Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, under rule XVI of the Senate, this is legislation on an appropriations bill. I raise a point of order against it.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. GRAMM. Parliamentary inquiry. Is this a strike-and-insert amendment?

Mr. GRAMM. I object to them being considered en bloc. Amendment No. 3964

Mr. GRAMM. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, at this time of shock and loss we tend to focus on Paul's death, but it seems to me that it is really a time that we should focus on his life. As we weigh how our lives and the life of our Nation has been diminished by the loss of Paul Coverdell, I think it is important that we also reflect on how our lives have been enriched. I first--I first met Paul Coverdell when I went to Georgia. He was campaigning for the Senate. And he was doing an event in this dingy old steel mill about industrial renewal. I had talked to him on the phone, I was--I was chairman of the Senatorial Committee, but I had not seen him in action. So I got up and spoke, and then Paul got up and spoke in that squeaky voice, and he sort of had a way of jumping up and down when he was speaking and waving his hands, so I tried to delicately whisper to him, quit jumping up and down, be still, but little did I know at that moment that with all of his outward appearance and the squeaky voice, that this man had the heart of a lion. He went on and won in that campaign. As chairman of the Senatorial Committee I was involved in 67 Senate campaigns. And he won the toughest race, defeated an incumbent, was in a runoff after the general election when everybody else would have sat down, given up, gotten tired. Paul Coverdell did not sit down and give up or get tired. He came to the Senate and we were immediately involved in the Clinton health care debate, and he and John McCain and I traveled all over America. We did 147 events in this crusade to defeat the Clinton health care bill. And in all those events and all that travel--you all know Paul Coverdell-- he never got tired or never let on he was tired or got irritable. In the Senate where we all want glory, we all want to be out front, we all want to see our picture in the paper, Paul was one of those remarkable people who simply wanted to get things done. There was no job too small for Paul Coverdell. And there is no job too big for Paul Coverdell. Paul Coverdell managed in eight short years to become absolutely indispensable to the United States Senate. And I am very happy today about one thing--not much I am happy about today, but I am happy about one thing. We often feel something about people--we often love people, but, but we don't often tell them that. It's especially hard for men to tell other men that they love them. But what I am happy about--I can't quite get to it--is the following point. I realized over a year ago that Paul Coverdell had become an indispensable member of the Senate, that he was the greatest Senator from Georgia since Richard Russell. And so I always went to great lengths to say it. Here, in Georgia, and everywhere I got the opportunity to say it. This is a hard time for the Senate, and I just would like to conclude on the two points I tried to open up with but didn't quite get said. In these terrible moments when we are shocked and hurt we tend to think about how someone died. But at these moments it is critical that we focus on how they lived. We tend to look at how our lives and the life of our nation have been diminished, but it is important that we focus on how our lives were enriched by Paul Coverdell. My grandmother used to say that as long as anyone remembers you, that you're not dead. As long as I live, Paul Coverdell will be remembered. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, one of the things I am afraid of is that many people following this debate will get confused about what we are talking about, why we are here, and what the issue is before us. I thought I would come over one more time before the weekend and basically try to outline what it is we are talking about. Many amendments are being offered. Our Democrat colleagues would not let us just bring up repeal of the marriage penalty and vote on it. They insisted on having the ability to offer amendments on scores of different issues. So I know it may be confusing as people listen to the debate. Let me talk about what the issue is, where those of us stand on repealing the marriage tax penalty, what we believe we have to do regarding that; and then I want to talk a little bit about what the President has proposed as an alternative. I don't know that anybody ever intended that American tax law penalize working people who get married. But today, when two people, both of whom work outside their home, meet, fall in love, get married, and pay their taxes, they pay, on average, $1,400 a year for the right to be married. Now, I hope and believe that if you asked most American couples if it is worth $1,400 a year to them to be married, I think most of them would say it is. I can say, without any reservation, that my wife is worth $1,400 a year, and a bargain at that. But I believe she ought to get the money, and not bureaucrats in Washington, DC. How did this all come about? You have to remember when the Tax Code was written that relatively few women worked outside the home. It was structured in such a way as to try to achieve various objectives. But the bottom line is we have two problems today. The first problem is, if you are single and you file your tax return, you get a standard deduction of $4,400. If you have a young man and a young woman, or not such a young man and not such a young