Striaght From the Horse's Mouth

Gov. Culver was recently in Fort Dodge on his "Capitol for a Day" tour. The Messenger covered the event here. The article has a couple of interesting quotes from Culver that should be highlighted.

One portion of the article covered the raise in tobacco taxes (the tax increase covered all tobacco, not just cigarettes, so lets call it what it really is):

‘‘I actually said it’s got to be a dollar, so you can blame me entirely,’’ Culver said.

You can't get any more blunt than that. For those of you angry at the tobacco tax increase, you can remember this in 2010 when Culver is up for reelection. Culver goes on with this quote:

He noted that people can argue for ‘‘sin taxes’’ on things like beer, but added that there was only consensus to raise the cigarette tax.

The tobacco tax was increased, according to Culver, to make it so expensive to force smokers to quit and new smokers from even starting. Alcohol has negative, and possibly long-term, effects on the human body, and alcoholism can destroy people's lives. A lot of domestic abuse incidents come after the abuser has been drinking. Go to any college town and you hear about alcohol problems and the amount of drinking going on. Iowa City has been trying for years to make bars 21 only to try to cut down on underage drinking. So, Gov. Culver, if you increase the tobacco tax to cut down on smoking.....wouldn't it be irresponsible to not increase taxes on alcohol? Don't try to pull the consensus argument either. There are a lot of people angry at the tobacco tax increase...nothing I would call a supporting consensus.

On another subject, a few days ago you read a post here about what topics would be big next year in the legislature. One of those topics was highway construction and upkeep. The largest contributer to our highway fund is the gas tax. Here is what Culver had to say:

While he championed the cigarette tax, the governor isn’t eager to move on raising the levy on a gallon of gasoline.

‘‘I don’t think the majority of Iowans want to raise the gas tax right now because of the skyrocketing cost of gas,’’ he said.

He said the state should ‘‘go very slowly’’ on raising that tax.

The way I'm reading this is that gas taxes here in Iowa are going to increase. I understand the importance of our highway system, of the need to upkeep roads and finish the 4-lane Highway 20. I understand that the state highway fund is short on cash and that revenue will have to come from somewhere. But the price of gas is high enough the way it is already. When Culver says "right now," I'd like to see at what price he thinks gas should be in order to increase the fuel tax. I'm expecting the idea to start floating around in the near future.

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