Don Nickles: “I know there are colleagues who want to offer the prescription drug amendment. I will make a few comments on elimination…”

“I know there are colleagues who want to offer the prescription drug amendment. I will make a few comments on elimination of the death tax. A couple of people said there is no tax on death. I disagree. I can say that from experience. My father died, and there was a significant death tax. His death was a taxable event. If he had not died, there would not have been a taxable event. To say there is no death tax-- maybe it is something the pollsters came up with--is something about which I totally disagree. Under current law, if you die, if your estate is above a certain amount, your survivors will have to pay a tax. I call that a death tax. It can be called an inheritance tax, an estate tax, whatever one wants to call it. We did pass an exemption in 1981 that exempted surviving spouses from the death tax. I was one of the principal sponsors of that legislation in 1981. I worked to put that in the big bill. That was one of the big tax bills. I was a freshman Senator and I really wanted to put that in the bill because I learned the hard way. My father passed away. My mother had five kids, and she inherited a business. The Government came in and said: We want about half of the business.”