The Obama administration has been proposing to tax Christmas trees but the tree tax got run over by a runaway public-relations disaster reindeer. With the one-year clock ticking on a difficult re-election bid, the president didn’t want the label Grinch anywhere near his campaign.
Critics said that Washington couldn’t have it both ways. A government that shies away from the word “Christmas,” and whose courts don’t let school kids sing religious songs, should not try to make money out of Christmas
They say even if you buy the Obama administration’s line that a proposed 15-cent per christmas tree tree charge really was a fee, not a tax, as far as most people are concerned you’re messing with Christmas.
The money would have gone to a 12-member board whose job would have been to “strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace.” The government said this would be no different than how it promotes milk, cotton, beef or pork with ads and slogans that have become part of American culture (got milk?).
The administration gets credit for being nimble. After the uproar hit on Thursday, the White House quickly went from arguing the technical differences between a tax and a fee to announcing that the Department of Agriculture “is going to delay implementation and revisit this action.”