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   (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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