mr. speaker , i thank the gentleman for yielding me time . 
mr. speaker , i was very interested in the last presentation . 
the bottom line was , he did not pay a tax . 
all that story , all those facts , and he did not pay a tax . 
he did pay his accountant some money to go through and make sure that he was doing what was right . 
he did that because the tax code is extraordinarily complicated and has been made 25 percent more complicated by the republican majority over just the last 48 months . 
mr. speaker , let us be absolutely crystal clear : this republican proposal is nothing but a tax increase . 
hear me , this is a tax increase disguised as a tax cut . 
`` who are you , mr. hoyer ? 
lewis carroll ? 
what is this gibberish that you are talking about ? 
`` it would raise taxes for thousands of families and thousands of family farmers and small businesses . 
there are no two ways about it . 
for years , house republicans have proclaimed that the elimination of the inheritance tax , a tax , now hear me on this side of the aisle , i know you want to hear this , a tax first proposed by theodore roosevelt in 1906 . 
now for those of you who may not be quite fully cognizant of our history , theodore roosevelt , of course , was a republican president of the united states of america . 
it was intended to save family farms and small businesses . 
but , today , not according to the gentleman from maryland ( mr. hoyer ) xz4001890 , not according to the gentleman from north dakota ( mr. pomeroy ) xz4003230 , not according to all the democrats in this house or in the senate , according to the republican department of agriculture , i tell my friend from missouri , the republican department of agriculture says more farm estates would have increased tax liability from the carryover basis rules in this bill than would benefit from repeal of the inheritance tax . 
in other words , if we pass this bill , family farmers and small businesses are going to pay more taxes . 
now , i am for the pomeroy alternative . 
first of all , we do not have that complicated look-back to find out what the basis was 10 , 20 , 30 , 40 , 50 years ago . 
we do as we do now , what is the basis now when you get it ? 
but we exempt under the substitute offered by the gentleman from north dakota ( mr. pomeroy ) xz4003230 $ 7 million . 
that means that 99.7 percent of the people in america would never pay an estate tax . 
i am for that . 
so this argument , i tell my friend from missouri , is about the three-tenths of 1 percent of the very largest estates in america . 
because if you vote for pomeroy , 99.7 percent are exempt . 
so , as we have been doing for the last 4 years , we have been talking about the upper 1 percent . 
that is who we are talking about . 
now we are pretty well off in congress . 
the american people do pretty well by us , very frankly . 
i am doing well enough . 
i paid a little bit of alternative minimum tax this year . 
it shocked me , but my accountant pointed out that i did . 
so we are doing pretty well . 
but there are a whole lot of people that are not doing nearly as well as we are doing , and we are not helping them at all by simply giving away revenue that we could spend on the education of their kids and the defense of their country , which we are borrowing for , of course , so that their kids will pay the debts . 
mr. speaker , under current law , the joint economic committee estimates that only 7 , 500 estates , in a nation of 290 million people where some 3 million people die every year , 7 , 500 estates out of the 3 million people that die would have any estate tax liability in 2009 . 
however , the permanent switch to carryover basis rules , rules that are used to calculate cap gains , would impact an estimated 71 , 000 additional estates , and many of those estates would face capital gains tax increases . 
now even as this bill increases the capital gains tax on many farm estates and small businesses , i tell my friend , it still adheres to what seems to be the republican party 's core economic principle : fiscal irresponsibility . 
the gentleman says this tax , that tax , and he is right . 
there are a lot of taxes on all of us , and we have a lot of services in this country . 
and , frankly , for the most part , as the gentleman knows , particularly if you take the industrialized nations , our tax structure at the federal level is lower . 
but , still , they are high , and we would like to see them reduced . 
but the fact of the matter is , i have three children , three daughters , they are wonderful people , and they provided me with three grandchildren . 
and i am buying stuff . 
i am buying defense against terrorists , i am buying stabilizing iraq , i am buying education , i am buying health care , i am buying roads . 
all of us are buying that . 
i do not want to have to say to my grandchildren , look , i am going to use it , but you pay for it . 
that is an immoral policy as well as a fiscally irresponsible one , an unwillingness to pay our bills . 
now , this is $ 290 billion . 
just $ 29 billion a year over 10 years . 
no sweat . 
shoot , we are borrowing all the social security money right now that the republicans said they were not going to spend a nickel of . 
they are going to spend $ 170 billion of social security money this year alone . 
how do we do that ? 
we borrowed $ 118 billion last february , from foreigners mostly , which we are putting our kids deeply in hock to china , to japan , to germany . 
at a time of record budget deficits of nearly half a trillion dollars , this republican bill would cost nearly $ 1 trillion over the first 10 years of full repeal . 
it would irresponsibly drive our nation even further into debt and immorally force our children to continue to be liable for our bills . 
in sharp contrast , i tell my friend from missouri , and i wish there were more people on this floor , but it is only giving away , you know , $ 250 billion to $ 1 trillion . 
what do we care ? 
we have given away trillions of dollars over the last 4 years as we go trillions of dollars into debt . 
as a matter of fact , $ 9 trillion into debt . 
the substitute offered by the gentleman from north dakota ( mr. pomeroy ) xz4003230 is excellent . 
it costs less than one-third of this republican bill . 
it would permanently increase the current exclusion amounts to $ 3.5 million per individual and $ 7 million for couples . 
three-tenths of the estates would be left in 2009 and , as a result , exempt 99.7 percent of all estates from estate tax liability . 
mr. speaker , i congratulate the gentleman from north dakota ( mr. pomeroy ) xz4003230 for this alternative . 
it solves the problems of small farmers , it solves the problems of small businesses , it solves the problems of pretty significant but nevertheless smaller estates , to make sure that the hard work of mom and dad can be passed along to their daughter and their son and their son 's and daughter 's families . 
we agree with the gentleman from missouri ( mr. hulshof ) xz4001900 that that is a good objective , but we also agree that we ought to have fiscally responsible policies . 
