Don’t let veto threat stop cigarette tax hike

IN DECLARING THAT he intends to veto the cigarette tax hike if it makes it to his desk in anywhere near the form that it passed the Senate last week, Gov. Mark Sanford made one of the most outlandish claims we’ve heard in some time: He said the Senate plan would “mean having to raise taxes later on to cover future growth in the programs it seeks to expand.”

If that were so, then his own counter-proposal would also lead to other tax hikes, since it uses the same cigarette tax hike to offset an income tax cut.

You see, the one thing Mr. Sanford and the cigarette-company-financed opposition have right is that a higher cigarette tax should eventually generate less money, as it does what we want it to do: reduce teen smoking. So whether you count on the cigarette tax to fund new services or to replace another tax that’s funding existing services, eventually there won’t be enough money.

But the fact is that barring a radical shift in the political philosophy in the Legislature and the public, that’s not going to lead to a tax increase. Not if lawmakers use cigarette tax revenue to lower the income tax, and not if they use it to provide Medicaid coverage to more workers too poor to purchase medical insurance.

Our Legislature has demonstrated over and over that when there’s not enough money to fund essential state services, it simply won’t meet its obligations. It’ll slash the number of prison guards and Highway Patrol troopers; it won’t provide care to keep the dangerously mentally ill from clogging up our hospital emergency rooms, won’t pay to fuel the school buses.

The Legislature has not approved a general tax increase in more than two decades. During that time, it has approved more tax cuts than we can count. Higher taxes are not the Legislature’s answer to anything. That’s what makes it so extraordinary that the Senate voted 31-13 to raise the tax on cigarettes from the lowest in the nation to half the national average.

That wasn’t because the Senate is full of tax-and-spend liberals looking for any way to get their hands on more money. A gas tax increase would not have passed the Senate. An income tax increase would not have passed. Nor would an increase in the sales tax or the accommodations tax or even the liquor tax.

Senators voted by more than 2-to-1 to raise the tax from 7 cents to 57 cents a pack because they realize that raising the cigarette tax is not primarily about raising money. It is about pricing cigarettes out of the reach of kids, so they won’t start smoking, and get addicted, before they have sense enough to know better.

Every time cigarette prices go up 10 percent, youth smoking drops 7 percent. By leaving the tax at 7 cents for two decades, while the price of a pack increased from 49 cents to more than $3, the state has effectively lowered the tax rate, making it easier for kids to smoke.

Even Mr. Sanford realizes this, and he favors raising the cigarette tax. He just doesn’t want to use the money to expand Medicaid, or to do anything other than lower income taxes. We don’t think that’s the best idea, since taxes in South Carolina are on the low end nationally and our unmet needs are near the top. More importantly, the Senate won’t go along with that plan. Indications are that the House won’t either.

What’s critical at this point is that representatives approve a plan that has enough support to overcome Mr. Sanford’s veto. Every day that the cigarette tax remains at its 1987 level, we lose more children to the cigarette addiction that will eventually kill them.