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Family Taxes: Conservatives Frame Estate Tax Repeal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2013

Richard J. Meagher
Richard J. Meagher*
Affiliation:
Randolph-Macon College
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Journal of Policy History , Volume 26 , Special Issue 1: Perspectives on Conservatism , January 2014 , pp. 73 - 102
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Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

NOTES

1. Donovan, Chuck and Fagan, Patrick, Insight: Taxes in the Stimulus Package and the New Congress (Washington, D.C., 2009).Google Scholar

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13. See, for example, Dionne, E. J., “As Bush’s Problems Persist, Conservatives Not Rallying to His Side,” Washington Post, 29 July 1992Google Scholar; Drew, Elizabeth, Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Political Power in America (New York, 1997)Google Scholar; Edsall, Thomas B., Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power (New York, 2006).Google Scholar

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15. See Meagher, Richard J., “Death and Taxes: Issue Framing and Conservative Coalition Maintenance,” Political Science Quarterly 128, no. 3 (Fall 2013): 517–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Author interview, 30 November 2006.

17. FitzGerald, Frances, “A Disciplined, Charging Army,” The New Yorker, 18 May 1981.Google Scholar

18. Jacobson, Darien B., Raub, Brian G., and Johnson, Barry W., “The Estate Tax: Ninety Years and Counting,” SOI Bulletin (Summer 2007): 118–28.Google Scholar

19. United States Department of the Treasury, “FAQs: Taxes: History of the U.S. Tax System,” at http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Taxes/Pages/historyrooseveltmessage.aspx (accessed 1 March 2013).

20. See Robbins, Gary and Robbins, Aldona, The Case for Burying the Estate Tax (Lewisville, Tex.: Institute for Policy Innovation, 1999)Google Scholar; Tax Policy Center, “Historical Number of Returns by Type of Tax,” at http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/TaxFacts/TFDB/TFTemplate.cfm?Docid=18 (accessed 1 March 2013).

21. Internal Revenue Service, “Table 17: Taxable Estate Tax Returns as a Percentage of Adult Deaths, Selected Years of Death, 1934–2008,” at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/12es01hi.xls (accessed 1 March 2013).

22. According to the Heritage Foundation, the Act “belongs to a class of legislation that warms only the hearts of lobbyists and specialists who must deal with the growing tax labyrinth” (William W. Beach, A Scorecard on Death Tax Reform [Washington, D.C., 1998]).

23. Graetz, Michael J. and Shapiro, Ian, Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight Over Taxing Inherited Wealth (Princeton, 2005)Google Scholar; Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy, Spending Millions to Save Billions: The Campaign of the Super Wealthy to Kill the Estate Tax (Washington, D.C., and Boston, 2006).

24. Author interview with Harold Apolinsky, 30 October 2006.

25. Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy, Spending Millions, 15.

26. Graetz and Shapiro, Death by a Thousand Cuts, chap. 5.

27. 60Plus Association, “Death & Taxes Poem,” at http://60plus.org/death-taxes-poem (accessed 1 March 2013).

28. Joshua Green, “Meet Dr. Death,” The American Prospect, 21 May 2001.

29. Graetz and Shapiro, Death by a Thousand Cuts, 76. Apolinsky noted that “I didn’t come up with the idea of ‘death tax.’ It’s like life insurance; they could call it what it is, death insurance. They call fire insurance ‘fire insurance.’ Jim Martin came up with that idea” (interview).

30. Interview.

31. Graetz and Shapiro, Death by a Thousand Cuts.

32. See Tax Policy Center, “Tax Policy Center Analysis of the American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA),” at http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/American-Taxpayer-Relief-Act.cfm (accessed 1 March 2013).

33. Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy, Spending Millions.

34. Author interview with Alix Norton, 12 October 2006.

35. The exact date of formation is unclear; the earliest Lexis-Nexis reference to the coalition was a 1996 New York Times article (“Rushing away from Taxes: Fighting the Estate Tax During a Second Life in Capital,” New York Times, 22 December 1996).

