Posted on 05/12/2009 2:35:48 AM PDT by PghBaldy
Senate leaders are considering new federal taxes on soda and other sugary drinks to help pay for an overhaul of the nation's health-care system.
The taxes would pay for only a fraction of the cost to expand health-insurance coverage to all Americans and would face strong opposition from the beverage industry. They also could spark a backlash from consumers who would have to pay several cents more for a soft drink.
On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee is set to hear proposals from about a dozen experts about how to pay for the comprehensive health-care overhaul that President Barack Obama wants to enact this year. Early estimates put the cost of the plan at around $1.2 trillion. The administration has so far only earmarked funds for about half of that amount.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based watchdog group that pressures food companies to make healthier products, plans to propose a federal excise tax on soda, certain fruit drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks and ready-to-drink teas. It would not include most diet beverages. Excise taxes are levied on goods and manufacturers typically pass them on to consumers.
Senior staff members for some Democratic senators at the center of the effort to craft health-care legislation are weighing the idea behind closed doors, Senate aides said.
The Congressional Budget Office, which is providing lawmakers with cost estimates for each potential change in the health overhaul, included the option in a broad report on health-system financing in December. The office estimated that adding a tax of three cents per 12-ounce serving to these types of sweetened drinks would generate $24 billion over the next four years. So far, lawmakers have not indicated how big a tax they are considering.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
You’re gonna have to ‘splain that one to my grandkids. ;)
Not to mention the contributions these "fine, Christian conservatives" make to the drug industry. Those empty plastic bottles & cans are just laying around waiting to be poked full of holes to use as a dope pipe.
Father Fed should tack on an extra tax to pay for treatment. While they are at it they might as well tax aluminum foil. It's our duty to pay for the bad life decisions of strangers.
Hell, they should throw their asses in jail for possessing drug paraphenalia.
Gatorade? Good Lord, I’ll go broke. Anyone with a kid playing high school athletics will.
Wow, I knew they were bad for you because of the aspartame, etc. I haven’t had them in years, when they started changing the diet formulas to taste more like the ‘real’ stuff, but they tasted nasty! :-\
Just drink tap water, filtered if you like...but like I wrote, HolyO will soon be taxing that 150% and higher to rake in dough to pay for all these spending bills HE is responsible for, NOT President Bush!
I say they start with tort reform. My personal opinion is that lawyers bear the biggest responsibility for the high price of health care in this country.
This is really an idiotic post. What don't you understand about spending other peoples money?? You sound like Zero.... are you into spreading the wealth too???
when are our enlightened politicians going to put a tax on whiskey/alcohol, and hotdogs, and anything from Dairy Queen, and Oreo Cookies, and Snicker bars, and sitting in movie theaters for two hours pounding down buttered popcorn and snowcaps, and riding lawnmowers, and sitting in the easy chair reading the paper on Sundays, and...playing on the computer... .
First off, there are numerous studies that indicate people drink a diet soda in order to *save calories* and thus allow themselves an additional Big Mac, double the fries, four tacos instead of two, etc. If they are going to tax soda based on the idea it is a obesity-inducing product, they ought to include taxing diet soda as well.
But the logic is faulty -- not EVERYONE who drinks what someone with an agenda considers *unhealthy* increases his weight, causes a health burden to taxpayers. Not EVERYONE who eats high calorie food has difficulty. Why are they limiting the sugar-consumption to soda, why not cookies/Hostess cakes/candy? Are we to tax eggs then, the cholesterol problem they are said to cause some? Butter next, whole milk?
The thing about a soda tax, it does not strike at the adults in this nation, children of all ages purchase canned/bottled soft drinks every day.
That in turn means the government will have to pay more for health care.
Not in a nation where FREEDOM rules, Government isn't to be paying for this service, the individual does. Because too many people have bought into the fallacy that the federal government ought to be paying for health services, once more, FREEDOM is being tossed.
I don’t smoke but I do drink Coca Cola but I can always go to lemonade especially with summer coming up. I would hate to think my drinking Coke would give ZERO money for healthcare.
So ZERO was not going to raise taxes on people making less then $250,000 a year. Sure don’t make near that but my taxes will be rising it looks like.
What a fraud this Administration and the lamebrains in leadership in Congress are.
Anyone that sits on their hands to teach us a lesson in 2010 needs to stay as far away from me as they can get. I am sick and tired of the “my way or no way” crowd not voting for a Republican over one issue. If their candidate doesn’t win the primary, they tend to sit the election out. We need every last vote of the grassroots to gain seats to stop the Clymers from taking our money, our health insurance, and putting our Country at risk to “friends” in the Muslim world of this President.
The logical extension of this is to have a single rate sales tax on all items so that there isn't some government official declaring some items sinful while others are virtuous. Spend how you want and the goobermint gets a (far more than) fair share of it. That sounds awfully like the FairTax.
only in the mind of a libturd :
raising the tobacco tax discourages smoking, but raising the income tax encourages work...
I'm surprised you own stock at all with the commie pandering traitors. Buy Coke!
Guess I just won’t drink pop anymore. Hope they don’t start taxing tea!
They can pry my Sprite from my cold, satisfied hands.
I would bet Kimberly GG is a smoker and is just tired of being singled out to have her wealth spread if we’re going to spread it. Obesity is just as unhealthly as smoking if not more so. Idiotic is kind of a strong word unless y’all know each other, in which case, none of my business.
I believe a carton is going for about $100 in New York, $10 a pack! New Jersey, my former state, (cough,cough) is around $75-80 or more. Pennsylvania was cheap until Obama, now they’re pushing $6 a pack here.
I smoke but have cut down my tax contributions by smoking less than a half a pack now..and yes, smoking is bad, but this is ridiculous.
Not an actress, a singer..Sheryl ONE SHEET Crow...
Bump yer little ditty. Just sent it to a buncha friends.
people are gonna be throwing bags of sugar into rivers and harbors now, hehe
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