The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it is going to delay implementation and revisit a proposed new 15-cent fee on fresh-cut Christmas trees. The fee, requested by the National Christmas Tree Association in 2009, was first announced in the Federal Registry yesterday and has generated criticism of President Obama from conservative media outlets.
Earlier reports said the Obama Administration’s Agriculture Department would impose the new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees in order to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.
White House spokesman Matt Lehrich told ABC News that despite some media coverage, “I can tell you unequivocally that the Obama Administration is not taxing Christmas trees. What’s being talked about here is an industry group deciding to impose fees on itself to fund a promotional campaign, similar to how the dairy producers have created the ‘Got Milk?’ campaign.”
However, Acting Administrator of Agriculture Marketing David Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. To pay for the new Federal Christmas tree image improvement and marketing program, the Department of Agriculture was to impose a 15-cents fee on all sales of fresh Christmas trees by sellers of more than 500 trees per year. And, of course, the Christmas tree sellers would be free to pass along the 15-cents Federal fee to consumers who buy their Christmas trees. The Acting Aministrator initially said the 15-cents mandatory Christmas tree fee “is not a tax nor does it yield revenue for the Federal government.” But the Federal government mandate was clear that Christmas tree sellers pay the 15-cents per tree whether they wanted to or not. In fact, this is a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees; there is no getting around it.
On the one hand, the Obama administration is not mandating this change, but the administrations Agriculture Department is. On the one hand, there is no new tax, but the mandate states that it is mandatory that the new fee be charged to the tree sellers. The adminstration got caught trying to shaft people in this tight economy just before Christmas and now they’re trying to backpeddle…and they did get caught.
Question: Doesn’t the American Christmas tree have a great image that doesn’t need any help from the government?