Regarding another critical health care reform measure: SB 27:

I'm astounded. Legislative leadership won't allow a public hearing on SB 27! What the...?

(SB 27 is the Health Care reform measure proposed by former Gov. John Kitzhaber and the "We Can Do Better" coalition.)

Oregon Legislative leaders have crippled the democratic process with this action. Citizens deserve to know on the record exactly which corporate special interests are opposing SB 27!

House and Senate elected leaders: You must NOT stifle debate on this critical health care reform measure. You must not stumble under pressure from big pharma and medical insurance giants.

Problem corporate interests include the multinational pharmaceutical and out-of-control insurance companies, but also AARP's profit-making subsidiary which sells health insurance. AARP has strongly opposed SB 27. Most voters are unaware of that fact.

Legislators: Don't allow your honor to be shamed by the greedy and the powerful.

Convene a hearing. Let supporters and opponents of SB 27 come forward in a balanced legislative hearing to present testimony. You owe this to the people of Oregon.

Extend the legislative session if necessary.

Don't close the doors on democracy!

As a Democratic voter, although I support the concept of this legislation, I will vote against this referendum by voting NO for two reasons:

First, Oregon Constitution is the wrong place for this type of legislation. Abuse of the Oregon Constitution has been especially understated in the past few years. This is yet another constitution stuffing proposal for the purpose creating a political motivated social agenda. Conversely, when articles in the Oregon Constitution are in opposition to such a socialistic agenda, the constitution is simply ignored by the political forces. Case in point: The Governor’s executive order to the DEQ to adopt California Emission Standards violates the Oregon Constitution by transferring the seat of Oregon government away from Marion County to the State of California, where the people of Oregon have no vote or direct representation. By following Federal standards, the people of Oregon are represented with Oregon’s elected delegation who are members of congress. Another example of the Oregon Constitution being ignored is the City of Portland marking off reserved parking places on public streets for the privately operated rental car company FlexCar. This violates the special privileges and immunities clause. This all adds up to socialized political abuse of the law of Oregon.

The second reason I will not vote for this referendum is the approximately $62,000.00 income threshold for a family of four to receive taxpayer funded financial support. This income level is way too high for the government to offer subsidies. If these high income families can afford big screen TVs, large homes, expensive liquor, nice vacations and frequently dine at fine restaurants, they do not need a subsidy for health care. They simply need to learn how to prioritize to their spending habits without additional dollars from taxpayers.

As I commented on the SB27 thread, this, contrasted with the failure to move SB27, is a betrayal of everything I stand for as a Democrat. I will be working hard to defeat this referendum, as I have worked to support SB27.

I'd really like to see the Democrat Party in every county, and the Oregon Democratic Party restore their bond with the people of Oregon by passing resolutions against this referendum. How many want to get on board with that effort?

The Democrat Party? There seems to be a pattern of late that the first few comments in a thread are from "disgruntled Democrats." I wonder if these are not actually (a) well-gruntled Republican(s) with a notification alert on the BlueOregon RSS feed?

I'm uneasy about this going into the Constitution too. Fortunately, there will be plenty of time for me to make an educated decision about how I'll cast my vote between now and then. I'm just glad that we will be given the opportunity.

PO'D Democrat can most certainly count me out on the hate campaign.

I agree with TR. The constituion is supposed to be a blueprint to interperet the law - not be the law in and of itself. Just look at what happened with the 18th amendment to the US constituion and the inplications that went with it.

Nuf Said.

I for one will be in the trenches with this helping Healthy Kids pass. It's only a temp fix, but it'll put some $$$ where it belongs, and HOPEFULLY, it'll give incentive for folks to quit. It'll get the ball rolling in the right direction.

If there is a silver lining in HC not passing this session, is that the R's will go home with a bad vote on this issue.

I'm going to vote against it. This sort of thing has no business in the state constitution. Although I can only roll my eyes at Republicans complaining about "cluttering the constitution" let alone calling it a "sacred document" given the amount of utterly misplaced (or just plain irresponsible) crap they pushed (or tried to push) into it when they controlled the legislature and needed to make an end run around the opposing party.

