Jessica Sabbath
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine plans to propose a cigarette sales tax increase to help close the state’s budget shortfall, Speaker of the House of Delegates William J. Howell confirmed Tuesday.
Kaine will recommend a 30-cent tax increase on a pack of cigarettes in his budget amendments, the Associated Press first reported earlier Tuesday. The current state tax is 30 cents per pack.
The Associated Press also reported Kaine’s budget amendments, which he is scheduled to present to the General Assembly’s money committees Wednesday morning, would include $400 million cuts each from public education and health care. He also plans to ask for a $500 million withdrawal from the state’s rainy-day fund and cut 1,500 state employees.
Howell and U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-7th, held a telephone news conference Tuesday afternoon to attack the tax increase proposal.
“What we have gathered is the governor is going to propose a hike in the tobacco tax, which is frankly nothing but an assault on jobs here in the greater Richmond area and throughout Virginia,” U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-7th told reporters.
Howell questioned the timing of the tax increase given the current recession, tobacco manufacturer Altria Group’s corporate relocation from New York to Richmond this year and its recent $350 million investment in a research facility in the city. “This is a job killer,” Howell said.
Hey Kaine, why do you HATE smokers so much ??
--Pat Van Alders of Wilmington, DE
Dec. 29, 2008 at 05:18 AM
Walk out of the smoky restaurant. It is your choice to eat or work there. If people want to smoke, work in a smoky place, or beat their head on a wall, it is their right. New York is now talking about a tax hike on sodas. Oh? Fatty foods have been attacked as well. How about we all live in a bubble. But wait, we are all going to die. Why are we taking more money? Here it is, redistribution of wealth. Take from the poor and give to the government. I guess a good lawyer and doctor should be able to monitor and document my vitals and every time I read how another freedom is taken away a few days are taken away from life. I think we should ban dumb politicians as they are surely causing high blood pressure. Raising taxes on cigarettes is only going to make poor people poorer. How about we ban smelly perfumes, fatty foods, sugar in cereal, sugar in soft drinks, etc etc. Fact of the matter is second hand smoke smells. Their is still conflicted data on second hand smoke. Is it bad at all? I am sure it is. But, as a corrected FDA report showed, and as the WHO report shows, you are more likely to be killed by lightening than occasional second smoke. Would you want to see a kid sitting in a smoky room 8 hours a day? No. But, would you feed a kid soda and fries every day? You are more likely to die of lung cancer working in allot of other industries than in a smoky restaurant. You can be assured more lives are effected by the alcohol served in these restaurants than the smoke. However, I’m in for the revolution when you touch my alcohol.
I prefer non-smoking sections by the way. I don’t like the smell of it. I also don’t like the smell of old people, and babies. They need a section too. And don’t get me started on people who drag their eating utensils across a plate. They need to eat out back.
This country was not formed to give congress the powers you now ask it. It is disgusting what we have let our government and many of its people do. The “progressives” need to go to New York and California and slowly wilt away with their bloated law books, high taxes, and failed dreams of utopia.
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.“
—Thomas Jefferson
“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated.“
—Thomas Jefferson
“Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.“
Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
Derek P of Richmond VA
Dec. 30, 2008 at 09:56 AM