September 1, 2000 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The U.S. House of Representatives vowed Thursday to try to override President Clinton’s veto of a Republican-backed bill to repeal the federal estate tax and its deduction for charitable bequests.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, said the first thing that House members would try to do when they return to Washington after the Labor Day holiday is to try to override Mr. Clinton’s long-promised veto, which the president carried out Thursday.
An override requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. Political observers expect the bid to fail in the Senate and possibly in the House.
Mr. Clinton, in a message to the House, said the controversial measure, passed this summer by both houses of Congress, would have hurt charitable giving, was “fiscally irresponsible,” and would have provided “a very expensive tax break for the best-off Americans while doing nothing for the vast majority of working families.”
Charity officials have been bitterly divided over whether killing the estate tax would hurt bequests (The Chronicle, July 27).
Some argue that even without the charitable deduction provided by the estate tax, wealthy donors would nonetheless continue to leave bequests. Others argue that eliminating the tax would erase a prime motivation for wealthy people to leave a portion of their estates to charity.
The estate tax currently is levied on estates of $675,000 or more, a threshold that is set to rise gradually to $1-million by 2006. The tax affects the richest 2 percent of Americans.
In remarks at the White House Thursday, Mr. Clinton said studies indicate that private contributions to charitable causes “could drop as much as $5-billion to $6-billion a year” if the estate tax were repealed.
“Less money for AIDS research or cancer studies, fewer resources for adoption, fewer opportunities for troubled children, fewer new acquisitions for art galleries and historical museums, and historic preservation” would result, he said.
“This is an element of this bill that has been discussed almost not at all in the public domain,” the president said of the effect that repeal of the tax would have on charitable giving.
Mr. Clinton said “at least two billionaires” had contacted him and asked him to veto the estate-tax measure.
“One of the reasons they cited,” the president said, “is that it would lead to a dramatic drop in charitable contributions.”
Mr. Clinton said he supports less sweeping estate-tax relief aimed at family farms, small businesses, and principal residences.
