Blog Stage Four - Editorial Critique

The Tobacco Tax
Washington Post
10/17/2007

In response to the Washington Post's article on... well, who knows what it's about? Its meandering writing goes from being anti-smoking to being anti-Bush for not passing the bill to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) with little segue and the only point it seems to make is that apparently President Bush must support smoking and the tobacco companies because he didn't pass the bill due to "the legislation would raise taxes on working people".
The argument made in the editorial (and what a long and winding road we took to get there) is the expansion would be funded by a steep raise in the taxes on cigarettes, steep being 61 cents per pack, and the veto would not enforce this price hike therefore no funding for SCHIP.
First and foremost, President Bush and his administration are hiding behind the working people he does nothing for in the first place. There can be many avenues taken to fund SCHIP... I have one... cut down on war spending. Crazy notion, I know. But, since he is hiding behind the working class and not wanting to raise the price of the cigarettes they apparently so desperately cling to, that is the game we’ll play.
Now I’m meandering as much as the fair editorial writer.
The editorial has its stance: it's mad about the SCHIP expansion being vetoed. But is it mad about smokers and their evil smoking? Is it mad at Bush because he uses the working class as a scapegoat? One cannot tell. This has an initial aim of discussing the dangers of smoking and how raising cigarettes taxes would cause a drop in smokers, but then goes on to talk about how we need the money from smoking to support and pay for SCHIP. Would that not defeat the purpose? If sin taxes from cigarettes are the only way to pay for the expansion and then we eliminate the smokers by pricing them out, what are we going to do about SCHIP?
Maybe we can have kids start smoking at a young age and then they can die of lung/throat/lung cancer and emphysema before anything really bad gets to them, since they won’t have insurance to help them. At this point I am as confused as the writer, but I know I'm mad too. I just don't know what I'm mad about anymore.