Mend The Estate Tax, Don't End It

The man speaks:

The Senate, meanwhile, is scheduled next week to take up legislation by Arizona Republican Jon Kyl that would permanently repeal the estate tax on the wealthiest Americans. If enacted, Kyl's bill would plunge the government another trillion dollars into the red during the first decade (2011-2021) that it would be in effect.

Behind the scenes, the action has been on the Democratic side in the Senate, as the party's leadership has sought to dissuade Montana's Max Baucus, ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, from forging a halfway-house compromise with Kyl that would deplete revenue by only $500 billion to $600 billion during that decade. The Republicans would need Baucus to bring roughly a half-dozen Democrats along with him to reach the magic number of 60 votes required to overcome any filibuster that the vast majority of Democrats would mount to block any such measure.

Even a paltry $500 billion, of course, is a lot of money to drain from public coffers just when boomers are going onto Social Security and Medicare and the number of employers providing health insurance, if present trends continue, might have dropped to a virtuous handful. To cover those and other needs, Congress will either plunge us deeper into debt or increase some other levies -- payroll taxes, say -- that will come out of the pockets of the 99 percent of Americans whom the estate tax doesn't touch.

Hey, "Anonymous," are you listening? I bet you're a wingnut shill, but of course I can't prove it. If you don't think the wingnut allies are going to respond, you better get ready to deal with it.

This is going to be a major fight. At least I hope so. What we need are more Lamonts and less Liebermans. What I'm afraid of is that too many Democrats will be like Lieberman.

Myerson calls it "lunacy." If you ask me, that's too easy. To take a page from the wingnut playbook, I'd call it "evil".