JAMES L. MARTIN: Federal estate tax repeal would wipe away costs for everyday people

JAMES L. MARTIN: Federal estate tax repeal would wipe away costs for everyday people: "JAMES L. MARTIN: Federal estate tax repeal would wipe away costs for everyday people

September 14, 2005

BY JAMES L. MARTIN

The U.S. Senate is poised to either drive a stake through the heart of the most confiscatory tax ever enacted, or to go wobbly and allow this cruel, job-robbing, antigrowth estate tax to live on in infamy.

In the Senate, the high-water mark to repeal was 57-43, but because of the filibuster threat, it takes 60 votes. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., is to be commended for calling for an up-or-down vote on repeal, resisting the admonition of the deal makers and the compromisers who somehow didn't seem to get the message sent to them by the House: 'Kill the death tax; don't wound it.'"