November 16, 2009 06:48 PM UTC

$18 Million For Schools, Willy Wonka's Not Gonna Mind

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post reports:

For Libertarians, it is a step toward social engineering.

But to Gov. Bill Ritter, a proposal to tax candy and soda-pop sales is nothing more than a way to help close a widening budget gap.

Regardless of the motivation, if Ritter’s idea is adopted next year by the legislature, Colorado would become one of a growing number of states and localities going after candy bars and soft drinks.

And, like cigarettes and liquor before them, sweet treats would achieve a special status as items whose consumption is discouraged by the very governments that become dependent on the revenue they provide.

Ritter’s office estimates that eliminating the sales-tax exemption for candy and soft drinks would generate $17.9 million and help avoid deeper cuts to schools and colleges.

“We thought that people would be willing to pay 3 cents on a dollar candy bar,” said Ritter, who once spent three years running a nutrition center in Zambia before resuming his law career. “We just viewed it (allowing the sales tax) as something that doesn’t do anything to our (state’s) competitiveness.”

Sounds right to us–very few people will even notice that they’re being charged three cents on the dollar to buy their Snickers bars and Cokes, and most dentists we know will forgive any resemblance to “social engineering.” Didn’t somebody say the same thing about tobacco taxes back in the day? If that’s the best they’ve got, repealing this exemption isn’t much of a controversy.

That said, there’s always somebody out there whose well-compensated job it is to complain, no matter how good an idea may seem from a health or fiscal policy point of view. In Colorado that’s Jon Caldara, set your watch to it:

“Not only has Ritter already hacked off taxpayers in Colorado, he’s now going to hack off children as well,” said Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a Golden-based libertarian think tank.

“I think the governor needs to sit down and watch Willy Wonka a couple of times and stop being such a buzz kill.”

Yeah. Is he done? The, ah, grownups are talking.