Brian Bilbray: “I want to articulate something. The fight against the death tax should not be a fight for the taxpayer. It should not…”

“I want to articulate something. The fight against the death tax should not be a fight for the taxpayer. It should not even be for the small farmer or the small business owner. The fight against the death tax should be a fight for a civilized, decent society, and that is it. Now, my colleagues may say how can I tie the death tax to the concept of decency? Well, Mr. Speaker, I always try to think about what will history say about us as a society. There is this movie out ``The Gladiator'' about this great civilization called Rome. But how can they be a great civilization when they had the kind of blood letting they had? And history has damned the Romans for that. What I worry about is what will history say of the greatest nation in the history of the world, the United States of America? What will they say about us a thousand years from now? And will they say about us, oh, they were a great nation, but they taxed their dead?”