In Cigarette Tax Fight, Jindal's Ideology Trumps Good Sense | Cigaretteson.net Tobacco News

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In Cigarette Tax Fight, Jindal's Ideology Trumps Good Sense

Not since Earl Long commenced cavorting with a stripper has a Louisiana governor acted this strangely.

Bobby Jindal appears to be putting principle over political expediency, and you couldn't get much more out of character than that.

But the principle on which he has elected to stand is a highly perverse one, and his main concern remains himself. So perhaps there is no need to send for the men in white coats after all.

Jindal, in his quest to lower the price of cheap cigarettes in Louisiana, is not only bucking public opinion but setting himself up to be the first governor in decades to suffer the indignity of a legislative override. He is evidently willing to pay the price of maintaining an anti-tax stance even when it defies all reason. Say tax, and Jindal will jump up and shake his head. Pavlov would approve.

Jindal cannot be against all taxes, of course. They have paid his salary for practically the whole of his working life, and he is already 40.

The shtick which is evidently supposed to confirm Jindal's bona fides with true believers on the right is a firm opposition to any new tax. On this occasion that opposition is not so much firm as mindless, given the popular view that smokers are a blot on the landscape and should be taxed to the hilt so long as they are with us.

The tax at issue here is a new one only according to Jindal's idiosyncratic definition, for it has been in place for years. It was designated as temporary, but that was just an old Baton Rouge trick to make it more palatable. It was not that big a deal anyway -- 4 cents a pack in addition to what was already in place. Now that the 4 cents are about to expire, and smokers are used to coughing up, legislators are overwhelmingly in favor of renewal.

Both chambers voted to keep the tax in place by margins that would be enough to overcome Jindal's threatened veto. He will, of course, be leaning on a few of the more pliable members, but nobody will want to be called a friend of buy cigarettes in the next election campaign. Besides, Jindal's package has met with unprecedented resistance in this session, and many members are still smarting over his treachery in the matter of their pay raise a couple of years ago. They will relish the prospect of any embarrassment that might come his way.

The cigarette tax might well be the issue that brings them that agreeable experience, and it appears uncharacteristically imprudent for Jindal to pick a fight over it. Not only is smoking cigarettes widely regarded as abhorrent, but these are straitened times for state government. The revenue from a 4-cents-a-pack tax may be paltry -- about $12 million a year -- but any hit on the budget is going to hurt someone. Cutting discount cigarettes taxes while taking the ax, say, to higher education is not an approach likely to earn plaudits from the electorate.

Jindal does not claim any benefit from lower cigarette taxes, although it might be argued that smokers from neighboring states where prices are higher will come here to stock up. Thus, any loss to the exchequer from a veto of the tax renewal might be at least partially offset.

That would be a pretty feeble justification for cheaper smokes, although it is hard to think of any other. But smoking cigarettes is not the issue here. Jindal must figure that taking a few licks now will be worth it if there is a reward down the road, perhaps when he is running for another office. Indeed, when urging his fellow Republicans to uphold his veto of the cigarette tax, he said the issue is "personal" because he made a promise not to raise taxes.

The idea that it is against Jindal's principles to break a promise no doubt raised a smile on some of the faces present. But this promise is different, because Jindal is mad about ideological purity.

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