The Paris Hilton Relief Act of 2005

Haven't heard yet if the act to repeal the estate tax permanently has passed in the House, but even if it didn't today, it seems to be on the cusp of passing.

I admit it, I don't get it. Smarter guys than me seem baffled as well. Why, in poll after poll, Americans are opposed to the Estate Tax on principle? It is bizarre. I simply don't believe "framing" it as "the death tax" is the only reason (though I think it was pretty effective in changing the debate and obscuring the facts). The idea that Americans are in favor of allowing the indolent off-spring of the rich to gain their inheritence tax-free is bizarre.

Anyway, Jonathan Weisman has an interesting history of the forces for repealing the act, which were originally funded by the Gallo and Mars Candy fortunes.

In 1992, when heirs to the Mars Inc. fortune joined a few other wealthy families to hire the law firm Patton Boggs LLP to lobby for estate tax repeal, the joke on K Street was that few Washington sightseers had paid so much for a fruitless tour of the Capitol.

Today, the House is expected to vote to permanently repeal the estate tax, moving the Mars candy, Gallo wine and Campbell soup fortunes one step closer to a goal that once seemed quixotic at best: ending all taxation on inheritances.

"I think this train has an awful lot of momentum," said Yale University law professor Michael J. Graetz, a former senior official in the Treasury Department of President George H.W. Bush.

Last month, Graetz and Yale political scientist Ian Shapiro published "Death By A Thousand Cuts," chronicling the estate tax repeal movement as "a mystery about politics and persuasion."

"For almost a century, the estate tax affected only the richest 1 or 2 percent of citizens, encouraged charity, and placed no burden on the vast majority of Americans," they wrote. "A law that constituted the blandest kind of common sense for most of the twentieth century was transformed, in the space of little more than a decade, into the supposed enemy of hardworking citizens all over this country."

The secret of the repeal movement's success has been its appeal to principle over economics. While repeal opponents bellowed that only the richest of the rich would ever pay the estate tax, proponents appealed to Americans' sense of fairness, that individuals have the natural right to pass on their wealth to their children.

When you think of the small percentage of Americans who actually pay Estate Taxes each year, and compare that with the amount of tax revenue that will be lost if it repealed, it is just staggering.

You know, I'm beginning to think that Americans have got just the government they deserve. And their kids will be proud when the time comes to pay the bills.