The President's Proposal to Increase the Federal Levy on Cigarettes

One of the more intreresting proposals in President Obama's budget blueprint is his plan to increase the federal cigarette tax from $1.01 to $1.95 per pack.

Does any knowledgeable individual believe this plank has a ghost of a chance of passage in a Republican House headed by the chain-smoking John Boehner, the man who was caught red-handed distributing tobacco lobbyist checks on the House floor to colleagues in 1996? (This disgrace occurred just two years after a group of tobacco company executives lied under oath to Congress, asserting that cigarettes are not addictive.)

I can hear Speaker Boehner's response to the tax hike plan now, the assertion that tobacco levies target the poor, blue collar American (never mind the fact that the higher the tax, the greater the extent to which children are discouraged from beginning this lethal addiction.) The longstanding ties between the tobacco barons and the Republican Party would only be broken over the speaker's dead (and perhaps cancer-ridden) body.