Letter to the Editor - Southern Style

Times Daily - Florence, AL

Related Post:
Jeff Sessions Looking for a Corpse

Getting richer

Alabama's "grave robbing" Republican senator, Jeff Sessions, has disgraced the dignified office of United States senator. He hoped to raid a proverbial morgue for his own self-seeking and special interests' motives.

Time magazine reported he recently sought to use deceased wealthy business owner victims of Hurricane Katrina as pawns in his attempt to permanently eliminate tax responsibility for those who get money they do not earn. He's lost touch with Alabama's values and constituents.

According to the Internal Revenue Service's Web site, estate taxes are only applicable to people who have died after 2002, with estates valued in excess of $1 million and $1.5 million in 2004 or 2005. Gift taxes are only applicable to those who have received gifts valued in excess of $10,000, and accounts for only about 2 percent of all estates. In 2004, less than 1 percent of those who died that year paid an estate tax, and half the money it brought in was from estates worth $10 million-plus.

Seventy percent of America's 105 million households earn less than $50,000 per year and only 4 million have a net worth of $1 million or more. While 30 percent of all Americans earn $50,000 or more per year, they still do not manage to attain the elite status of "millionaire."

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. accurately named the Republican-led effort the "Paris Hilton Tax Cut" after the sex-flaunting young hotel heiress who neither earned the money that supports her excesses, nor has worked a day in her life.

Is it just to allow certain people to not pay taxes on money they did not work to earn? If they don't have to pay taxes on their windfall, why should lottery winners be required to pay for their winnings? Neither one worked to earn the money.

To hear Sessions or other congressional Republicans say otherwise is as if they are telling us to "get back to work, you poor working class slobs, and stop whining about your $3 per gallon gasoline, and go make some more money for your masters!"

Kevin * *****

Elgin