Lloyd Bentsen: “I rise in support of the Rangel substitute and opposition to the underlying bill. We have heard a lot of rhetoric on…”

“I rise in support of the Rangel substitute and opposition to the underlying bill. We have heard a lot of rhetoric on both sides about this and about the repeal. The bottom line is we can make a decision today that is a practical public policy decision, or we can make a political decision. The political decision would be to pass H.R. 8 and hope that in 10 years or 11 years that the estate tax will be repealed; and the reason that is being put forth is because the repeal of the estate tax costs far more than the President thought it would, far more than our Republicans colleagues thought it would; and to make their budget work, they had to shoehorn this bill in. Mr. Speaker, on the other hand, we can pass immediate relief today, raise the exemption to $4 million for most families going up by 2010 to $5 million, but $4 million beginning January 1, that will exempt down to 1 percent of all estates subject to any estate tax as opposed to the 2 percent of all estates that are subject to any estate tax. I have to say to my colleague from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie), I appreciate the fact of what family businesses have to go through; but there are 98 percent of other Americans who wake up every day trying to figure out how they are going to pay the bills, and we ought to think about them as well. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 8, an ill-conceived, extraordinarily back-loaded measure that sacrifices fiscal prudence for political gains.”