NAN A. S. HAYWORTH: “I thank the gentleman, and welcome my friend, the gentleman from Missouri, to this Chamber and to service in the United…”

“I thank the gentleman, and welcome my friend, the gentleman from Missouri, to this Chamber and to service in the United States House. My friends from Missouri often say, Show me. Sadly, the Federal government has taken a slogan that Hollywood popularized a few years ago, show me the money, and taken it from family enterprises. It has been noted before, Mr. Speaker, that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Mr. Speaker, nowhere have we seen it with a more egregious impact, with a more unfair specter, with a fundamental departure from our values and ethics, than we have seen with this death tax. Yes, for years it was called an estate tax, offering this type of placid, pastoral recognition. But what it is in reality is the death tax: the destroyer of jobs, the destroyer of economic opportunity, the destroyer of communities and a way of life. Some have come to service on this Hill offering a slogan and a written word, It takes a village. Well, Mr. Speaker, I think it is fair to ask, what happens when we tax the businesses and farms and ranchers in said village literally to death? What happens when we abandon the notion of basic fairness and penalize people whose only offense is to succeed? Why punish those who have worked to establish a growing business, an agricultural or economic enterprise creating jobs, generating wealth, and not coincidentally, Mr. Speaker, paying taxes on those funds even as they are accumulated?”