacky, but whether we’re talking the war or entitlements or anything else, I think we should pay what our government actually costs.) Also, I would hesitate to go back to the old rates when we’re in an economic slowdown — but McCain’s change of position occurred before that.

This is not a deal-killer for me, any more than Barack Obama’s preacher is. It’s just something that goes on the ledger in the negative column.

So it’s kind of galling to see this on the latest McCain fund-raising e-mail:

My Friends,

Today, April 15th, marks the deadline when all Americans must file their income taxes. While many of us are aggravated and displeased when we see exactly how much of our hard-earned money goes to the federal government – if one of my Democratic opponents is elected in November, you can be certain your tax rate will increase across the board.

When we elect our next president in November, we will make a clear statement about the direction we want to take our economy and our tax system. As I have said before, this election will present Americans with a clear choice between my vision for our country and that of my Democratic opponents.

I believe today, as I have always believed, in small government, fiscal discipline and low taxes. I believe that tax cuts work best when accompanied by lower spending. And I make the promise to you that if elected president, I plan to make the present tax cuts permanent, lower corporate rates from 35% to 25% and end the Alternative Minimum Tax, which will affect millions of middle class families….

Then, of course, we get to the point of the message:

But I cannot succeed in my efforts without your immediate financial support…

In other words, Quick! Send me your money before those crazy Democrats spend it on universal health care or something…

Such moments are not the senator’s best.

More good news: Cigarette tax hike takes leap forward

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First the smoking ban thing, now this…

A little bird just called to tell me that the Senate Finance Committee just voted, 14-11, to increase the state cigarette tax by 50 per pack, taking us to 57 cents (yes, currently it is only 7 cents, the lowest in the nation).

The vote followed three hours of debate, but the only person who actually seemed to be against the increase itself was Greg Ryberg. So what did they argue about all that time? Well, they argued about what lawmakers tend to really care about — how to spend the money. Of the $158 million the increase will raise per year, $5 million will go to smoking cessation efforts, the rest to Medicaid (which means getting a federal match). The spending decision was on a vote of 12-11.

Two important things to add:

  1. This is indexed to inflation (which the old tax wasn’t), so as cigarettes go up in price, so will the tax.
  2. The tax will also apply to those little "cigars," which are really just brown cigarettes. So no more loophole there.

If this gets full Senate approval, it will have to be reconciled with the 35-cent hike the House passed last year. The House plan was to spend the money on eliminating the sales tax on groceries, but that idea is now moot, since that happened last year anyway, without the cigarette tax increase.

You know, between this and the S.C. Supreme Court’s decision yesterday that it’s actually OK for local governments to respond to their citizens and pass smoking bans, it’s almost as though South Carolina leadership has suddenly made a consensus decision to behave in a rational manner toward tobacco. Two branches of gummint, that is — we have yet to hear from our governor. But let’s just pretend that first the full Senate, then the governor, will act like a sensible people about the health of South Carolinians, too. I’m not going to have my day ruined by thinking otherwise (even if Sen. Ryberg is a reliable indicator of the governor’s thinking, more often than not).

And no, this is not an elaborate April Fool’s Day gag. This good stuff is really happening.

Read My Lips: ‘No New Taxes’ is a stupid, irresponsible thing to say

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George H.W. Bush’s "no new taxes" pledge was a watershed moment for me. It was an idiotic thing for a reasonably bright man who knew better to say, and we know why he said it, right? To charm the Reagan revolutionaries, who might otherwise have listened to all that "wimp factor" talk.

But it was more than that to me. It caused me to become permanently disenchanted with campaign promises in general. No one knows what kinds of decisions he will face in office. There is something very phony about pretending to know, and presuming to predict what you will do. You end up with such absurdities as the latest George Bush spouting against nation-building, then spending most of his time in office trying to do just that (although botching it badly enough, for most of that time, to convince us he was never that into it).

