Snack taxes...

Would you like some taxes with that drink?

The Senate Finance Committee, looking for ways to pay for health reforms, has been considering the possibility of attaching a federal excise tax for the first time to soda and other drinks sweetened with sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners. Increasing the taxes on alcoholic beverages has also been on the congressional table.

It seems unlikely that these ideas will make it into the health-care legislation that Congress will tackle this year. In an interview with CNBC, committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said they're "on life support." Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, described them as "nuisance taxes."

Read between the lines...

This won't make it into the legislation that the Democrats are going to try to ram down our throats this year. The reason is because they haven't put their hands on the reigns just yet. There will be more leverage to control your lifestyle after they invoke a Universal Health Care, and start making rules that you will have to follow in order to participate. The thing is...they will decimate any private insurer in the process making it an obligation to secure this Universal Health Care. In essence, you will give up the care you have to pay more so that those who did not make health care a priority in their lives get the same half-ass coverage. Then there will be rules that will turn into laws (since there will be no private insurers left as an alternative). One such "rule" will start with the tax on soft-drinks followed shortly after by outlawing the "substance" altogether. This is how the "nanny-staters" operate. Of course, that will only apply to the "great unwashed."

There are 26 states that have taken this route already. Nine of them repealed the legislation shortly after invoking it. Others still have a tax on snacks and soft drinks.

What is surprising is that snack taxes are anything but new, and actually have been especially unpopular and unsuccessful during the last fifteen years. As of 2000, nine states had repealed existing snack taxes - sometimes within just several years of enactment.9 While seventeen states continue to levy some variation of the tax - including California, which has taxed soft drinks since 193310 - most of the existing snack taxes significantly pre-date the obesity crisis. The first soft drinks and candy tax was levied in 1917,11 an era when food was scarce and calories were much more valuable.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Universal Health Care MUST FAIL! It must fail for a whole host of reasons. At the top of that list is the tool it will give our "control freaks" to shape, dictate, and mold our everyday lives. They are not qualified.