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Why liberals want you to smoke

July 12, 2007 | By Nathaniel Ward

 

The government could soon be in the business of encouraging smoking, according to a stunning analysis from Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis. And this, ironically enough, is part of a health care bill being promoted by the Left.

Congress would need to sign up 22.4 million new smokers in the next ten years under this proposal, the analysis shows, even as the number of smokers declines. This means that if they’re to hit their targets, Congress could find itself encouraging more and more people—young and old alike—to light up.

Here’s why. Liberals like Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) have tied the expansion of a big-government program to a massive tax hike on cigarettes. They want to expand the federal program subsidizing health care for poor children to cover even children from families the government considers wealthy.

The new tax, however, would encourage smokers to quit. As more people quit, cigarette tax revenue would decline, so Congress would need to sign up still more new smokers. And ironically, this liberal-backed cigarette tax would have the most impact on the low income Americans the bill is intended to help, Heritage’s study finds.

Ed Meese on immigration reform

Former Attorney General Ed Meese spoke to Heritage Foundation members in Chicago today about immigration reform after the failure of the amnesty bill.

Watch the video on MyHeritage.org.

A good term for the Supreme Court

How good was the recently-concluded Supreme Court term for conservatives? “This was a term for conservatives to go dancing in the streets” a former Dean of Stanford Law School said yesterday at The Heritage Foundation.

—DeEtte Chatterton

Read more about the Supreme Court’s decisions to uphold conservative principles.

Tax cuts work, spending restraint needed

The government has released a new report showing once again the benefits of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. The tax cuts allowed an economic expansion, which in turn drove higher government revenues. But this news is tempered by sobering spending numbers.

Read more on the impact of the tax cuts and the need for spending restraint.

Missing the point on spending cuts

The liberal Congress has identified one way to eliminate wasteful spending: cut back unneeded subsidies to higher education lenders. But Heritage economist J.D. Foster points out that Congress is missing the point: “Congress may use most of the savings to increase other spending, including the creation of nine new entitlements.”

Getting real on homeland security

Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff recently claimed he had a “gut feeling” that America would soon be attacked by terrorists. But is this really news?

“Al Qaeda has been trying to organize, outsource, or inspire attacks against the West non-stop since 9/11,” Heritage’s James Carafano writes. “These are serious people, and they are serious about trying to kill us.”

He continues: “It should be no more surprising to hear about Secretary Chertoff’s ‘gut feeling’ than it would be to learn that Churchill harbored suspicions in 1942 that the Nazis ‘might be up to no good’ that year.”

America is facing a long war against terrorist groups like al Qaeda, and we must remain under no illusions about their desire to attack us.

In other news

  • Liberals in Congress have introduced a program they claim will limit greenhouse gas emissions without harming the economy. How their plan would fail to impose economic costs is unclear: the only real ways to limit emissions are to reduce overall use or reduce the use of coal, both of which have clear costs.
  • An Associated Press article about a new alarmist report on global warming also points out the futility of costly emissions limitations schemes: “Some impacts are expected to happen whether or not anti-global warming strategies are adopted.”
  • Al Qaeda has rebuilt much of its terror infrastructure, the Associated Press reports.
  • Addressing a crowd at New Jersey’s “Live Earth” environmental rally over the weekend, global warming alarmist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. accused Washington politicians of treason for not imposing government controls on the economy.
  • Saturday marks 218 years since a Paris mob stormed the Bastille prison in France, setting in motion the bloody and destructive French Revolution. These events, in turn, helped lay the groundwork for much of modern liberalism and many of the worst ideas of the past two centuries.

Coming up at Heritage

To attend the following Heritage Foundation events, RSVP at Heritage’s events website. Or you can watch these events live online at Heritage.org. All times are Eastern.

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. DeEtte Chatterton contributed to this report.