This idea developed further as I moved from news to editorial in the early ’90s. News is about "What did he say; what did he do; what did they other guy do; did their actions match their words?" and other stuff that just makes me tired now. I began to think more about what candidates, and far more importantly, office-holders should do. I thought more and more about the nature of representative democracy, and came to appreciate the system more deeply. And the more I thought about it, the more I came to appreciate character over specific policy proposals. I think our system works best when we elect a candidate we trust to make good decisions come what may. I care less about the specifics of policy proposals (which in most cases will never become reality in that form), and more about the quality of the individual proposing them. Past actions count a lot. So do words, in the sense that they reveal the kind of person the candidate is. The fact that a candidate is the kind of person who would want to do a certain thing will matter more than the specifics. So would the intangible qualities revealed in the way the candidate communicates his or her ideas. For that reason, the fact that Obama speaks of approaching challenges as one nation, and is able to sell that approach to voters, contrasted against Sen. Clinton’s world view of life as a constant struggle against Republicans, matter more to me than the specifics of, say, their respective health care plans. If their health care plans were polar opposites, it would mean something. But they’re not, and I don’t care to quibble over them. This approach can be extremely frustrating to such people as today’s caller.

It does make a difference to me when a candidate lacks a serious proposal to address health care. I criticized John McCain on this point several months back. But as important as this issue is to me, it’s not a make-or-break one in considering the presidency. Truth is, no candidate but Dennis Kucinich wants to do what I want to do on the issue — and Rep. Kucinich cancels that out by putting me off on other issues. Among the Republicans, Mitt Romney probably came the closest to wanting to do anything good — but that wasn’t nearly enough, and it didn’t cancel the reasons NOT to support Romney. (Biggest reason? Rather than run as a guy who’d done something smart on health care in Massachusetts, he tried to pander to every impulse to be found in his party, and tried to get ahead by pulling other candidates down. Character.)

This brings us to what John McCain said this week: "No new taxes." This was a reprehensible thing to say. I know McCain is a national-security guy and just isn’t into the stuff that the anti-tax part of his party obsess over. That’s one of many things I like about him. But that doesn’t excuse him from throwing them a bone to this extent, even if he did it so badly that it wasn’t convincing (as Nicholas Kristof says, "he is abysmal at pandering").

Now let’s pause for a moment to make sure you understand what I’m saying. The tax haters don’t understand why I say it’s inexcusable to say, before you’re even in office, "No new taxes." That’s because they think the only thing to do with a tax — ever, under any circumstances — is to cut it, and they think anyone who doesn’t agree with their extreme must be their extreme polar opposite, which to them means that person, in one of their favorite phrases, "never saw a tax he didn’t like." They really say things like that. It doesn’t bother them a bit that such accusations are insupportable, and that in fact evidence exists to the contrary. Their world view is just that simple, and just that wrong.

McCain’s world view is not that simple, and therefore it is profoundly wrong for him to say what he said, even if he just said it to shut them up so we can talk about more important things (understandable, but still not excusable). Perhaps he believes that there never will be a need during a McCain presidency to raise a tax, so what’s the harm?

Here’s the harm: Let me put it in terms that he might understand, because they would touch more closely upon his own deeply held values. Think how stupid, how grossly irresponsible, it would be for the man who would be commander in chief to say, "I will never take military action" in office. See what I’m saying? You might like to think you’d never have to send another soldier into harm’s way, and you might want voters to know you’re the kind of guy who likes to think that. Perfectly understandable. But perfectly wrong. The would-be commander in chief of the world’s one superpower just can’t take force off the table like that.

Mind you, this is not a perfect comparison — a president has greater leeway in taking military action than he does in making tax policy (properly speaking, the purview of Congress; all the president can do is make non-binding proposals or wield the blunt instrument of the veto — he can’t even veto line items). But my point is that the thing that’s wrong here is not the policy question itself. Peace is a fine thing. Not raising taxes is a fine thing.

But you cannot know what future situations will call for, and it’s wrong to try to tie your hands in advance. And it’s particularly wrong to do it to win votes.

