Obama Open to 'Sin Tax' on Soda

Obama Open to 'Sin Tax' on Soda

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posted: 3 HOURS 8 MINUTES AGOcomments: 2175filed under: Health News, National News

(Sept. 9) -- As he fights a heated battle to get Congress to pass health care reform, President Barack Obama seems warm to another health-related idea: a so-called sin tax on soda and other sugary drinks.
In an interview with Men's Health magazine, Obama called a tax on soda "an idea that we should be exploring."
"There's no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda. And every study that's been done about obesity shows that there is as high a correlation between increased soda consumption

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Another amazingly stupid idea from the President who loves to talk to hear him self talk especially when it’s in front of a camera he can see himself on.

Yet I can’t help think of the Boston Tea Party as for many people carbonated sodas are the modern day equivalent to tea in colonial days.

It’s not bad enough that come every April 15th we have to pony up to pay for a huge bureaucracy rife with inefficiencies corruption and fraud and already pay other costly and punitive additional taxes at the gasoline pumps and for alcoholic beverages and cigarettes too, but now sodas?

Where does it end, will ultimately any luxury item be taxed to the point that few people except the idle rich will be able to afford anything anymore?

Is it just yet another way to pretend to be keeping his pledge not to pay taxes while saddling us with trillions of dollars in additional tax payer debt to bail out the world’s richest corporations and business people?

Something sure is rotten in Denmark these days and it’s not the carbonated beverages!


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(visit the link for the full news article)

The Daily News pointed out that a similar proposal in New York went down in flames earlier this year. Gov. David Paterson proposed an 18 percent state tax on soda and other sugary drinks, but he backed off because of strong public opposition.
Yet there does seem to be some public support for taxing soda -- if the revenue would help pay for health care reform. A May posting on The Atlantic's Web site looked at polling data that shows most people would either strongly or somewhat support such a tax if it were tied to paying for health care.

I truly fail to see how shifting the cost of healthcare reform onto the citizens through additional prohibitive taxes on normal day to day items is reforming in anyway.

In essence all you are doing is then taking those who can not afford to pay for health insurance and don’t want healthcare insurance and are forcing them to pay and ‘save’ for it, but taxing the things that they do want and can afford and place a premium on.

Meanwhile of course all this money doesn’t go to insurance companies, doctors, or clinics, but straight to the government coffers.

Where does this madness end now? Clearly we are once more facing taxation without real representation, when our congress repetitively votes on massive and costly bills passing them into law without even reading them first or allowing time for them to be read first.

I wish the British were coming! To save us from this insanity.

I thought Obama said there would be no tax increases on people that make less than $250K per year. I know a lot of people that make less than $250K that enjoy drinking soda.

"I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."
- Barack Obama

Edited to add Obama Quote



[edit on 9/9/2009 by Erasurehead]

Wow ! He really isn't as smart as we give him credit. Although I could be
extremely wrong but , I don't think so.

I don't really see the problem here folks.

It's SODA.

Something that by all means is a form of poison when you look at it. Why not pay an extra 5 cents a can if it means more revenue?

It's just amazing to me that you won't just compromise on the ltitle things that will hardly effect anybody.

It's a very small tax if it's only in the 5 to 10 cent range.

Look the government can't do everything right, and sometimes a little more is needed.

~Keeper

Nice. The soft drink world could use some black market action.

Cant wait until truck drivers are being beaten and killed for their haul of Pepsi.

Or kids are getting jumped and robbed for trying to buy a Mountain Dew from some older kid in a shady corner of the school.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


With this and the talking head on CNN (was watching the plane hijacking) saying that all Americans have a personal responsibility to have health insurance (and will be fined or jailed if they don't) I don't doubt that there will be rioting in the streets soon.

You know what gets me the most? They wanna tax sugar drinks..suppose poeple just simply stopped drinking coca cola and pepsi, fanta, ect ect ect...yuode think the soda comapnys are going to start hurting big time financially! who was responsable for this? the politicians. so! perhaps soda is that addicitive, they know kids and obese people are going to drink it like water, regardless. seems kinda on the sick side of planning and thinking. I dont understand the health reform..i mean wouldnt it be better to simply encuorage and promote to tstop drinking so much soda? instead, their going to tax it, to make money, and knowing the kid or obese person is still going to consume thier sugary addictive product, and not give a rats ass if they end 8up with diabetes or dead.. thier simply proffiting of of death, and pre knwoledged murder. more or less.

reply to post by Erasurehead

Yet one more bold faced lie on the part of the Obama administration.

