Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
June 8, 2006 -- Page: S5626

MRS. HUTCHISON. Madam President, we passed a bill in 2001 that actually started lowering the death tax for a 10-year period, and then it will come back in full force. When it comes back in full force, we are going to have up to a 55-percent tax on estates that are over $1 million.

What does this mean? It means that if someone owns a farm where the property has appreciated but they cannot possibly produce enough on that farm to pay one lump sum on its value--55 percent of it--we would be breaking up family farms and ranches all over this country. That is what the death tax has been doing for years.

In fact, America has the highest death tax in the world. We say we are a country of small businesses, of family-owned businesses, entrepreneurs who have started with nothing and built something, and yet we do the very thing that hurts those small businesses. In fact, they cannot pass to the next generation. Thirty percent of family businesses today pass to the second generation; 13 percent make it to the third generation. That is because the property owned in a business is worth much more in value than it produces.

The death tax walks away from the American dream. The American dream is if you come to this country, if you work hard, you can give your children a better chance than you had. The American dream is that you can start with nothing and you can build something if you work hard and you have a good idea. But the death tax walks away from that because it breaks up that family business, it breaks up the ability to accumulate wealth, it interferes with freedom and the free enterprise in this country today.

I hope we will not throw people out of jobs, as Senator DeMint just mentioned; that we will not prevent people from giving their kids a better chance than they had. Please vote for cloture today so that we can do the right thing for our country and promote small farms, family-owned businesses, and entrepreneurship once again.