It’s not the policy; it’s the character. And saying "no new taxes" this way places a stain upon John McCain’s. (It also makes him look desperate; if he’ll say that to appease the extremists, would he actually consider such a disastrous choice as Mark Sanford for veep? It was the desperation and the irresponsibility in this statement on taxes that caused me actually to worry about something I had dismissed as merely ridiculous before.)

Does the stain disqualify him? Not in my eyes. His virtues far outweigh this sin. And consider that the pandering, hands-tying statements that Sens. Barack and Clinton routinely make regarding Iraq are far more egregious. I am somewhat reassured to believe that both of them know better, but it doesn’t make me think more of their characters.

Nor does it cause me to dismiss them altogether — particularly not Obama, whose character seems so much better suited to the office than Mrs. Clinton’s.

All of us are stained; no one is qualified to throw the first stone. But I do pick up these stones as I find them, and place them on the balance. As I weigh them, I’m still very glad we endorsed John McCain and Barack Obama. The one perfect guy isn’t actually running.

Palmetto abuse

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This is what the Order of the Palmetto has sunk to: The Club for Greed’s favorite governor, Marshall C. Sanford Jr., has awarded it to a guy whose signature achievement is having crusaded to save himself obscene amounts of money in property taxes on his $1.3 million Charleston home.

Here’s a story about it from the Charleston paper. An excerpt:

    Emerson B. Read Sr. was given the state’s highest civilian honor
Monday for heading up a citizens group that convinced state legislators
to reduce property taxes.

    While accepting the Order of the
Palmetto, Read thanked others from around the state who helped propel a
tax-law reforming crusade. He then told an appreciative audience that
efforts to shift taxes away from homes are not finished.

    "We’re going back for more," he declared.

    Read,
83, said he has a presentation prepared for legislators in Columbia,
and if the latest efforts are successful, "there will be no property
taxes for those who are 65 and above, not even bonded indebtedness."

In a Dec. 3, 2006, article about Read’s "noble" efforts, The Post and Courier reported:

    Read stands to see a significant reduction in taxes on his King Street home, which he bought for $45,000 four decades ago and which is now valued at $1.3 million. His tax bill tops $10,000.

Since school operating taxes generally made up about half of a tax bill, that meant his immediate savings would be in the neighborhood of $5,000  per year.

Next thing you know, the gov will be handing out this award to folks who save a bunch of money by switching to Geico. No, he won’t — those folks would not be saving themselves money at the expense of the community they live in, so the governor wouldn’t admire it so much.

So in Washington, spending equals revenue?

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It’s been over 20 years since my job entailed dealing regularly, via phone, with editors in the old Knight Ridder Washington bureau, so I guess I forgot what it could be like.

When I was editing the George Will column for today’s op-ed page, I ran across this paragragh:

   In January, with much preening, House Democrats embraced "paygo,” the pay-as-you-go rule that any tax cut must be "paid for” by compensatory tax increases or revenue cuts. In December, Democrats abandoned it because of the alternative minimum tax.

Does that make sense to you? It sure didn’t to me. So I called The Washington Post Writers Group, and asked the question, did he mean "’paid for’ by compensatory tax increases or spending cuts?" The first person I asked referred me to another person (which is fine; I hadn’t exactly expected the first person to answer the phone to address the question anyway — he had just sounded like he wanted to try).

The second person I spoke with was one of those people who is unbothered by long stretches of "dead air" in a conversation. A couple of times, while waiting for a response from him, I had to say, "Hello?" to see if he was still there.

After I repeated the question to him, and waited through a long pause, he said he supposed that would be a fine substitution, as it was synonymous.

I could have just let that go in the interest of getting on with a very busy day and enabling folks to go home and start their holiday, but my inner Scrooge asserted himself: Obviously we were miscommunicating.

They’re hardly synonymous, I insisted. "Revenue" is money coming in; "spending" is money going out. It you were going to cut something in order to balance a tax cut, it would have to be the latter.

