Permanent Estate Tax Relief Act of 2006
PERMANENT ESTATE TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 22, 2006)
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Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, on June 16, the United States Senate majority leader put out the following statement asking for the House to send estate tax legislation to the Senate: ``I will ask the Speaker of the House to send a bill to us that would be a permanent solution to the death tax. I will encourage them to attach appropriate provisions to make it attractive and will hold a vote by July 4.'' This measure, H.R. 5638, is the response to the majority leader's request.
This House is on record with a bipartisan vote in favor of repealing the estate, or death, tax. But we know that the Senate on a procedural or cloture vote rejected that offer from the House by 57 votes in favor of moving forward, short of the 60 necessary.
I heard during the discussion on the rule the ranking minority member on Rules, Ms. Slaughter, say that this bill, H.R. 5638, will pass. I, too, in agreeing with her, believe that the bill will pass. It will be available to the Senate to take from the desk, and it will be then the Senate's decision to pass or defeat it.
I want to underscore the point, this is a response to the majority leader's request. This is not a first offer; it is the only offer to the majority leader's request that the chairman intends to offer.
This bill was crafted as a compromise. Compromises are supposed to be reasonable; but, most importantly, they are supposed to be doable. The goal of a compromise is to make law. H.R. 5638 is a compromise.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, as we might have expected, the gentleman from New York wheeled out all the usual arguments. I hope he didn't trip as he went back to his seat with the flag tightly wrapped around him in terms of his arguments of patriotism. The class warfare card was played; the rich card was played.
``This is for the richest of the rich,'' he said. I tell the gentleman from California, I will quote who know who the richest of the rich are. In today's Wall Street Journal editorial they said, ``But now comes Mr. Thomas, the chief tax writer, who has proposed a compromise that would be voted on as early as today but is hardly an improvement over current law.''
I will tell you who the richest of the rich are. Dick Patton of the American Family Business Institute says, ``We flatly oppose the Thomas plan. The more our members hear about it, the angrier they get.'' Who are they? The real richest of the rich.
So I find it rather ironic that they need to play those same old tired cards that this is the rich versus everyone else, when today the rich have spoken. They don't like the compromise. A compromise is a compromise.
Now, let us turn to a paper, The Washington Post, which said yesterday: ``The search for a compromise has pitted affluent small business owners against the truly rich, families with estates valued at tens of millions of dollars.'' The paper says: ``Thomas came down in favor of the business owners.'' And we know the Wall Street Journal agrees I didn't come down on the side of the rich.
This is a compromise. We will send it over to the Senate, and we will see if there are 60 Members of the Senate that want to remove once and for all the uncertainty in this very difficult area.
The National Federation of Independent Business says this is a reasonable compromise and they will be watching everyone's vote. Who? For the very rich? No. For the small businessman that creates all the jobs. A few extra dollars and the ability to keep the business together after the principal owner has died will make sure that we can continue this economy in the robust way in which it has continued.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I am heartened by the gentleman from Maryland's statement that he is now in support of current law which will move to 3.5. Everyone just needs to remember he was opposed to the legislation that put it into effect. I expect 5 or 6 years from now he will be in favor of this particular measure when he speaks on the floor, although he will be opposed to putting it into law. I always appreciate those kinds of positions.
The gentleman also quoted a very liberal think tank that dreams up numbers that allows them to make outlandish statements on the floor of the House. The Joint Committee on Taxation, the official scorekeeper, says that over a 10-year period this measure will not be $700-some billion; it is $283 billion.
Again, you will hear extremely outrageous statements, as we heard on the underlying legislation in which, for example, the gentleman from Maryland opposed but now blithely says I support. The point is, why not be right the first time? Why not support the legislation when it is in front of you? Why not vote now for H.R. 5638 instead of waiting to say you are for what the bill did after it becomes law?
Mr. Speaker, it is now my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to a member of the Ways and Means Committee, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth).
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Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
It is a pleasure to indicate that for the first time in my memory I completely agreed with the gentleman from Washington when he said, if you have just tuned in, and you are watching me, you are watching the theater of the absurd.
We are not repealing the estate tax so Mr. Gates wasted a phone call. I hope he is a little more in tune with what is going on in the software world than he is what is going on in the floor of the House.
We are not doing away with the estate tax. We are producing a compromise which will pass this House and go to the Senate in an attempt to make permanent law and remove uncertainty.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady), a member of the Ways and Means Committee.
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Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I also want to be on record as being opposed to a theocracy. And I will tell you that today, shortly, democracy will be demonstrated when the House of Representatives determines whether or not it sends this compromise measure over to the Senate with a majority vote.
I know it is a mystery to some people. And I found it most revealing in a poll when Americans were being polled as to whether or not you supported either repeal or making smaller the estate or death tax.
One gentleman responded to the poll that he was in favor of repeal, and if he couldn't get repeal, he wanted it smaller. And given the location in which the question was asked, in the home which the gentleman lived, the questioner said, ``But you aren't currently in a position to benefit from the estate tax, whether it's repealed or not.''
And he said very simply, ``But I want to have the opportunity to be able to.''
That is really the American dream. It really is what democracy is all about. It really is keeping more of your hard-earned efforts at the end of your life, or, if this bill becomes law, the amount that is legally appropriate, $5 million per individual, to be given while you are alive or after you pass or partially when you are alive or partially when you have passed. As one of my colleagues said, after all, it is your money.
The estate tax does deal with progrowth or antigrowth because it is simply a tax on capital and savings. The lower the tax on capital and savings, the greater the opportunity for growth.
We have heard the argument that this really is not a compromise. I believe it is a compromise. I said why. But I think the real test as to whether something is or is not a compromise is what I like to call the Goldilocks test. The Wall Street Journal thinks this is too cold. An individual representing the richest people in America, Dick Patten of the American Family Business Institute, says, ``We flatly oppose the Thomas plan. It just isn't good enough.'' The gentleman from North Dakota says, This is virtually repeal. It is just way too hot.
Well, for some it is too hot; for some it is too cold. It sounds to me like that we have got a compromise that has a chance to pass the United States Senate. We know it will pass the House of Representatives.
Mr. Majority Leader, you asked for a bill that should become law. Mr. Majority Leader, the House is sending you the bill you asked for.
I urge support of H.R. 5638. I urge the Senate to take up the compromise as soon as possible. And when that bill is sent to the President, the American people, those who work hard and expect to retain or pass on at the end of their lives a portion of their earnings during that life, will have achieved a significant victory, not in a theocracy, not in an aristocracy, but in a democracy.
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