By Nicholas Contompasis
This is how it starts friends, the slow insidious government creep into what any normal person would think is a mundane and harmless industry. Obama is now regulating into submission the Christmas tree industry.
We all know what their plan is. With the help of environmentalists and atheists expect to see limits put on the sale of Christmas trees. This would be a slap in the face to every Christian in America.
As American Christians continue to battle their own government for the legitimacy of their religion, this is just another reminder of what President Obama said earlier in his Presidency "America is not a Christian nation."
I beg to differ!!!
By David S. Addington
Heritage Reported:
President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.
In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).
To pay for the new Federal Christmas tree image improvement and marketing program, the Department of Agriculture imposed a 15-cent fee on all sales of fresh Christmas trees by sellers of more than 500 trees per year (7 CFR 1214.52). And, of course, the Christmas tree sellers are free to pass along the 15-cent Federal fee to consumers who buy their Christmas trees.
Acting Administrator Shipman had the temerity to say the 15-cent mandatory Christmas tree fee “is not a tax nor does it yield revenue for the Federal government” (76 CFR 69102). The Federal government mandates that the Christmas tree sellers pay the 15-cents per tree, whether they want to or not. The Federal government directs that the revenue generated by the 15-cent fee goes to the Board appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture to carry out the Christmas tree program established by the Secretary of Agriculture. Mr. President, that’s a new 15-cent tax to pay for a Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.
Another opinion -
The Christmas Tree Tax Is a Microcosm of What’s Wrong with Constitutional Law
Posted by Ilya Shapiro
Jim Harper beat me to the punch on the new Christmas tree tax — probably because I initially thought it was a joke — but there’s actually much more to say here beyond the USDA’s claim that it’s not a tax and the general absurdity of the situation. Three quick things:
First, there are obvious Free Exercise and Equal Protection issues here. That is, unless we consider Christmas trees to be wholly secular, this is an obvious burden on the free exercise of Christianity, and one that no other religion faces. Even if it might be reasonable to see Christmas trees as not particularly religious – pine trees played no role in The Greatest Story Ever Told and, e.g., my secular Jewish family always had a traditional Russian New Year’s Tree (which has no ties to Russian Orthodox Christianity) – but do we want courts drawing lines between, say, creches/crucifixes and trees/Santa?
Second, and probably even more important given the times in which we live, where in the Constitution does the federal government get the power to tax the sale of a local agricultural product? Setting aside trees trucked in from out-of-state, there’s no interstate commerce here to regulate. And if it’s a tax (which, again, Ag officials deny) — presumably an excise, which is specified in the Constitution and which courts have construed to be a tax on transactions or privileges – how does assessing it to promote the general welfare or common defense? The administration cites the Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996, under which the tax mandatory fee funds a new program to ”enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States.” That’s what passes for the general welfare?
Third, even if the tax is a lawful use of federal power, shouldn’t Congress be the body levying it, rather than an agency of the USDA?
I could go on, but this little 15-cent tree tax is a microcosm of what’s wrong with constitutional law, evermore divorced from the Constitution as it is. Yes, under modern doctrine, the Christmas tree tax can be probably justified under either the Commerce Clause or the General Welfare Clause — and Congress can delegate to bureaucrats the power to levy certain “assessments” – but is that the kind of government we signed up for?
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