Tractor Pulls Veto-Bound Estate Tax Bill to Clinton

With a theatrical flourish, Republican congressional leaders sent President Clinton legislation Thursday to abolish federal estate taxes, continuing their orchestrated efforts to boost the party’s anti-tax message, despite a promised veto.

The bill, which Congress approved more than a month ago, was carted from Capitol Hill to the White House aboard a red tractor driven by a Montana farmer. The GOP-chosen courier dramatized the claims of proponents that repealing the estate tax would help families hold on to farms that might otherwise face steep taxes when their owners die.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), scoffing at Clinton’s pledge to veto the bill, denounced the estate tax as “the way the government snatches a lifetime of labor away from the widows and children who inherit family farms and businesses.”

Clinton and other critics have maintained that the bill would grant a huge tax cut to wealthy families while doing little to help the poor and the middle class.

Although both houses approved the legislation by wide majorities, the margin in the Senate fell short of the two-thirds needed to override a veto.

Lott and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) held on to the bill during this summer’s national political conventions as part of a GOP strategy to force Clinton to consider a series of tax-cutting bills one at a time. Republicans hope that as Clinton carries out his vetoes political momentum will build for the tax-cutting platform that George W. Bush has embraced as the GOP’s presidential nominee.

Earlier this month, Clinton vetoed a bill that would have cut taxes for married couples. That bill was sent to him just before the Republican National Convention by a couple in wedding garb riding in a car decorated with a “just married” poster. He also has threatened to veto another measure working its way through Congress that calls for cutting the tax paid by some Social Security recipients on their benefits.

Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee, has supported Clinton’s contention that the tax cuts would undermine the fiscal discipline that has produced a period of budget surpluses during a booming economy. Bush supports the GOP bills and has made a proposed $1.3-trillion, 10-year tax-cut plan a key component of his campaign agenda.

White House spokesman Jake Siewert reiterated Clinton’s intention to veto the estate tax bill, predicting Thursday that the president will do so today or early next week.

“I don’t think we’ll waste a lot of time thinking about it,” Siewert said. “This is a bill that’s too expensive, that explodes in costs at a time when we can least afford it.”

The bill would reduce estate tax rates over 10 years, with elimination coming in 2010. The Treasury Department has estimated that the government would lose $105 billion during the phaseout and $750 billion in the decade after the tax ended.

Under current law, inheritances worth less than $675,000 are exempt from the estate tax, a figure that will rise to $1 million by 2006. The tax rate on eligible estates follows a sliding scale, ranging from 37% to 55%.

Only about 2% of families of those who die pay the tax. But many others escape the tax only after paying accountants and lawyers to help plan their estates.

In the House, 65 Democrats broke with their leaders to vote for the repeal, giving the measure a more than two-thirds majority and indicating the issue’s growing popularity for people who have seen the value of their businesses, homes and stock portfolios rise steadily in recent years--toward or over the threshold of taxation.

It is unclear whether House Democratic leaders could regroup to find the votes to sustain a veto. But the veto-sustaining margin in the Senate seems firmer. The vote there was 59 to 39, with nine Democrats, including California’s Dianne Feinstein, supporting it. Democratic nose-counters say they have not detected any further erosion in their party’s opposition to the bill. “We’re not worried,” said Ranit Schmelzer, spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).