Wealthiest Americans, Spending Millions to Save Billions, Taxes & Truth

[Stinger2]

Wealthiest Americans. Spending Millions to Save Billions, Taxes & Truth


The Campaign of the Super Wealthy to Kill the Estate Tax
Congress Watch
April 2006


Public Citizen’s Congress Watch & United for a Fair Economy: Spending Millions to Save Billions
14
Section II: How the Super-Wealthy Families
Have Fought for Repeal
The super-wealthy families pressing for repeal of the estate tax have marshaled a tremendous
lobbying juggernaut that has reported nearly a half-billion dollars in lobbying expenditures
($490.3 million) since 1998, the earliest year for which lobbying disclosure data is available
online.
17
The absence of precise lobbying disclosure requirements makes it impossible to
calculate the amount spent lobbying specifically on the estate tax, but the total would almost
certainly come to tens of millions of dollars.
The families have also helped finance groups that have spent millions of dollars on
advertisements in an attempt to sway public opinion.
These families have served as the engine of the anti estate tax campaign by:
• Providing money to outside groups that have lobbied members of Congress on the estate
tax or run anti-estate tax ads, a practice commonly known as grassroots lobbying;
• Hiring lobbying firms with money from their own fortunes or deploying their companies’
lobbyists to press the case for repeal on Capitol Hill;
• Helping coordinate the anti-estate tax lobbying efforts of the trade associations to which
their companies belong; and
• Helping form, then riding the coattails of, a massive anti-estate tax business coalition
consisting primarily of trade associations.
The Super-Wealthy Families Have Financed Outside Groups
The families identified in this report have provided funding to at least four outside groups – the
Policy and Taxation Group, the American Family Business Institute, the Club for Growth, and
Citizens for a Sound Economy (now FreedomWorks) – that have either lobbied on the estate tax,
run anti-estate tax advertisements, or both.
A fifth group, the Free Enterprise Fund, was founded by the former president of the Club for
Growth and partnered with the American Family Business Institute on a $7 million ad campaign
in 2005.
18


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Public Citizen’s Congress Watch & United for a Fair Economy: Spending Millions to Save Billions
15
Figure 3: Anti-Estate Tax Groups Financed by the Super-Wealthy Families
Group
Known
Family
Funders
Group Has Reported
Lobbying On the
Estate Tax?
Group Has Run Ads
Against the
Estate Tax?
American Family
Business Institute
Harbert family has
contributed more than
$500,000.
Yes ($1.5 million in
reported expenditures,
solely on the estate tax,
since 1998)
Yes (Group has
sponsored or co-
sponsored at least three
ad campaigns, including a
$7 million campaign in
summer 2005)
Citizens for a Sound
Economy (now Freedom
Works)
Koch family foundations
have contributed more
than $12 million.
Yes (Group has reported
lobbying on the estate tax
in five years since 1998)
No
Club for Growth
Stephens family has
contributed nearly $1.4
million.
No
Yes (Group has run at
least two anti-estate tax
ad campaigns)
Policy and Taxation
Group
Allyn-Soderberg,
Dorrance, Gallo, Koch,
Mars, Mayer, Sobrato
(amounts unknown)
Yes ($4.1 million in
reported expenditures,
solely on the estate tax,
since 1998)
No
Policy and Taxation Group
Pat Soldano, an Orange County, Calif., estate planner is invariably cited in accounts on the estate
tax campaign as a pioneer in the movement. She formed a non-profit policy group – the Center
for the Study of Taxation – in 1992. A few years later, she formed the for-profit Policy and
Taxation Group (PTG) to lobby against the estate tax.
19
Soldano also played a leading role in the
formation of the Family Business Estate Tax Coalition, a massive alliance of trade associations.
20
Soldano has taken on at least seven of the families listed in this report as clients. Soldano listed
members, or companies, of the Allyn-Soderberg, Dorrance, Gallo, Koch, Mars, Mayer and
Sobrato families as clients of the Policy and Taxation Group from 1998-1999.
21
Since 2000,
Soldano has chosen to mask her clients’ identities by reporting the Policy and Taxation Group as
lobbying on its own behalf, just as General Electric or General Motors would. This secrecy,
taking advantage of a lax lobbying disclosure law, is by design. “We don't disclose our
membership to anybody,” she says.
22
The Policy and Taxation Group has received at least $4.1 million in revenue since 1999 to lobby
on the estate tax.
23
The group has, in turn, paid $420,000 to the powerhouse lobbying firm Patton
Boggs to assist its lobbying efforts. Its separate Center for the Study of Taxation reported
$213,070 in revenue in 2004.
24
The Policy and Taxation Group also claims to “assist ‘think-tank’ organizations such as Citizens
for a Sound Economy, The Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute, The Tax Foundation and
others to distribute information about the damaging effects of estate and gift taxes.”
25
Soldano said in 2003 her group’s “membership” consisted of about 65 families in 25 states.
26
Given that Soldano has claimed to represent 65 families, she may represent other families listed
in this report and it is likely that she represents mega-millionaires or billionaires not identified in
this report.

