Spending millions to Save Billions
WASHINGTON, D.C. – [link] The multimillion-dollar lobbying effort to repeal the federal estate tax has been aggressively led by 18 super-wealthy families, according to a report released today (ed: April 25) by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy at a press conference in Washington, D.C. The report details for the first time the vast money, influence and deceptive marketing techniques behind the rhetoric in the campaign to repeal the tax.It reveals how 18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion.
The report profiles the families and their businesses, which include the families behind Wal-Mart, Gallo wine, Campbell’s soup, and Mars Inc., maker of M&Ms. Collectively, the list includes the first- and third-largest privately held companies in the United States, the richest family in Alabama and the world’s largest retailer.
In a massive public relations campaign, the families have also misled the country by giving the mistaken impression that the estate tax affects most Americans. In particular, they have used small businesses and family farms as poster children for repeal, saying that the estate tax destroys both of these groups. But just more than one-fourth of one percent of all estates will owe any estate taxes in 2006. And the American Farm Bureau, a member of the anti-estate tax coalition, was unable when asked by The New York Times to cite a single example of a family being forced to sell its farm because of estate tax liability.
It's been well-documented in places nobody pays attention to, that the Estate Tax is only for richest of the rich—so who benefits is hardly a surprise—but it is interesting to see the kind of money at stake for the people pushing for this. I'd venture even the Republican politicians voting for this don't qualify, but it sure seems like these donors have a lot riding on it, and that's why the GOP won't shut up about it.
2 comments:
Hang onto your wallet. More than half the members of the U.S. Senate are millionaires or better.
I hate to sound cynical, but that little factoid leads me to expect a certain bias toward killing the inheritance tax.
What will trickle down to the rest of then will be the responsibility for paying that $71.6 billion these wealthiest of families won't be paying.
More than half the members of the U.S. Senate are millionaires or better.
[slaps forehead]
Yeah, I guess I knew that. I was thrown by the scale of wealth of these clowns in the report that I dismissed that fact. You're right.
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