The DLC gets tough on estate tax repeal

Finally! The DLC is showing some backbone on estate tax repeal -- part of an encouraging trend where they stop acting like wimps. I'm a DLC type myself on policy, but their weak-kneed tendencies make me nuts. So this is good news. Here's the conclusion to the article:

[F]or Democrats, opposing this proposal is as simple a matter of basic principle as can be imagined. Democrats should also make it abundantly clear that this giveaway decisively and permanently undercuts any argument for changes in Social Security that will add even more to the national debt and indirectly, to the obligations of our retirement system.

We don't always share the views of some in our party who seem to want to make every single vote in Congress a test of partisan loyalty, since a party that defines itself purely in terms of the opposition's priorities can't make its own values clear. But this is an occasion where the positive and negative responsibilities of governing exactly coincide. Democrats should stand up to the "death tax" rhetoric that tries to make a perfectly sensible policy sound like grave-robbing, and have the courage and persistence to explain to the American people the deeply regressive nature of this proposal, which will shift the cost of government from trust-fund babies to hard-working families.

If there was ever a moment when Democrats should be loud, proud and united about exposing the skewed values of George W. Bush's GOP, this is it.

Comments

[Patrick Carver]

"Democrats should also make it abundantly clear that this giveaway..."

How is abolishing the estate tax, thereby letting people pass on their assets more easily to their heirs, a "giveaway"? The DLC's statment presumes that such money and assets belong to the government.

[Paul]

Patrick, you're 'presuming' as well that the opposite is true, even though your position has as much to do with personal opinion as the DLC statement.

"Private property... is a creature of society, and is subject to the calls of that society whenever its necessities shall require it, even to its last farthing."
-Ben Franklin