Legislature to debate changes to bottle deposit program

Posted on January 15, 2008 in Politics by DM

plastic water bottle image The Iowa Legislature will be taking up a proposal by Governor Chet Culver to change the state’s bottle and can deposit program, wherein the deposit will double to a dime - but customers will only get 8 cents of it back when they turn in their bottles and cans. What a load of crap. As many on both sides of the legislative aisle have already pointed out, that’s not a deposit - it’s a tax. With this proposal, Culver shows he’s not content to simply keep the revenue that comes in when people don’t return bottles and cans. Now he wants to actually keep part of the money from those who do turn them in.

The Register reports that Culver noted “…that former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, was one of the main advocates of the 5-cent proposal while he was in the Legislature 30 years ago. ‘So I expect that we’ll have a lot of bipartisan support for this major new initiative related to the environment.’”

Well Guv’na, that doesn’t even make sense. Branstad may have supported the bottle deposit program in its original form, but that was because the customer got the money back. Just because a Republican thirty years ago supported an actual deposit program doesn’t mean that translates into Republican support today for a new tax.

Furthermore, the proposal’s only “related to the environment” because that’s where the 2-cent “retained” portion will be spent - on environmental programs. It has nothing to do with preventing litter - don’t you remember Al Gore trotting out that woman in the 2000 election who said she picked up cans and bottles to pay for prescriptions? And I’ve personally seen people in Cadillacs - in Cadillacs! - stop along the roadside, risking life and liimb to fetch an empty nickel-can out of the ditch. (Hey I guess they didn’t get to drive the Cadillac by leaving nickels lie in the ditch, so I give ‘em that much…) This is all taking place with the five-cent deposit we have in place now, and have had for 30 years. So there’s no environmental imperative to suddenly increase the deposit to 10 cents and cheat the consumer out of 20 percent of it.

Think about this: the other place where we’re all used to making deposits is with our bank. What would you say if your bank sent out a happy little mailer telling you that you’d only be able to withdraw 80 cents for every dollar you deposit?

Yeah, me too.

Between this and last fall’s Pumpkin Tax, it’s becoming clear that Culver is hunting for new taxes to impose on the people of Iowa. We’re going to have to be vigilant to make sure we don’t get soaked.

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