Repealling The Estate Tax: Because Paris Hilton Needs More Money!

From The Hill Tip Sheet via E-mail:

House moves forward on repeal of estate tax 6/23/06

Partial repeal of the estate tax edged closer to legislative reality Thursday, as the House voted to approve a compromise plan from Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) that could reach the Senate floor by early next week.

The 269-156 vote came only after 10 Democrats voted with Republicans on a minority motion to recommit, which came with strong criticism of the House's decision to stave off a vote on increasing the minimum wage while fast-tracking an estate-tax break.

"Republicans are falling all over themselves to give the heirs of approximately 7,500 estates a tax cut — even as they ignore the needs of one hundred times more single mothers, 760,000 who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage," Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a statement.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Editorial Board probably puts it best:

Estate Tax: True cost of repeal
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Please, for a moment, suspend your American sense of fair play.

Assume that you are in a microscopic community, a member of one of the most prosperous families in the nation. You will one day be assessed a tax before inheriting vast wealth. Pretend that you really have a stake in the U.S. Senate moving forward with a repeal of the tax and are eager to see it so.

Now answer this: How will the country replace over one decade the trillion dollars in revenues lost by repeal?

"A vote to repeal or virtually repeal the estate tax would continue Congress' dismaying record of lavishing costly tax breaks on the very wealthiest while cutting services for struggling families in the name of deficit reduction," says Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women's Law Center. "The Senate is about to vote on repeal of the estate tax, while the House moves forward with a budget for next year that would force cuts in health care, education, job training, child care and other essential services."

Then, Americans' sense of fair play runs deep. That's why the repealing the estate tax to benefit 7,000 to 12,000 people a year is poor public policy. Any tax cut that adds to the federal debt is outright immoral.

Repeal of the "death tax" is, in fact, a "birth tax," says Diane Lim Rogers, a scholar at The Brookings Institution. "This 'birth tax' is a true cost imposed on all American babies. It cannot be repealed, no matter how upset Americans eventually get about it."

Citizens should demand an end to the birth tax.

Can I Get A Witness??.