36. U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Legislative Agenda, 2006.

37. Family Business Estate Tax Coalition, Letter to Majority Leader Reid, Republican Leader McConnell, Speaker Boehner, and Leader Pelosi, 15 November 2012.

38. Stephen Moore, “Repeal the Grave Robber Tax,” Cato Institute Commentary, 22 February 2001, at http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/repeal-grave-robber-tax (accessed 1 March 2013).

39. Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy, Spending Millions, 18.

40. Americans for Prosperity, “AFP Says Death Tax Unfair Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow; Should Be Repealed ASAP,” 10 May 2005, http://www.afphq.org/afp-says-death-tax-unfair-yesterday-today-and-tomorrow-should-be-repealed-asap (accessed 1 June 2009).

41. Since the FBETC is largely structured as a coalition of member organizations, it is difficult to determine its exact membership. Still, a 2005 NFIB press release identified the Seattle Times as “a member of the NFIB-led Family Business Estate Tax Coalition” (National Federation of Independent Business, “Death Tax Summit: Small Business Urges an End to the Death Tax,” 23 May 2005). A list of current membership organizations is available on the NFIB website (http://www.estatetaxrelief.org).

42. Interview.

43. Thompson, Bob, “Sharing the Wealth?” Washington Post, 13 April 2003.Google Scholar

44. Interview.

45. “Beyond the Forum,” Heritage Forum 1, no. 3 (2005): 26.

46. Norquist, Grover, “Democrats Miss a Demographic Shift,” American Enterprise, April–May 2003.Google Scholar

47. Bartels, Larry M, “Homer Gets a Tax Cut: Inequality and Public Policy in the American Mind,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 1(March): 15–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Political scientist Benjamin Barber argued that, in the case of the estate tax, “political mythology . . . trumped economic reality” (Benjamin R. Barber, “Kevin Phillips on Wealth and Democracy,” panel discussion at American Political Science Association meeting, Philadelphia, 28–31 August 2003).

48. Goffman, Erving, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Cambridge, Mass., 1974).Google Scholar

49. Stone, Deborah, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, 3rd ed. (New York, 2011)Google Scholar; Schneider, Anne Larason and Ingram, Helen, Policy Design for Democracy (Lawrence, Kans., 1997)Google Scholar; Baumgartner, Frank R. and Bryan D, Bryan D., Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago, 1993).Google Scholar

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51. Lakoff, George, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (Chicago, 1996).Google Scholar

52. Block, Fred L., The Vampire State: And Other Myths and Fallacies about the U.S. Economy (New York, 1996).Google Scholar

53. Author interview with Bill Beach, 3 October 2006.

54. Beach, William W., The Case for Repealing the Estate Tax (Washington, D.C., 1998).Google Scholar

55. Beach, Scorecard on Death Tax Reform.

56. McCaffery, Edward J., “The Uneasy Case for Wealth Transfer Taxation,” Yale Law Journal 104, no. 2(November): 283–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57. McCaffery, Edward J., “Grave Robbers: The Moral Case Against the Death Tax,” Policy Analysis, no. 353 (4 October 1999): 1–20.Google Scholar

58. He does so in both Beach, The Case for Repealing, and William W. Beach, Time to Repeal Federal Death Taxes: The Nightmare of the American Dream (Washington, D.C., 2001).

59. Interview.

60. Of course, the purported threat to farms and small businesses from the estate tax is, at best, exaggerated. While it is likely true that some small-business owners and farmers would rather forego the expense of estate planning and that some may sell off assets to pay the tax, repeal proponents are still unable to produce a single, verifiable example of a farm or business closing due to the burden of estate tax payments. See Christine Schwen, “Fox Revives Ancient Myth that the Estate Tax Kills ‘a Lot of’ Farms,” 9 December 2010, at http://mediamatters.org/blog/201012090019 (accessed 1 March 2013).

