Marshall Sanford: “I have before you a bill that I introduced today. It is a bill that would put the worst insomniac in the world to sleep.…”

“I have before you a bill that I introduced today. It is a bill that would put the worst insomniac in the world to sleep. I look here at 160 or 170 pages that by themselves are long and boring pages. And yet what this bill is about is, in essence, I think something that is very exciting. That is, I think that this bill, which is a bill to save Social Security, is a bill about the American dream. Because if you were to stop and think about it, I think that what we would all agree upon is that a part of the American dream is tied to ending a lifetime of work with something more than just memories. And yet for many Americans, in fact, we pulled the number at home in my State of South Carolina. Last year, about 38,000 people died and only about 243 filled out Federal estate tax returns, which says to me that something is wrong, because clearly for that small a number, 38,000 people died but 243 filled out Federal estate tax returns, which means in the eyes of the Federal Government they had accumulated enough in the way of assets to hold an estate that ought to be taxed. It says that something is wrong in fulfilling that part of the American dream that ties straight to ending a lifetime of work with more than something other than just memories.”