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Wash. Post Editorial: President Should Veto Corporate Tax/Tobacco Bill [10/07-3]

Excerpts from: Veto This Bill

The Washington Post [10/07/04]

In June, the House and Senate each passed corporate tax bills. As we wrote at the time, both threatened to inflict further complications on the tax code, widen the budget deficit and affirm the belief of corporations that ruthless lobbying of Congress will be rewarded handsomely. Four months later, the House and Senate have combined their two bills into a single measure. The result is an improvement, but it's insufficient. President Bush should exercise his veto.

The bill represents a missed opportunity to regulate tobacco. It includes a generous payout to tobacco farmers that at one point had been coupled to a provision allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. The regulation has been dropped, but the payout remains. This destroys a bargain that might have brought one of the nation's leading health hazards under federal oversight.

Mr. Bush will be tempted to sign this bad bill, since the tobacco payout matters to key congressional Republicans. In so doing he would only fuel cynicism about his seriousness on economic policy. There is no way to argue that avoiding $660 million worth of European duties justifies signing a bill that costs billions and that constitutes bad policy as well.

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