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 near 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 inside constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.
First, there are obvious Free Exercise and Equal Protection issues here.
* That is, unless we consider Christmas trees on the way to keep wholly secular, this is an obvious burden on the free exercise of Christianity, and someone that no other religion faces.
* Still if it might be reasonable in the direction of see Christmas trees as not particularly religious, do we have need of courts drawing lines between, say, crèches/crucifixes and trees/Santa?
Second, and probably even more important given the times during which we live, where inside the Constitution does the federal government seize the power en route for tax the sale of a local agricultural product?
* Setting aside trees trucked within from out-of-state, there's no interstate commerce here on the way to regulate.
* And if it's a tax (which, again, USDA officials deny) — presumably an excise, which is specified during the Constitution and which courts have construed to be 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 Hints Act of 1996, under which the mandatory fee funds a new program in the direction of "enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry within 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 stay the body levying it, reasonably 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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