200
Opinion of the Court
a tax and a subsidy, Massachusetts has created a program more dangerous to interstate commerce than either part alone. Nondiscriminatory measures, like the evenhanded tax at issue here, are generally upheld, in spite of any adverse effects on interstate commerce, in part because "[t]he existence of major in-state interests adversely affected . . . is a powerful safeguard against legislative abuse." Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U. S. 456, 473, n. 17 (1981); see also Raymond Motor Transp., Inc. v. Rice, 434 U. S. 429, 444, n. 18 (1978) (special deference to state highway regulations because "their burden usually falls on local economic interests as well as other States' economic interests, thus insuring that a State's own political processes will serve as a check against unduly burdensome regulations"); South Carolina Highway Dept. v. Barnwell Brothers, Inc., 303 U. S. 177, 187 (1938); Goldberg v. Sweet, 488 U. S. 252, 266 (1989).17 However, when a nondiscriminatory tax is coupled with a subsidy to one of the groups hurt by the tax, a State's political processes can no longer be relied upon to prevent legislative abuse, because one of the in-state interests which would otherwise lobby against the tax has been mollified by the subsidy. So, in this case, one would ordinarily have expected at least three groups to lobby against the order premium, which, as a tax, raises the price (and hence lowers demand) for milk: dairy farmers, milk dealers, and consumers. But because the tax was coupled with a subsidy, one of the most powerful of these groups, Massachusetts dairy
17 The same principle is recognized in the conceptually similar field of intergovernmental taxation, where nondiscrimination also plays a central role in setting the boundary between the permissible and the impermissible. Washington v. United States, 460 U. S. 536, 545 (1983) ("A 'political check' is provided when a state tax falls on a significant group of state citizens who can be counted upon to use their votes to keep the State from raising the tax excessively, and thus placing an unfair burden on the Federal Government"); South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U. S. 505, 525-526, n. 15 (1988); United States v. County of Fresno, 429 U. S. 452, 462-464 (1977).
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