If you blinked you missed it. This Tuesday, the Department of Agriculture published a notice in the Federal Register announcing their intention to create a Christmas Tree Promotion Board that would conduct a new marketing campaign for fresh cut Christmas trees. The Board and media campaign would all be financed by a 15 cent fee on all trees sold by sellers of more than 500 trees per year.
But on Tuesday evening, The Heritage Foundation posted an story calling the new fee a “Chris tams Tree Tax” and Drudge linked to the post sometime Tuesday night. By Wednesday afternoon the Obama administration had caved, announcing they would delay implementation of the program.
For liberals, the story demonstrates how the conservative movement has made it impossible to anything of value in Washington. The Washington Monthly‘s Steve Benen wrote: “This is why we can’t have nice things — our political discourse is dominated by fools and charlatans.” Benen explained:
To pay for the effort, the industry launched the Christmas Tree Promotion, Research and Information Order, asking the Agriculture Department to approve a 15-cent fee, per tree, on domestic producers and importers. It was requested by the industry, to benefit the industry, and to be paid for by the industry.
This is almost all true. The program was requested by the industry, the National Christmas Tree Association to be exact, and it would benefit that industry, but as anyone who didn’t fail Econ 101 will tell you, the fee would not ultimately be born by the industry, but by Christmas tree consumers.
But Benen’s story also leaves out another little industry group, the American Christmas Tree Association, which cleverly promotes artificial trees by playing up the fire dangers of fresh cut trees and their impact on global warming. Turns out the American Christmas Tree Association and the National Christmas Tree Association have been locked in a decades long battle over the Christmas tree market. And for years now, the fresh cut tree industry has been losing.
Enter the the Commodity Promotion, Research, and Information Act which empowers the Department of Agriculture to do things like create Christmas Tree Promotion Boards and levy fees on the entire industry to pay for them. As Benen points out, the Ag Department already administers similar programs for other commodities.
But should they? Why is it the federal government’s business if American consumers are choosing fresh cut trees, artificial trees, or Festivus poles? Would Americans really stop eating meat if the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion And Research Board went out of existence? Do liberals like Benen even support the Ag Department’s corporate welfare support for the beef industry?
A 15 cent tax Christmas trees is not a threat to Christmas, let alone the U.S. economy. But the National Christmas Tree Association’s instinct to enlist the federal government in their battle for market share with the American Christmas Tree Association is. In his book Government’s End, Jonathan Rauch explains:
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By definition, the power of government to solve problems comes from its ability to reassign resources, whether by taxing, spending, regulating, or simply passing laws. But that very ability energizes countless investors and entrepreneurs and ordinary Americans to go digging for gold by lobbying government. In time, a whole industry – large sophisticated, professional, and to a considerable extent self-serving – emerges and then assumes a life of its own. This industry is a drain on the productive economy, and there appears to be no natural limit to its growth.
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Washington looks increasingly like a public-works jobs program for lawyers and lobbyists, a profit center for professionals who are in business for themselves.
