Bill Archer: “Several Members in support of the Rangel substitute... have begged us to adopt the Rangel substitute because their…”

“Several Members in support of the Rangel substitute... have begged us to adopt the Rangel substitute because their farmers need help now. Well, I find it curious that the Farm Bureau has endorsed not the Rangel substitute but the underlying bill, which I hope will pass this House today. That is real relief to farmers, not the Rangel substitute. Let me talk about why that is. Three years ago, in 1997, I was the author of a bill to do what the Rangel substitute attempts to do today; that is to give a higher exemption, so to speak, to family farms, family businesses from the estate tax. I pursued that course for two reasons. Number one, in 1997, we were not expecting the huge surpluses at the Federal level that we are today. We had very much more limited revenue over expenditures to work with for any tax cuts. So I chose a route to try to do the most good with the estate tax that I could with the limited dollars that we had to spend. And the route I chose was to try to direct the relief at family farms and family-held businesses.”