The 18 super-rich families pushing for repeal just won’t let this one die. While we’ve been actively focused on the FMA this week; the estate tax repeal vote has made it’s way back on the Senate’s schedule for tomorrow. It was originally scheduled for vote in September but delayed due to hurricane Katrina and then the House passed it’s own bill calling for repeal a few months ago.
The Republicans probably don’t have enough votes for the bill to pass, but even if it doesn’t pass as is, there probably will be compromise that will put even more money in the hands of the extremely wealthy. Can you say robber barons?
Back to those 18 families. They are the richest families in this country, and are the impetus behind the repeal of the estate tax.
Calling themselves “The Club for Growth” (and NOT registered as a political action committee), they have been major fundraisers for Bush’s campaigns and have contributed soft money to Progress for America, a group that contributed tens of millions of dollars to Bush. They also made significant contributions to Blanche Lincoln, who they consider a swing Senator who would work for them. She ranks #3 in money accepted - Tom DeLay and Elizabeth Dole got more. They worked actively for the defeat of Tom Daschle and were victorious, saying “one of the reasons we were so keen on spending so much money on Daschle, is we really felt if we could take out the other team’s general, we can march all over them” – Stephen Moore, President of Club for Growth.
The following report gives a very comprehensive background on these families, their political dealings and their push for the estate tax repeal. I urge everyone to read it:
http://www.citizen.org/documents/EstateTaxFinal.pdfOf course, these families stand to make a lot of money if a repeal is passed. But what about our economy? Will a repeal be a good idea for our deficit and the people of this country? Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Clinton, explains how devastating a repeal would be to our economy and our deficit:
Right now, the tax only hits families with more than $4 million to give to their heirs. That's the richest one-half of one percent of American families. Families can leave their children up to $4 million without any tax at all. But because this small group of families has so large a fortune, repeal would cost the U.S. Treasury $1 trillion in its first ten years. That's about equivalent to what's needed to save Social Security over the next 75 years. Put another way, the yearly loss to the Treasury is almost exactly equal to the amount the U.S. spends each year on homeland security. If the super-wealthy won't pay, the middle class will have to pay more taxes to make up the difference. Or the national debt will expand, and we'll all be paying more interest on the resulting borrowing (mostly from wealthy Americans, along with China and Japan).
So why aren't Americans making a bigger fuss? Because they've been sold a huge load of lard about this. The PR campaign for repeal has been financed by 18 super-rich families, with a combined total wealth of $185 billion. If they get the tax repealed, they'll save over $70 billion.
Every Republican president who has waged war during his presidency, from Abe Lincoln on down, has supported the estate tax as a way to finance the war equitably by having the rich pay their fair share. George W. Bush is the first to want to repeal it. To make matters even more absurd, the richest American families, with personal fortunes of $2 million or more, already own a third of all the wealth in the nation. That's a record high, since records have been kept
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2006/06/super-rich-estate-tax-dont-call-it.html.More than likely there will be a compromise:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, will push this week for a permanent repeal of the tax, which is being temporarily phased out under President George W. Bush's 2001 tax cuts. The Senate is scheduled to begin debate on repeal today and may hold a first vote on the measure tomorrow.
Charles Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said yesterday that Republicans are three or four votes shy of winning full repeal. He said they may be able to muster the 60 votes needed to pass an alternative measure that would exempt $10 million of a couple's estate from the tax. The plan would subject any amount above that to a 15 percent rate, or 31 percentage points lower than the current top rate of 46 percent.
``We're going to start out with the purest form, which would have outright elimination of the estate tax,'' said Grassley, an Iowa Republican. ``But I think we're going to come up short of the 60 votes, which leads us to the possible compromise.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=avId7uYtXqEM&refer=top_world_newsThis issue should be very important to all of us, in addition to everything else we’ve got on our plates. Please take time today to call, fax and email your Senators. We are seeing a return of the robber barons, a return of the days when a very small group people have control of the wealth of our country and it will only get worse if this repeal or even a compromise are allowed to pass - another step in the gutting of our country. The vote is tomorrow. Contact your Senators, and then take time to make a special call to Blanche Lincoln, constituent or not.
:patriot:
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