Tobacco Lobby

Too good to wait for Thursday is Ernest Dumas’ column on how Gov. Mike Beebe can beat the tobacco lobby and its mostly Republican legislative shills, the result being better health programs and less smoking.

Read on.

For sale cheap

The tobacco companies spent $66.7 million in California, $5.7 million in Missouri and $7.1 million in Oregon to defeat tobacco tax increases, exactly enough to do it each time, but Arkansas will be a bargain.
When it comes to taxes, Arkansas is a Wal-Mart special. You can purchase tax policy more cheaply in Arkansas than anywhere in the land.

All that R. J. Reynolds, Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris) and Lorillard Tobacco have to do is persuade as few as nine already highly amenable politicians to oppose the 56-cent-a-pack cigarette tax and it is stone dead. No emergency-medical system, no expanded health insurance for children, no wider community medical care, no improvements in a score of other health services.

Governor Beebe’s masterly orchestration of the legislature, where for two decades he was the concertmaster, will be put to the test on the tobacco taxes even though the leaders of both houses and the whole health establishment joined him on the tax drive. Beebe crafted a supermajority in both houses for a natural gas severance tax last year, an achievement that had escaped many strong governors before him, only because the gas companies practically begged to be taxed to head off a far larger tax increase that the voters would almost certainly have approved.

Beebe will not have that leverage over the cigarette companies because they know that for a million or so dollars they can defeat a ballot initiative in Arkansas as they’ve done in about half the state elections in recent years, all states with a smaller contingent of smokers than Arkansas.

The governor and the sponsors of the tax could adroitly shift the odds in its favor by changing the form of the tax, but they haven’t done it.

Shills for the tobacco industry landed in Arkansas last week — more will follow, probably including former House Republican Leader Dick Armey — and gave us the flavor of the campaign against the tax. R.J. Reynolds and the Philip Morris people grieve for all the poor people of Arkansas who will have to pay another 56 cents a pack or else kick a habit they’ve come to love. The tobacco executives are not concerned about lower profit margins when people give up the habit or children don’t take it up but rather about struggling families who will have to choose between food or medicine on the one hand and their smokes.

But that is only for public consumption. The real campaign has nothing to do with the sons and daughters of toil but with convincing a couple of dozen lawmakers, or fewer, who have never evinced the slightest concern for the poor and the awful choices that low-wage workers have to make.

The couple dozen legislators are not altogether or maybe not even predominantly Republican, but that is a handy cohort to target. Eight of the 35 state senators, one short of enough to kill the tax, are Republicans. Twenty-eight of the 100 representatives, two more than are needed to kill the bill in the House, are Republicans. You only need to stop it in one house or the other.  A perverse amendment to the Constitution in 1934 requires three-fourths of both houses to increase a tax that existed that year, which includes the cigarette excise tax, enacted in 1929. That took the power to set tax policy away from a majority and delivered it to a tiny minority.

(Not all Republicans are always wrong on this issue. Sen. John McCain, in his maverick phase, famously led a failed campaign 10 years ago to raise the federal tax by $1.10 a pack to drive people from tobacco.)

What they need to do is introduce a bill raising the sales tax on cigarettes from 3 percent to whatever level produces the $86 million needed for the trauma network and the other medical programs. That might be 20 or 25 percent, depending on whether the tax was collected on the wholesale, distributor or retail price. Arkansas had no sales tax in 1934 so it could be levied or increased by a simple majority of both houses — 18 senators and 51 representatives. The legislature enacted the first sales tax in 1935 when President Roosevelt threatened to cut off all relief programs to Arkansas if the state did not raise money to match federal relief to the vast numbers of unemployed as the other 47 states were doing and to pay schoolteachers.
That would make this a short fight because most legislators in both houses support the tax and the health programs. The tobacco shills could go home, the governor could husband his political capital for another cause, tens of thousands of Arkansas youngsters would not become slaves to tobacco, and a habit that places a mammoth burden on the public health-care system would finally begin to pay a modest share of its enormous cost to the state. That would be a bargain for everyone.

SPRINGFIELD - When Gov. Rod Blagojevich put out the “U.S. senator wanted” sign following Barack Obama’s White House win, he said he wanted someone who’d carry out the president-elect’s agenda built around hope and change.

Blagojevich’s final pick was Roland Burris, a trailblazing black politician when he won his first statewide race more than 30 years ago.

But Burris, who arrived in Washington Monday to try to lay claim to a Obama’s Senate seat today, has been out of political office nearly 14 years. Unable to win his way back in, he’s cashed in his political clout to lobby for cigarette companies, a Native American tribe looking to put a mega casino in the suburbs and mortgage brokers, among others.

Burris has donated thousands of dollars to Blagojevich in recent years and his clients have won millions of dollars in state business, according to state records.

Aside from the ongoing questions of whether Burris should be seated, some argue the veteran politician is an odd choice to replace Obama, whose campaign swore off lobbyists and chastised their influence on government.

“Lobbyists were represented as the anti-change agent, and Roland Burris, for the last decade of his public life, has been a lobbyist,” said Jay Stewart, director of the watchdog Better Government Association. “He has tried elected office and voters have decided otherwise.”

In the midst of all the political hoopla surrounding the Burris pick, his modern-day credentials had largely escaped scrutiny and raise the question of exactly why Blagojevich thinks Burris is best to carry on in Obama’s place.

“It’s a great question. I don’t think anyone has taken the Burris appointment seriously enough to engage that question,” said David Morrison, assistant director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

Blagojevich’s staff couldn’t answer it, pointing first to Burris’ statewide victories from 1978 to 1990 but not addressing the more recent lobbyist role.

“As for the other qualifications, I can’t answer because I wasn’t part of the selection process,” said spokesman Lucio Guerrero.

Asked who was, Guerrero said, “I don’t know. He never told me.”

A spokeswoman for Burris didn’t return a phone call seeking comment. An e-mail sent to a spokesman also was not returned.

Burris arrived in Washington on Monday planning to seek admittance to the U.S. Senate today for swearing-in ceremonies.

Senate Democratic leaders have said Burris will not be allowed in because his appointment is not official.

Burris said Monday he does not plan to create a spectacle if denied entry. He has a meeting with the Democratic leadership on Wednesday.

Back in Illinois, his selection by a governor arrested last month for allegedly trying to sell the Senate appointment for personal gain, has created a media, racial and political firestorm.

Black leaders have dared Democrats not to seat what would be the only black senator in the 100-member chamber. At the same time, state lawmakers have sped up their impeachment proceedings of Blagojevich.

State Rep. Mary Flowers, a Chicago Democrat, said she still has questions about where Burris stands on today’s issues.

“I’m glad you’re taking race out of it,” Flowers, who is black, said in a telephone interview Monday. “Let me say, quite frankly I would have chosen someone else.”

But state Sen. Kwame Raoul, a Chicago Democrat first picked to serve out the remainder of Obama’s state Senate seat, said it’s unfair to use Obama as the benchmark for picking successors.

“Is Roland Burris Barack Obama? No, he’s not. Who is?” said Raoul, “Do I think Roland is qualified? Yeah. In terms of an objective review of credentials and experiences, he’s arguably one of the most qualified.”

Suburban lawmakers, however, said there are better choices to follow in Obama’s footsteps.

Hinsdale Republican state Sen. Kirk Dillard, who appeared in a campaign commercial supporting Obama early in his presidential run, said Burris is no agent of change.

“Personally, Mr. Burris is a fine man,” Dillard said. “But there is no change as espoused by the Barack Obama presidential campaign in appointing a lobbyist who represents tobacco companies, gambling institutions and who - with all due respect - is in his 70s.”