Big Beer is at it again, pushing a self-serving bill (H.R. 1610) to enrich its bottom line by slashing the federal excise tax on beer by 50%, to its 1951 level!

Please urge your legislator to stand up to the beer lobby by opposing this bill. Ask him or her instead to consider a well-justified increase in alcohol taxes to provide needed funds for children’s health care and other domestic spending priorities.

Beer-industry representatives will be in Washington, D.C. this month hoping to cash in on some $3.3 million in campaign contributions during the last election cycle and add co-sponsors to the beer-tax rollback bill.  Please ask your legislator to OPPOSE H.R.1610!

Subject: Increase alcohol taxes, Don't cut them

Dear [decision maker name automatically inserted here],

I am writing to ask that you reject co-sponsorship of H.R. 1610, a beer-industry bill that would irresponsibly slash beer taxes by half. I urge you instead to stand up to the beer lobby and support a long-overdue increase in all alcohol excise taxes to pay for key healthcare programs.

Reducing taxes on alcoholic beverages is bad fiscal and public health policy. Lower alcohol taxes would unnecessarily enrich an already prosperous industry, add to the deficit, reward and encourage heavy drinking, and attract more young drinkers. Beer taxes are already too low. Federal taxes on beer have been raised only once (1991) since Harry Truman was president. Today's tax rate is less than 30% of what it would be had it only kept up with inflation since his presidency. Any way one looks at it--as a percentage of retail sales, retail prices, GDP, international standards--beer taxes are low. Given the enormous toll of the nation's existing alcohol-related public health and safety problems, why should Congress add a tax cut to the free ride the beer industry has enjoyed for so long? If anything, beer and other alcohol excise taxes should be increased instead.

1) Current federal and state taxes on alcoholic beverages dont come close to offsetting the huge public health and safety costs of alcohol consumption-- estimated at $184 billion per year, including $62 billion per year for the costs of underage drinking alone.

2) Alcohol tax increases have been rare and modest. Beer and wine taxes have been raised only once in the past 56 years, liquor taxes only twice. As a result of Congress' failure to adjust the tax for inflation since the last increase in 1991, the Treasury has lost some $24 billion in revenues that could have helped support under-funded health and human needs programs or reduce the deficit.

3) An increase in federal alcohol excise taxes is fair. About one-third of adults don't drink at all, and among those who do, most drink so little that they would barely notice a tax decrease (or increase). Alcohol tax cuts would benefit only producers and the 20% of drinkers who imbibe heavily and consume 85% of the alcohol.

4) An alcohol excise tax increase would help reduce underage drinking and its harms, according to both the National Academies of Science and the Office of the Surgeon General, which called for beer-tax increases and increases in the cost of alcoholic beverages to youth, respectively.

Please reject special-interest beer industry appeals to lower federal excise taxes on beer and consider ways to raise taxes on all alcoholic beverages instead. A 2007 report of the Congressional Budget Office estimated that modestly increasing and reforming alcohol taxes could generate almost $28 billion in new revenue over five years. When the time comes to find new resources for important health and social programs, I hope you will stand up to the alcohol lobby and support long-overdue increases in federal excise taxes on alcoholic-beverages. I would appreciate knowing your views on this issue, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,