Earl Blumenauer: “I appreciate my namesake's courtesy in permitting me to speak on his substitute. I appreciate his hard work and clarity…”

“I appreciate my namesake's courtesy in permitting me to speak on his substitute. I appreciate his hard work and clarity in dealing with this issue and a step forward to stop a cynical game that I have watched be played here in this Congress since I was first elected 9 years ago. There is today, and there has been throughout these 9 years, a consensus to make adjustments to the inheritance tax, to make it less steeply graduated, to raise the exemptions, to be able to do fine-tuning, to deal with the legitimate problems of small, closely held businesses and farms. And if the Republican majority would have permitted a fair and honest debate on this floor of the inheritance tax, we would have enacted significant permanent adjustments that would have solved the vast majority of the problems for 99.9 percent, I dare say. But that is not to be. Instead, we have been involved with a cynical process that we are seeing played out here today.”