Taxing tobacco violates the letter of the promise -- it's a promise made in superlatives, after all -- but it seems obvious to me that it doesn't violates the spirit. When Obama says there will be no tax increases on families making less than $250,000 a year, he doesn't mean "taxes that incidentally fall on some families in that range." He means taxes that fall on those families because they make less than $250,000 a year.
So sure, some people who are part of families making less than $250,000 smoke. But there's no necessary connection between lighting up and making less than a certain amount. The overlap is accidental, not intentional.
More importantly, the story puts the process of politics above the substance of politics. Raising a tax on cigarettes, like raising a tax on gasoline, is the kind of pigouvian tax that conservative economists like Greg Mankiw and Jeffrey Miron should love. Smoking has all sorts of negative externalities that a government can rightly correct.
But few people are going to discuss the merits of this policy shift. Instead, they will get hung up on the horserace questions -- who said what, and when they flip flopped. They will mention the irony: Obama himself is (or was) a smoker. But will they mention the obvious -- that this tax is a good idea?
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/04/read-obamas-lips-new-taxes/7165/
