By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 7, 2007; 9:43 AM
GREENVILLE, Miss. -- Mollie Hudson, a social worker, has some hungry boys to feed and a pocketbook that can barely keep up.
Her 20-year-old son is in college and comes home for weekend meals, and her 10-year-old is a robust fifth grader who can eat almost as much as his big brother.
"The grocery bill is one of the biggest expenses of the month," said Hudson, 40, who makes a big shopping trip once a month, spending $120 to $150, and then smaller trips about once a week, spending about $60 to $70.
Hudson and her fellow state residents are finding themselves in a financial pinch: They pay the highest taxes on groceries, yet rank among the lowest paid households in the nation.
"For the poorest state in the nation to have the highest sales tax on groceries is cruel," said state Sen. Alan Nunnelee, a Republican who hopes to address the imbalance by cutting the grocery tax.
Proponents of a cut are keenly aware of what's happening on the other side of the Mississippi River. In neighboring Arkansas, where household incomes also are among the lowest in the country, the new Democratic governor, Mike Beebe, signed a law last month that will cut the grocery tax in half on July 1, from 6 percent to 3 percent.
But a similar measure before the Mississippi Legislature is barely alive. The bill would slice the grocery tax in half _ but it would also increase the cigarette tax from 18 cents a pack, the third-lowest in the nation, to $1 a pack, about the national average.
Republican Gov. Haley Barbour opposes the bill and he vetoed two cigarette-grocery "tax swap" bills in 2006, which lawmakers failed to override. "I'm against raising anybody's taxes," Barbour says consistently when asked about the legislation this year.
Critics say Barbour is protecting the tobacco companies that helped make him wealthy when they were clients of Barbour Griffith and Rogers LLC, the Washington lobbying firm he founded and ran before winning the governorship of his home state in 2003.
Barbour is seeking a second term this year and says he doesn't want to change the grocery tax rate while the state still faces economic uncertainty 18 months after Hurricane Katrina.
The governor has powerful allies on the tax swap issue. Republican Sen. Tommy Robertson, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he's "99.9 percent sure" he'll kill the legislation. Like other opponents, Robertson argues that the poorest families pay no grocery tax because their food stamp purchases are tax exempt.
Health advocates, state Democratic leaders and even Republican Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck support the tax swap and argue the lower grocery tax would help the state's working poor.
The state's 7 percent grocery tax is the highest in the U.S., according to the Federation of Tax Administrators, a Washington-based research group.
The Mississippi Democratic Party estimates that a family spending $150 a week on groceries would save $273 a year if the grocery tax were cut in half.
Barbour was Republican National Committee chairman from 1993-97, and is widely credited with helping the GOP gain control of Congress in 1994 _ a power advantage the party held until the elections of this past November.
Barbour's name is still mentioned in some circles as a possible vice presidential running mate, but he plays down questions about national ambitions.
"I can't imagine why a Republican candidate for president would choose somebody from Mississippi as his running mate," Barbour said. "Because if a Republican doesn't carry Mississippi for president, he won't carry but about three states."
Some Democratic lawmakers believe Barbour is adamant about opposing tax increases so he'll have a bragging point if he joins the national ticket.
Nunnelee, the Republican chairman of the Senate Public Health Committee, sides with Barbour on many issues but splits on this one. Nunnelee said reducing the grocery tax and boosting the cigarette excise tax are equally beneficial.
"Our citizens smoke and get sick because they smoke much more so than citizens of other states. And I have to believe that in some way that's tied to the fact that we have the third lowest cigarette tax in the nation," Nunnelee said. "But there is a corresponding issue that I think is equally a public health issue, and that's a sales tax on groceries."
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On the Net:
Federation of Tax Administrators: http://www.taxadmin.org