Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., is planning to call for a vote next week on the
Estate Tax Elimination Act, a measure that Republicans view as a political winner, pass or fail, according to sources.
Behind the scenes, however, there is a battle taking place between opponents of the measure — including most Senate Democrats and the White House — and their mostly Republican counterparts, as Democratic leaders scramble to find a way to defeat the measure while still appearing to be friendly to the millions of small-business owners and farmers who support it.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., has sponsored the Senate version of a bill to gradually eliminate the estate tax. |
The bill, S 1128, sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., would amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the federal estate and gift taxes and the tax on generation-skipping transfers. The measure, which would phase in the repeal over 10 years, also would provide additional exclusions for family-owned businesses and farms.
A similar bill was passed by the House of Representatives June 9.
According to inside sources, who spoke with WorldNetDaily on condition of anonymity, the measure could have far-reaching implications beyond Capitol Hill.
“[Vice President] Al Gore and [first lady] Hillary Clinton both know their political fate is tied to what happens on the Senate vote, and they can only hope the president can figure out a way to get the Senate to ‘compromise’ on the kind of targeted plans they favor [instead],” one source said on Friday.
President Clinton, who has come out publicly in opposition to the bill, has promised a veto if it remains too close to the House version. Some revisions, however, have already been agreed upon, and nine Senate Democrats out of a list of 28 cosponsors have signed on in support of the measure.
Nevertheless, sources said Friday, Clinton “has been spending a lot of time with [House Ways and Means Committee Chairman] Bill Archer lately, hoping to coax him into accepting the kind of compromise his committee rejected when it was proposed by Rep. Charles Rangel,” a New York Democrat, earlier.
Rangel had reportedly offered an amendment that would have raised the estate tax exemption level from $650,000 to $4 million; the White House and Gore are said to favor raising it higher — to $5 million — “but with other conditions that make it unpalatable to the GOP leadership,” said the source.
One analyst said Republicans suspect most Democrats want to keep the so-called “death tax” high on large estates because so much of the funding that supports liberal special-interest foundations comes from those who would not establish foundations were it not for the estate tax.
Meanwhile, sources said Lott has informed Democrats that he likely will call up the measure passed by the House on Monday for a cloture vote to end debate and force a vote on the entire bill.
“If the Democrats wish to present one or two amendments to the House bill,” one source said, “[Lott] would then not file for cloture, but in exchange, the Democrats would have to agree to accept the consequences of a vote by Wednesday, even if they lost their amendments.”
Analysts said there is still plenty of “calculating” to do, because, as one source put it, “there is no certainty the nine Democratic cosponsors will join the Republicans in voting for cloture.” A vote to accomplish that requires 60 senators.
Furthermore, sources said that not all 55 Senate Republicans are “enthusiastic” about the measure.
On Friday,
WorldNetDaily reported that three of them — Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, Sen. Jim Jeffords, R-Vt., and Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I. — were leaning towards opposing cloture. Since then, sources told WorldNetDaily that Voinovich “has definitely informed the leaders he will vote with the Democrats [while] Sen. Jeffords and [now] Sen. Ted Stevens [R-Alaska] are said to be wobbly.”
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio |
Calls to Voinovich’s office went unanswered on Friday, but at least one other source said he will vote against Republicans next week.
If the measure is voted down, sources said that also could play into the GOP’s hands.
“Republican strategists will prefer defeat on a compromise, knowing they will force a record vote on Democratic senators who are facing re-election this fall,” one source told WorldNetDaily. “They will bet on [Texas Gov.] George Bush [the likely Republican presidential nominee] winning the presidency, partly on this issue.”
Then, the analyst said, Republicans could count on “scrapping the estate tax next year with even more favorable terms than in the House bill.”
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