The Cycle of Government: Subsidize the Living; Tax the Dead; Benefit the Corporate Cronies

    In recent weeks, we’ve been subjected to mellifluous pandering to our nation’s farmers by liberals in both parties.  They admonish us about the need to provide farmers with a “safety net” and to protect them from catastrophic events.  To that end, they are pushing a massive $1 trillion Ag subsidy, which happens to contain over $750 billion in food stamp spending. Aside for the fact | Read More »

    Today in Washington – December 14, 2010

    Taxes and spending are on the House and Senate agenda for today.  After the Senate passes the President’s tax deal, the House may blow up the compromise by changing the Death Tax.  Later this week, Senate appropriators are reportedly trying to sneak through a massive new Omnibus spending bill.  They are planning on offering an Omnibus Spending bill as a complete substitute for the Continuing Resolution, a bill to fund the | Read More »

    Brad Sherman (D, CA): most tone-deaf Congressman?

    I know that this would be a title with a lot of contenders, but let’s look at the evidence.  It’s not because he’s for a death tax: that’s just ordinary tone-deafness, coupled with the standard Democratic politician’s assumption that it was all really their money all along, and they were just letting individual citizens hold on to it for a while.  It’s not even that | Read More »

    Today in Washington – July 22, 2010

    So much for President Obama’s promises of economic stimulus.  The New York Times reports that moments after the President signed a new law to expand regulation over the financial sector, one business group complained that the new law will discourage job growth. The Business Roundtable complained in a statement that the law “takes our country in the wrong direction” and may discourage investment and job growth, echoing | Read More »

    A Good Year to Die

    It’s been pointed out that George Steinbrenner’s heirs saved about $500 million in estate taxes because of the timing of his death. Unlike every other year since 1916, there is no federal estate tax in 2010. In 2009, the estate tax rate was 45% and next year, without Congressional action, it will be 55%. The one-year tax-free gap is the result of Congress’s refusal in | Read More »

    Dr. Frankenbama: Death Tax Re-Animator

    Death and taxes may be inevitable, but they shouldn’t be related. - J.C. Watts, Jr. President Bush’s tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 lowered the death tax from 55 percent to 45 percent this year and would have eliminated them entirely next year. But Dr. Frankenbama’s budget drags the rotting corpse of the death tax from its intended grave by keeping it at its 2009 level next year. The doctor | Read More »