Spencer Cox: “let us remind ourselves how we got here. When, in 1993, I introduced the first bill in the history of the income tax to…”

“let us remind ourselves how we got here. When, in 1993, I introduced the first bill in the history of the income tax to repeal the death tax, we had just a few sponsors. By the 106th Congress, I had over 200 sponsors on my legislation to repeal the death tax. And last year the House and the Senate agreed on legislation that we sent to President Clinton to completely repeal the death tax. In September 1999, Bill Clinton vetoed death tax relief. Now we are back here to do it again for one simple reason. The gathering momentum behind repeal of the death tax is a result of the increasing realization of where the burden of this tax falls. It does not fall on the dead rich person. That is the one person who does not care. It does not even fall on the wealthy people in the family of the rich person. They might have to pay 55 percent or 60 percent because of a 5 percent surtax that kicks in, but the real burden of this falls on the low-wage worker who pays a tax rate of 100 percent when he or she loses a job because that medium-sized business or small business that is not publicly owned has to be liquidated in whole or in part to pay the tax man. That is why when in California we put this to an initiative of the people, even though the Los Angeles Times repeatedly said it is a tax break for the rich, almost two-thirds of voters agreed we should completely repeal California's death tax.”