Such as the 3/5ths rule that brought about the current situation. Republicans hate seeing this in the constitution? They have only themselves to blame. Now, send out a measure to repeal the 3/5ths majority rule on tax increases, I'll happily vote for that.

I hope the critters in Salem know what they are doing. Cause I don't.

Banning smoking in bars is said to decrease smoking by 19%. Healthcare costs rise almost 10% per year.

Sounds like a recipe for another underfunded program.

James X - Of course at lot of what Republicans said in opposition to this referendum is self-serving tripe. Based solely on the demographics of Oregon and the blogosphere, however, the odds are I've been an active Democrat far longer than many of the commentators on this blog. If comments from some of us about defending the Constitution from this kind of trashing doesn't fit your apparently limited understanding of the values Democrats actually stand for, you might want to consider re-assessing your views rather than publicly accusing some of us of not being Democrats.

ellie - We appear to be on the same side in opposition to this, at least until you change you mind since I won't be changing mine. However, you obviously have something else going on that you have to resort to disreputable tactics like referring to comments for principled political action against a really bad constitutional amendment, one that flies in the face of everything all the Democrats I know say we stand for when it comes to constitutional government, as a "hate campaign". You can be as angry as you want against straight talking Democrats like me who have no problem standing up against faithless Democrats blighting our party, I can't help but feel respectfully sorry for you.

bulahJo - Sorry, we are going to have to agree to disagree on this. I'm going to be in the trenches and on the streets on the other side, because that is my personal view of what I as a Democrat who cares about making sure kids have health care should do to make sure they get it. I'll be trying to get rid of faithless Democrats who refused to fight the battle to get general funds for this obligation so we all are invested in making that happen. Our legislators are going to be in session next year, and they could be called back for special session to do the right thing if Gov. Ted and the Democratic leadership wanted to do something other than play footsy with their anti-tobacco constituencies at the cost of providing health care for kids. There is a connection between why legislators of our party passed this terribly misguided referendum and why they oppose SB27 that I assert is rooted in a bankruptcy of values and an inability to lead. (I guess you'll probably have to distance SB27 from supporters like me.)

Hey Jefferson Smith - Where do you stand as the leader of the Oregon Bus Project on trashing the Oregon State Constitution with matters that should be handled through the legislative process?

" (I guess you'll probably have to distance SB27 from supporters like me.)"

Yes, PO'd Dem. but regrettably so. So much passion.

I have to admit, and I'm being honest here: I am/was beginning to think you were one of the "SB329 ONLY" people plant or an R. You are a gentleman, for understanding and for putting it in writing. Try, try, try not to name call. Please??? You have much to offer.

And you are right on all points, it's the personal attacks that I have a problem with, and so do other SB27 supporters. (a few SB27 supporters emailed me and asked if I knew who you were and I told them "no" and if I did, I wouldn't give you up.)

They they expressed concern that everyone would think they are "name callers' as one person put it."

I would love to discuss with you or any good Oregon Democrat the merits, or not, of a Constitutional amendment. Cripes. One thought, pass it, pass REAL reform with SB329 & SB27 and then repeal it and/or just make it statutory.

I love the Oregon Bus Project. It's helped tremendously. I know, you may not have the same sentiment, but I really love what they've done with respect to civic engagement. They do the work to get D's elected. It's up to us who vote in the primary to make good choices and then it's up to Dems, Bus Project, and a whole slew of other good groups and organizations to get them elected.

I too, so wish it had passed, the HK bill. The original version of the bill would have put monies into OHP standard for most of the adults who got kicked off during 2003. People are desperate for real reform, and passing HK would have tided us over till SB329 & SB27 kicked in.

bulahJo McCallaster - I think the people who wrote you should have joined in mixing it up over this really abysmal referendum (and SB27), including taking their best shots at me if that's what spins their top, rather than get in a funk over the reality of how politics always has been and always will be. Representative democracy is about people who care being fully engaged, taking punches and punching back harder. Too bad they are so easily put off by the trivial, the people in politics that I have learned most from and have come to respect over the years have developed very thick skins, mostly from having to continuously stand up to sucker punches from fair weather political "allies" (Just to be clear - I'm not referring to you as a fair weather political "ally" here.)

