WASHINGTON -- President Bush told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday that he will veto the $35 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) passed by Congress, to be funded through a federal excise tax increase on tobacco, including a 61-cents-per-pack cigarette tax hike to $1 per pack from the current 39 cents. The president wants to increase S-CHIP funding by $5 billion and opposes the cigarette tax increase.
The U.S. Senate voted 67-29 Thursday night to pass the compromise bill to renew S-CHIP, which means [image-nocss] that the Senate could override a presidential veto. Supporters hope to persuade the president to drop his objections and sign the measure. But if he does not, the bill's fate may rest in the House, which did not pass the bill by a veto-proof margin, reported The Billings Gazette. The House passed the bill Tuesday, 265-159, with 45 Republicans voting for it.
The Associated Press reported that Pelosi reminded the president that many Republicans voted to raise tobacco taxes to fund a program expansion, and that many governors from both parties support it. "He said he liked people who don't give up," Pelosi said, but also made it clear that the president is not backing down.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said, The president has been very clear for months that if the bill came to him in its current form that he would veto it. That is his intention. I don't see any changing of the minds there."
Senator Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) called the tobacco tax unfair. "It redistributes income from low-income smokers to states with the highest per-capita incomes," he said. "It could be called Robin Hood in reverse." (Click here to view Bunning's statement on S-CHIP.)
The president is likely to receive the legislation next week, lawmakers said.
Even if the veto sticks, however, a federal cigarette tax hike is not dead. If the S-CHIP bill is defeated, there is nothing to prevent lawmakers from resurrecting the tobacco tax increase as part of some other legislation, The Wall Street Journal said last week. I would assume that tobacco tax will come back in one way or another, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told the newspaper.
Click the Download Now button below for a roll call of the Senate vote provided by the National Association of Tobacco Outlets (NATO).
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