Reading today’s New York Times editorial on the Lincoln-Kyl proposal to cut estate taxes to the tune of $250 billion, I wondered about what kind of reward these politicians hope to get for their sponsorship of such a plan. According to CNN, Arizona (from which Sen. Kyl hails) had more foreclosures in the first two months of 2009 than every state except California and Florida. And it’s not even a very big state! And Arkansas, the home of Sen. Lincoln, has the third lowest median household income, beating out only West Virginia and Mississippi. Meanwhile, the estate tax reaches just 0.2% of all taxpayers; Obama’s budget imposes the tax only on couples with estates worth $7 million and individuals with estates worth $3.5 million, which is to say, not a whole lot of people in Arizona and Arkansas.
So I ask, are these politicians completely detached from the interests of their constituents? Or do Sens. Kyl and Lincoln think that a tax cut for multi-millionaires is really how their constituents want them to spend $250 billion?
But maybe these questions are naive. In all likelihood, the people of Arizona and Arkansas will never hear about their representatives’ sop to the uber-rich, because it probably won’t pass and they’ve got other things to worry about. And so the real question is, how do we end up with politicians who think, in their heart of hearts, that the best way to spend $250 billion in the middle of a deep recession that is hurting middle-class families across the country (and especially in their home states) is to hand out more money to the sons and daughters of the richest of the rich?
UPDATE: Well, it looks like we might have an explanation for Sen. Lincoln’s behavior, at least. The Waltons, the Arkansas family whose patriarch founded Wal-Mart, are funding the estate tax campaign. Just for fun, I checked OpenSecrets.org to see what politicians the Waltons regularly contribute to. Most of the family’s largesse goes to Republican senators and senatorial candidates, as well as the NRSC, NRCC, RNC, and various state Republican causes. But they also sent $57,000 to something called the DNC Services Corporation and, yes indeed, three donations of $2,300 to Sen. Blanche Lincoln. Lincoln has an election coming up in 19 months. This, right here, is why I support public financing of elections.