Spencer Cox: “I have been waiting for this day since 1993 when I first introduced the bill to repeal the death tax. The following year…”

“I have been waiting for this day since 1993 when I first introduced the bill to repeal the death tax. The following year by 1994, we had some 29 sponsors, over 100 sponsors in the next Congress, over 200 sponsors in the following Congress. Due to the efforts of the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Dunn), the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner), that bill was eventually signed into law. Four times this House has voted to repeal the death tax. And for good reason. By the way, I refer to it as the death tax because that is in fact what it is called in the Internal Revenue Code. For example, in section 2014 and section 2015, you will see the words, unlike the comments of the preceding speaker, death tax. That is the proper name for this code because it is a tax that applies on death. Its purpose when it originally was put into place was to confiscate the wealth of the super rich. Much of the discussion today has been focused on the nobility of that cause, confiscating the wealth of the super rich. But we have now a century of experience and we know that it does not succeed, or come close to succeeding, in that effort. It does not break up concentrations of wealth. To the contrary, it is the engine for concentrations of wealth.”