Politicians - Fiscal Responsibility

It is amusing that Republicans continue to try to repeal the estate tax for good from our revenue coffers. They have used the "death tax" to put fear into Americans that this tax is bad for the American people, yet only 0.5% of estates are subject to this tax. 0.5 PERCENT for 2006!

A phased out approach would have been much suitable given the current financial climate of the federal government. No matter how the US economy is doing so fine, we got a huge deficit to trim down, and cutting more taxes does not help.

The failed vote will now be used by both political operatives for the midterm elections in November. As usual, Republicans will denounce Democrats for not cutting taxes and helping the "farmers" that own the estates, and the Democrats will accuse Republicans for not being more fiscally responsible and serving the rich folks who own the estates the "farmers" reside on.

If people want to cut the estate tax permanently, I want to see an equal amount of spending cut in the federal government to preserve the fiscal strength of the government. Tax cuts have brought increased revenue because consumers are spending more of that money, but we still continue to generate multi-hundred billion dollar deficits, and no matter what Bush says in cutting the deficit in half by 2009, the country will face a national debt of over $9 trillion dollars.

CNN.com - Senate blocks chances for estate tax repeal