Like I said before, a lot of what Republicans said is a bunch of self-serving tripe. But sorry Evan, justifying making the Constitution more of a mess than it already is is the kind of unprincipled destructiveness that doesn't cut it in my book. Particularly since this is also bad public policy that was really put on the table largely political reasons, by a group of poor Democrat politicians who bring discredit to us all as Democrats if we don't reject their poor behavior, and for those reasons most definitely should not be one more in "a bunch of laws that are harder to change and trump statutory laws and administrative rules". And by the way, you don't do any service to your argument by failing to acknowledge that the bulk of the Oregon Constitution actually is the specification for the framework for our state government, the clutter to which you refer is the result of successive rounds of poor leaders doing a poor job of leading.

I think presenting a broader picture of the current situation, from how I as just one average citizen piece it together by having followed the public debate from the broadcast, print, and online sources available to us all, rather than by trying to schmooze up to pols for all sorts of self-serving reasons, helps make my point why this is such a pathetic episode in health care reform, legislative history, and constitutional governance in our state:

Despite the way Kari and others try to spin it, according to the official Senate records, SJR-14 was introduced on January 12, 2007 at the start of the session. It was introduced the request of Bradbury, another Democrat who in my mind has brought a lot of discredit to our Party because he just can't seem to concentrate on doing the job he was elected to do, much less do it well. Absolutely nothing happened except threat making by Democrats until May 29, 2007. So basically, to people like me this sure looks and smells a lot like a situation in which, for the entire session, the Democrats and the interests they are serving (clearly not the children in the way it comes across to me), pulled the tactics of a 6-year-old who screams give me what I want, or I'll throw a temper tantrum and trash the house. When they failed in the legislative process, rather than even try the approach of declaring the statutory referral passed and let the courts sort it out once the popular will has been made clear, kind of like trying to behave as young adults, they decided to trash the house.

You don't reward that kind of behavior, particularly by passing very, very bad public policy like this (like by trashing the house yourself so your brat kid can't make it any worse). Instead, you punish the kid: In this case telling the legislature to drag their sorry behinds back into session for as long as it takes to pass legislation to provide health insurance for children, and then funding it out of the General Fund. If they won't do that, nominating and voting in adult Democrats who will keep making that fight to do it right. If our party can't come up with better, than we the people need to think about how we are going to change that. A new party dedicated to genuine health care reform and standing up for working people in a principled way, is starting to look better and better to this true blue Democrat.

Those of you who whine about name calling: Save it for Kate Brown, one of "leaders" who is responsible for this mess, or at least whose office covers for them by not talking to average citizens in a respectful way about who is responsible. From today's Oregonian:

Brown called opponents of ATV regulation "e-mail wackos" who flooded legislators with comments. She commended her colleagues for passing the bill. "The fact we were able to find middle ground and pass anything on ATV safety legislation is amazing."

The constituion is supposed to be a blueprint to interperet the law - not be the law in and of itself. Just look at what happened with the 18th amendment to the US constituion and the inplications that went with it. The more we mess with our constitution in this destructive manner, the more it becomes just a glorified paragraph of the ORS. We eventually end up with no constitution and a plethera of mean spirited laws. Evan, in his post above, is quite correct when he says "Oregon's constitution is simply a bunch of laws that are harder to change and trump statutory laws and administrative rules." And I agree.

That's PERFECT public policy.

TJ: Why don't we tax the poor for other products they buy in order to pay back what they use in welfare? Why don't we tax the poor and middle class to pay back part of what it costs to publicly educate their kids? Why don't we tax the poor to help pay for police, since the majority of police services are focused on poor neighborhoods?

We don't do this because liberals believe in a society where those with the most ability to pay are taxed the most, in order to increase the public good. On average, smokers are lower income and less-educated than non-smokers. So this is a tax on lower-income, less-educated ADDICTS, in order to pay for health care for all kids. It is very bad public policy.

All that said, I will hold my nose and vote for it because in my mind the opportunity to get universal health care for children outweighs the inequity of the funding source. But please, let's not pretend this is anything other than an illiberal tax on some of society's most vulnerable citizens.

