A little snip of the estate tax and we're good to go [View All]

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. . . right?

All that rhetoric from House Democrats about 'core principles betrayed' . . . the changes they seek make their quibbles look like grandstanding.

Estate tax emerges as key Democratic beef in Obama's compromise
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Washington (CNN) -- House Democrats will allow a vote on the tax compromise reached by President Barack Obama and Republicans but will try to change the deal, especially an estate tax provision they believe is beneficial to the wealthy, one of their leaders said Sunday.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told reporters that the package will get a vote in the House despite a threat by House Democrats last week to prevent it from reaching the floor.

Van Hollen said the main concern of House Democrats is the estate tax, which expired for 2010 but was set to be restored in 2011 at a rate of 55%, with inheritances under $1 million exempted. A bill that passed in the House set the tax rate at 45% and exempted inheritances under $3.5 million, while the provision in the tax deal would exempt estates up to $5 million and set the tax rate at 35%.

"It did not have to be part of the overall deal," Van Hollen said of the estate tax provision pushed by Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona. "The Republicans never said if we don't get the Kyl estate tax that the deal is off the table."

read: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/12/tax.plan/


House Democrats are free to do what they want with the Senate bill, including nothing. It looks like they chose the 'tweak' option where they clip off a few items and declare they've preserved their 'core principles'.

They never had any intention of letting the cuts expire. They just sat around to a month before the deadline and waited for the President to step up and take the heat for something they intended to do all along. All of their grandstanding against the President means nothing if they just tweak his bill and pass it back.