Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

LLOYD
Paul Wellstone actually voted to tax people 'cause they died?
What's going to happen?
RUTH
LLOYD
We're going to have to sell the farm.
RUTH
No, Lloyd, we're going to call Paul Wellstone and tell him our folks paid their
fair share. And to keep his money-grubbing hands off our farm.
ANNOUNCER (V.0.)
Call Paul Wellstone. Tell him to protect small business and family farms, and
to stop taxing the dead. Paid for by Americans for Job Security.
Wellstone had voted against the full repeal of the estate tax. But he had also voted to exempt
family farms and small businesses, and to exempt all other estates up to $8 million. You
know, if anyone hated the small farmer, or, in fact, the little guy in general, it was Paul
"Moneygrubber" Wellstone. That's why they had to plant the crowd for his memorial.
Bush used the death tax issue in practically every stump speech he gave, lamenting
the devastation it visited on family farmers and small business owners. The Republicans
pushed the estate tax re peal as a middle-class tax-relief issue. With some success. Seventeen
percent of Americans thought the estate tax would apply to them. In fact, the tax affects less
than 2 percent of estates-and nearly half of the revenue it produces comes from taxes on 0.16
percent of estates, worth an average of $17 million, belonging to about 3,300 families each
year. In 1999, fully a quarter of the estate tax revenue came from just 467 estates. As David
Brooks, who works at the Weekly Standard but is nonetheless a terrific guy, wrote in The
New York Times, the estate tax is "explicitly for the mega-upper class."
Bush has said that it is immoral to tax people when they die. Since we are currently
experiencing a $450 billion deficit, the amount of the revenue being lost by the phase-out and
eventual re peal of the estate tax will have to be made up by taxes on you and me. It is arguably
more moral to tax an incredibly rich person who is dead than a middle- or working-class