Steve Rothman: “My friends, the American estate tax system is 85 years old. Who supported the creation of the American estate tax…”

“My friends, the American estate tax system is 85 years old. Who supported the creation of the American estate tax system? Well, one of the first supporters was Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. Why would he do such a thing? Well, he did not want to have two America's, a have and a have not. What do we have today in America? We have a nation where the top 1 percent of our people, the top 1 percent, own 40 percent of the Nation's assets, twice the amount held by them in the past 20 years. Today, my friends, the House has a choice: The Democrat plan to reform the estate tax system, a reform plan that would leave 99 percent of Americans paying no estate tax and still cutting the estate tax for the top 1 percent; or the Republican plan, on the other hand, which adds another $40 billion in cost a year in order to eliminate the tax for the top 1 percent. My friends, I believe that most Americans feel that that $40 billion extra would be better spent going to save Social Security and Medicare, or paying down our $5.6 trillion national debt, which is now being assumed by our children, or providing prescription drugs for our seniors, strengthening our military, fixing our public schools and providing health care for 45 million uninsured Americans. The time may come when our country can afford to entirely eliminate the estate tax for the top 1 percent, but not today.”