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Mr. THOMPSON of California. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of estate tax reform and in strong opposition to this wrongfully and inaccurately titled Death Tax Repeal Act.
Whenever you hear people say ``death tax,'' know right away that they are not talking about public policy and that they are not talking about tax reform--they are talking about politics. There is no such thing as a death tax. You won't find those words anywhere at all in the Tax Code. It is partisan jargon. After you die, you don't have to pay taxes. You don't have to take out the garbage. You don't get called for jury duty anymore. When you are dead, you are dead. So there is no such thing as a death tax.
Today, my Republican colleagues are pursuing a full repeal of the estate tax under the guise of helping family farms and small businesses. I wish this were the case, but the rhetoric is simply disingenuous when you look at the policy.
I agree that the estate tax is a real issue for family farmers and for ranchers. The first bill I introduced when I came to Congress was a bill to reform the estate tax. Folks in my district, where farmland values have reached as high as $300,000 an acre, are often land rich and cash poor.
There are middle class people who work their land every day and pay taxes on the income they earn from that work. They are not people who the majority's bill is designed to help. Their full repeal is not the answer. It costs too much money. It is not paid for--$269 billion not paid for--and it helps people who don't need the government's help.
A more commonsense and targeted approach would be to pass the bill that I referenced earlier. My bill exempts farmlands and related assets from estate tax as long as the family that inherits the farm continues to farm the land. If they stop farming the land, then the tax kicks back in. This is a fair and equitable response to the issues many farmers are facing today: a shortage of young farmers because the barriers to entry are too high and the high volume of farmland we are losing. More than an acre of farmland is lost every minute of every day.
It is important that we help farmers preserve farmland for future generations, which will benefit our food supply and our environment, but it needs to be done the right way. So once this political exercise is over, I hope we can get down to business and work together on a proposal that is actually aimed at protecting our family farms and our family-owned small businesses.
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