Rich = Richer = Even Richer!

Another $290 billion in irresponsible tax cuts. But who's counting? (Obviously not Congress).

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Republicans on Wednesday pushed to make permanent a one-year reprieve on estate taxes, a change that Democrats said would reward the wealthiest families and increase the federal deficit by tens of billions of dollars annually. Current laws would eliminate the estate tax in 2010, only to resurrect it the following year. Republican lawmakers want to keep the repeal in place, decreasing government revenue by roughly $290 billion over a decade.

Look, the estate tax (a) impacts a very small number of people, (b) helps to maintain what's left of a progressive tax system, (c) has never resulted in the loss of A SINGLE FAMILY FARM -- NOT ONE!, and (d) is a legitimate way to prevent the dangerous consolidation of wealth in a democratic society. Wealthy folks already have all kinds of ways to establish trusts and other ways to pass wealth on to their heirs; eliminating the estate tax -- at a cost of nearly $300 billion just over the next 10 years -- is so heroically irresponsible that I'm pounding the keys of my laptop as if it might make a difference.

Oh, and this is just rich (pun intended):

"Eliminating the death tax is a matter of basic fairness," President Bush said.

Yeah, if you think "fairness" means asking working Americans to shoulder more of the tax burden. Once again, policies that favor the wealthy and powerful at the expense of regular folks are being cheered by regular folks. Insanity. Or, to coin a phrase, "Reason Gone Mad."