AFP on SCHIP: Guess it's a good thing Renzi is going

Dear Arizona Taxpayer,

If your Congressman is one of the three listed here, please take a moment to thank him for taking a courageous stand against a needless tax increase, and urge him to once again stand on principle and reject a reckless expansion of government:

Rep. Jeff Flake

Rep. Trent Franks

Rep. John Shadegg

Last year, those three Congressmen voted to sustain President Bush’s veto of the so-called State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) Reauthorization Act, a bill that would have dramatically expanded the role of the federal government in health care while raising taxes on smokers, many of whom are poor.

It is easy to send your Congressman an email by using the form available here:

https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml

Unfortunately, the five members below voted in favor of the tax increase:

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

Rep. Raul Grijalva

Rep. Harry Mitchell

Rep. Ed Pastor

Rep. Rick Renzi

If you are a constituent of Rep. Giffords, Grijalva, Mitchell, or Pastor (Renzi is not planning to return to Congress next year), please send a quick note to your Congressmember, asking that member to reconsider his or her support for the SCHIP tax increase.

America is at a crossroads on health care policy. Clearly, reform is needed. But we should move towards consumer-driven health care, harnessing the power of free markets, price transparency, and individual choice to offer high-quality care, rather than going down the path toward larger, more intrusive government. The verdict of the 20^th century is that the latter does not work. Centralized bureaucracies cannot adequately plan for even relatively simple industries, let alone something as complex and important as health care.

A dramatic expansion of SCHIP would move America’s health care system toward universal government children’s coverage, which could--in combination with other program expansions--lead to a system of universal, government-provided health insurance. Once government is paying the health care piper, it will call the health care tune. Judging from international experience, such a system would be rife with long waiting lines and substandard quality of care. That disastrous move in the wrong direction would come at a time when much of the rest of the world is moving away from government health insurance.

For more info: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9272

As limited-government conservatives, we are strongly opposed to tax increases, including the substantial cigarette tax presently included in the SCHIP bill. It is easy to pick on smokers (who make up a minority of Americans), but excise taxes are bad policy. To minimize economic distortions, taxes should have a broad base and a low rate. Excise taxes are the worst departure from this principle, singling out specific products for excessive taxation, substituting coercive government power for free market pricing.

Once again, please thank Reps. Flake, Franks, and Shadegg for their courage in putting policy over politics and rejecting this nice-sounding but harmful legislation. And please encourage them to maintain their admirable stance on this issue in the future.

Tom Jenney

Arizona Director
Americans for Prosperity
(Arizona Federation of Taxpayers)
www.aztaxpayers.org
tjenney@afphq.org
(602) 478-0146