Scott Garrett: “The SCHIP program, of course, is intended to benefit the low-income and the indigent children. The question is how is…”

“The SCHIP program, of course, is intended to benefit the low-income and the indigent children. The question is how is this being funded? You had correctly stated it is going to be funded by a cigarette tax. You generalized the statement that the cigarette tax generally falls disproportionately on the poor. And that actually is correct. A study was done in 1990. It said that people who made under $10,000 per year paid almost twice as much in cigarette taxes as those who made $50,000 and above. So there is the irony. We are trying to provide a health care program for the poor. And on whose back is it going to be placed? It is going to be placed and paid for by those very same poor people who are paying a substantially higher cigarette tax.”