One of the joys of reading Peter “One Man Army” Hirschfeld is the way he subtly reveals a politician’s hypocrisies. There’ll be a quote, there’ll be a countervailing fact nearby. He doesn’t call attention to it, and he certainly doesn’t roar “This guy is a hypocrite!” as some uncouth bloggers are won’t to do.

Here, in today’s Mitchell Family Organ (paywalled, sorry), is a Hirschfeld piece on the House-passed budget plan and how it might fare in the Senate. Penitent Pro Tem John Campbell is quoted extensively on the pros and cons of the House’s taxation ideas, but there’s one passage in particular that jumped out at my cynical old eyes.

It concerns the House’s one-year, half-penny increase in the rooms and meals tax. Campbell doesn’t care for the idea:

“I don’t want to do anything that might impede our tourism businesses from emerging from this last recession,” Campbell said. Campbell and Sen. Tim Ashe, first-year chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, say they’ve taken a brighter view of Shumlin’s proposed tax on break-open tickets than their counterparts in the House.

…”I would rather go to something which some people engage in voluntarily for entertainment purposes,” Campbell said.

Cough. Choke. Gasp. (Drinks water.)

Uh, okay, let me see if I’ve got this right. The break-open tickets are “something which some people engage in voluntarily for entertainment purposes.”

As opposed to, say, going out for dinner or staying in a cute little B&B? Those, I guess, are involuntary activities.

Try again, Senator.

Moving on to the end of the article, we find a discussion of the House plan to increase the gas tax and shift part of it from a per-gallon levy to a price-based tax. Dick Mazza, longtime chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, is dubious.

“I don’t like having automatic tax increases built in now,” Mazza said. “If we need more money in three or four years, then I think we ought to come back in three or four years and deal with it then.”

Ahem. Noble sentiment, sir. I assume you’re calling for a drastic re-do of the sales tax, because it automatically rises with inflation?

Guess not.

Try again, Senator.