61. Smith, Henry Nash, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge and London, 1950).Google Scholar

62. Mary Weaks-Baxter, Reclaiming the American Farmer: The Reinvention of a Regional Mythology in Twentieth-Century Southern Writing (Baton Rouge, 2006). Farmers themselves, however, have little to fear from the estate tax, argued Iowa State University economist Neil Harl. Instead, they should worry about more important tax issues: “for the farming part of the population,” Harl argued, “a new income tax basis . . . is more important economically than repeal of the federal estate tax” (“Repeal of Federal Estate Tax: A Good Idea or a Mistake?” AgDM Newsletter, April 2001).

63. Reiland, Ralph, “America’s Prosperity Machine,” American Enterprise, July–August 1997.Google Scholar

64. Blackford, Mansel G., A History of Small Business in America (Chapel Hill, 2003), 4.Google Scholar

65. American International Automobile Dealers Association, “The Death Tax Almost Destroyed Our Family Business . . . ,” 2005.

66. Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid, “Playing Politics with Numbers,” 6 September 1999, at http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/playing-politics-with-numbers (accessed 1 March 2013).

67. American Conservative Union, “John Kerry: A Tax Disaster for American Families,” 30 August 2004, at http://conservative.org/john-kerry-a-tax-disaster-for-americas-families/741 (accessed 1 June 2009).

68. American Conservative Union, “ACU Urges Congress to Pass H.R. 64, Permanent Repeal of the ‘Death Tax,’” 25 January 2005, at http://conservative.org/acu-urges-congress-to-pass-h-r-64-permanent-repeal-of-the-death-tax/692 (accessed 1 June 2009).

69. American Legislative Exchange Council, “Statement by ALEC’s Executive Director regarding the Jobs Protection and Estate Tax Reform Act of 2005,” 10 May 2005, at http://www.alec.org/news/press-releases/press-releases-2005/may/statement-by-alecs-executive-director-regarding-the-jobs-protection-and-estate-tax-reform-act-of-2005.html (accessed 1 June 2009).

70. Atkins, Chris, “Wanted Dead, Not Alive: How Eliminating Certain Taxes Would Create Thriving State Economies,” ALEC Issue Analysis, June 2003.Google Scholar

71. “Editorial: Death and Taxes,” Orange County Register, 28 April 2006.

72. “The Conservative Index,” The New American, 6 November 2000.

73. Newt Gingrich, “Tough Lessons,” American Enterprise, April–May 2000.

74. George Allen, “Death Should Not Be a Taxable Event: Tax Code Should Promote Economic Activity,” Human Events, September 2005.

75. Bill Frist, “Burying the Death Tax,” 19 April 2006, http://www.volpac.org/index.cfm?FuseAction=BLOGS.View&Blog_id=254 (accessed 1 June 2009).

76. Issues 2006: The Candidate’s Briefing Book (Washington, D.C., 2006).

77. Robbins and Robbins, The Case for Burying.

78. Robbins, Gary, Estate Taxes: An Historical Perspective (Washington, D.C., 2004).Google Scholar

79. Allen, “Death Should Not Be a Taxable Event.”

80. Family Business Estate Tax Coalition, “Who Does the Estate Tax Really Hurt?” Heritage Forum, 2005.

81. American International Automobile Dealers Association, “AIADA Position on the Federal Estate Tax,” 2005.

82. Miller, Dan, The Economics of the Estate Tax (Washington, D.C., 1998).Google Scholar

83. Author interview with Dan Miller, 5 October 2006.

84. Americans for Prosperity, “Kevorkian Redux,” 25 October 2005, at http://www.afpoldsite.com/kevorkian-redux (accessed 1 June 2009).

