Month: April 2005

by hilzoy

Tomorrow Congress will consider whether to make the repeal of the Estate Tax permanent. From the Washington Post:

“WITH MEDICAID and food stamps on the chopping block, the House of Representatives is about to vote for a $290 billion tax break for the richest sliver of Americans. The subject is, once again, the estate tax. Under the convoluted, dishonest plan Congress approved in 2001, the estate tax was to be gradually reduced and eliminated by 2010, only to spring back the following year to its 2001 level: a tax of 55 percent on estates of $1 million or more. Tomorrow the House is set to vote to keep full repeal in place after 2010.

This is unnecessary, irrational and unaffordable. Those who inveigh against the “death tax” point to the travails of family farmers and other small-business owners whose heirs are supposedly forced to liquidate enterprises to pay the tax bill. In fact, even if the estate tax were to revert in 2011 to its 2001 level — and no one believes that the exemption will remain at $1 million — it would affect the estates of only 2 percent of those expected to die that year. At $3.5 million (and $7 million for a couple) — the level proposed in a Democratic alternative sponsored by Rep. Earl Pomeroy (N.D.) — a mere three-tenths of 1 percent of estates would be covered. In other words, no one but the richest Americans would be asked to pay estate tax.

Moreover, an analysis by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center supports the contention that the family forced to sell its farm to pay the tax is, if not a fiction, close to it. Looking at situations in which farm and business assets represent most of the estate, the Tax Policy Center found that there would be just 50 affected in 2011 in the entire country if the exemption were set at $3.5 million.

The true cost of repeal is far higher than $290 billion, an amount that covers only the first few years of making repeal permanent. The bill for a full 10 years without estate tax would be $745 billion — close to $1 trillion if you throw in increased interest payments. In contrast, raising the exemption level to $3.5 million and setting the tax rate at 47 percent would cost less than a third of that; $21 billion in 2015 compared to $71 billion for full repeal. The effective rate would be far less than 47 percent, because the tax is levied only on the amount above the exemption and state payments and charitable bequests also reduce the tab.

The estate tax is a tough vote for some lawmakers in part because of the enormous amount of misinformation surrounding it. House members who fear that a vote for the more responsible Pomeroy alternative will be used against them should ask themselves two questions: Will my constituents really punish me for a vote to exempt 99.7 percent of estates from taxation? And how can I justify adding to the deficit, or cutting other programs, to underwrite a costly tax break for the extremely rich?”

Making the repeal of the estate tax permanent would be wrong on a number of counts, which I will summarize below.

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From Marketwatch (subscription required):

“The Bush administration has spent millions of dollars in the past two months on its campaign to overhaul Social Security, narrowly skirting laws that prohibit spending of taxpayer funds to indirectly lobby Congress.

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and more than 20 other administration officials have blanketed the country since early February, delivering more than 100 speeches in 37 states in an effort to rally the public behind Bush’s Social Security plans.

Although no hard figures on costs are available, rough calculations show the White House and other agencies have spent at least $2.2 million on the campaign so far.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has been asked by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to investigate the costs of the pro-privatization effort. Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee have also asked quietly for an accounting, according to the Washington Post.

Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, asked the GAO to determine whether “the Bush administration has crossed the line from education to propaganda.”

Federal law prohibits spending any public funds for publicity or propaganda designed to support or defeat legislation pending in Congress. (…)

Bush himself has spoken at 25 events in 20 states on the topic since his State of the Union address in early February. According to press reports, Bush’s audiences are carefully screened to exclude those expressing disapproval of his plans.

Twenty-two other administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Treasury Secretary John Snow, three other Cabinet secretaries and four top officials at the Social Security Administration, have been on the road talking up the need to overhaul Social Security.

All told, officials in the White House and other executive agencies have delivered 120 speeches in 37 states. The Bush administration is well on its way to its goal of visiting 60 cities in 60 days with the Social Security reform message.”

I don’t know about you, but I resent having the President spend my tax dollars lobbying for his Social Security proposal. I also mind this (from the same article): ” “He’s devoting two days a week to it,” said White House spokeswoman Martin.” That’s not two days a week working on Social Security issues; it’s two days a week traveling around giving speeches about the plan he has yet to put forward. And I mind those 22 other officials who are doing the same thing. It’s not as though actually running the federal government leaves one with a lot of free time. It’s not as though there aren’t other problems to deal with.

