But the White House staff reviewing funding options never embraced the idea, the report said. A key congressional [image-nocss] committee, after initially seeming receptive, ended up refusing to consider it. Several minority advocacy groups, including some committed to fighting obesity, lined up against the tax. And there is no sign that First Lady Michelle Obama will mention taxes Tuesday when she unveils her new healthy-eating initiative, which had input from fast-food and soft-drink representatives, the Times said.
Meanwhile, beverage lobbyistsaccused nutrition scientists of bias and distorting available evidence. The beverage industry also financed its own research.
No one underestimated the difficulty of getting new taxes approved, but Representative Linda T. Sanchez (D-Calif.), a member of the tax-writing House Ways & Means Committee, said, "We thought we had a chance to punch through."
From the beginning, fast-food and beverage company executives were uneasy about President Obama, said the report. He and his wife were known advocates of healthy eating. The executives were also concerned that the promised Obama healthcare initiative might include taxes or other incentives to reduce consumption of fast-food and high-calorie beverages.
Coupled with similar initiatives in such states as California, the industry faced the possibility of a full-scale national debate on sweetened soft drinks and their effect on health.
Another alarm sounded last May, the report said, when the Senate Finance Committee heard testimony from public health advocates who proposed using a soda tax to help finance healthcare legislation. Analysts at Yale University calculated that a penny-an-ounce tax would induce a 23% drop in consumption, and the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a smaller tax could raise $50 billion over 10 years. Although the extent to which such a tax might drive down obesity rates is scientifically unclear, nutrition experts argued that it would, at the least, improve health by discouraging consumption.
A few weeks later, soda tax advocates in Ways & Means reported initially favorable responses from colleagues during closed-door meetings. And in July, President Obama told a Men's Health magazine reporter that such a tax was an "idea that we should be exploring."
Sanchez pushed for consideration of the idea. She told a closed-door meeting of committee Democrats that it would be a political winner: "We are on the moral high ground here," she said. "We can improve health outcomes and get more revenue."
At the beginning, several other Democrats expressed support, said the report, including Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) and Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz (D-Pa.).
Beverage lobbyists enlisted other industries to help pressure members of Ways & Means. "The industries in our coalition realized that this is a slippery slope, that once government reaches into the grocery cart, your business could be next," Kevin Keane, senior vice president of public affairs for the American Beverage Association told the newspaper.
The coalition, Americans Against Food Taxes, included soft-drink makers, their suppliers and such mass-marketers as McDonald's and Domino's Pizza.
Using the argument that higher food and drink taxes would unfairly burden the poor, the coalition recruited Latino groups, among them the Hispanic Alliance for Prosperity Institute, the National Hispana Leadership Institute,the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Hispanic Medical Association. Nearly all of the Latino groups had received beverage industry money in the past or have industry representatives on their governing boards, according to the report.
The National Hispanic Medical Association's director, Dr. Elena Rios,told the newspaper thatthe financial support, which amounted to no more than $10,000 from a single company, had nothing to do with the decision to oppose the tax, which she and the other Latino groups agreed would hurt minority communities. She also said the evidence is not clear that the tax would effectively reduce obesity. But the grouphas withdrawn from the coalition, the report said.
The coalition launched an intense lobbying effort, including a $10 million TV ad campaign in key markets warning against taxing food. The paper industry, a major supplier to fast-food companies, also contacted members of Congress. Even some truckers joined the fight. By the time the Democratic caucus held its next closed-door meeting in early summer, the atmosphere had changed, Sanchez said and others told the paper.
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) argued that the soda tax could lead to taxes on other foods, raising prices for hard-pressed consumers during a severe recession. Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) said he became concerned about the fairness of targeting one industry.He had heard from local Pepsi and Coke distributors, and he and other members also received letters from the National Milk Producers Association concerned that the proposed tax could apply to chocolate milk.
"We went from having real interest in this idea to it just falling off the table," Sanchez told the Times. "It was my perception that opposition increased as members began hearing from local businesses" that were part of the beverage industry coalition.
While winning its battle at Ways & Means, the soft-drink industry was also waging a long-term war over the scientific evidence linking soda consumption to the nationwide problem of obesity, said the report. Scientists have equated the beverage industry campaign to tactics employed by the tobacco industry in defense of smoking.
Keane said some scientists were acting as advocates. "Cigarettes kill. Soda doesn't," Keane said. "They pick and choose the facts that support their view and they attack anyone who disagrees," including those whose work appears in peer-reviewed journals, Keane said. "It's scientific McCarthyism."
The American Beverage Association website for the campaign against the soda tax points to three studies in peer-reviewed journals that dispute a link between soda and obesity. One was conducted by an author working for Archer Daniels Midland, a major producer of high-fructose corn syrup' two were conducted by a researcher who now works for the beverage association; one of those studies was funded by a grant from the association, the report said.
Despite the funding source, "the researchers worked independently and their findings were published in a peer-reviewed journal. That's the gold standard in the scientific community," Keane said.
Some of the studies Keane cites point to sedentary lifestyles and high-fat diets as the significant causes of weight gain. And, largely through reviews of previously published studies, they say that the existing science on soft drinks' role is at best unclear.
Keane also said soda accounts for just over 5% of the average American's calorie intake, and that blaming soda for the obesity epidemic "defies common sense."
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