Earl Pomeroy: “I believe we are at the end of our time, and I yield myself the balance of the time to close our side. Mr. Speaker, I am…”

“I believe we are at the end of our time, and I yield myself the balance of the time to close our side. Mr. Speaker, I am feeling a bit like the man in the middle as we approach this debate. There has been some on our side that suggests the Pomeroy substitute provides too much estate tax relief. Indeed, the amounts are higher than acceptable. Obviously, we have heard from the other side they believe this is too low, but I would say to my friends in the majority, and listen to this carefully, those who approach this issue with an all-or-nothing mentality are likely to get nothing. We cannot tell what is going to happen in the year 2010. None of us know. Except there is one thing we know, and look at this chart, the national debt is going to exceed $10 trillion, $10 trillion, 36 percent above where we are at today, and this is based upon established budget projections. Do we really believe that that future Congress is going to sit blithely by and let this become implemented? There is not a nickel's worth of certainty in that. And we all know, because as damaging as this is to the budget in the first 10 years, with $290 billion of revenue loss, debt service added, this is a $326 billion hit to the budget in the first 10 years, look what happens in the second 10 years: $1.3 trillion impact in the second 10 years when we count the value of the debt service. Do any of us think that we are really going to allow this to happen in the future years?…”