AFL-CIO: Congress to Vote on Estate Tax Repeal

[Coexist]

Mike Hall over at the AFL-CIO's weblog is pissed. As he should be - the repeal of the Estate Tax is not only unnecessary, but will drive our country deeper into debt. We don't need another Gilded Age of Vanderbilts and Robber Barons. We need a strong middle class.

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The estate tax only applies to estates larger than $2 million ($4 million for a married couple). That adds up to just 0.27 percent (that’s right, about one-quarter of 1 percent) of all taxpayers—those who amassed multi-million dollar estates of at least $2 million.

Financed by some of the nation’s richest families, the campaign to permanently repeal the estate tax could come to a vote in the Senate next month. The House already has voted to repeal it.

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Only 23 percent of those who responded to a poll by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates said they favor a repeal of the estate tax. In fact, keeping the estate tax was considered the second-best way to reduce the budget deficit—which has mushroomed to $8.4 trillion since Bush took office with a budget surplus left by the Clinton administration. The poll was commissioned by the Coalition for America’s Priorities.

The word is that if they can’t outright permanently repeal the estate tax, Bush and his congressional allies will go for some type of phony “reform” that will boost the estate tax exemption beyond the annual budgets of many of the nation’s small towns.

[Coexist]

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