woman, and they are single and filing separately, and don't itemize deductions, each one of them gets a standard deduction of $4,400. If they meet, fall in love, and get married, they end up getting a joint return standard deduction of $7,350--obviously, much less than $8,800, which would be twice the single deduction of $4,400. If you meet, fall in love, and get married, the amount of income you get to deduct before you start paying taxes is actually less after you are married than it is before. Second, the income of the second spouse is added directly to the income of the first spouse. What tends to happen is two people who, as singles, are in the 15- percent tax bracket meet, fall in love and get married, and end up in the 28-percent tax bracket. Hence, when you combine the discrimination in the tax law against married couples as compared to singles on the standard deduction, and when you look at pushing people into these higher tax brackets more quickly when they are married than when they were singled, the result is a marriage tax penalty which averages $1,400 each year. We want the remedy to be very simple. We want to repeal the marriage penalty. We think this is not just an economic issue, we think it is a moral issue. We think even the greatest country in the history of the world is treading dangerously when it has policies that discourage people from forming families. We are not here to give any kind of sermon on families and the values of families, but the plain truth is the modern family is the most powerful institution in history for happiness and economic progress, and we don't think our Government, of all governments, should be trifling with it. Our reform says, whereas single people get a $4,400 standard deduction, we will give a married couple $8,800. We want to change the tax brackets so that if two people get married who are in the 15- percent tax bracket as singles, they will still be in the 15-percent tax bracket after they get married; or, if they are in the 28-percent tax bracket, they are still in the 28-percent tax bracket after they get married. You would think you could look throughout the continent of North America and not find a single soul who thought the marriage tax penalty was a good idea. But, unfortunately, we have a President and we have Members of this very Congress who may say they are not for it but they are opposed to getting rid of it. They are opposed to getting rid of it for a very simple reason. They believe they can spend this money better than families. They believe if we repeal the marriage penalty and working couples get to keep $1,400 a year more of their own income to invest in their own family, in their own future, and in their own children, that those families will do a poorer job with that money than the Government will do if the Government gets to spend it. They really believe that the Government can spend it better. Our President and many of our Democrat colleagues, honest to goodness, in their hearts, believe it is wrong to give this $1,400 back to people by eliminating the marriage penalty because they believe that Government could spend the money so much better than families could spend it. While they believe that, they don't feel comfortable saying it because they don't believe the American people will agree with them. So what do they say? What does our President say? He doesn't say: Look, don't give this money back to families. They will spend it on their children. They will spend it on houses. They might buy a new refrigerator. They might go on vacation. They might send their children to Texas A&M. Let the Government spend it. But they do not say that. Our President is many things, but dumb is not one of them. He is very smart. So he says it is rich people--that we are trying to give money to rich people. There is a code that you need to understand about our President and many people in his party. The code is that every tax increase is on rich people and every tax cut is for rich people; therefore, you always want to raise taxes but you never want to cut taxes. I want to remind you--I am sure people who are listening to this debate are going to hear our President speak on the issue within a week after we send this bill down to the White House. The President is going to have to decide whether to sign it. I suspect he is going to say: I wanted to eliminate the marriage penalty. I am against the marriage penalty. It is just that I didn't want to do it for rich people. Let me remind people that this is the same President who, when he raised taxes in 1993, looked us right in the eye over the television, and said: No one who is not rich will pay more taxes under my tax bill. Then he raised gasoline taxes on everybody. I guess maybe everybody who drives a truck, or a car, or uses gasoline in some way to travel or go to work is rich. Then there was the even more grievous example where the President taxed people's Social Security benefits if they earned over $34,000 a year, because if you earn over $34,000 a year, according to the President, you are rich. Here is an example I wanted to make. I think it is so priceless. Let me make it a couple of times to be sure I get it right. The President says he wants to get rid of the marriage penalty but he doesn't want to do it for rich people. So what he proposes is raising the standard deduction if both people work. If one of them doesn't work, or one of them doesn't make as much money, he doesn't raise it or doesn't raise it as much. I am going to get back to that. But he doesn't expand the 15-percent bracket so that married people don't end up paying in the 28-percent tax bracket with the same incomes that were taxed