Judging Freedom - Biden's Agenda on Gas & Cigarettes

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, June 21st, 2022. It's about 1035 in the morning. Yesterday, the President of the United States made two announcements. One, he's going to ask Congress to abandon the gasoline tax, which is 18 cents per gallon on regular gas and 24 cents per gallon on diesel. And he's going to, on his own, tell the tobacco companies that they have to reduce the amount of nicotine in the tobacco products that they sell. I'm all in favor of reducing taxation. We are the heaviest taxed country in the world. I understand state taxes on gasoline as a user fee. Theoretically, the money you pay, it's 76 cents a gallon, 76 cents a gallon here in New Jersey. The money you pay for the tax theoretically goes to maintain and repair the roadways. I say theoretically because it all goes into the same pot and the government spends it

however it wants. But the federal government doesn't maintain roadways. They don't need a tax on gas. This is just an opportunity for them to grab money. So I support this gas holiday. It should be made permanent. All taxes should be reduced. Jefferson said we should live under easy taxes, not oppressive taxes. Case with the nicotine is a different story. I don't smoke. I never had.

My father, God rest his soul in heaven, smoked three packs a day for 40 years, including at the dinner table during dinner, totally turned my mother and my brothers and me when we were kids, my mother was young, turned us off to the concept of smoking. But people have the right to put in their bodies whatever they want. It is none of the government's business, certainly none of the federal government's business, how much nicotine there is in tobacco. And the president wants to do this by edict. He wants the Food and Drug Administration to establish a rule telling the tobacco companies how to prepare and sell their products. This isn't even your representatives in Congress doing it because

they don't have the fortitude to do it. Nobody should do it. You should be able to buy and use and put in your body whatever you want, and it's none of the government's business. Well, don't tell that to old Joe. Don't tell that to the lefties that run the government for 100 years. Since Woodrow Wilson established the administrative state, neither fish nor fowl, not in the legislative branch, not in the executive branch, not even hinted at in the Constitution. The experts who are always there who want to tell us how to live, like in the Food and Drug Administration, they claim to know what's better for us than we do for ourselves. They want

to tell us how to live. They don't care about freedom. They just care about their version of how to take care of yourself. They can go take a hike. They're about to get a shellacking from the Supreme Court in a case involving the EPA in which the wings of the administrative state are about to be clipped. I don't know about the government. Every time you turn around, it wants to take more liberty and more property away from us. But those are things that the government does best. It lies and it steals. It steals liberty and it steals property. And we must not let this happen lest we become a nation of sheep. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.