OpinionJournal Federation - Emptying the Humidor

Congressmen push a cigar tax, proving they've learned nothing from history. Democrats in Congress love to do several things at once - pretend to solve problems, hike taxes, and make other problems worse: "A Joint Economic Committee study later found that 330 jobs in the jewelry industry and 7,600 jobs in the yacht industry were lost thanks to the luxury tax. Perhaps the greatest irony was that in 1991 the federal government paid out over $7 million more in unemployment benefits to those workers than it collected in luxury tax revenues."

The dirty secret is that for Democrats, slowing the economy and increasing unemployment is good, because it makes people more dependent on the government, increases the need for social services (and thus government employment), and thus bumps up the numbers of people voting Democrat.