Will GOP Tax Cuts Kill Grandma?

In a column in Newsweek, Jacob Weisberg argues that Republicans shouldn't be afraid of "death-panel" rumors and warnings that the health-care bill will "pull the plug on Grandma." Instead, the scariest policy in the pipeline is a provision in the 2001 GOP-led tax cuts that reduces the estate tax to zero beginning next year and lasting for exactly 12 months, Weisberg argues. The estate-tax revision that Sen. Chuck Grassley fought for will incentivize "ailing, elderly rich people to end their lives" before December 31, 2010, when the estate tax will jump back to 55 percent, he says. Economists have produced evidence showing that benefactors die in greater numbers just before tax hikes and just after tax cuts. One Australian study showed that more than half of the people who would have normally died the last week of June 1979 made it to July, when Australia abolished its inheritance tax. Weisberg also cites a University of Michigan study that came to the same conclusion.