Taxing the addicts to supply heatlth care. But isn't our goal to stop smoking as well? If these addicts stop smoking, the funding goes away and no care will exist.

So this begs the question: By voting for this are we condoning smoking? Don't we want to stop smoking too?

No matter how you vote, you are going to be chastised either way. Vote yes - you hate smokers. Vote no - you hate kids.

With that in mind - this cyclical argument makes it bad policy in and of itself. I am all for healthy kids, but they wont get healthy if the smokers stop smoking (which gets kind of ironic if you think abnout it).

Actually, if the smokers stopped smoking right now, there'd be enough money in the public health system to give primary care to all kids in the state.

Smoking costs taxpayer-funded health care programs over $3.00 per pack -- even when those packs are purchased by people with health care. So if everyone stopped smoking, all those additional mega-expensive costs borne by smokers (and, even more importantly, second-hand smokers) will allow us to target that money where it will do more good for cheaper -- kids' health care.

This per-pack fee isn't so much of a tax as it is a cost recovery. I, for one, am glad that I will have an opprtunity to lower the Smokers' Subsidy.

Why don't we tax the poor and middle class to pay back part of what it costs to publicly educate their kids? Why don't we tax the poor to help pay for police, since the majority of police services are focused on poor neighborhoods?

We do. They're called income and property taxes, and you can find them hanging around every April.

My personal jury is still out on the Healthy Kids proposal, but I'm a little irritated to see the same tired line "this is a tax on helpless poor people to pay for KIDS, of all things," being trotted out again. We tax low-income, under-educated people to pay for roads and transportation, even though most of that money does not go to maintain the roads in poor neighborhoods (and many of the poor do not have cars, so they don't benefit that way either). We tax these people to pay for overcrowded, underserved school in poor districts whose teachers are spread too thin to give kids the help and attention they need. We tax these people to help pay for maintaining parks, lakes, and wilderness areas that they may never get to see because they don't have vacation days or job security. It's nice to see that, at least conceptually, the Legislature is considering a tax where low-income people can see the money being returned directly to their communities.

Like I said, I haven't made up my mind about Healthy Kids in its current form. But the arguments being made above sound more like a complaint about the way taxes are administered in general than a complaint against a plan to get health care to thousands of children. I'm happy to have the tax reform debate. But please, let's not confuse a broken tax system with public health care policy.

Telling us it is tax on the poor is propaganda. I know many rich people who smoke. All the same however, because the tax may either stop them from smoking, or they will go and buy them from another state. If anyone remembers when Coors was illegal in Oregon, it's the same deal. Why, some may just keep buying until they die, then there is no revenue for anyone. Eventually, the well will dry up (or be lower) for the kiddies. In thoery it sounds good, but if it goes into practice, we may be cutting off our nose to spite our face and telling the face we look better for the long haul.

Better yet - Just vote NO on everything.

I'll vote no since I don't see any reason to tax smokers to pay for kid health care. If kid health care is important then let the parents of the kids pay for it. If they can't pay for it then why did they have the kids? Paying for the family you created doesn't seem like an unfair request.

TJ: I was making the broader point that we don't generally levy taxes on people based on the services they receive from the government, which is the argument it seemed you were making. (It charges people who cost the system huge amounts of money, and uses the revenue to pay a fraction of those costs back.) I'm not comfortable with a tax on one segment of the population based on their disproportionate use of public services because it leads to value judgements that I don't think the government should be making. Should we tax high-fat foods? Should we impose a 1% income tax surcharge on high-school dropouts because on average they go on welfare more often than high-school graduates? People who attend church regularly tend to use church donations instead of public programs when things go bad. . . should they get a tax cut?

Assuming you're not comfortable with these examples, why are you comfortable singling out smokers to "pay back" the government services they receive?

They're called income and property taxes, and you can find them hanging around every April.

The poor don't pay much in income taxes due to exemptions and personal deductions (they do pay more in Oregon than at the federal level, however -- something that should be changed). That aside, though, I meant to say that we don't tax the poor and middle-class more than the rich simply because they use more public services.

