Christmas tree fee delay upsets growers

GOBLES, Mich. (AP) - Some Michigan Christmas tree growers say they're peeved that the federal government caved to conservative critics and halted a new program that would have put 15 cents for every tree sold toward promoting the industry.

Growers across the country willing to pay 15 cents for each tree sold had asked the U.S. Agriculture Department to create the program, which would be similar to campaigns to boost milk, beef and egg consumption. But the Obama administration changed course in recent days after conservatives claimed it would amount to a tax on a holiday tradition.

"I'm just aware that everyone got it all screwed up," said Dan Wahmhoff, a grower in Gobles in southwestern Michigan, who has supplied trees to Gov. Rick Snyder and Vice President Joe Biden.

"It was passed, it was good to go, something we'd been working on several years -- then I got an e-mail that Obama pulled the plug," Wahmhoff told the Kalamazoo Gazette . "It was misinformation is what it was. People thought it was a tax being put on the trees." 

Wahmhoff said the promotion program was intended to change the public's perception that tree farms are bad for the environment. Growers also have competition from artificial trees.

"People get the idea that we're cutting down a rain forest or believe it is better to buy a plastic tree made in China, made out of petroleum, that's not recyclable," Wahmhoff said. "If it burns it will put off fumes that will kill you. Yet people think that's better?"

The White House said the USDA would suspend the start of the fee and revisit the issue.

Michigan traditionally is one of the top Christmas tree states. Marsha Gray, executive director of the Michigan Christmas Tree Association , said farmers, who tend to lean conservative and Republican, probably feel burned by criticism about the fee.

"I'm sure (they're) thinking, `I can't believe Rush Limbaugh just threw us under the bus,"' Gray said.

Wahmhoff hopes the delay is temporary.

"That would be stupid," he said of killing the promotion program. "More stupid than calling it a tax in the first place."