Bill Clinton: “Arguably, if we raise the tax, it will reduce consumption. But the answer to your question is, I don't think it's right…”

“Arguably, if we raise the tax, it will reduce consumption. But the answer to your question is, I don't think it's right to have a big, broad tax--I'll say again: tax everybody in America, most of whom are paying too much for what they've got to pay for those who haven't paid anything. I don't think that's right when there are savings. So, we didn't in the beginning know if there would be any tax. But we wound up with a gap in what we think the program will cost in the early years, for about 5 years before it starts to get big savings by the way, and what we had. And we had to figure out how best to make it up. And I thought that a tobacco tax and a tax on the biggest companies who will get big benefits out of this, a modest one just to make sure they contribute, as I said, to medical education, to medical research, and to preventive services like everybody else will, that those were the two fairest ways to get it. And the truth is that smoking is one thing--unlike drinking, for example, where it's a terrible thing if you do it to excess--we know that there is some risk in any level of it and that it imposes enormous extra costs on the health care system which the rest of us have to pay. So it seemed to me that that was a fair way to get some money. Mr. Koppel. Mr. President, I want to take advantage of one of our experts again, this time in public finance up at the Kennedy School in Harvard. Mr. Forsythe, would you go ahead, please? [Dell Forsythe expressed concern about job losses in the health industry.]”