Wednesday, March 7, 2001

The fight to keep the death tax was strengthened last month by support from 120 of some of the nation's wealthiest people. Warren E. Buffett, George Soros, David Rockefeller, Jr., and the father of Bill Gates, among others, began a petition to keep the death tax, citing that the tax prevents an American "aristocracy of wealth."

And why wouldn't the wealthiest Americans be burdened by the death tax? After all, they already have teams of lawyers and personal accountants who make sure their estates are far from the grasp of Uncle Sam. They have the means to donate millions to charity, while hard-working Americans are simply trying to pass on the family business, or farm.

The repeal of the death tax is not aimed at America's multimillionaires and billionaires, who are already practically tax-exempt through tax loopholes. It aims to help middle Americans with family farms or businesses; those whom have worked hard, struggled, and saved; the Americans who don't have the resources to hire a team of accountants to throw their estates through IRS loopholes.

Perhaps William Buffet and his billionaire friends can't understand the plight hard-working, successful middle Americans. After all, I can't imagine Buffet's children having to sell the family farm, or close the family business in order to grease Uncle Sam's palm.

To add flame to the fire, house representative Tom Daschle came out with his illogical and knowingly deceptive comparison of the "Lexus tax break" and the "muffler tax break." Obviously mistaking Lexus for the new official U.S. currency, Daschle told reporters that under Bush's tax plan an American earning $1 million per year would save enough money to buy a new Lexus, or, in U.S. dollars, $35,000. What he fails to mention is that the same "evil, greedy millionaire" is paying $360,000 dollars in income tax each year, enough to buy six of the Cadillac limousines that Tom Daschle shuffles around Washington in, at taxpayers' expense.

The billionaires and multimillionaires continue to fuel the class war against middle America: the hard-working, silent Atlas.

Christopher Armstrong

Peachtree City

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