85. In fairness to Americans for Prosperity, its article included a link to a New York Times piece that considered this same possibility. Eagle Forum head Phyllis Schlafly also discussed it in her newsletter in 2003 (Phyllis Schlafly, “Conservative Agenda for 2003,” The Phyllis Schlafly Report, January 2003).

86. Ron Paul, “Will the Estate Tax Ever Be Repealed?” 24 October 2005. http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1172&Itemid=69 (accessed 1 June 2009).

87. Jim Martin, “Dying Should Not Be a Taxable Event: Eliminating the Federal Estate and Inheritance Taxes,” 14 July 1999, at http://60plus.org/aw349/ (accessed 1 March 2013). Martin’s statistic is apparently accurate but, it should be noted, quite possibly independent of the estate tax.

88. Patten, Dick, “Estate Tax Hurts Family Businesses,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 28 July 2005.Google Scholar

89. Interview.

90. Green, “Meet Dr. Death.”

91. However, just because estate tax opponents claimed morality for the repeal side does not mean that a moral, populist case could not be made for keeping the tax. Bradford Plumer, an online editor for Mother Jones, argued that such a case should be easy to make: America is a meritocracy, and socialites like Paris Hilton do not deserve the fortunes they would inherit. See Bradford Plumer, “We’ll Always Have Paris,” 20 April 2005, at http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/04/well-always-have-paris (accessed 1 March 2013).

92. Author interview with Michael Schwartz, 3 October 2006.

93. Interview. However, Beach also claimed that social conservatives were not terribly interested in repeal: “I just never felt that they were likely a strong partner. It is a small business-individual asset thing.”

94. Beach, William W., Now Is the Time to Permanently Repeal Federal Death Taxes (Washington, D.C.: 2003).Google Scholar

95. Conservative strategist Paul Weyrich claimed that “it was the school interference issue that drove most of them that had thought that it was a sin to get involved in politics” (interview).

96. Reed, Ralph Jr., “Casting a Wider Net: Religious Conservatives Move Beyond Abortion and Homosexuality,” Policy Review 65 (Summer 1993).Google Scholar

97. Rees, Matthew, “Cutting the Tax-Cut Pie,” The Weekly Standard, 26 May 1997.Google Scholar

98. Dionne, E. J., “The New Ideas Republicans,” Washington Post, 6 July 1993.Google Scholar

99. Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Kalberg, Stephen (New York, 2007).Google Scholar

100. Lichtman, Allan J., White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (New York, 2009), 5.Google Scholar

101. James McKay, “The Economic as Spiritual: James Fifield’s Spiritual Mobilization and the Social Gospel of the New Deal,” unpublished.

102. Frederick Clarkson, “Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence,” The Public Eye, March/June 1994.

103. North, Gary, An Introduction to Christian Economics (Nutley, N.J., 1973).Google Scholar

104. Clarkson, “Theocratic Dominionism.”

105. Chip Berlet, “From Scopes to Reagan: The Political Crusade of the Christian Right” (paper presented at Understanding Dominionism, Political Power, and the Aims of the Theocratic Right conference, New York, 22 October 2005). While Clarkson may have overstated these ties—Robertson distanced himself from Rushdoony’s ideas in the 1990s (see David John Marley, Pat Robertson: An American Life [New York, 2007])—he likely was correct in noting that “the Christian Coalition would not have been possible without Reconstructionism.”

106. “The Pro-Family Network,” Conservative Digest 6, no. 5/6 (May–June 1980): 24.

107. Jones, Bob, “The Check Is in the Mail,” World, 9 June 2001.Google Scholar

108. American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, “Great Expectations: Hope for the New Millennium,” 21 January 2001, at http://www.tfp.org/tfp-home/pro-life-statements/great-expectations-hope-for-the-new-millennium-2001.html (accessed 1 March 2013).

109. Tanya L. Green, “Bush Proposes ‘Conservative’ Budget,” 5 March 2001, http://www.cwfa.org/articles/1728/CWA/misc/index.htm (accessed 1 June 2009).