at 15-percent when they were single. He says his plan just eliminates the marriage penalty for people who are not rich--that our plan eliminates it for people who are rich. It is very interesting. For a couple filing a tax return, they move into the 28-percent tax bracket at a combined income of $43,850. If you want to know whether you are rich or not by the definition of our President, if you make $21,925 a year and your wife makes $21,925, according to Bill Clinton, you are rich. I ask a question: Does anybody really believe that somebody making $21,925 a year is rich? I don't think anybody really believes that. Why does Bill Clinton say that? He says it because he is not willing to say what he really believes, which is, it is fine to penalize people for getting married, because he may not necessarily like it or enjoy it, but it is all right to do that and make them pay the marriage penalty of $1,400 a year because the Government can do such a good job spending that money and the family would probably waste it. Let me mention two other issues. Then I will yield the floor. The President says if both spouses are not working, they ought not to get the benefit. We reject that. First of all, anybody who thinks stay-home parents don't work has never been a stay-home parent. Anybody who thinks you are getting a tax bonus by staying at home to raise your children is somebody who doesn't understand families too well, because most families make tremendous economic sacrifices to have one parent stay home with their children. Yet the President runs around and says when one of the parents doesn't work outside the home, they are getting a bonus. Forgoing income and sacrificing to raise children is only called a bonus in Washington, DC. In most places it is called parenting. We want to eliminate the marriage penalty because we think there is one institution in America that is constantly starved for resources. It is not the Federal Government. As many of our colleagues know, we are in the greatest spending spree of the Federal Government since Jimmy Carter was President. We are increasing money for all kinds of Government programs. The President would like to increase it faster, and he is concerned that, if we let families not pay a marriage penalty, that $1,400 per family they will spend instead of him, means that we will not have as much money for education, housing, or nutrition. What the President forgets is, What are families going to spend this money on? If we eliminate the marriage penalty and let working couples keep $1,400 a year more, what are they going to spend it on? They are going to spend it on education, housing, and nutrition. The question is not about how much money we are going to spend on all these things we are for. The question is, Who is going to do the spending? Bill Clinton wants Washington to do the spending. We want the family to do the spending. On the issue of one parent staying at home, this is something we have thought about, worked on, prayed over. Here is the decision we have reached. We don't think Government tax policy ought to have a say in the decision that parents make about working outside the home or staying in their homes. My mama worked my whole life when I was growing up because she had to. My wife has worked the whole while that we have had children because she wanted to. We are not trying to make a value judgment as to what people ought to do. So basically we say we want to eliminate the marriage penalty, whether both parents work outside the home or whether only one does. We do not think we ought to have a tax policy that discourages a parent staying home, or encourages it. We think the Tax Code ought to be neutral. So we have put together a proposal that eliminates the marriage penalty. The President says it helps rich people because, if you make over $21,925 a year, you get the benefit of our stretching the tax brackets. We do not believe that is what most people think of as rich. Finally, to address the ``rich'' issue, our point is not about poor people or rich people or ordinary people. Our point is about penalizing marriage. If two people are poor and meet and fall in love, I want them to get married. If two people are rich and they meet and they fall in love and they want to get married, I don't want the tax code to discourage them from getting married. This is a question of right and wrong. It is not a question of rich and poor. I don't understand why the President has to always pit people against each other based on how much money they make. I would have to say of all the things we do in debate in the Congress and in the American political system, the thing I dislike the most is this use of class struggle, where somehow we have people who claim to love capitalism, but appear to hate capitalists. They claim to want success, but seem to hate people who are successful. I, for one, do not understand it. I want to repeal the marriage penalty for everybody. The plain truth is the bulk of the cost of eliminating the marriage penalty is for middle-income people. But I want to eliminate it for everybody because it is wrong. Finally, if we did not eliminate all of it, what do we think would happen the first time we have a President and a Congress who want to raise taxes? We would be back down to the point where $21,925 is rich. So this is a very important debate. This last week, and today, repealing the death tax, and on Monday, repealing the marriage penalty tax, represents the best 2 weeks that American families have had in a very long time. These are good policies. They are good because they are right. They are good because they are profamily. They are good because they recognize that