The cigarette tax hits the poor harder than it hits the rich, not only because it's a flat tax but also because the poor smoke in larger numbers than the rich. From a Rawlsian standpoint, that's bad policy. I may also have more sympathy for smokers than you do (and I've never been a smoker). It is truly a drug addiction, and friends of mine have tried for years to quit. So we're really taxing people who, in some cases, are simply unable to quit.

Time for a constitutional convention people.

Actually, if the smokers stopped smoking right now, there'd be enough money in the public health system to give primary care to all kids in the state.

Smoking costs taxpayer-funded health care programs over $3.00 per pack

Although I suspect the people behind this scheme condescendingly believed many Oregonians wouldn't be smart enought to realize this is an exceedingly dishonest red-herring argument, it really exposes something twadry and low-quality about them.

The $3.00 per pack cost is an academic actuarial estimate that doesn't admit two irrefutable facts in the real world:

1) That $3.00/pack equivalent "cost" to one health care program is not fungible dollars, it is not actual cash that can be spent for other programs, including health care services.

2) In any applicable bottom line accounting, those $3.00/pack "savings" would accrue to the general fund simply as lower program costs. Why would the morally bankrupt, self-serving interests, and venal Democratic interests behind this fight for (these) general fund dollars any more than they fought for general fund dollars for health care for children this session? Of course, there actually is no reason to believe these astoundingly low-caliber folks would. Could it be that they really don't care about doing the right thing for children, or anyone else, at least not nearly as much as they delude themselve into believing they do, and certainly not as much as they sanctimoniously protest to us that they do?

I'm going to work hard against this disreputable action, and work equally hard to hold accountable the "leaders" who have brought shame and disrepute to our party with this. Democrats don't regressively shift the costs of fundamental programs that promote the common good, like health care for children and everyone else, on to the backs of those who have benefitted disproportionately less from our society. These people aren't Democrats, and it's up to us who bear that name proudly to repudiate them to save our party and our own moral integrity.

PO'd Democrat wrote... by a group of poor Democrat politicians who bring discredit to us all as Democrats if we don't reject their poor behavior Ding! POD just proved he's not actually a Democrat. Go away now, troll.

Did it every occur to you in your pathetic little pea brain that this could be a typo? Certainly we have no evidence to the contrary since mentally dull people like you never attempt to refute anything argued hear on substantive grounds of what we as Democrats profess to believe? The fact is that blustering losers like you and many of the posters here can't, because you don't represent anything close to what the party of FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, and Carter stood for (that's dangling participle, careless writing that just proves I must not be a Democrat.) You are too young and stupid to even know what that means.

"I'm going to work hard against this disreputable action, and work equally hard to hold accountable the "leaders" who have brought shame and disrepute to our party with this."

You meant to write "your" party, right?

Egads. I'm quaking in my boots going up against the likes of you. I don't care how much the tobacco PACs are paying you. If you think Kari has a a pea brain, that we're "mentally dull" (a nice, progressive term) and don't know the difference between here and hear...I dare say that we're safe. Keep trolling.

By the way, you and hawthorne might have had the basic intelligence to note that in the post above I wrote:

Our legislators are going to be in session next year, and they could be called back for special session to do the right thing if Gov. Ted and the Democratic leadership wanted to do something other than play footsy with their anti-tobacco constituencies at the cost of providing health care for kids.

It sure seems that what is driving people like you nuts is that your knowledge is so limited that you don't even have a clue what Democrats in the best tradition of our modern party stand for. You can't refute the substance of arguments made here because they are rooted in long-standing Democratic Party values. That's not your fault entirely, you are the product of the circumstances that created you. Rather than having enough sense to learn something, however, you egotistically lash out that anyone who dares to expose your stunted and self-centered concept of the Democratic Party as being completely antithetic to what our party stands for must be a right-wing troll, or in the words of ignoramus like "hawthorne", a tobacco lobbyist. Well our party is in trouble, SJR-14 and the apparent defeat of SB27 is another, and it's in trouble in part because of people like you for exactly the reasons I've stated.

