Oregon: Tobacco Taxes for Children's Health Insurance

Jekyll and Hyde: Gordon Smith’s positions on everything from county payments to health care to Iraq flip 180 degrees when it’s time for him to face the voters in Oregon. Even so, the audacity of some of the things that come out of his mouth continues to surprise.

Here’s a whopper:

"It is rare that I even consider a proposal that raises taxes," Smith said at a news conference Tuesday. "However ... I have and will vote to support an increase in the tobacco tax if I believe the cause is just."

(Last week, Smith made headlines by publicly backing a proposal by Democratic Governor Ted Kulongoski to increase state tobacco taxes to fund the Healthy Kids plan. Courageous? Maybe. Or maybe he listens to his pollster…)

Today, he held a news conference in DC to declare his support for an increase in federal tobacco taxes to fund children’s health insurance. He may have seen the light and changed his mind, but he hasn’t been a supporter of that proposal in the past. In fact, he’s been an opponent.

You don’t get much more spot-on than this proposal by Ted Kennedy:

To increase the excise tax on cigarettes by 43 cents per pack and increase the tax on other tobacco products by a proportionate amount, and direct $12 billion of the resulting revenues be applied to the children's health initiative.

(It would have fully funded the Children’s Health Insurance Program.)

Gordon Smith: Nay.

It’s hard to fathom what vote Smith is citing to say he’s supported increasing federal tobacco taxes in the past. Maybe he’s trying to disingenuously claim he supported the idea of ‘tobacco taxes for children’s health insurance’ because it was included in the final budget bill that Smith and 84 other Senators voted for later that year. If so, that’s pathetic and borders on dishonest.

Why? How about his own logic on ANWR? Smith has repeatedly argued that his vote for oil drilling in Alaska essentially “doesn’t count” because it’s included in a larger omnibus budget bill. "But I voted against it in stand-alone legislation..." "But I supported the Cantwell Amendment..." That's Smith’s whole mantra everytime someone tries to call him out for supporting ANWR in a pivotal budget vote.

At the federal level, Gordon Smith is against raising tobacco taxes to fund children’s health insurance. That may have changed today, rhetorically, but he cannot claim to have supported it in the past.

As an aside, Smith has become one of the foremost advocates in Congress for preventive mental health services over the last few years. Ironically, the only other time from his tenure there appears to be a vote in the US Senate on tobacco tax increases was this vote:

“To provide for increased resources for medical research, disease control, wellness, tobacco cessation and preventative health efforts including substance abuse and mental health services, establishing a fund for this purpose, offset by an increase in the cigarette tax”

Gordon Smith: Nay.