Genius President Plans to Take Failed Local Proposal National

You almost have the admire the gumption and determination of the left. They never let failure get in the way of pursuing even more failure. Be it the failed war on poverty, the failing public school system, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, you name it, they never admit the actual failure and just look to grab more of your money to spread the misery and failure around.

Latest case in point is Barack Obama sneakily floating the idea of a 'sin tax' on soda, a proposal met with such resounding resistance in New York it nearly torpedoed David Paterson's political future all by itself. Naturally, it's for the children but let's face it, if parents are in any way responsible for their children, and it's safe to say most still are, then we can do just fine regulating what the kids are drinking.

Just another Democrat scheme to wring money out of taxpayers for Obama's pie-in-the-sky socialized medicine scheme is all this amounts to.

Gov. Paterson's proposal to tax soda in New York fizzled, but President Obama believes it may be time to pop a similar sin tax on the nation.

The President, in an interview with Men's Health magazine released yesterday, said he thought taxing soda and other sugary drinks is worth putting on the table as Congress debates health care reform.

"It's an idea that we should be exploring," the president said. "There's no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda. And every study that's been done about obesity shows that there is as high a correlation between increased soda consumption and obesity as just about anything else."

Obama is floating the idea seven months after a storm of protest forced poll-challenged Gov. Paterson to drop his plans for an 18% tax on soda and other sugary drinks.

Despite that debacle, congressional lawmakers have considered soda taxes as one way to cover the cost of revamping the nation's health care system, estimated to eat up much as $1 trillion over the next decade.

But Obama - who works out six days a week and keeps a bowl of apples in the Oval Office - has been largely mum on the controversial topic, at least until now.

As in Paterson's case, Obama's comments drew the immediate wrath of industry and consumer-choice groups yesterday.

"The tax code should not be used as a method for social engineering, and that's what this is," said J. Justin Wilson, the senior research analyst for the Center for Consumer Freedom, a group funded in part by the food and beverage industry. "It smacks of the regulation that government imposed on tobacco, but soda is not tobacco."