I think everyone should check out this editorial that appeared in today’s Washington Post.

It outlines a convincing and reasonable argument in defense of keeping the Estate Tax. Repealing a Tax in this time of severe deficit is both reckless and stupid. This Tax helps level the playing field, keeps the middle and upper class gap just a little bit closer, and provides valuable economic resources to our cash-strapped government.

To repeal this Tax would be foolish and indefensible.

“For most of the past century, the case for the estate tax was regarded as self-evident. People understood that government has to be paid for, and that it makes sense to raise part of the money from a tax on "fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits," as Theodore Roosevelt put it. The United States is supposed to be a country that values individuals for their inherent worth, not for their inherited worth. The estate tax, like a cigarette tax or a carbon tax, is a tool for reducing a socially damaging phenomenon -- the emergence of a hereditary upper class -- as well as a way of raising money.”

I would encourage all of you to write your Senators, who will vote on this sometime this week, and explain to them the madness behind eliminating the estate tax. If the Republicans want to run our country into the ground economically (even further than they have) then they should at least be forced to leave the means to pay for the clean-up of their mess.

Here's a link to send something about this to Orrin Hatch.