Ken Blackwell: Hiking the death tax is an insult to Jack Kemp's legacy

I had the honor of working with Jack Kemp when he was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Jack was extraordinary.

Yet the Left couldn’t abide the idea that a conservative Republican was color-blind. Liberal commentator Mark Shields paid Jack a left-handed compliment when he quipped that as a pro-football quarterback, Jack had “showered with more black men than most Republicans know.”

Al Gore was even smarmier in his praise for Jack. In their 1996 Vice Presidential debate, Gore lauded Jack for standing up for civil rights, and got in a dig that suggested the rest of his party could learn from Jack.

Well, we all can learn from Jack Kemp. But we’re unlikely to be instructed by Al Gore, whose Democratic Senator dad was voting against the great Civil Rights Act of 1964 while Senate Republicans voted 33-6 for it and who himself took African-American support for granted as if it were a Democratic Party entitlement.

Jack cared passionately about minority peoples and communities. He knew the GOP had to be the Party of Lincoln. It’s one reason he was vocally and vigorously pro-life. And it’s also a reason why Jack Kemp crusaded for Enterprise Zones. He wanted to re-vitalize our blighted inner cities. But he didn’t want to continue the failed liberal policies of government handouts and make-work employment.

If the Obama Administration and liberals in Congress go ahead with plans to hike estate taxes --which I prefer to call death taxes--to their 2001 levels, they will be helping to kill Jack Kemp’s dream. Responding to last fall’s economic meltdown, President Obama and liberals in Congress pushed through an $800 billion stimulus package. They promised they would “create or save” 3.5 million jobs.

We’re still waiting, especially with the news that in September, job losses cascaded by another 263,000, creating a jobless rate of nearly 10 percent.

My colleague at Family Research Council, Dr. Patrick Fagan, has just come out with a new paper on the death tax. Co-authored with Palmer Schoenig of the American Family Business Institute, this paper shows how we need to repeal--not hike--the death tax.

Repealing the death tax would impose no burden on taxpayers while it would powerfully aid economic recovery. It could create as many as 1.5 million jobs--jobs last winter’s “stimulus” has so far failed to stimulate. Repealing the death tax could increase the probability of hiring by 8.6 percent, increase payrolls by 2.6 percent, expand investment by 3 percent, and increase small business capital by more than $1.6 trillion!

Repealing the death tax is good policy for all Americans, but it’s especially important for minorities. Jack Kemp loved to quote President Jack Kennedy in saying “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

Minority Americans’ boats need to be lifted further up. Jack could wax poetic on what Enterprise Zones could do to bring all Americans together and into the productive mainstream of our national life. His vision was of an America where truly each person would be judged by what Dr. King called “the content of his character, not the color of his skin.”

Repealing the death tax would powerfully stimulate small business capital accumulation. This is not what liberal critics charge-- “trickle down” economics. It’s Economics 101. Small businesses provide more than 70 percent of the new hires in America. They provide the bulk of new goods and services. When you help small businesses, you help families. The young man who has a good job with a small business is much more likely to marry the mother of his children, much more likely to buy a home, much more likely to rise in income, education, and self esteem. There is no better social program for Americans in general or for our inner cities in particular than helping small businesses extend their reach.

Finally, repealing the death tax is simple fairness. The money they earn has already been taxed. Government has already gotten its bite of that apple. In America, we still recall the cry, “No taxation without representation.” We could, today, modify to, “No taxation on what’s left after taxation!”

Jack Kemp understood the creative and productive capacity of free peoples and free markets, which is why I would encourage my fellow conservatives to have more confidence and to carry Jack Kemp’s message to more Americans--especially minority Americans.

When you saw Jack Kemp standing with Jaime Escalante, a great calculus teacher in Los Angeles, or with me in Cincinnati, you always knew that he had a heart as big as all America. Let’s repeal the death tax. Let’s win one for Jack Kemp.

Ken Blackwell is a former undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and member of the board of directors of the National Taxpayers Union.