mr. speaker , i thank my colleague , the gentleman from massachusetts , for leading the debate on this important rule in this fashion .  i will just respond to my friend , the gentleman from indiana ( mr. pence )  , the preceding speaker .  it is important that we talk about real facts today and , honest to goodness , some of the language does not reflect what reality would be relative to the estate tax if you would pass the pomeroy substitute and set it at $ 6 million per couple , taking care of , making estate tax completely go away for 99.7 percent of the people in this country .  language like `` waging war on small business '' and the majority reason for why small family farms do not pass on , 99.7 percent have no , absolutely no estate tax under the proposal that we are advancing .  clearly , that language does not match the facts of the proposal that we have advanced .  we heard about the immorality of taxing for the wealthiest three out of the 1 , 000 estates in this country .  i believe another immorality is on the floor today , and that is the immorality of privatizing social security and reducing the benefits of social security for our children and grandchildren .  an essential part of the social security debate is changing the inflation index that would reduce the benefit for our subsequent generations .  in my opinion , that is immoral .  what i think we ought to have captured in this debate on estate tax is the trade-off , because they say it is just estate tax ; believe me , it is also social security .  if you take $ 290 billion out of the budget for the wealthiest three out of 1 , 000 , you impact the ability to fix social security for everybody else .  and the proposal i would like considered before the house is , let us give immediate and certain estate tax relief , 6 million per couple , and let us capture the amount over that dedicated to social security .  that would fill 40 percent of the unfunded liabilities .  in context , we are looking at a 75-year solvency figure that the president has found so troublesome he wants to privatize social security .  well , by dedicating the sums that we capture with this three-tenths of 1 percent , we could fill 40 percent of the hole on social security .  we would not have to cut benefits for our children .  we would not have to cut benefits for our grandchildren .  so what we have is a very reasonable proposal going forward .  let us make the estate tax go away for 99.7 percent of the estates in this country .  let us not impose new capital gains taxes at the time of estates , and let us dedicate the difference to addressing social security .  it brings us almost halfway there in terms of keeping all of the guarantees , while meeting the funding challenge over the next 75 years .  that is what is advanced by the minority proposal in this debate , and i hope it will get my colleagues ' close consideration .  