Opposition to Estate Tax Repeal

Floor Speech

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, it was barely three weeks ago that the Republicans came to the floor with their ``work harder, get less'' budget. While making everyday life harder on working Americans, the Republican budget disinvests in the future of our nation by making deep cuts to education, infrastructure, and scientific research. Under their plan, Americans would face smaller paychecks and have a harder time getting ahead or buying a home; kids would have a harder time affording college; and seniors would have a harder time ensuring a secure retirement, with the end of the Medicare guarantee and immediate higher costs.

The Republican plan also took budget quackery to a new level. Their budget claimed to repeal the ACA, but relied on its revenues and savings in order to claim it balanced in 2025. It made no accounting for the costs of the almost $1 trillion in business tax cuts that Republicans called for in the 113th Congress. The Republican budget also included all the revenue from the current estate tax.

Today, Republicans are fully abandoning any claim to balancing the budget, and showing once again that they prioritize wealth over hard work. Instead of investing in America in a fiscally responsible way, Republicans want to give the very wealthiest households a $269 billion dollar tax cut by repealing the estate tax, while still refusing to close a single special-interest loophole to pay for it.

The estate tax is designed so that it only affects the very wealthiest households. Today, you do not have any estate tax obligation as a couple if your estate is less than $10 million. That means that only 5,500 of America's richest families will pay the estate tax this year. There are cruise ships that hold more people than that. 99.8% of households will never pay it. We do have an estate tax on the amount over $10 million, because we do not believe that people should get ahead just by the wealth they inherited from others--Americans pride themselves on getting ahead through their own hard work.

But instead of rewarding work, Republicans are passing a massive giveaway for just 5,500 of the wealthiest households in the country. The average tax cut will be $3.3 million. Three-quarters of the cost of this bill goes to households with estates over $20 million. For households with estates worth over $50 million, the average tax cut would be $22.5 million. And right now, the wealthy have rarely been better off. The top 1% of income-earners now hold 42% of all the wealth in the United States. Last week was the 90th anniversary of The Great Gatsby being published, and we are heading towards levels of wealth concentration not seen since then.

And yet, Republicans want to give tax cuts to the very richest families without doing anything for the middle class. In fact, the Republican budget would raise taxes on American workers--it ends the American Opportunity Tax Credit for higher education, ends the expansions to the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, does nothing to expand the EITC for childless workers, does nothing to expand tax credits for child or elderly care, and does nothing to help two-earner families. This bill also destroys any pretense of the Republicans balancing the budget in ten years. This is not just me talking--the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said, ``if the estate tax were repealed, the budget would no longer balance.'' And they did not even take into account the lost revenues from repealing the Affordable Care Act or unpaid for extensions of expiring tax provisions. If you add those altogether, in 2025, the Republican Budget is hundreds of billions of dollars in the red.

Of course, this is nothing new. In the two years of the 113th Congress, the Republicans passed tax bills on the House floor and in the Ways and Means Committee that, including debt service, would have increased the deficit by a trillion dollars. The Republicans in this Congress are doing their very best to surpass even that level of fiscal irresponsibility. When you add up all the tax bills approved by Ways and Means Republicans in this Congress, the debt would grow by $700 billion--and it's only April! Just today, in addition to the estate tax, the Republicans brought another permanent tax extension to the Floor without closing any loophole to pay for it--not the loophole for corporate jets, for hedge fund managers, or for shipping jobs overseas.

The House Democratic Budget is focused on the priorities of the American people--boosting the economy to create more broadly shared prosperity, making critical investments in our future, and keeping our promises to seniors. Our plan would grow workers' paychecks and provide tax cuts for the middle class and for Americans who are working hard to get by; invest in our infrastructure and transportation network; help students pay for college; support working families and reduce the cost of childcare. And we do it in a fiscally responsible way.

Today is more proof that Republicans are not seeking balance. Rather, they want to cut crucial supports for children and the elderly, voucherize Medicare and cut investments in research and infrastructure, all so that they can give America's wealthiest families multi-million dollar tax cuts.

We need to foster shared prosperity and reward hard work, not give a tax cut to multi-millionaires. I urge my colleagues to vote no on H.R. 1105.

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