From The Wall Street Journal today:

More than 250 current congressional candidates, mostly Republicans, have signed a pledge this year to support elimination of the tax, according to the advocacy group sponsoring the effort. The signers include 53 incumbents and more than half of Republicans running for House and Senate. During the 2008 elections, when the group first began seeking supporters, only 30 candidates signed up…

Of the 260 candidates for the Nov. 2 elections who have signed the pledge to eliminate the tax, 253 are Republicans, and two are Democrats, according the American Family Business Institute, the advocacy group behind it.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), a leader of the repeal camp in the Senate, said he hoped the 2010 elections would generate "the momentum to finally kill the death tax for good," using the conservative shorthand for the estate tax. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who is leading a drive by congressional liberals for higher rates on large estates, called the repeal effort "morally obscene." But he said in an interview he was worried by its renewed momentum.

  The cost of full repeal over the next decade would be more than $400 billion. Ah, so much for the cause of "deficit" reduction (for the record, I don’t buy the whole "deficit" and "debt" crisis nonsense).

  Contrast the loony idea of giving even more money to billionaires with Bernie Sanders’ proposal:

Exempt the first $3.5 million of an estate from federal taxation ($7 million for couples), the same exemption that existed in 2009.  That would leave 99.75 percent of all estates exempt from the federal estate tax next year.

•     Create a progressive rate so the super wealthy pay more.  The tax rate for estates valued between $3.5 million and $10 million would be 45 percent, the same as the 2009 level.  The rate on estates worth more than $10 million and below $50 million would be 50 percent, and the rate on estates worth more than $50 million would be 55 percent.

•     Include a billionaire’s surtax of 10 percent.  According to Forbes Magazine, there are only 403 billionaires in the United States with a collective net worth of $1.3 trillion.  Clearly, the heirs to these multi-billion fortunes should be paying a higher estate tax rate than others.

•    Close estate and gift tax loopholes as President Obama proposed in his budget for next year. The White House estimated that closing the loopholes would generate at least $23.7 billion in revenue over 10 years.

•     Protect family farmers by allowing them to lower the value of their farmland by up to $3 million for estate tax purposes. The bill also would increase the maximum exclusion for conservation easements to $2 million.  The non-partisan Tax Policy Center has estimated that only 80 small businesses and farm estates throughout the country paid an estate tax in 2009, affecting only three out of every 100,000 people who passed away.

  And, please, let’s shelve the sad phony stories about the risks to the family farm, as Citizen for Tax Justice points out:

The provisions of the estate tax rules scheduled to come back into effect on January 1, 2011 already have substantial breaks targeted to family farms and closely-held businesses including special valuation rules and a 14-year period over which to pay related estate taxes. These rules, along with a $3.5 million per person exemption (the 2009 level which is expected to be enacted for 2011 and subsequent years), would completely shelter a family farm valued at up to $9 million from estate tax. Considering more generous estate tax rules for farms should not even be on the agenda when the country has so many other pressing needs.

  So, make no mistake about it: this election is about whether there will be more robbery by some of the wealthiest people in America.

  Their greed has no boundaries.