Editor & Publisher, October 2, 1999

viewpoint

Judge (de)merits of estate tax on their own

When President Clinton vetoed the Republican-crafted $792-billion tax cut in a Rose Garden ceremony the other day, he said the bill was "too big, too bloated, (and) places too great a burden on America’s economy." Lost in the legislation was the gradual repeal of the estate tax, a modestly scaled and long-overdue proposal that would make little difference to the U.S. treasury, and all the difference in the world to the newspaper industry and the family-owned businesses that advertise in newspapers.

As Clinton was wielding his veto pen in Washington, Michael Gartner was preparing to clean out his desk at The Tribune in Ames, Iowa. After a journalism career that included positions as front-page editor of The Wall Street Journal, editor and president of The Des Moines Register, and president of NBC News, Gartner returned to Ames a few years ago to run an honest local paper, train a new generation in journalism, and, as it happened, win a Pulitzer Prize for his graceful editorials along the way.

But now Gartner – and his business partner, Gary Gerlach, another industry veteran -–are out of newspapering. Not by their own choice, but only because the third partner in Partnership Press, David Belin, a Des Moines attorney, died suddenly last January. With Belin’s family facing a heavy estate tax due Oct. 1, Gartner and Gerlach were forced to sell The Tribune and all the other community papers and shoppers they owned. A man slips in a hotel room, and so a legendary editor must leave the newspaper business: Death tax, be not proud.

This sort of doubled tragedy is occurring with the grim predictability of an actuarial table to newspaper families storied and obscure all over America. It is time to say, "Enough," and one way to do that is to extricate death-tax repeal from the huge legislative packages like the recently vetoed tax cut bill.

That’s not the way it’s done in Washington, of course. Legislators like bills that grow to be as thick as a big-city telephone directory. Not only is there one big number to trumpet as a tax "reform," but it allows plenty of nooks and crannies to reward friends and punish enemies. But the estate tax is neither an impressive number nor a special interest’s favor: It brings in less than 1.4% of the federal government’s revenues, and it hurts families, whether they are publishing newspapers or running a hardware store. At the beginning of this Congress, bills were offered to repeal the estate tax gradually over 11 years. That’s more than reasonable – especially when back-to-back budget surpluses are now calculated to run as high as $100 billion.

It’s just as reasonable to ask Congress to take a simple, uncluttered vote on death-tax repeal, and for President Clinton to sign it.