Remarks on Returning Without Approval to the House of Representatives the Death Tax Elimination Act of 2000 - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 4, 2000

Today, a few moments ago, this bill suffered the inevitable fate of a snowball in August. [Laughter] I vetoed it not because I don't think there should be any estate tax changes--I do believe there should be some changes--not because I think that the United States Government should never respond to the legitimate concerns of people who happen to be in upper income levels and have been successful--I think they're entitled to fairness just like all the rest of us--but because this particular bill is wrong for our families and wrong for our future. It fails the test of the future both on grounds of fairness and fiscal responsibility. And I'd just like to lay out the facts in a little greater detail.

The cost of their bill is $100 billion over 10 years. That sounds--in the context of a $2 trillion surplus you may say, well, that's not all that much. But to get it down to $100 trillion, they have to ever so gradually phase it in. In the second 10 years, when all the baby boomers retire and we need as much money as we can for Social Security and Medicare and to keep the burden of the baby boomers' retirement off the rest of you, the real cost of the bill appears. It's $750 billion.

Now, this is $750 billion for 54,000 families, 54,000 estates. We'll come back to the smaller number, $100 billion for 54,000 estates. That's 2 percent of the estates. Now, if it's a farm or a small business, that can be misleading because they may employ lots and lots of people. There may be a lot of people riding on the welfare of, the success of the small business people and the farms.

And I've talked to a number of people who say, "You know, I don't want to have to sell my business," or "I don't want my daughter or my son to have to sell the business to pay the estate tax. Yes, they'll still have money, but the business won't be going. Somebody else will be running the business." So, should something be done to help them? Of course. But keep in mind, there are millions of businesses in America--we're talking about 54,000 here--and it's very important to note that over half of the benefits to these 54,000 estates go to less than 6 percent of the estates, less than one-tenth of one percent of the American people, 3,000 of the estates. So over half the benefit of that bill that came down here on a tractor goes to 3,000 people. And I'll bet you not a single one of them ever drove a tractor. [Laughter] I'll bet you if I had a tractor-driving contest with any of those 3,000 people, I would win. [Laughter]

And I say that not to build resentment against them but to say they have presented a picture of this bill which is not accurate. The average tax relief for those 3,000 families would be $7 million a person. And it will do nothing for the farm families like those represented by our speaker. That is my problem with this bill. It doesn't really do what it says it's supposed to do.

And for the other 98 percent of the American people, literally get nothing out of this. That's another thing I think that is important. This was the first priority. This is the bill that was sent up before an increase in the earned-income tax credit for low income working people that have three or more kids, before doing more on the child care tax credit, before a long-term care credit for people who have to take care of their elderly or disabled loved ones and long-term care, before doing anything to help average families deduct the cost of college tuition to send their kids to college, before increasing the incentives we want to give wealthy people to invest in the poor areas of America. This was their top priority.