The Republicans made them do it

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Bernie Sanders op in the Burlington Free Press

A century ago, President Teddy Roosevelt, a good Re publican, called for a gradu ated inheritance tax on wealthy estates. In 1916, Congress passed that law. Here is what Roosevelt said in 1910.
“The absence of effective state, and, especially, na tional, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enor mously wealthy and eco nomically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise ; No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered — not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qual ities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is passed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily col lected and far more effective — a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”

I agree with Teddy Roosevelt. What he proposed is exactly what The Responsible Estate Tax Act that I have introduced (along with Sens. Harkin, Whitehouse, Franken and Sherrod Brown) will do. Specifically, my bill exempts the first $3.5 million of an in heritance from paying any federal estate tax what soever. Doing this means that 99.7 percent of Ameri cans who receive an inheri tance would not pay one penny in federal estate taxes. This legislation would impact only the very wealthy — the top three-tenths of 1 percent.



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