Angie Craig: “I call it that which destroys the American dream. I have always been amazed that anyone who serves in public life can…”

“I call it that which destroys the American dream. I have always been amazed that anyone who serves in public life can justify the revenue they spend for the sake of Government as somehow destroying someone else's life or property. Yet over the years, clearly, the estate tax provision of our national Tax Code has done just that. Much of our States are made up of farmers, ranchers, and small business people. Really, the character of the business and industry of our States is made up of small businesses. Some of us strive all of our lives in a small business to create a little estate that we then want to hand to our children, if they choose to carry on that which we have developed. Yet in nearly every instance today, under current law, to be able to carry on that small Main Street business or that farm or that ranch, you have to re-buy it. You have to sell it to get the revenue to pay off the Federal Government, and then you spend the rest of your life, as the person who is the inheritor, paying for the business. That is not the American dream.”