Flip-Flop Express: Estate Tax

Via FT.com and Huffingtonpost.com-

Here is John McCain in 2002:
"Farm and family-owned business assets accounted for less than three percent of the total value of these estates in 1999. In most estates that are taxable and include a business or farm, the business or farm does not even constitute the majority of the estate. In fact, the American Farm Bureau Federation has acknowledged that it could not cite a single example of a farm having to be sold to pay estate taxes. These facts belie the argument that we must repeal the estate tax to save family businesses and farms to assure that they do not have to be liquidated to pay estate taxes."

Here is John McCain in 2006:
"In his 1906 State of the Union Address, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed the creation of a federal inheritance tax . Roosevelt explained: 'The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.' Additionally, in a 1907 speech he said: 'Most great civilized countries have an income tax and an inheritance tax. In my judgment both should be part of our system of federal taxation.' He noted, however, that such taxation should 'be aimed merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits.' I agree with President Roosevelt, and I remain opposed to full repeal of the estate tax."

And here is John McCain on June 10th 2008:
"Another of my disagreements with Senator Obama concerns the estate tax, better known to you as the 'death tax . . . . which he proposes to increase to a top rate of 55 percent. The estate tax is one of the most unfair tax laws on the books .