Maurice Hinchey: “this resolution calling upon the other House to join in the permanent repeal of the estate tax I think reduces cynicism…”

“this resolution calling upon the other House to join in the permanent repeal of the estate tax I think reduces cynicism to a new low. The permanent repeal of the estate tax, first of all, very obviously benefits only a handful, a tiny fraction of the American people; but the other problem has to do with the other taxes that have been repealed by this House or reduced by this House. A study just out today by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute shows the fraudulent nature of that tax cut. It shows how middle-income people are being forced into the alternative minimum tax. It shows how middle-income people across the country are going to pay up to $1 trillion in alternative minimum taxes over the course of the next decade. It shows how the tax cut that was rammed through this House in the early days of 2001 by the Bush administration, when the Republicans controlled both Houses of the Congress, is shifting the burden of taxation away from the rich and to the middle class. Middle-income people are paying more and more taxes under their so-called tax cut while millionaires are paying less and less taxes; and that is what they want to do with this particular tax cut today, to the estate tax, and of course, they have not figured out how to pay for any of this. What they have done is taken us from a situation of budget surpluses just 2 years ago to a situation now of increasing budget deficits.”