Senate Minority Whip Bill Payne

For Immediate Release Thursday, March 04, 2010 Contact: 986-4702

Different Day- Same Story
Today, Most Republican Senators Vote NO! To Raise Taxes- This time on Cigarettes

Santa Fe- Today, all but one New Mexico Republican Senators voted “no” to raise taxes on cigarettes, Wednesday, all Republican Senators voted “no” on a state budget that has no real spending cuts to address revenue shortfalls, on Tuesday, all Senate Republicans voted against the bill to increase taxes by $200 million in fiscal year 2011.

Today, as well as during the past two days of the special session, all Republican efforts to amend the tax increase in order to protect taxpayers were shot down.

Despite the Republican Senator efforts, the tax increases passed. Even the
Republican efforts to make the taxes temporary were killed on the Senate floor despite the taxes being paraded out to be “temporary” taxes.

The cigarette tax that is estimated to raise taxes by $33 million in fiscal year 2011 passed the Senate 25 to 15.

The original cigarette tax bill was proposed to shore up the state’s dwindling reserves, but changes were made to the bill and now part of it will be going to education. Some Senators say that is bad tax policy to use a questionable and possibly unreliable source of revenue to pay for a recurring expense.