What´s wrong with Democrats these days? They used to like any and all tax increases.

It seems that communism is coming back to bite the communists.

What people are missing is Obama keeps adding poison pills to this deal which make them impossible for republicans to agree with. Now he wants $255 billion in more stimulus and he´s also working on something to soften the blow to rich people he claims to hate. The point is he wants the fiscal cliff to happen to devastate the military and other tax brackets will endure big increases.

Obama´s real distribution is from the white middle class to rich and poor liberals,period.The whole motivation behind all this is the left thinks the middle class has had it too good. They´re not intent on raising the lower classes up but bring everybody else down to their level while the ruling class elites are awash in money.

Landrieu is up for reelection and I suspect there´s a lot of family farmers in La. who especially hate the death tax.When family farms have to sell them to pay the death tax,they are bought up by farming conglomerates who then reap free money from ethanol subsidies.

A Washington representative´s first loyalty should be to the Constitution and what enhances the freedom of the American people. This is a no brainer, but increasingly Americans find themselves at odds with their government. It didn´t start out this way.

"The proposal—which would raise $276 billion over 10 years, according to the Tax Policy Center"

This is beyond stupid. The entire objection to the tax is that most heirs don´t have the money to pay the tax, so they have to sell the assets. The increased tax will never be collected !! Plus, after sale, many of the assets which are producing income will produce less, further damaging the economy.

sorry @2..
apparently it depends on your lawyers..
MN Gov. Mark Dayton and his three brothers share a SOUTH DAKOTA administered trust.. of FIVE BILLION DOLLARS..

Oh oh...starting to affect their bank accts..

They´ll cave. Dems always do. If Dingy Harry doesn´t need their votes, he may cut them some slack and allow them to vote against it.

Politics maybe the only field where one can become rich doing the wrong thing, for the wrong reasons, in the wrong way.

Facts, logic, rationality -- all out the window, all kicked aside in favor of power-seeking by the pols.

1. Only legitimate purpose of Federal taxation is to fund the few legitimate areas of authority delegated to the Feds under the Constitution. Therefore taxes should be broad-based and simple.
2. Though often called "social engineering" in the past, and "fairness" today, the better term is "influence peddling."
3. I have read that is actually costs more to administer and collect the estate tax than it brings in. That´s not hard to believe. At best, the revenue raised is small; the tax certainly hits only a small number of people and families, though it hits them harshly; and the property taxed has already been taxed several times in most cases.
4. "Fairness" is utterly unacceptable as a test or measure of the propriety of a tax or other law. "Fairness" is wholly subjective; is impossible to define with any consistency; and can be made to fit [or disguise?] just about any agenda.
5. Any tax rate above, say, ten percent should immediately be eyed with suspicion. [Aren´t the reasons obvious?]

Right now there is a farmland bubble that family farmers have no control over in many states. While their farmland is now valued at over one million, in most other ways they are just regular people who work for and earn a living off that land that usually has been in the family for generations.

If the one million, 55% tax rate, comes into affect in January, when an owner dies, the family will never be able to come up with enough money to pay off the 55% tax. So the farmland will have to be sold, and most times it will be purchased by farming corporations, some actually owned by foreign interests, with the farm families now living on that land loosing their longtime source of income. At least up until now, that has never been the American way.

Demonrats have huge ill gotten estates. No wonder they oppose the goobermint taking it all.