FDR, MLK and Edward R. Murrow smoked. That was their choice as an adult and no one else's business, much less anything you or anyone else is even close to having the stature from which to cast aspersions, either directly or through legislation. I'd gladly trade all of the Democratic Party trolls responsible for SJR-14 and the defeat of SB-27 for just 3 smokers of the caliber of these 3 people and their focus on fighting for the principles that truly define the Democratic Party. The very fact Democratic Party posers like you don't even give a hint you recognize the distortion of Democratic Party values SJR-14 and the apparent defeat of SB-27 represents, compared to the values these 3 giants placed first and fought hard for in their own ways, speaks volumes.

The least that average citizens and Democratic Party members like myself can do is not let our party be sullied and dissipated without fighting for it. That starts with standing up to the people right in our own party who are destroying it by alienating people outside the party that actually share our values, but wouldn't know it because people like you are misrepresenting what the Democratic Party stands for. As one small step that includes fighting against SJR-14 and for SB-27, because everything that got us to SJR-14 and the apparent defeat of SB-27 are not even close to the true principles the Democratic Party is fighting for in the larger battle for genuine health care reform. There is a reason the number of NAVs in the NW is so high, and the poll numbers I see from time to time in the public press strongly suggest it's not because people like you, hawthorne, and Kate Brown have kept faith with the core values of our party since FDR.

Wow, P'OD, just wow. That's a truckload of poor spelling, assumptions, and faulty conclusions all wrapped into one.

I'm not sure what to say other than to let you know that I will continue to advocate for the inclusion of mental health issues and medication in any public health plans. Thank you for your support.

Wow, P'OD, just wow. That's a truckload of poor spelling, assumptions, and faulty conclusions all wrapped into one.

With regard to the last post, my spell checker says you are wrong. Point out the assumptions, and demonstrate those faulty conclusions.

And you are the one who pulled a typical Republican sliming tactic of saying "I don't care how much the tobacco PACs are paying you". I simply put you in your place.

You and Kari may get away in other circumstances by distracting attention from your obvious limitations by making ignorant and unsubstantiable accusations, not in this case.

PO'd whatever tries very hard to explain away the raw truth: smokers rack up public health costs, dollars for which could do much more to benefit public health without increasing general revenue. I have no idea what he means to say that smokers have benefitted less from society--they are indulging in a behavior largely free of the responsibility for the costs of that behavior, traceable to a single, nonessential product.

torridjoe is another example of the low-quality, kind of generally stupid people that I'm talking about. First torridjoe, what I referred to is that Democrats don't shift the burden for the common good down the economic scale. The tobacco tax is example of shifting the burden down the economic scale. And what I more generally referred to is that the Democratic Party doesn't stand for the kind of low-morality, self-centered piggishness you advocate here (not that I have any reason to believe you even claim to be a Democrat.)

As for the other examples Miles cites, in none of them is there anywhere near as direct or clear-cut a link between behavior and social cost as for smoking--and in none of the other cases is the specific behavior as separable as for smoking. (eg, you have to eat; you don't have to smoke).

Aren't you ignoring the fact that a lot of people do have to smoke? Don't you feel at all for the single mom, two jobs, three-pack a week smoker, who's trying to quit but just can't (insert all that "more addictive than heroin" stuff here). Assuming her kids are alread on OHP, we're taking over $100 a year from her to pay for the health care of the kids down the street whose parents make $50,000 a year. She's the one I think about when I wish this was being funded out of the general fund.

As for the other examples, I think the high-fat food one is exactly the same. Costs us millions of dollars to treat heart disease and other health problems, the linkage is absolutely clear, and while we have to eat we don't have to eat fast food. This one is also relevant because a few local Democrats around the country have begun arguing for exactly that -- a fast-food tax. Are you really comfortable with the government taxing people for engaging in morally undesirable (but otherwise legal) behavior?

I would support this legislation as an across the public tax, I'd support it if it cost me exactly what it will raise my taxes on my cigarettes, the absolute cynicism of this is offensive. It does not belong in the Constitution, regardless of the other junk that doesn't belong there, it is a regressive tax sold on falsehoods, ie: smoker's costs are not recouped - its general revenue and it is, that the health and societal costs are somehow unique to the product - alcohol is considerably more expensive, but that would never pass.

