The following article by Tory Newmyer was posted on the Washington Post website December 8, 2017:
If you didn’t know better, you might think some Republicans were trying to see how low they can drive public support for their tax plan.
It’s already basement-dwelling, with lopsided majorities of voters consistently telling pollsters the GOP’s rewrite of the code will benefit the wealthy more than the middle class. On Thursday, 54 House Republicans banded together behind a push seemingly tailor-made to reinforce the suspicion.
Their request, laid out in a letter to their leadership: to insist in conference negotiations on maintaining the House tax bill’s full repeal of the estate tax, rather than the Senate version, which doubles the current exemption to $22 million for couples.
“I get all the political arguments over, ‘Hey it’s an easier political deal to do it this way,’ particularly given the perceptions with the president,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), who organized the letter, tells me, referring to estimates that full repeal would save President Trump’s heirs $1.1 billion. “But the reality is, this is just a fundamental issue about, to me, a tax that seems immoral… It’s been a long-term Republican platform position. To me, it’s important to do the things we said we were going to do.” Continue reading “The Finance 202: GOP drive to repeal estate tax risks making its tax plan more unpopular”