families can spend money better than Government can. They are good because they represent the triumph of the individual and the family over the Government. I have to say I wish that every American could have heard the debate on the death tax and on the marriage penalty. I would be willing to let this election and every election from now until the end of time be determined on these two issues and these two issues alone because I think these two issues clearly define the difference between our two great parties. I am against the death tax because I don't think death ought to be a taxable event. And I am against the marriage penalty because I am for love and I am for marriage and I don't want to tax it. And neither do the American people. I thank my colleagues for their patience and I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Give me 30 seconds.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, what we are talking about here is basically a setting of priorities. Do we want to take money away from eliminating the marriage penalty in the earned-income tax credit for working families to give a tax credit for a noble purpose? In fact, a purpose that we had written into our tax bill last year that the President vetoed. That is what we are debating: priorities. We set aside the $5 billion in the budget to fund earned-income tax credit for the elimination of the marriage penalty. If we spend it here, we cannot do it tomorrow. Amendment No. 3841 (Purpose: To provide for pension reform, and for other purposes)

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I send the amendment to the desk and yield back all time that is allotted.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I will be brief in my 5 minutes. First, I know the Senator from Massachusetts is sincere about this amendment, but I remind my colleagues of a few key points. We are here to repeal the death tax. All over America, families work, sacrifice, save, and through sweat equity build up businesses, farms, and assets. Then they die, and the Government, because they die, taxes their life's work even though they paid taxes on every dollar they earned. Too often in America, their children have to sell the farm or sell the business to give the Government up to 55 cents out of every dollar they earn. Republicans believe that is unfair, that is un-American, and that is immoral. Our colleague from Massachusetts calls getting rid of this tax a windfall. If your parents worked a lifetime to build up a farm, and they were there when it was dry and they had droughts, they were there when there were floods and when the hail killed the crops, and they saved and sacrificed, and they did it so their children could some day run that farm, I do not call that a windfall. That is just a fundamental difference in philosophy. There are two big-time problems with this amendment. No. 1, it sets up this new trust fund not out of taxes that were raised to pay for this activity but basically by requiring people to sell off the family farm or sell off the family business to fund this trust fund. The second problem is, there is no point of order against it. One might ask why is that true of amendments that have been offered that spend money. It is true because this amendment takes $5 billion that the Finance Committee was allocated to do something else with. For what were they allocated the money? They were allocated the money to repeal the marriage penalty for people who receive the earned-income tax credit. That is what this $5 billion was for. A janitor with three children meets a waitress with two children. They fall in love, and they find the solution to their problems. Only, under the marriage penalty, they both end up losing the earned-income tax credit, and they end up in the 28-percent tax bracket if they get married. We are planning to use the $5 billion that Senator Kerry would use to fund this trust fund to repeal the marriage penalty for the lowest income individuals to be sure they do not lose their earned-income tax credit if they meet, fall in love, and get married. Senator Kerry is trying to do a very good thing, but unfortunately there is something I think is of a higher order: repealing the marriage penalty for poor people and not taking away their earned-income tax credit. Senator Kerry is inadvertently taking this money from that purpose. So ultimately you come down to choices. The choice he would make is: Sell the family farm, sell the family business, and let the Government have that money; and, secondly, the money you were going to take--that $5 billion that we gave the Finance Committee in the budget to repeal the marriage penalty for low-income people, by changing the earned- income tax credit, where they do not lose it if they get married to somebody who also works--the net result of this is, sell the farm, sell the business, and take away the earned-income tax credit from the janitor and the waitress who have a total of five children, who met, fell in love, wanted to get married, and who saw it as a solution to their problem. But Senator Kerry will be sure they get subsidized housing. I do not think it is a good swap. I do not think it is a good trade. So on another day, on another issue maybe, but not today. Finally, let me remind my colleagues, if they are worried about housing--and we would be if we did not have a house--that we have a $1.9 billion increase in the 2000 budget for housing, $25.9 billion for the Department of Housing and Urban Development--and that is a 7- percent increase. Very few families in America had a 7-percent increase in their income last year. So it is a good amendment--well-intended--but we should reject it.

