The Soda Jerk: How State Sen. Eddie Lucio Lost His Way To The Bar...Taxing Booze Would Be a Bigger Revenue Generator In His Happy-Hour District...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
Special to The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - It is said here that trucks move a six pack of beer into town for every resident every day. Sales are large and they are steady. Bartenders and cops know it well; they deal in drunks. That's a lot of beer when your community counts more than 100,000 citizens and another 100,000 non-citizens.

Now comes State Sen. Eddie Lucio with a not-so-novel idea of taxing every can, bottle or carton of soda. He wants to add to the state treasury in an effort to avoid teacher layoffs as Texas struggles with its projected $27 billion deficit. For sure, it is a time to think big.

But maybe not Big Gulp.

Lucio's bill, filed in Austin this week where the Legislature is entertaining a load of proposals, would impose a one-cent tax per ounce for a “carbonated or non-carbonated nonalcoholic beverage that contains natural or artificial sweeteners.”

Well, it would add to the state coffers. But it is an easy-reach solution. Tax soda? Lucio must've stayed up all night thinking about that one. Tax soda? Lucio never has been accused of being the brightest bulb in the room.

As empty as it sounds, here's Lucio's fatuous explanation: "There are solutions to the budget mess we find ourselves in which do not involve making drastic cuts to vital services. The Texas Legislature should be exploring these solutions."

Sounds good. But then Lucio adds the tax would help prevent layoffs in public education and healthcare.

A better solution would be taxing booze. Lucio knows his South Texas district counts on some world-class drunks. Imagine the tax cash that could come from taxing, not soda, but beer.

Lucio won't go there, however. Beer is simply too ingrained in his community's culture. To mess with it would bring immediate outrage and scorn, no doubt more than he got for his profitable role in the Bridge To Nowhere scandal. Heck, some of the city's biggest names have a certain fondness for booze, beginning with the DWI-arrested Mayor Pat Ahumada and continuing on down the 14th Street bar tab line. You can stop any of a thousand cars on a weekend night and likely nab a drunk or two or three or four in the same vehicle. Booze flows here like chocolate flows in Paris.

So, it'll be interesting to see just how far Lucio's soda tax bill goes. He's a Democrat and Democrats are in extremely short supply in the Legislature these days. Our bet is that it goes nowhere, pretty much like every piece of legislation Lucio has put forth in his too-long career as public servant.

Tax on soda? Absurd. Nevermind that Lucio's expansive district counts some of the country's top producers of raw sugar, a key ingredient in all soda. It feeds his constituents' economy as much as do the hundreds of taco and tamale outlets, and as much as the thousands of booze-happy cantinas.

Lucio is damned lucky there is no tax on small brains...

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