You can put a dress on a pig, but its still a pig not a beautiful woman and this is a pig. You ignore the bronosaurus in the living room, alcohol, because you cannot pass it. Sal Peralta invited me to try to pass one, I won't bother anymore than anybody else will - it would go nowhere, already proven.

I have said nothing about the bill to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, there are actual health considerations in that, whether I smoke or not. The same is true of the tax resolution, I would oppose it whether I smoke or not. These are Oregon's children, not smoker's children and the fact that if every smoker vote against it there wouldn't be enough votes doesn't make it right or good Democratic policy.

You will pass this because you can, and that's about it. M37 was passed because it could be, it was bad policy and inherently unfair and was passed on the same ethical basis and you don't like it. I didn't either and don't now, but I don't propose to act like that, either. If you stop to look at them both you'll see the parallels. Here, I'll help you, narrowly targeted small affected population, sold as a wide spread problem and a false issue of fairness, passed by those largely unaffected, ignoring the actual problem areas.

I'm a fairly light smoker, but I pay around $2/day state and federal taxes and have, at age 54, cost the state and feds $0 in medical costs, every cent of tax since 1969 is clear profit. No state has ever recouped anything like the costs of my alcohol abuse, and I wasn't one of the costly ones.

Now I've wasted perfectly good time on this.

Based on what Chuck just said above, just vote NO on everything - then we don't have to worry about it. Anything that messes with the constotution, regardless of the issue, should not be voted in or on.

Actually, it's a tax on people who smoke, in order to recover some small part of what they cost us each and every time they light up a pack. Why is that bad?

No, its taxing smokers to pay for all kid's health care. "Recovery" of what they cost us would be an argument if this was health care for the smokers themselves.

And there are efforts to keep banning smoking just about everywhere, what happens when people stop smoking? And I know smokers now who buy on Indian reservations to keep from paying federal taxes, they can just keep doing that and not pay the state taxes as well.

Not one single person has responded to Andy's question:

I'll vote no since I don't see any reason to tax smokers to pay for kid health care. If kid health care is important then let the parents of the kids pay for it. If they can't pay for it then why did they have the kids? Paying for the family you created doesn't seem like an unfair request.

That's the question a lot of voters are going to ask. Why should Oregon smokers pay for the state's uninsured children? Where's the nexus? I keep reading that smokers are eating up all the money, but aren't we taxing them just for that? If insuring uninsured children is a high priority, and I don't disagree that it is, why shouldn't the General Fund pay for it, or is the rationale, as I suspect, just that smokers are easy prey tax-wise? And we disapprove of smoking, so we can justify our approach on that basis? That doesn't seem like a Democratic thing to do and I will not vote for the constitutional amendment.

I'm completely comfortable with the us charging people for the costs they impose. If it's smoking, fine. If it's unhealthy living, fine.

People would still be able to make the choices they want, they'd just be choosing them based on their true costs. Asked back at you: are you willing to subsidize people to eat poorly or to smoke?

The nexus is that absent smokers, there would be plenty of money saved to buy health care for children.

But even you said that people who could afford it would pay for it. The smokers who can afford insurance are covering themselves, right? So in essence, the tax will unevenly hurt the "poor" smokers they are trying to help.

I'm completely comfortable with the us charging people for the costs they impose. If it's smoking, fine. If it's unhealthy living, fine.

And if it's having more kids than you can support, can we charge you for that? And if you take on too much debt and declare bankruptcy, can we throw you in the poorhouse to work off those debts? And if you have unprotected sex and contract an STD that you get treated at a local health clinic, can we increase your taxes to recover the cost of that irresponsible behavior?

Asked back at you: are you willing to subsidize people to eat poorly or to smoke?

