Copyright 2000 The Omaha World-Herald Company
Omaha
World-Herald
September 8, 2000, Friday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1;
LENGTH: 819 words
HEADLINE:
Estate-Tax Bill's Veto Survives The House GOP can't muster the votes to override
and save the repeal measure
BYLINE: MATT KELLEY
SOURCE: WORLD-HERALD BUREAU
DATELINE: Washington
BODY:
House Republicans failed Thursday to override President Clinton's veto of an
estate-tax repeal, leaving the issue for campaign debate or
perhaps year-end budget negotiations with the White House.
The 274-157
vote fell 14 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for an override.
While 53 Democrats voted against Clinton, party leaders corralled enough
support to keep the measure from moving on to debate and likely defeat in the
Senate.
"This bill is a bad bill," said Minority Leader Richard
Gephardt, D-Mo. "It's a reckless bill. It does absolutely nothing for 98 percent
of the American people."
U.S. Rep. Doug Bereuter, R-Neb., withdrew his
support for the repeal, becoming the only House Republican voting Thursday to
sustain Clinton's veto.
Bereuter said repealing the estate tax on
"billionaires and mega-millionaires" would amount to "great political error" and
would eliminate an important incentive for charitable giving. Bereuter, who
expressed the same reservations in June, said he voted for total repeal back
then "to keep the process moving" toward a more targeted cut.
All other
House members from Nebraska and western Iowa voted for the repeal.
While
critics derided the bill as a costly tax break for the rich, supporters cast the
vote in philosophical and moral tones. They said the estate tax forces heirs to
sell off family farms and small businesses in order to comply with what amount
to double taxation.
House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, called
on his colleagues to kill off one "onerous, obnoxious, stupid, unfair" provision
of the tax code.
"You don't give the dead guy a tax break. He's in the
grave," Armey said. "What you do is abstain from stealing his life's work legacy
from his children."
U.S. Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., called the issue one of
"fundamental fairness." Terry said the estate tax is a significant burden for
family farmers and Nebraska small businesses such as Modern Equipment Co. and
Great Plains Communications Inc.
As for Bereuter's concern over
repealing the tax on billionaires, Terry called it "an emotional argument."
"It's a philosophy of government knows best what to do with their
money," Terry said.
In closing debate Thursday, U.S. Rep. Bill Archer,
chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, called "astonishing that
we let people be taxed after they die."
"That's certainly not the
American dream," Archer said. "It's the American nightmare."
The repeal,
vetoed by Clinton last week, would phase out the estate tax at a cost of $ 105
billion over the next decade. Clinton and most Democrats contend that the
measure's cost would balloon after that, costing $ 755 billion over 10 years.
Currently, estates worth up to $ 650,000 are exempt from the estate tax,
a level that will climb to $ 1 million by 2006.
Democrats, including
Clinton, argue that repealing the estate tax would benefit 2 percent of the
richest Americans. They back a separate estate-tax reduction to raise the
exemption limit to at least $ 2 million.
"People do not want to spend
the majority of this (budget) surplus on tax cuts," Gephardt said. "And they
sure don't want to spend it on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans."
While voting against the outright repeal, Bereuter said he would support
a measure raising the exemption to $ 15 million or $ 20 million and cutting
rates.
Others, including Rep. Greg Ganske, R-Iowa, argued that the
outright repeal would shift the tax burden so that heirs would pay capital-gains
taxes based on original property values. By shifting away from estate taxes,
Ganske said, heirs would not be forced to liquidate estates to meet tax
obligations.
"We say death as an event should not trigger a tax," Archer
said. "But when those assets are sold ... the tax is paid."
Archer,
R-Texas, called budget projections used by Clinton and House Democrats
"insupportable," in part because they do not account for the capital-gains
taxes.
Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, said he supported the tax repeal
even though he thinks many farmers are overly worried about estate taxes. He
said careful estate planning might solve much of their problem.
"There
are more farmers who think they have a problem out there than actually do," he
said.
Even so, Boswell was among the few who hold out hope that Clinton
and Congress might compromise on a scaled-down estate-tax cut. "I'm an eternal
optimist because I'm a farmer," Boswell said.
U.S. Rep Bill Barrett,
R-Neb., was less optimistic that estate taxes would be included in a year-end
budget negotiation between Clinton and Republicans in Congress. Unlike Boswell,
Barrett called the estate tax is a "real problem for a lot of folks out there."
"I'm really disappointed," Barrett said. "We'll get some tax cuts, but
not this one."
LOAD-DATE: September 8, 2000
