Poor, Smokers To Pay More for Children's Health Plan
WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats have chosen an unlikely source to pay for the bulk of their proposed $35 billion increase in children's health coverage: people with relatively little money and education.
The program expansion passed by the House and Senate last week would be financed with a 156% increase in the federal cigarette tax, taking it to $1 a pack from the current 39 cents. Low-income people smoke more heavily than do wealthier people in America, making cigarette taxes a regressive form of revenue.
Democrats, who wrote the legislation and provided most of its votes, generally portray themselves as champions of the poor. They do not dispute that the tax plan would hit poor communities disproportionately, but they say it is worth it to provide health insurance to millions of modest-income children. All the better, they say, if higher cigarette taxes discourage smoking.
"I'm very happy that we're paying for this," the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, a Democrat of Nevada, said in an interview Friday, noting that the plan would not add to the deficit. "The health of the children is extremely important," he said. "In the long run, maybe it'll stop people from smoking."
Congress probably will revisit the cigarette tax issue soon because President Bush has pledged to veto the proposed $35 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The decade-old program helps families buy medical coverage if their income is too high to qualify for Medicaid.
Mr. Bush has proposed a more modest growth for the program, and both political parties seem inclined to pay for it through a tax on an unpopular group, cigarette smokers.
By most measures, the average smoker is less privileged than the average nonsmoker.
Nearly one-third of all American adults living in poverty are smokers, compared with 23.5% of those above the poverty level, according to government statistics.
