mr. speaker , i thank my good friend , the gentleman from missouri ( mr. hulshof ) xz4001900 , for yielding to me and for the great work he has done on this issue from the day we came to congress 8 years ago . 
i rise in support of the bill that would repeal this tax . 
the house and senate are already both on record for repealing the tax . 
we just did not repeal it permanently . 
by not repealing the tax permanently , we created an incredible situation for those people who would have an estate that was not taxable at all in 2010 , but is highly taxable in 2011 . 
the alternatives that the other side of the aisle have discovered during the hard work to achieve the goal of this bill are certainly a long way from where they were a few years ago . 
in fact , we have all heard about the impact on small businesses and family farms , but it bears repeating as we consider this legislation today . 
more than 70 percent of family businesses do not survive the second generation , and 87 percent do not make it to the third generation because of the estate tax . 
the idea that you give your son $ 2 million overlooks the vast numbers of family members in this country who actually are working side by side with their son or daughter . 
it is hard to tell who made the money and who did not , but on the day that the original member of the family passes away , suddenly the side-by-side partner has a big problem . 
family farms and businesses are among the hardest hit . 
in fact , $ 2 million is quite a bit below the alternative that the gentleman will vote for and suggests that amount somehow would be okay to give in his vote , but not okay to give in his speech . 
add in the value of farm equipment and business inventory , suddenly there is a lot more money than you thought you could accumulate . 
when we started this debate a few years ago , i saw some statistics that the highest percentage of estates paying at that time were estates that were only slightly above the estate tax amount , but i am sure none of the principals involved had any idea that they had accumulated over their lifetime an estate that would be taxed as a taxable estate . 
on friday of this week , i am going to visit with mark and kim larson who own a family farm right outside of joplin in my district . 
mark tells me he and his family spend a lot of money , money which would otherwise go into continuing to grow their family business , simply trying to comply with a tax code that says if somebody dies in 2010 , your family deals with one set of circumstances ; but if they die the next year , you are impacted by the return of the death tax . 
medium-to-large farms like the larsons ' produce more than 80 percent of agricultural products in america . 
let us put some certainty in the future for those kinds of families . 
let us do the right thing and abolish this tax that penalizes savings and hard work . 