Trying to hide it as a way of paying for health care reform is simply shameless and shameful.

Drinking soda is not a sin, lying like Obama is, sure is a sin though.

We could probably fund peace on earth through a lying tax on politicians. Everytime they get caught telling one it would be just a penny, but oh would those pennies add up fast!

Double Post

[edit on 9-9-2009 by lucentenigma]

if they put a tax on pop were does it stop
does it mean they can tax everything
there is way to much tax already
they have to learn to spend the money they have already better
they need to take a step out of our lives not a leap in

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


I've said it before, I'll say it again.

To Her Royal Majesty,
Sorry. On behalf of all americans, I would like to apologize for the whole revolutionary war-thing. Our bad.
If you take us back, we'll be better. Promise.

Sincerely,
Your most humbled subject,
mikerussellus

PS, can you keep the liberals in California? Most obliged.

Well taking into consideration that soda like cigarettes are life style choices that can affect health I have not problem with a sin tax.

I don't drink sodas and neither smoke cigarettes, I am all for it.

Originally posted by lucentenigma
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

With this and the talking head on CNN (was watching the plane hijacking) saying that all Americans have a personal responsibility to have health insurance (and will be fined or jailed if they don't) I don't doubt that there will be rioting in the streets soon.

A personal responsibility to pay the government and big corporations in case I get sick or injured? Yeah right!

When will the endless brainwashing and manipulation end?

Insurance is a suckers bet!

Originally posted by marg6043
Well taking into consideration that soda like cigarettes are life style choices that can affect health I have not problem with a sin tax.

I don't drink sodas and neither smoke cigarettes, I am all for it.

Breathing air is a lifestyle choice. Guess who does pay taxes on such items...the corporations that make and sell them.

Lets see how you feel when yogurt and tofu are deemed luxury items too!

All americans without health care fined or jailed... it saddens me, to see hwo big business and the new scam..health insurance..is helping hand in hand, to force communism on us all. It used to be, i have the gods rigth to live breath, do as i please to venture out and explore, and to take care of myself as i see fit. Now its THEIR right, not gods, to tell me when to bend over and take it, and how many pills they feel i need to take over a simle common cold...
I hope rioting does break out...really. the message has got ot get sent out somehow, spreda the word! i dont want no one to get hrut or nothing, bt would be interesting to see an entire mob sized city of angry protestors rioting on the white house lawn, or overrunning hospitols, or pulling as many coca cola machins into the middle of the stret druing rush huor traffic, prying its doors open, and smashing the cocke cans agianst the concrete, like they did with beer and prohibition( throwing glass bottles at a wall, using an axe to break open/up beer barrells.

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
Another amazingly stupid idea from the President who loves to talk to hear him self talk especially when it’s in front of a camera he can see himself on.

That was my dumb idea. He gave out his personal e-mail address when he took office. Not hard to send him ideas. If it appears as if he takes these ideas and speaks to the people as if it is his own, then he has performed his constitutional job as legally obligated!

Do you have any bright ideas?

Originally posted by ziggy1706
You know what gets me the most? They wanna tax sugar drinks..suppose poeple just simply stopped drinking coca cola and pepsi, fanta, ect ect ect...yuode think the soda comapnys are going to start hurting big time financially! who was responsable for this? the politicians. so! perhaps soda is that addicitive, they know kids and obese people are going to drink it like water, regardless. seems kinda on the sick side of planning and thinking. I dont understand the health reform..i mean wouldnt it be better to simply encuorage and promote to tstop drinking so much soda? instead, their going to tax it, to make money, and knowing the kid or obese person is still going to consume thier sugary addictive product, and not give a rats ass if they end 8up with diabetes or dead.. thier simply proffiting of of death, and pre knwoledged murder. more or less.

Exactly right, They are going to sell this tax as helping us yet they know very well that this tax will not cause people to drink less soda. It is simply just another way for the government to take more money from us.

The government would not want us to drink less soda that would reduce their tax revenue.

Originally posted by Beach Bum
Wow ! He really isn't as smart as we give him credit. Although I could be
extremely wrong but , I don't think so.

It's becoming painfully obvious that the dirt floors of Kenyan huts are just as hard as kitchen floors here in the states.

He sure appears to have been dropped on his head as a child one too many times that's for sure!