[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 140 (Monday, October 30, 2000)]
[House]
[Page H11593]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        ELIMINATION OF THE DEATH TAX WOULD BENEFIT ALL AMERICANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, for quite some time, we have been hearing 
from our friends on the other side of the aisle that Republican 
attempts to abolish the death tax is just a sop to the rich and that 
few ``regular'' folks would ever benefit from its elimination.
  I would like to bring to the attention of the House an article that 
appeared in The Denver Post this weekend entitled ``Death, Taxes end 
Rancher's Dream.'' The article describes the plight of the Laurence 
family who have for the last couple of generations been eking out a 
living from an 1,800 acre ranch in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
  Merrill Laurence died 4 years ago and the family has been struggling 
ever since to keep the tax man at bay. They have run out of time and 
resources. Soon, the auctioneer's gavel will fall; and the ranch will 
be sold to developers. November 11 will be the date that ends a 180-
year history of the Laurence family ranching heritage. This family will 
be moved off the land and homes will be built where the ranch now 
stands.
  But the proceeds from the sale will not accrue to the heirs. They do 
not want the sale. They will not receive very much at all of what comes 
from that sale. The money raised by this forced sale will go to satisfy 
the demands of the IRS.
  I can assure my friends on the other side of the aisle that there are 
real people out there who are affected by the death tax and who are far 
from ``fat cats,'' that phrase that we so often hear them employ when 
attempting to foster class hatred in this country. These people and 
hundreds of thousands, millions others like them all over the United 
States are regular, hard-working tax-paying families who, in fact, have 
made only a couple of mistakes in their lifetime. Like Mr. Laurence, 
many of them work too hard, accumulated too much, according to, again, 
people on the other side of the aisle who keep talking about the death 
tax as something that so few people would get and so few people deserve 
the elimination of the death tax.
  Mr. Speaker, the fact is that there are lots of people who actually 
are, as I say, hard working, and they are not the top 1 percent, as we 
have often been told, of this Nation's income-earners who would benefit 
by the elimination of this death tax. They are people like Mr. Laurence 
who, as I say, he made a few mistakes. He worked too hard. He died 
before a new President could take office.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that we will soon be able to reintroduce this 
idea, the elimination of the death tax, and we will soon pass it; 
again, this will be the third time, and it will be signed by the next 
President of the United States, because it is a tax that needs to be 
eliminated, it is an unfair, unjust tax that people like the Laurences 
of Colorado are now being forced to pay and, as a result, being forced 
to sell their own heritage.

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