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Public Citizen’s Congress Watch & United for a Fair Economy: Spending Millions to Save Billions
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American Family Business Institute
The AFBI, a 501(c)(6) non-profit group, was formed in 1992 by Harold Apolinsky, an estate
planner whom the AFBI’s Web site dubs the “Godfather” of the repeal campaign.
27
According to
Time magazine, Apolinsky was also the “co-author” of estate tax legislation proposed by Sen.
Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)
28
Apolinsky has received significant financing from at least one of the wealthy families profiled in
this report. In the mid-1990s, Apolinsky began receiving contributions from John Harbert, the
only person in Alabama who was in the Forbes 400.
29
AFBI put that money toward a grant of
approximately $200,000 to the Heritage Foundation, which resulted in a study, “The Case for
Repealing the Estate Tax,” that was influential in gaining Republican support for repeal.
30
John’s son, Raymond Harbert, now serves as a leader and benefactor of the group. He is AFBI’s
“funding chairman” and has personally contributed $500,000 to the AFBI.
31
The AFBI says its
members own a total of 507 businesses, but the group discloses no specific information about the
identities of its members.
32
Apolinsky said in 2005 that three of his clients are billionaires.
33
The AFBI has campaigned for repeal of the estate tax with a series of advertising campaigns:
• The group financed television and radio ads attacking then-Senate Minority Leader Tom
Daschle (D-S.D.) for his opposition to estate tax repeal when Daschle was up for re-
election in 2004.
34
• The group paired with the Free Enterprise Fund to run a reported $7 million ad campaign
in the summer of 2005. The campaign included ads pressuring Sens. Max Baucus (D-
Mont.), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to vote for repeal, and
thanking Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe (both R-Maine) for their support of repeal.
The campaign also targeted senators in Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada, North Dakota,
Washington, and Hawaii.
35
• In April 2006, the group launched a new round of anti-estate tax ads, targeting Sens. Max
Baucus (D-Mont.), Olympia Snow (R-Maine), and Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln
(both D-Ark.)
36
The group has also made substantial lobbying expenditures. Since 1998, the AFBI has spent
nearly $1.5 million lobbying. The estate tax is the only issue on which it reports lobbying.
37
Club for Growth
The Club for Growth, a group registered under Section 527 of the tax code, has received nearly
$1.4 million since 2000 from the Stephens family, owners of the Stephens Group, a holding
company.
38
Following the acrimonious departure of former leader Stephen Moore, former Rep. Pat Toomey
(R-Pa.) took over the reins of the Club, which had raised $1 million for Toomey and spent
another million on advertising to aid him in his narrowly unsuccessful primary challenge to Sen.
Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) in 2004.
39


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[eridani]

1. Anybody up for bringing the tumbrils and the guillotine?

I'll bring the knitting needles and yarn.

[Stinger2]

2. The High Cost of Estate Tax Repeal add almost $1.3 trillion to the deficit

The High Cost of Estate Tax Repeal


Making permanent the repeal of the estate tax after 2010 — repeatedly proposed by President Bush— would add almost $1.3 trillion to the deficit between fiscal years 2012 and 2021, the first ten years in which the full costs of extending repeal would be reflected in the budget. This cost includes $1 trillion of lost revenues and $277 billion of higher interest payments on the national debt. Each year of repeal would cost slightly more, in today’s terms, than everything the federal government now spends on homeland security, and considerably more than it now spends on education.

http://www.centeronbudget.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=455

— would add almost $1.3 trillion to the deficit between fiscal years 2012 and 2021, Better raise those taxes on them dumb working folks to pay for this or just cut out Social Security completely!