Political Quotes

“The estate tax has been around, I think, since President Theodore Roosevelt in the last century. It is a source of revenue for the Federal Government that is imposed on the estates of some people after they pass away. It is the position of the Republican majority that when you come to reforming the Tax Code of America, the first and highest priority is to deal with the estate tax. The basis for that statement on my part is the fact that it is the first matter of any consequence in terms of its cost that is being brought to the floor of the Senate by the Republican leadership. So they believe, looking at the Tax Code--that affects literally every American, every individual, every family, every business--and searching out an inequity in it, that the estate tax is the source of an inequity, an unfairness, and it should be the first thing that we address if we are going to reform the Tax Code. That is an interesting observation because when you consider how many Americans are affected by the estate tax, it turns out that they are literally very few in number. In 1997, the estates of fewer than 43,000 people in America had to pay any Federal estate tax.”