Mountain Views News          Saturday, March 21, 2015

B6

OPINION 

Mountain Views-News Saturday, March 21, 2015 


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PHIL Kerpen 

 Making Sense MICHAEL Reagan


DEATH TAX REPEAL IS 

LONG OVERDUE

On April 13, 2005 the House of Representatives voted 
overwhelmingly, 272 to 162, to permanently repeal the federal estate 
tax, also known as the death tax. But in the ten years since, they have 
all but dropped the issue. A stunning 236 of the current members of 
the House have never had an opportunity to vote on it. Fortunately, 
the Ways & Means Committee under Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) 
will soon consider a bill, H.R. 1105, written by Reps. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Sanford 
Bishop (D-Ga.) that would repeal the death tax. House leadership should bring it to the 
floor before April’s tenth anniversary of the last such vote, because it’s a winning issue 
both politically and economically.

 Polls consistently show the death tax is hated by the American people. A 2006 study 
by two Yale professors, Mayling Birney and Ian Shapiro, did a comprehensive review 
of this issue. They said: “Many polls since the late 1990s have shown widespread public 
support for estate tax repeal, in the range of 60, 70 or 80 percent. Moreover, supporters 
appear to be spread more or less equally across income groups, contrary to what self–
interest would predict.”

 The study’s remarkable findings, which confounded the study’s authors, belie the 
claim that strong public support for repeal depends on misunderstanding or misleading 
information. They found surprisingly high public support regardless of who asked the 
questions or how they were phrased.

 Most recently, a November 2014 survey by Public Opinion Strategies that asked the 
neutral question: “Do you personally favor or oppose completely eliminating the estate 
tax, that is, the tax on property left by people to their family when they die?” found 
the public supports repeal by a typically robust 61 to 35 percent margin, with even a 
majority of Democrats supporting repeal.

 Americans fundamentally do not believe that death should be a taxable event. The 
Founders of our country believed this so strongly that they included a clause in the U.S. 
Constitution that forbids seizing an estate at death as a punishment for treason. Yet, we 
now have a tax on the books that takes up to 40 percent of everything a person leaves 
to his or her children as a punishment for success, for achieving the American Dream.

The death tax punishes virtue and rewards vice. It tells older Americans: “You can’t 
take it with you, and you can’t leave it to your kids.” So it discourages and punishes the 
traditional American virtues of hard work and thrift, savings, and investment, while it 
encourages lavish, reckless consumption.

 That has serious economic consequences. A broad coalition of free-market and 
business groups organized by the Family Business Coalition recently noted in a letter 
to Congress that multiple recent studies show repeal would create over 100,000 jobs, 
and that the tax is responsible for the destruction of $1.1 trillion in capital. A new study 
from the Tax Foundation finds that the U.S. now has the fourth highest death tax in 
the OECD and that 13 countries have completely repealed their death taxes since 2000. 
They found repeal would boost the U.S. capital stock 2.2 percent, resulting in a net 
increase in federal revenues.

 The bottom line is the death tax is wrong, and advocates of economic freedom 
shouldn’t be afraid to say so and fight for full repeal. While liberal editorial pages and 
cable news talkers will shriek about it, the American people strongly support repeal. 
The House has a great opportunity to do the right thing by bringing H.R. 1105 to the 
floor for a vote, and, with the tenth anniversary of the last vote approaching, they 
should do so as soon as possible.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of 
“Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at phil@americancommitment.org. 



THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

“What about the children?”

 Politicians of both parties often stoop to using our children as props 
whenever they’re fighting for a new law or pet government program.

 They argue we need to cut the $18 trillion debt, regulate the Internet 
or pay teachers more “for our children.”

 “Think of the children” is almost always an emotional and irrational 
appeal made in desperation by those who don’t have a reasonable or 
legitimate argument.

 Invoking “the children” is pure BS. It’s obvious political BS. But it’s BS that’s been used for a 
long time by Democrats and Republicans.

 It became so common that it was satirized way back in the early 1990s in the “The Simpsons,” 
when the character Helen Lovejoy constantly shrieked “Think of the children” during town 
debates over everything from lowering taxes to what to do about too many bears roaming the 
streets.

 Despite becoming a cultural joke, using “the children” as emotional weapons in political 
warfare still goes on all the time.

 Every other lousy politician in Washington who wants to tax, subsidize or regulate something 
still claims he’s doing it “for the children” -- whether it’s saving the planet from climate change, 
giving amnesty to illegal immigrants or intervening in Syria.

But when it comes to passing a piece of legislation that will actually do something to help 
hundreds of thousands of real children, it’s another story.

 As part of the latest parliamentary maneuvering and cat-fighting between Democrats and 
Republicans, the passage of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015 has been delayed 
in the Senate.

 Passed by the House, and having broad bipartisan support, the act would strike an important 
blow in the fight against human sex trafficking.

 The act would create a fund to help authorities in the USA deter and combat sex trafficking, 
prosecute traffickers when they are caught and provide assistance to private groups that work to 
rescue and restore the lives of trafficking victims – most of whom are children.

 We hear little about it, but human trafficking is a serious problem in the United States and 
around the globe. The U.S. State Department estimates there are 27 million victims of trafficking 
worldwide.

 Human trafficking is a $32 billion industry involving more than 125 countries. The majority 
of victims are women and girls who are forcibly trafficked from one place to another to do work 
or provide sex, usually under horribly unsafe and unhygienic conditions.

The United States is not untouched by this crime against children. Experts say 17,500 people are 
trafficked into the U.S. each year and about 300,000 American children, particularly children in 
foster care, are continually at risk of being pulled into the hell of human trafficking.

 According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the typical sex-
trafficked child in the United States is 13 or 14 years old. The average pimp makes upwards of 
$200,000 a year from one of his four to eight children, who are forced to have sex 20 to 48 times 
a day.

 Private organizations like the Polaris Project and Arrow Child and Family Ministries in 
Texas, which I’m affiliated with, are working hard to educate the public about the horrors of 
sex-trafficking and rescue as many young victims as they can.

 But it’s a huge job and the public and private resources to do it are spread thin and hard to 
acquire.

 With the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, Republicans and Democrats are in a great 
position to actually do something “for the children” instead of just talking about it.

 For now the act has become another bargaining chip in Washington’s never-ending private 
poker game.

 It will pass eventually. Even Congress gets it right once in a while. But it’s time for politicians 
to quit playing politics with the lives of our children.

 Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author 
of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press). He is the founder of the email service 
reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.
com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @
reaganworld on Twitter. 


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