What Passes for Good
News
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, June 9, 2006
Any day in which the House or Senate
refrains from doing something destructive is about as good as it gets in
Washington lately. Yesterday, the Senate cleared that low bar when it
rejected efforts to repeal the estate tax.
The nation is at war and the budget is so wildly out of balance that the
government cannot pay its bills without borrowing money from foreign investors.
The idea that this is a good moment to repeal a tax on people who inherit
multimillion-dollar estates is mind-boggling. But Congress, pushed by the
lobbying efforts of a handful of super-rich families, was on the brink of doing
just that. The country was saved from that fate when the Senate fell three
votes short of the 60 needed to prevent a filibuster by Democrats who were
rightly horrified by the whole idea.
The senators who deserve the most credit for saving the day, however, were
George Voinovich of Ohio and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Republicans who
broke with their party to help block consideration of the repeal. Mr.
Voinovich said, rightly, that the idea of eliminating the tax under current
conditions was "incredibly irresponsible and intellectually dishonest."
Majority Leader Bill Frist, on the other hand, was the chief culprit. Mr.
Frist appears convinced that the best way he can demonstrate his potential as a
presidential candidate is to march the chamber through votes on all the most
divisive and useless legislation moldering on the agenda — banning gay
marriages, writing a prohibition of the nonexistent flag-burning problem into
the Constitution, and eliminating a tax that applies only to the richest 1
percent of the population.
The estate tax certainly needs work. It currently exempts the first $4
million of a married couple's estate — or $2 million for an individual — and
taxes anything beyond that at 46 percent. The exemptions go up to $3.5
million and $7 million by 2009, and the rate drops to 45 percent. Then in
2010, the tax is repealed entirely. In 2011 it reverts to 55 percent of
everything over $1 million.
Congress could easily have rationalized the tax structure, while protecting
small businesses and family farms. But that would have forced everyone to
admit that there's nothing wrong with asking people to pay a tax when they
inherit enormous fortunes. For this Senate, the bar doesn't go nearly that
high.
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