Dave Camp: “today I rise in support of a permanent solution to the ``estate tax'' or what many call the ``death tax.'' Whatever name…”

“today I rise in support of a permanent solution to the ``estate tax'' or what many call the ``death tax.'' Whatever name it goes by, it is a tax on the American dream. This country was founded on, grew and has become the world's most powerful economic engine based on the entrepreneurial spirit of our citizens; the willingness to have an idea, invest in it and build a business around it. America's history is replete with once small family operations that are now some of the world's largest and best in their fields: Levi Strauss and his San Francisco dry goods store; Eberhard Anheuser and his son-in-law Adolphus Busch and their first struggling brewery in St. Louis; J. Willard Marriott and his wife Alice started with a root beer stand here in DC; and the Houghton family and their Corning Glass Works, which provided the glass for Edison's first light bulb and now is a leader in fiber-optics, just to name a few. Studies have shown that the death tax is the leading cause of dissolution for most small businesses. It is estimated that 70 percent of businesses never make it past the first generation because of death tax rates and 87 percent do not make it to the third generation. Resources that could be better used to expand a business or hire new employees are instead used inefficiently to plan for the impact of the death tax. This tax costs the American economy between 170,000 and 250,000 jobs annually.…”