[PEN-L:9434] Re: CDF: CHILD Act introduced (fwd)

["Max B. Sawicky" <maxsaw@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Reply-to:      pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> From:          Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject:       [PEN-L:9430] CDF: CHILD Act introduced (fwd)

> . . .
> BTW, does anyone on this list (D&S collective, are you listening?) can
> produce a set of numbers describing the impact of the proposed legislation
> on different income groups?

Howard Chernick (Hunter) and Andy Reschovsky (Univ Wisc) did a paper
a few years ago on the incidence of tobacco taxes which took up the
lifetime versus annual incidence issues.  They found the tax to be
highly regressive in either sense.  If you want the cite I'll hunt it
down for you.  Or you could hunt down Chernick or Reschovsky.

Of course, the incidence of the expenditure component of the bill
offsets that of the tax side; how much I couldn't say.

I agree totally on the limousine-liberal aspect of the tax component,
but I think Teddy K is being smarter than Hatch.  If the basic idea
of the package is bought into, which Hatch has explicitly done, than
the revenue side is adjustable.  There's no important principle that
the spending has to be financed by the cigarette tax.  Find a new
revenue source (or combination of sources) and you have a modest
but nice expansion of the gool old welfare state by the bankrupt
requiem'ed-to-a-faretheewell social democracy.

MBS


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Max B. Sawicky            Economic Policy Institute
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