Another long pause.

Finally, he conceded that he saw my point.

After another long wait, I said, so that substitution’s OK?

Yes, he said.

And then, he added most strangely, "He just meant it in the Washington sense." If there had been irony in his tone, I would have laughed politely. But he sounded so serious, so "you folks in the hinterland wouldn’t understand our insider lingo," that I almost laughed anyway — and not politely.

But I let it go. I had a lot more work to do.

Finding common ground on health care reform

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The dialogue on this post about single-payer started out in the predictable manner — with libertarian Doug decrying the very idea that I would want him (which is the way he reads the words "we" and "us") to be a part of what I see as the common-sense sense solution to a critical need we have in common as a society.

But you have to read past that. One of the problems Doug and I have discussing issues is that he likes the "how" of specific proposals, whereas my interest lies more in the broad concept. As an INTP, I intuitively understand his frustration, but that’s the way I approach things.

And once you do get to proposals, the ideology falls away enough for Doug to say things that I agree with. For instance, he set forth these five suggestions for taming the health-care-cost monster in America:

1) Reduce drug patent lengths to allow competition from generic makers

2) Require insurance companies to offer coverage that is portable, not revokable under any circumstance, and restricted in the percentage increases in premiums to a limited range across all policies

3) Abolish HIPAA rules that only add expensive overhead costs to the system

4) If healthcare for all is a national concern, pay for it by cutting government costs in other areas rather than simply adding another tax on top of the waste already built into the government. The money is there already to easily cover every one who doesn’t have insurance.

5) Go back to the days where drug companies could not advertise on TV, radio, or print media. All that marketing cost gets passed onto consumers. I really don’t care if I ever see another commercial for Viagra, Ambien, or any other product that has "oily discharge" as a frequent side effect.

With the exception of item No. 4, which is simply a libertarian article of faith (which is why I initially read right over it), this seems like a list I could go for. (As much as I’d like to have a clean sweep,that one is just a spoiler condition. While you or I or anyone can come up with a list of federal expenditures that we could do without, that’s not how representative democracy works — such decisions are made collaboratively, and one person’s waste is another person’s essential. This fact lies at the root of so much libertarian alienation. Anyway, the bottom line is that in the real world, if you say you’ll only agree to a national health plan if you cut an equivalent amount elsewhere, you are for practical purposes saying let’s not do it at all. But in the interests of furthering dialogue, let’s set that aside.)

I was a little surprised that Doug went for No. 1 even more wholeheartedly than I would, since it’s about property rights. And I always thought that HIPAA (which I hate) was about privacy (another libertarian priority), and specifically about trying to achieve Item No. 2 by preventing insurance companies from knowing your medical history. But fine. I’m all for it. And I prefer the more direct, regulatory way of approaching No. 2 — if you insist on still having insurance companies.

I was even more pleased and surprised when Doug, later in the dialogue, proposed that we just make the plan that federal employees are on available to everybody. I would have to study this a lot more closely (and those of you who deal intimately with that system, please weigh in), but I have to applaud Doug’s willingness to do something that bold, even if it’s not single-payer.

Of course, he threw in the caveat that we could cover the cost by cutting spending elsewhere — once again, a fine idea until you try to do it, and something that can’t be an absolute condition if we want to get anything done.

But the really cool thing is that, when we get down to such specifics, we’re no longer arguing about the need for universal coverage. We’re just haggling over the price.

How did you vote in the District 5 referendum, and why?

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Let’s have a little real-time civic discussion here.

I notice that interest seems high in my posts from yesterday on the subject, here, here and here.

Now that the voting is actually going on, let’s analyze it, and let’s not do it the bogus, TV-style, talking-heads-guessing way. Let’s hear from real people who have voted today:

How did you vote in the District 5 referendum, and why?

I’ll do my best to keep up with approving comments, to keep this as current as possible. Now, let’s see what happens.