Bob Kerrey: “as I said, the die is cast on this thing. This amendment is going to be accepted. The question is, Will we have any…”

“as I said, the die is cast on this thing. This amendment is going to be accepted. The question is, Will we have any reexamination moment? We will reexamine what we are about to do? Again, this affects people with incomes over $100,000 in retirement income. To get $100,000 in retirement income, I am probably going to have to have a million or more dollars in liquid assets that are earning this income. I would probably have tax-exempt bonds that I own as well. This is a very select group of people. We are not penalizing them; we are treating them like everybody else. I am capable of feeling sympathy for low- and moderate-income seniors who are struggling to pay for health care bills, and about making certain that Americans have the opportunity to save. But we are not helping Americans who are struggling to save with this. These are Americans who have accumulated a substantial amount of wealth. If we want to help struggling Americans, we ought to cut the payroll tax, as Senator Moynihan is proposing, giving Americans an $800 billion cut in taxes; that would go immediately into savings. That is exciting to me. And 98.5 percent of Americans die with estates under $600,000. We are talking about 1.5 percent of the American people who have estates over $600,000. You have to have an estate over a million dollars in order to generate $100,000 worth of income. Please don't tell me that tax lawyers and tax advisers can't figure out a way to transfer this to your heirs.”