It only took 15 days and 6 hours for Barack Obama to raise taxes — and break a major campaign promise to a poor segment of American society to fund a Democratic pet project. The good news is, with the swipe of his pen, Obama made the continuation of my bad habit even more patriotic.

It’s doubtful Barack Obama has yet to receive the first paycheck from his new job, but he wasted no time Wednesday raising the federal cigarette tax from 39 cents a pack to $1 to fund an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to cover another 4 million kids.

Smokers are easy targets. States have been tacking on cigarette taxes for years to pay for health programs, early childhood education, commercials against smoking and to fill general fund gaps. Currently, the 25 million Americans who regularly smoke fund $19 billion of state government budgets. The feds currently suck up $7 billion from smokers each year.

And why not? There’s not enough smoking voters to cause problems for lawmakers who use them as a cash cow, and there’s plenty of health organizations to cheer on those lawmakers for singling us out. Besides, smoking is viewed as a bad habit to be avoided.

The logic is pretty easy to follow. Obama and his health-nazi pals in Congress get to take credit for expanding the socialist state by giving free health care to kids while also encouraging the nation to quit buying those 20-stick packs of cancer-causing goodness.

But it’s also all a gigantic farce. In order for poor American kids to get the health care they so desperately need I have to keep smoking. If I quit, S-CHIP’s funding source will grow smaller and poor kids will die from treatable illnesses. In order for children to be healthy those taxes will have to keep coming in. My friends and I must to do what Joe Biden calls “patriotic” and continue smoking.

Perhaps the Senate should drop that $75 million set aside for smoking cessation programs from the stimulus package.

The problem is, if it costs more to smoke, fewer people will light up. According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, every 10 percent increase in cigarette taxes causes a 4 percent drop in smoking rates (7 percent among underage smokers). According to those numbers, Obama’s tax should prompt a huge swath of smokers to quit — more than 40 percent.

Assuming those numbers are correct, S-CHIP will only receive 60 percent of its funding. If even a mere 10 percent of smokers quit — that’s one-quarter the estimated amount — S-CHIP will be in the red by more than $7 billion over the next 10 years, and those poor kids will be in trouble. Additionally, states would be out $2 billion a year, forcing state programs to shut down or run deficits.

Look at what happened in Maryland. Two years ago the state doubled its cigarette tax to pay for state-run health services. Unfortunately, patriotism runs thin in Maryland. Cigarette sales plummeted by 25 percent and the state’s health program is in the red. The situation is so bad that it is illegal to be in possession of more than two packs of cigarettes purchased in another state. Like mail and tea in colonial American, your smokes must be affixed with a Maryland stamp proving you paid your taxes.

That explains why Congress was loathe to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes last summer — the government needs the cash.

In fact, with the health of poor children hanging in the balance, the government should be doing more to make smoking easier. Repeal those bans on smoking in bars and restaurants. Allow tobacco companies to advertise on TV. Eliminate those laws barring me from enjoying a Marlboro Ultra-Light within 25-feet of government buildings — especially the ones housing S-CHIP caregivers. And for the sake of poor kids across this great land, stop asking for I.D. when I try to replenish my stash.

The only downside is that Obama is raising taxes on the very people he’s seeking to help — the poor. Remember when he reassured us that he would only raise taxes on the super rich during the second debate back in October? “If you make less than a quarter million dollars a year, you will not see a single dime of your taxes go up.”

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, 96 percent of American smokers make less than $150,000 a year. The Tax Foundation says 99 percent of smokers pull in less than $250,000. Virtually all smokers make less than Obama’s campaign threshold. But with kids’ health on the line, that must be a promise worth breaking.

And a reason the “government has become a stakeholder in smoking.”

So join me. Be patriotic. Renege on that resolution to quit, throw out those patches and get rid of that nicotine gum. Every time you light a cigarette, you’re saving the life of a poor child.