Gov. Maura Healey ought to be praised, not condemned, for proposing to tax children buying candy.

It is a commendable learning experience for youngsters.

Especially if their tax money goes to support illegal immigrants, the way their parents’ tax money does.

Being the progressive that she is, Healey apparently believes that it is a good policy to program children to pay taxes at an early age so they will become used to paying, and not become too resentful to have to pay them for the rest of their lives.

Or even when they die, for that matter, since the state does indeed have a death tax.

Soon there will be tax on being born, based on a progressive policy that would say that since you pay a tax when you leave this earth, you should also pay a tax when you arrive.

If they combined the two, it could be called the “Come and Go” tax.

It is not for nothing that we are known as “Taxachusetts.”

It is all part of a cradle to grave tax policy that progressives would initiate to help pay for housing and feeding the thousands of illegal immigrants who have flocked to Massachusetts.

Caring for the approximately 250,000 illegal immigrants who have made Massachusetts their home is costing taxpayers more than $1 billion a year in shelter funding. And it’s climbing.

Only recently Healey fielded a request for another $425 million to continue to shelter immigrants and others in Healey Hotels, and the end is not in sight.

The candy tax Healey is proposing is part of her $62 billion budget that she filed with the Legislature last week.

In it she proposed to raise $25 million by placing the state’s 6.25% sales tax on candy that children buy, or that their parents buy for them, such as Snickers, Twix, M & M’s, Hershey bars and so on.

Children with a couple of dollars in their hand would be forced to come up with another 12 or 14 cents to buy a Twix or a Snickers.

Healey insisted, however, that the new tax was not a new tax, but more of an adjustment.

Instead of candy being treated like untaxed bread, milk or eggs— “essential groceries” — it would be treated like cupcakes.

Candy, she said, “is now going to be treated in the same way as when you go to the bakery in the back of the grocery store and pickup up (taxed) cupcakes for your kids.”

Who knew that cupcakes were even taxed? And why are cupcakes stashed away in the back of the store?

Is there anything that is not taxed?

Things are so bad in Massachusetts that you are taxed in the morning, at noon and at night, beginning with your first cup of coffee, your lunchtime tuna fish sandwich to your last evening beer. And you haven’t even put gas in the car.

But the tax on candy may be a tax too far.

Especially as the governor proposed the new tax on the eve of St. Valentine’s Day, (Feb. 14) which is the biggest candy sales day of the year. Where is the child who does not dream of buying their mother a small box of Valentine’s Day candy?

Since the Legislature moves at the speed of a melting glacier (although glaciers are melting faster these days) there is no chance it will act on the proposed new candy tax by then.

So, there is time to organize a campaign against it.

Already the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, the Retailers Association of Massachusetts and various Republicans have come out against the tax.

But the opposition would be more effective if they formed a Children’s Candy Crusade (CCC) to campaign against its implementation.

Children could be bused from schools to the State House to testify at budget hearings the way grown-up lobbyists do. Or they could demonstrate in the building and camp out in front of the governor’s office.

They could even demand a meeting with the governor the way other protesting groups do and present her with a Twix or a Snickers.

Their chant would be: “No taxation without representation.”

Healey’s heart, like a Snickers in the sun, would melt.

Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas can be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com

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