Christmas Tree Tax Is Microcosm Of What’s Wrong With Constitutional Law
Christmas Tree Tax Is Microcosm of What’s Wrong with Constitutional Law
Christmas Tree Tax Is Microcosm of What’s Wrong with Constitutional Law
On November 8 the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) gave the OK en route for a new industry-funded Christmas tree promotion program, but says it is not a tax. The program was quickly postponed by the Obama administration after public outrage. But this even says something about the federal government and the state of constitutional law as a whole, says Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow during constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.
First, there are obvious Free Exercise and Equal Protection issues here.
* That is, unless we consider Christmas trees headed for maintain wholly secular, this is an obvious burden on the free exercise of Christianity, and self that no other religion faces.
* Even if it might be reasonable in the direction of see Christmas trees as not particularly religious, do we want courts drawing lines between, say, crèches/crucifixes and trees/Santa?
Second, and probably yet more important given the times inside which we live, where within the Constitution does the federal government win the power in the direction of tax the sale of a local agricultural product?
* Setting aside trees trucked during from out-of-state, there’s no interstate commerce here headed for regulate.
* And if it’s a tax (which, again, USDA officials deny) — presumably an excise, which is specified within the Constitution and which courts have construed headed for stay a tax on transactions or privileges — how does assessing it promote the general welfare or common defense?
* The administration cites the Commodity Promotion, Research and Suggestions Act of 1996, under which the mandatory fee funds a new program headed for “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry during the United States.” That’s what passes for the general welfare?
Third, yet if the tax is a lawful use of federal power, shouldn’t Congress keep the body levying it, quite than an agency of the USDA?
This is a microcosm of what’s wrong with constitutional law, evermore divorced from the Constitution as it is, says Shapiro.
Source: Ilya Shapiro, “The Christmas Tree Tax Is a Microcosm of What’s Wrong with Constitutional Law,” Cato-at-Liberty.org, November 9, 2011.
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