Mr. GRAMM. I believe this is an amendment that should be defeated. If I have any time, I would love to yield to my dear friend.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, did not our Democrat colleague from New York ask that both sides get 2 minutes?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, our colleagues have just introduced the Gore plan to extend Social Security by giving the Social Security Administration a bunch of new IOUs. Of course, the IOUs are from the same Government that is going to have to pay the Social Security benefits in the future. We currently have $800 billion of paper IOUs in a steel filing cabinet in West Virginia. They represent the trust fund of Social Security. When Social Security takes in more taxes than it spends, this computer in West Virginia prints out this IOU, and the Government goes on about its business and spends the money on something else. That something else can be any other Government program, or buying down the debt of the Treasury. But the Social Security Administration gets the IOUs. What we are hearing here is a new gimmick, where you give them the IOU and then maybe you buy down debt, maybe not, but you still give them another IOU. Then that IOU earns interest and you get another IOU. Let me go back and start at the beginning. Let me quote President Clinton in his year 2000 budget. I know it is late, but I hope my colleagues will listen to this quote. These Social Security trust fund balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other trust fund expenditures--but only in a bookkeeping sense. These funds are not set up to be pension funds, like the funds of private pension plans. They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing the benefits-- Which means cutting Social Security benefits-- or other expenditures. The existence of large trust fund balances, therefore, does not, by itself, have any impact on the Government's ability to pay benefits. That is not me talking. That is President Bill Clinton from his fiscal year 2000 budget. What is he saying? This $800 billion of Government IOUs we have represents a debt of Government. So when the Government has to pay Social Security benefits in the future, they have an IOU and they can collect it. But who has to pay it? The same Government that collects it. It is why I cannot write an IOU and put it on my balance sheet. The Senator from Oklahoma, when he was running Nickles Machine Corporation, could not inflate his balance sheet by simply adding another IOU. President Clinton clearly explains that. Our Vice President is saying: OK, I want to make Social Security solvent for 50 more years--I do not know why he did not do 100 or 500-- and the way I am going to do it is I am going to print up these IOUs that say the Government owes the Government money, and they are going to put the IOUs in that filing cabinet in West Virginia. Here is the problem. When they get them out to cash and they say: OK, this IOU is for $100 billion; we will pay benefits with this. Who is going to pay the $100 billion? The Government has to pay the $100 billion. To quote Bill Clinton, they have to raise taxes, borrow from the public, they have to reduce benefits, which is cut Social Security benefits, or they have to cut other expenditures. The point being this is a totally fraudulent proposal. It simply acts as if you can pay benefits that the Government owes with an IOU that the Government owes. The problem is there is no way the Government, with its own debt, can pay anybody benefits because it has to pay its own debt first. All the Vice President is proposing is that we commit future income taxes to pay benefits in the future. How does that in any way improve the solvency of Social Security? It does not, and this whole proposal should be rejected.

Mr. GRAMM. If all time has expired on that amendment, I would like to be recognized----

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I yield myself 10 minutes, and I will yield 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Arkansas.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order for me to offer the Lott amendment on the list at this time and that I be allowed to yield back all the time and that the vote occur in the sequence to follow the Bayh amendment as previously ordered.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, first of all, I note the incredible paradox that this wonderful amendment offered by our dear colleague from Connecticut was in the Republican tax bill that Bill Clinton vetoed last year. I wish our colleagues had supported that bill, and I wish they had helped us override the President's veto. I have two simple responses here. One, it is true that if you count up the number of people affected by his amendment, Senator Dodd has more numbers. But the point is, he is asking us to forgo repealing the death tax so that families will continue to work a lifetime to build up a business or a family farm, pay taxes on every dollar they earn; yet, when they die, their children have to sell off the farm or the business in order to give this tax to the Government. We would repeal the tax. He would take funds from it for another purpose. So when we talk about somebody's home, somebody's farm, somebody's business, and the fact that there are a larger number of people who would like to have their home or business, I am not surprised by that, nor am I overwhelmed by it. Almost any robber anywhere would say, ``I had six children and he had two; I had a gun and he had a wallet.'' That is my first point. My second point is that the $5 billion they spend here is $5 billion that was allocated to the Finance Committee to allow us to repeal the marriage penalty for people who get the earned-income tax credit. There was no point of order against this amendment because it has taken the $5 billion that we were going to use in repealing the marriage penalty to see that people who get the earned-income tax credit don't lose that earned-income tax credit when they get married. Let me give you an example. A janitor with three children meets a waitress with two children. They are both working. They are both low income. They both get the earned-income tax credit. They meet and they fall in love. They have the answers to their prayers--a father for the children and a mother for the children. They get married. What happens? They both lose their earned-income tax credit. They are in the 28- percent tax bracket. So, as a result, they decide not to get married. It is a crazy policy. We want to repeal it. We are going to repeal it tomorrow. But our ability to fund the earned-income tax credit so they can keep the earned-income tax credit and not move into the 28-percent bracket is made possible by the $5 billion that this amendment will take away from the Finance Committee. The question you have to ask is not does the Senator's amendment do any good. It does good. But the question is, Is it worth taking away the earned-income tax credit from working poor people who are trying to better their lives? Is it worth forcing people to sell their farm and sell their business that their parents spent a lifetime building up as a way of funding it? I think this is a proposal that has merit. We wrote it into the Republican tax package last year that the President vetoed. But I don't think we ought to eliminate EITC relief for working people who get married to fund this proposal, which is what it does. Second, the amendment also keeps part of the death tax in place. Why is that dangerous? They argue that at least we are reducing it. They are. But do you remember in 1993 when the President was putting together his tax increase, and one of the ideas he floated was lowering the deduction from $600,000 to $200,000? Does anybody doubt that unless we kill the death tax, get rid of it and pull it out by the roots, that the next time we have a Democrat President and a Democrat Congress we are going to end up as we were in 1993 with this deduction back down to $600,000, $400,000, or $200,000?

