Graham Repeats Lie That Estate Tax is Going to Devastate Small Businesses and Family Farms
If it's Sunday, it's another week of Republican politicians repeating more of their lies on the bobblehead shows. Lindsey Graham really wants to keep those Bush tax cuts in place and when asked by David Gregory if there's any way the Republicans will compromise with the Democrats on taxes, he offers up being willing to work with them on the "death tax" -- or the more aptly named estate tax, as it used to be called before the Republicans started paying Frank Luntz -- which he claims needs to be fixed before it's reinstated to "prevent devastation to small business and family farms."
GREGORY: Is there room for compromise on tax cuts? Say, if the president were to extend all the tax cuts for a period of a couple of years, would that be able to attract Republican support?
GRAHAM: It might. There's certainly some room to compromise on the death tax. In January it goes back to 55 percent, at the end of this year it's at 0. So maybe you could find a way to compromise on the death tax to have something below 55 percent, a $5 or $6 million exemption for American families out there that would prevent devastation to small business and family farms. But if the--the idea of increasing taxes now, David, makes no sense to most people.
And the agenda the president and his Democratic colleagues has offered the country has increased the deficit, increased the role of the federal government. And he ran as a centrist, and most Americans would say, "Well, I never believed he would do all this." And everything has been so partisan. There was a bipartisan bill on health care, Wyden-Bennett, that was rejected. Senator McCain had a $450 billion stimulus bill. But we didn't go down any of these compromise roses--roads, just big government, more spending. And the Democrats don't have a whole lot to talk about going into November other than more debt and more government.
That's some major projection Graham's got going on there when it comes to partisanship and the failure to compromise. He needs to go take a look in the mirror if he wants to see what a partisan hack looks like. And The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has more on why Graham's statements about the estate tax are ridiculous. It doesn't need to be fixed so that it doesn't "devastate family farms". It didn't do that before and won't after it is reinstated next year.
