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For Immediate Release
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Representative Steve King
5th Congressional District of Iowa |
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January 13, 2009
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| King: Tax Increase on Low-Income Families Funds Pelosi’s SCHIP Expansion |
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| Says Pelosi’s “Early Session Victory” a Defeat for Taxpayers and Needy Children if Low-Income Kids Are Not Focus of Children’s Health Care Welfare |
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Washington, D.C.—Congressman Steve King today made the following statement about Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposal to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), known as HAWK-i in Iowa, to illegal immigrants and to an Iowa family of four earning as much as $106,000 a year. According to news reports, Pelosi is bringing the bill to the House floor this week in an attempt to score an “early session victory.” The bill will make it easier for illegal aliens to obtain SCHIP benefits. By skipping the normal committee process, Pelosi will allow Americans little opportunity to improve the legislation.
“Speaker Pelosi refuses to hold an open debate on an expansion of SCHIP, and it is easy to understand why,” Congressman King said. “Rather than focus on needy children from low-income families, Pelosi’s SCHIP proposal will increase the most regressive tax out there – the cigarette tax – to force low-income, working families to pay for illegal aliens and wealthy families to have taxpayer-funded health insurance. This is a classic example of robbing Peter to pay Paul, while claiming to help Peter. Taxpayer dollars designated for the children’s health care program should go to children in need, not illegal aliens, high-income families or adults. Any bill that forces American taxpayers to pay for welfare to illegal aliens or high-income families has to be stopped.”
Background:
- The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) calls tobacco taxes “the most regressive of the federal taxes,” meaning that the vast majority of any increases will be on the backs of low-income American families, the very folks intended to benefit from SCHIP. According to the Heritage Foundation, “Around half of smokers are in families earning less than 200 percent of the federal poverty line (FPL), so increasing the tobacco tax would burden the families in the income class that SCHIP and Medicaid are trying to help.”
- The Pelosi SCHIP plan will hit the House floor sometime this week. The bill is expected to resemble the 2007 version of the bill, a five-year reauthorization that expanded the program by $35 billion and to 400% of poverty, funded by a 61 cent per-pack increase in tobacco taxes. According to the Heritage Foundation, this tobacco tax would require nine million new people to take up smoking in order for SCHIP to be fully funded: http://www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/wm1548.cfm.
- While it is unclear how much tobacco taxes will be raised, a previous version of the Pelosi SCHIP plan would have increased tobacco taxes by $70 billion over 10 years (H.R. 3963).
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