Washington's two U.S. senators, both Democrats, can be relied upon to agree on a number of issues. Last week, they both cast decisive votes modifying the estate tax to go easier on the few wealthy heirs it affects.
In its passage of the 2010 federal budget, the Senate voted 51-48 to reduce the tax rate and raise the threshold on the inheritors of wealth next year. While it's not binding now, the vote acts as a prelude to future debates about the estate tax, Ben Secord noted on Schmudget, the blog of the Washington State Budget and Policy Center. And if the amendment became law, the government would lose an estimated $440 billion in revenue from taxed estates from 2012 to 2021.
Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray were two of 10 Democrats who sided with Republicans to pass the amendment.
Murray, says spokesperson Matt McAlvanah, "is working on a realistic bipartisan approach" toward the estate tax, which, due to a sunset provision in a 2001 bill, is set to disappear in 2010, then reappear again the next year in its pre-2001 form, taxing all estates valued at or above $1 million. The tax currently affects estates worth $3.5 million or more.
The prospect of the estate tax disappearing entirely, says McAlvanah, pushed Murray into playing defense.
"It's certainly true that going into a year with a potential repeal, it's important to have the revenue in place," he says. In the revised amendment, "We were looking at a compromise level."
Lee Farris, United for a Fair Economy's point person on the estate tax, says that's a bogus argument.
"They don't need some bipartisan Kum Ba Yah," she says. "They need the Democrats to stick together and they need one or two Republicans."
Fair Economy's own proposal would set the tax's threshold at $2 million and raise the rates to 45-55 percent. President Obama's own proposal is less aggressive, holding the tax structure and rates at 2009 levels, with a $3.5 million threshold and a 45 percent rate.
Calls to Cantwell were not returned. Farris suggests that readers contact the senators' offices directly to tell them what they think of the vote.