Oregon's House Republicans

[July 6th, 2005] Let's say you lost a gold ring you had for more than a decade. If you found it again a year later, would you call it a "new" ring? Well, that's the logic facing the Rogue desk this week as it calls out the leaders of Oregon's House Republicans in the dying days of this legislative session. Using a no-new taxes pledge, theose "leaders" are killing a bill that would reinstate a tobacco tax of 10 cents per pack that had been dedicated since 1993 to the Oregon Health Plan.

Before the tax got knocked out last year, the dime levy on a pack of smokes had been regularly renewed every year since 1993. The money went directly into a fund for the cash-strapped OHP, which provides health coverage for the state's poorest. But the tax was rolled into a package of tax increases defeated by state voters in 2004 as part of Measure 30. House Bill 2048, drafted this year at the request of the governor's Oregon Health Policy Commission, aimed to reinstate the levy.

But Republican leaders never let the bill out of the now-closed House Revenue Committee.

That's because the bosses of the Republican majority in the House, such as Revenue Committee Chairman Tom Butler , Speaker Karen Minnis and Majority Leader Wayne Scott , have promised no new taxes, even apparently those that lived for more than a decade. By ditching this tax, the state forfeits $42 million in federal matching funds. That federal cash, combined with the $28 million in revenue from the dime-a-pack tax, would be enough for the health plan to cover 16,000 low-income Oregonians.

Smokers don't have any reason to celebrate, either. Cigarette prices are still the same as when the tax was in effect. Now, the money just goes to tobacco companies instead of health care.

A worthy tax-gone up in smoke.