110. Author interview with Peter Sprigg, 5 October 2006.

111. Schneeberger, Gary, “Family Tax Relief Last Act of GOP Senate Majority,” Focus on the Family Citizen, August 2001.Google Scholar

112. Carbone, Leslie, Death and Taxes: How Divorcing the Two Benefits the Family (Washington, D.C., 2001).Google Scholar

113. Author interview with Leslie Carbone, 4 October 2006.

114. The New American opposed the death tax on similar grounds. Estate tax proponents, one article suggested, wrongly argued that “man exists for the state” when they said that the tax provided society with a return on investment (Mark Samuel Anderson, “Death and Taxes,” The New American, 13 August 2001).

115. Carbone, Death and Taxes.

116. Interview. Of course, serendipity plays a role here, as it always does in political matters. Carbone may have been influenced by conservative advocates like Bill Beach to adopt particular arguments but was brought to the issue by her own particular intellectual interests. Carbone seemed to have fallen into the role of tax policy person for the Family Research Council. As she described it, her role developed when, in an annual performance review, she told her boss, “I’m bored. . . . You know where my heart is: the economic effects of social policy” (interview).

117. Interview.

118. Aaron Atwood, “Death Should Not Be a Taxable Event,” 31 August 2005, at http://www.family.org/cforum/news/a0037747.cfm (accessed 1 June 2009).

119. Bill Fancher, “AFA Commentary and News Briefs,” 7 September 2005, http://headlines.agapepress.org/printver.asp (accessed 1 June 2009).

120. For documented examples, see Drew, Whatever It Takes; and Susan Page, “Norquist’s Power High, Profile Low,” USA Today, 1 June 2001.

121. Interview.

122. Family Research Council, “Economics and Taxes,” at http://www.frc.org/file.cfm?f=RESEARCH&iss=EC (accessed 1 June 2009).

123. Family Research Council, Vote Scorecard for the First Session of the 109th Congress (Washington, D.C., 2005).

124. See, for example, Tony Perkins, “Declare the Pennies on Your Eyes,” 12 October 2005, http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WU05J08 (accessed 1 June 2009).

125. Christian Coalition of America, “Our Legislative Agenda: Christian Coalition of America’s Agenda for the 109th Congress, Second Session (2006),” at http://www.cc.org/issues.cfm (accessed 1 June 2009).

126. Christian Coalition of America, 2004 Christian Coalition Voter Guide: Presidential Election (Washington, D.C., 2004).

127. Nicholas Sanchez, “Death Tax Should Be Laid to Rest,” 16 February 2001, at http://www.freecongress.org/commentaries/2001/010216NSfcc.asp (accessed 1 June 2009).

128. Family Research Council, Washington Watch Weekly, 13 April 2006.

129. Hacker, Jacob S. and Pierson, Paul, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (New Haven, 2005).Google Scholar

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131. George H. Nash, “The New Counterculture,” 21 February 2006, at http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110007996 (accessed 1 June 2009).

132. For just one example, see Douglas A. Hicks, Inequality and Christian Ethics (New York, 2000).

133. Stiglitz, Joseph E., The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York, 2012).Google Scholar

134. CNBC, “Santelli’s Tea Party,” 19 February 2009, at http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=1039849853 (accessed 1 March 2013).

135. Skocpol, Theda and Williamson, Vanessa, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (New York, 2011), 37.Google Scholar

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137. “The Contract from America,” 2010, at http://www.contractfromamerica.org (accessed 1 March 2013).

138. See, for example, “The Campaign against Women,” New York Times, 19 May 2012.

139. American Family Association, “AFA to sponsor TEA parties in 1000 cities on April 15,” 19 March, 2009, at http://www.afa.net/Media/PressRelease.aspx?id=2147486492 (accessed 1 March 2013).

140. “Repeal the Death Tax,” at http://act.theteaparty.net/5204/repeal-death-tax (accessed 1 July 2012).