Demagogue

No surprise here -- the Associated Press reports:

The House voted Wednesday to eliminate federal estate taxes in 2010 and beyond, a repeal that Republicans hailed but Democrats said would reward the richest families at the steep cost of deeper federal deficits.

House lawmakers voted 272-162 to prevent the tax on inherited estates from reappearing after its one-year disappearance in 2010. The bill would end the tax at a cost of roughly $290 billion over the next decade.

... Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., said those pushing to retain a tax "still want to pry lots of cash out of the cold, dead fingers of America's deceased entrepreneurs."

I don't know what kind of funerals Congressman Cox has been to lately, but I'm not aware of a single entrepreneur who was buried with "lots of cash" in his or her hands.

The money that gets taxed under the estate tax is what gets inherited by others -- which is why this is also called the inheritance tax.

In fact, to analyze Cox's ridiculous statement more closely, if some eccentric multi-millionaire chose to be buried with all or most of his money and there were no estate left behind that exceeded the federal limits, then there would be no estate tax.

In other words, wealthy entrepreneurs who plan to go to their graves with all or most of their money should worry about grave robbers, not the IRS.