The mavericky Maverick is at it again, making a reasoned adjustment switching flip-flopping his position on the estate tax. While he was just another Senator he bucked his party, sounding like he had common sense and speaking out against the small fraction of people that wanted to do away with a tax on estates that are worth millions and billions of dollars. Now that he is running and trying to hold on to the conservative base, his views are-a-changin'.
From Crooks and Liars:
McCain used to see through this nonsense.
“In his 1906 State of the Union Address, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed the creation of a federal inheritance tax . Roosevelt explained: ‘The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.’ Additionally, in a 1907 speech he said: ‘Most great civilized countries have an income tax and an inheritance tax. In my judgment both should be part of our system of federal taxation.’ He noted, however, that such taxation should ‘be aimed merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits.’
“I agree with President Roosevelt, and I remain opposed to full repeal of the estate tax.”
That is, until he became the Republican presidential nominee. Now, McCain finds the estate tax offensive.
“Another of my disagreements with Senator Obama concerns the estate tax, which he proposes to increase to a top rate of 55 percent. The estate tax is one of the most unfair tax laws on the books, and the first step to reform is to keep it predictable and keep it low. After a lifetime building up a business, and paying taxes on every dollar that business earns, that asset should not be subjected to a confiscatory tax.”
Why, it’s almost as if McCain were some kind of flip-flopper or something. Heaven forbid.
Maybe Teddy Roosevelt was just another red communist who wanted to penalize all those "hard working" Americans who have millions of dollars socked away. Why would Obama want to be in favor of stripping elite families of a portion of the wealth they didn't earn. Earning a living is a terrible thing when you can just be born or marry into it.
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