I believe that when it comes to government programs, we shouldn't use people's past decisions to determine if they are morally worthy of receiving public support. That idea is fundamentally (socially) conservative. People in need of food stamps and welfare should get support no matter what they did to end up in that situation. People in need of public health care should get that care regardless of what they did to put themselves in bad health. You and Torrid Joe are arguing that it's okay to place extra taxes on people who engage in "bad" behavior because they're costing the rest of us money. That strikes me as a dangerous argument that you might support when targeted towards smokers, but you would oppose when targeted towards welfare moms, bankrupt families, or young promiscuous college students.

Let me get this straight - From reading all these notes above, we will be taxing a bad behavior to pay for something as a result of an irresponsible behavior? What if those with a bad behavior stop the behavior and quit smoking? Will the money still be there?

Sounds like no one thought this one out thoroughly. Best just to vote NO and not worry about it.

But, if the trend (theoretically) continues and more and more smokers quit, wouldn't the money diminish over that period of time? Wouldn't some quit because the tax made it too expensive, or would they go somewhere else to buy them (like the 'Couve)? If that happens, wouldn't the money diminish too? By putting emphasis on the kids getting well, are we not then encouraging the bad habit of smoking?

Wouldn't it be ironic if the money from a smoking tax helped cure a kid with second-hand smoke problems? The smoker could be the parent, and the parent would then just smoke a few packs a day and die to help the kid get better.

Such is life I guess.

TJ will tell you that if people stop smoking, the health care system will have more than enough money to pay for kid's health care. That argument is false for two reasons: 1) any reduction in health spending that results from a dramatic decrease in smokers will not occur for decades; and 2) even if those savings occurred immediately, they're not fungible. Kids health care is going to be paid for from the tobacco tax, and if that funding decreases, HHS still has to go back to the legislature to ask for more. Extra money in other public health programs may or may not be available for transfer.

TJ, from your above arguments you obviously feel great contempt towards smokers and believe that the costs they impose on society are so large that it is justified to tax them to pay for an unrelated program. You're not worried about any slippery slope on this issue because, apparently, no other behavior that has societal costs is even close to being as bad as smoking. At this point, we can just agree to disagree.

But let me ask this: Reality aside, if the legislature could have successfully passed and received voter approval on either a general income tax surcharge to pay for kids health OR a tobacco tax increase, which would you support?

Torrid Joe: Getting addicted is past behavior, not ongoing behavior. Lots of smokers get addicted while young & don't understand the choice they're making. There are considerable other dimensions to smoking, especially once addicted, that involve stress-coping mechanisms (both in the physiology and the sociability aspects of smoking) for working people upon whom we as a society allow disproportionate stresses to be put for the greater profit of employers. I believe that a good deal of the disproportionate smoking among persons from low-wage and lower-middle class families arises from that kind of cause.

Jared Johnson: Yes I am willing to subsidize people who eat poorly or smoke. In two senses. One is, I already do because my health insurance premium includes paying costs for the health consequences of choices other people make that affect their health, and I don't mind that -- it's part of what you sign up for when you join a risk pool. I just think it would make more sense to create a universal risk pool and then concentrate on reducing barriers to healthy living and creating incentives for it.

The other is that I --that is, we collectively-- subsidize Archer-Daniels-Midland (e.g.) to produce high fructose corn syrup and then market poor dietary choices, and likewise various other corporations who profit from either promoting unhealthy behavior or whose actions as employers create obstacles to healthy choices or who profit from creating structures that create such obstacles (e.g. the link between suburban development separating work from residence, driving/riding public transit, and a big piece of sedentary life-styles).

Subsidizing care for people after they make constrained choices is not subsidizing those choices. I think we should care for one another, and help each other take care of one another, on the basis of a principle of solidarity: as Otto von Bismarck (not greatly noted as a liberal or socialist) built into the German contributary health system (statutory but not state run, mostly through private non-profit funds) "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need." Yes, I know Karl Marx said something similar, but social solidarity actually is a value across the terms that define U.S. politics -- VERY conservative people historically have objected to unfettered market "classical" economic liberalism because of its dissolution of fundamental social ties and values.

Health care for kids should be paid for out of taxes we all pay, same as schools or fire departments. Taxes on cigarettes, if aimed at improving public health and lowering healthcare costs in both public and private sectors, should be devoted to smoking prevention and cessation programs.

<hr/>