[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 17222]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                           DEATH TAX OVERRIDE

  (Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, last month the Clinton-Gore 
administration vetoed tax relief for the American people. They struck 
down a repeal of the death tax, a measure which taxes family businesses 
and farms on up to 55 percent of their value upon the death of their 
owner. Eighty-five percent of these businesses do not survive to the 
second generation because of the death tax penalty.
  And to what end? Government enforcement of the death tax costs nearly 
as much as the tax actually generates. As a result, the death tax adds 
less than 1 percent of revenue to the Federal budget. In contrast, if 
we had ended the death tax last year, we could have created 45,243 more 
jobs this year and nearly 236,000 by 2010.
  I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do the right 
thing: override this senseless veto and do away with the death tax.

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