Proposed Federal Tax on Cigars Burns Me Up

My Uncle Leo and Winston Churchill must be spinning in their respective graves.

In terms of role models, UL and WC were the best: great raconteurs, brilliant wits - and cigar smokers without peer.

"Smoking cigars is like falling in love," Britain's greatest prime minister once declared. Churchill fell in love many times over in a single day.

With similar passion, my dear uncle would advise me on the spiritual aspects of cigar smoking. Lying in bed and sporting sunglasses from dawn to dusk, Uncle Leo would brush the burning ash from his nightclothes. "Big shot," he'd tell me as a kid, "it's better to burn now than in the hereafter."

Too bad, Uncle Leo. Sorry, Sir Winston. It looks as if I'm going to get burned in the here-and-now by the tax-addicted Democrats in The Beltway.

The donkeys in Congress want to add $35 billion to $50 billion to the state children's health-insurance program, which would help purchase coverage for children who don't qualify for Medicaid. Upon first review, that's a noble sentiment. But why not reform the health-care system itself? After all, government's intrusion into health-care delivery has transformed "Do no harm" into "Do unto other's wallets." Those others, by the way, are often the naughty cigarette smokers, non-PC Americans who relish a Camel Wide or a Capri Ultra Light. From the myopic perspective of congressmen, "corrective" taxing produces maximum revenue with seemingly minimal political fallout.

And even though these hopeless addicts of taxation know that one revenue source is too many and that 1,000 are never enough, they also have decided to extinguish the joy of cigar smokers, whose vice currently has a 4.8 cent-per-cigar tax cap. The proposed tax on large cigars - are there any other kind? I ask - is 53 percent. In the meantime, the Senate Finance Committee has a proposed maximum tax on a cigar of a whopping $10.