Mr. GRAMM. Then I will take 5 minutes, and I will yield 5 minutes to my colleague. Mr. President, I could not help but hear Senator Kennedy talking about the need for education. I would like to remind my colleagues that we and a Republican Congress spent more on education last year than the President asked for. Our colleague from New Mexico talks about priorities. Bill Clinton, in his budget, calls for over a trillion dollars of new spending over the next 10 years. Not one Democrat raises any concern about spending the surplus. We propose $100 billion to eliminate the death tax, one- tenth the amount Bill Clinton wants to spend on new programs, and they are up in arms, outraged. Now, this is about priorities. What are we trying to do? We are trying to eliminate a situation where, every day, working Americans build up farms and build up businesses with sweat equity. They save and sacrifice, and they work long hours. They pay taxes on every dollar they earn. And then, when they die, the Government comes in and forces their children to sell the business or sell the family farm, and we think it is wrong. We think it is un-American, we think it is immoral, and we are going to eliminate it. When you get down to the bottom line, there are two reasons our Democrat colleagues disagree. Number one, our Democrat colleagues exactly within the context of this amendment say: Look. Force people to sell the family farm when papa dies. Force people to sell their business because by them giving that money to the Government, the Government can spend it better. We don't agree. We think families can spend it better--not the Government. The second argument is an argument we often hear from the Democrat side: We are talking about rich people. These are rich people. I don't understand our Democrat colleagues. They profess to love capitalism but they hate capitalists. Many of them are rich but they hate rich people. Let me try to boil this down to its basic point because I only have a couple of minutes. The only thing I was ever bequeathed in my life and ever will be was when my great-uncle Bill, my grandma's brother, left me a cardboard suitcase full of yellow sports clippings. If it had been baseball cards, I would be a rich man today. Our agriculture commissioner in Texas owns a ranch that her family worked for four generations. When her dad died, she had to sell a third of that ranch to pay a death tax. How does that help me? How did forcing her to sell off her family's ranch that had been in her family for four generations help me or help my family? How does tearing down one family build up another? We don't think it does. That is what this issue comes down to. We believe when people work, build up a business, or build up a farm, or build up assets, and they pay taxes on it, that it ought then to belong to them and to their children, whether they are rich or whether they are not rich. I think it is important to note that our colleagues, when they use all of those little examples, leave out one important thing. Over the next 10 years, the revenues collected on this tax are going to quadruple. Why? Because of all of those teacher retirement programs. Many college professors are going to retire with $1 million in their investment accounts. I thank God for it. If they die before they can spend it, under current law, their children are going to end up having to give part of that retirement program to the Government. I think it is absolutely wrong and outrageous. We are down to making a choice. They say don't eliminate the death tax--just raise the cap a little. Why do we need to eliminate it? When you have a cancer, you don't cut out half of it. You cut out the whole thing. Have we forgotten that when Bill Clinton was writing the 1993 tax bill he floated trial balloons about lowering the deduction from $600,000 to $200,000? Does anyone doubt, if we don't repeal the death tax and if we ever have a Democrat President and a Democrat Congress again, that the first thing they are going to do is lower the deduction back down to the point where ordinary working families, farmers, ranchers, and small business people will pay this tax? I don't doubt it. I want to cut it out by the roots. That is what this vote is about.