If that weren’t enough, there’s also the fact that I, along with the rest of the large majority of Americans who do not support the President’s approach, would be barred from attending the speeches he is spending my money giving. (How he intends to convince people when he bars all those who don’t already support him from coming to his speeches, I can’t imagine.) I think it’s cowardly not to face those who disagree with him, but unconscionable to use our money to pay for speeches we will only be allowed to attend if we share his views. He’s welcome to do that if he’s spending his own campaign funds, but he should not do it on my nickel.

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by Charles

Aside from filibustering judicial nominations, one of the other items loaded into the Democratic Obstruction Machine is the thwartation of nominee John Bolton as UN Ambassador.  Steven Clemons at the Washington Note is on an anti-Bolton jihad (the non-violent kind of course), as is Bush-hating George Soros and his Open Society Policy Center (they published a 60-plus page "briefing book" chock full of opposition research and liberal talking points).  TAPPED is also on the anti-Bolton bandwagon, with obsessive numbers of anti-Bolton posts, and there is also stopbolton.org and Arms Control Wonk and a raft of others.  One of the apparent strategems is to pressure liberal Senators such as Lincoln Chafee and moderate Republicans such as Chuck Hagel into voting "no" against Bolton in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

To be sure, there are questions that need answering, and his confirmation is not a sure thing.  In Newsweek, Mark Hosenball brought up allegations that Bolton "pressured intel specialists on Cuba".  In the WMD report, the commission concluded that intelligence analysts were not pressured by Bush administration officials on Iraqi WMDs, but it did specifically point out that Christian Westermann, a CIA analyst specializing on Cuba, testified that he was pressured by John Bolton on the matter of Cuba and germ warfare.  Another unnamed intelligence analyst also had a run-in with Bolton and it was not pretty.  In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh raised the issue of stovepiping, documenting the conflicted relationship between Greg Thielman, a State Department intelligence liasion, and John Bolton.

Bolton needs to answer the questions relating to the two CIA analysts and Greg Thielman, and he also needs to answer a whole host of other questions, such as:

• How does he see his role as UN ambassador?
• What will he do on the Darfur genocide?
• Now that UN peacekeepers have shown to be next to useless in Haiti, when will the U.S. take more concerted action?  The only viable options appear to be reconstituting the UN peacekeeping force or kicking them out and bringing in U.S. personnel (or perhaps a joint venture with France).
• Will he support Kofi Annan as Secretary General?
• Does he support Annan’s reform package?
• Will he push for a stronger UN Democracy Caucus?

And many more.  But the problem with this tempest is that politics have completely swamped it.  Former Secretaries of State (all Republicans) have weighed in favor of John Bolton, although Colin Powell is not one of the five.  In response to the letter signed by 59 ex-diplomats opposing Bolton, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy produced a letter signed by 85 "security policy practitioners" endorsing Bolton for the job.  Steven Clemons is right that most of the signatories are also on Gaffney’s advisory council, and why Gaffney thought that crackpot Alan Keyes was a good choice to be on the endorsement list is mystifying.  However, when Dave Meyers at TAPPED wrote the following…

Compare this group to the signatories to the letter opposing Bolton, which is not only non-partisan, but was signed by more Republican appointees than Democratic.

…he was both lying and distorting.  The facts are these. 

• Out of the 59 ex-diplomats opposing Bolton, 39 of them made political contributions in the last three election cycles totaling $268,975, of which 94.3% went to Democrats, Greens and related organizations.
• Twenty-four of them endorsed John Kerry for president.
• Eight of them signed onto Diplomats & Commanders for Change, a group of 27 retirees opposing George W. Bush.
• Fourteen of them endorsed Bill Clinton in 1996.
• A year ago, eight of the ex-diplomats signed a letter opposing Bush’s Middle East policy.  As Joel Mowbray noted, the prime instigator of the letter (former Ambassador Andrew Killgore) has some fevered opinions on Zionism, and is co-founder and publisher of the horribly biased Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Just as Gaffney has partisans on his list (and a crackpot or two), the same goes for the 59 ex-diplomats.  Below are summaries of the more colorful ones.

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by hilzoy

There are two new stories about Tom DeLay, one in tomorrow’s Washington Post and one in tomorrow’s New York Times. Since I’ll quote both stories at some length, I’ll put the rest of it below the fold.

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