Political Quotes

“Mr. President, if I might respond to my colleagues from Mississippi and from Indiana, the Senator from Mississippi is absolutely right. The proposal we will vote on as presented by the Democrats today would allow the death tax exemption to go back to $1 million, that is the pre-2001 level, and apply a 55-percent tax rate on top of that. To give you an example of how that might work in a State such as mine, I represent South Dakota. The average size farm in my State is a little under 1,400 acres. And if you look at the average value per acre of land and multiply it by the size of the average farm, you are talking about an average farm of between $2 million and $2.5 million in value. You could be talking about--and this is average, and we have a lot of farms that will be impacted more significantly than this. But you will be subjecting about $1.5 million of that farm's value to a 55-percent tax rate; and 84 percent of the value of farm assets, according to USDA, is in real estate. They are land rich but cash poor. What happens? When the IRS comes calling after somebody passes away and says: Your farm is worth this amount, we are going to assess a 55- percent tax, they will say: We cannot pay that. We have it in land but not cash. So they have to sell land, assets, and equipment to pay the IRS.…”