A push for soda tax? It's possible under Biden admin

Neera Tanden, who has been picked by President-elect Joe Biden to run the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has pushed for a soda tax in the past as president of the Center for American Progress, a far-left think tank.

In 2018, a plan from the “health policy team” at American Progress suggested a one-percent tax per ounce on sugary soft drinks. 

In a report that same year, American Progress published a report calling for raising taxes with the goal of reducing consumption by bumping up the cost for a canned Coke or bottle of Pepsi.

“Several studies show,” reads the report, “that if implemented properly, these taxes can have a significant impact on residents' beverage choices, reducing their overall sugar and caloric intake and ultimately leading to lower obesity rates—particularly among low-income individuals."

Reacting to that report, Jeff Stier of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance says it is the poor who are hurt the most by soda taxes.

"Even socialist Bernie Sanders has come out against the soda tax,” Stier says, “recognizing the truth that it is so regressive and will hurt working families more than anyone else.”

Sanders authored a 2016 commentary, published during the Democrat presidential primary, in which he said a soda tax proposed by the City of Philadelphia, which would raise taxes for public education, “targets the poor and middle class while going easy on the wealthy.”

Hillary Clinton supported the tax but Sanders opposed it.  

Sanders, no fan of corporate America and its profits, complained months later when the American Beverage Association used his warning to fight ballot measures seeking to increase taxes.

According to Stier, the incoming Biden administration can be expected to push a soda tax as part of a “nanny-state approach” to government and its liberal leaders.

The soda tax and other tax policies deserve to be discussed in a confirmation hearing for Tanden, he adds.