I’m proud that the chairman of the political party I’m a member of understands that with corpses littering the streets of New Orleans, the last priority of our nation shouldn’t be tax breaks for the super-rich
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean released the following statement in response to reports that Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will push for a vote on Repealing the Estate Tax when the Senate returns on Tuesday:
“Countless thousands of our fellow Americans throughout the Gulf Coast region continue to suffer in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. While some have begun the painful task of rebuilding their lives and coping with the unfathomable loss, so many still await help. And the cost of this disaster in human and material terms remains unknown.
“It’s simply irresponsible for Senator Frist and Ken Mehlman to even think about spending our tax dollars on breaks for millionaires at a time when our top priority must be to ensure we have the resources needed to address the long and short term costs associated with rescue, recovery, and rebuilding in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Not to mention the vital lesson we learned this week about the deadly cost of diverting funds at the expense of the safety of the American people. These costs also come at a time when our nation faces a massive deficit, and mounting costs in the ongoing war in Iraq.”
I find it a bit disingenuous for Howard Dean to be criticizing Frist with respect to anything related to Hurricane Katrina. Dr. Bill Frist was in New Orleans putting his medical skills to use. Where was Dr. Dean?
Probably getting his rabies shots.
You must write for Gaggle.
The poor heirs of Jack Kent Cooke can’t own a football team because of the death tax! How tragic? How will they live! Maybe they should pick themselves up by their bootstraps and earn the money to buy the team back.
We don’t tax money, we tax transfer of money. The estate tax is a transaction of conferring wealth from one generation to another. It only affects the largest 1% of estates annually.
The estate tax is a terrible thing. People work their entire lives, working hard to build up something for their heirs, having everything they have built up taxed when it was earned, taxed as property when it is held, taxed for interest and dividends and returns it accrues, and when the heirs inherit it, it will be, once again, taxed as property, taxed on the money it earns, taxed on the interest and dividends and returns it accrues; why on God’s earth do we have to tax it when the owner dies as well?
There is one very sorry fact about the estate tax: it is saying, in effect, that people don’t own anything, that the government owns everything, and that it is only by the largesse of the government that anyone is allowed to keep anything.
Heck, Oliver, you’re a fan of the Deadskins: look what happened to the good ownership of the team when Jack Kent Cooke died, and tried to avoid the estate tax, leaving his son unable to control the team. You got the utterly incompetent Daniel Snyder. The Redskins would have been a lot better off had the estate tax not existed!
People of moderate wealth measuring in the millions or tens of millions are going to be taxed more after the estate tax is repealed, the people with hundreds of millions or billions are going to get off with paying almost nothing.