Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, we are being asked today to approve a tax cut so blatantly irresponsible that the authors have had, in effect, to white out the costs. Those are not my words. That is the words of the Washington Post in their lead editorial today, and I agree with the editors of the Washington Post. As the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) pointed out, if this bill was fully implemented immediately, the cost would be much, much higher than the $200 billion that has been put on this bill by the Joint Committee on Taxation. In fact, when it is fully phased in, it is about $70 billion of loss of revenue under the estate tax revenues, plus additional losses under the income tax; for when the estate tax is repealed, it is very difficult to figure out the base of property that is later sold, and there is transfer of property during life under the gift tax exclusions that would also lose revenue. We have a choice, Mr. Speaker. We can have the Republican bill that tells our constituents in 2011 that we will not have an estate tax, or we can support the Democratic substitute which tells our constituents immediately that they can have a $4 million exclusion per family. That will take care of 99.4 percent of all of the estates that will be exempt from Federal estate tax. Then we can take care of almost all of the problems of family farmers or family-owned businesses.”