Russell
Craig
Shirley is the guy whose PR firm created the newly formed Disabled Americans for
Death Tax Repeal. Disabled Americans for Death Tax Repeal ran a full-page ad in
The Wall Street Journal and Washington Times to lobby Congress to abolish the
federal estate tax.
According to its press release, the group was formed to refute an "a misguided
advertising campaign group of multi-millionaires and billionaires called
‘Responsible Wealth’ who want to preserve the federal estate tax claiming it
would be an ‘unfortunate legacy’ for America’s future generations to inherit
family money and property."
"I
was deeply offended by the callous and heartless comments made by this group,"
said Erin O’Leary, President of Disabled Americans for Death Tax Relief. "I take
offense that this group of wealthy elite should term helping people like me an
‘unfortunate legacy’ and that I shouldn’t be allowed to keep the money my family
has earned to offset future medical expenses." The group cites the need to allow
mothers and fathers to assist their disabled children with long-term care needs
after their death.
Offended by O’Leary’s comments I asked around disability circles as to who this
O’Leary fellow might be. None had heard of him. Investigation of Shirley turned
up quite a cornucopia of insight however. Much of Shirley’s work comes from
various conservative groups that want him to get their views on talk radio, like
the NRA. In recent years, he has worked for the Kuwaiti government and for
interests connected to Haiti’s provisional military regime. The press contact on
the Disabled Americans for Death Tax Repeal is Diana Banister, also the contact
for a "free speech" anti-campaign finance reform effort. George Stephanopoulos
tagged Shirley "an adviser to the Dole campaign, a paid agent to the tobacco
lobby, a paid agent of the gun lobby." The Washington Post reported that some
say Shirley — like so many prominent Washington conservatives, a veteran of the
Reagan-era National Conservative Political Action Committee — was left out of
the Dole campaign because he is too much the in-your-face operative for a
campaign aiming for a moderate image. Perhaps, but he is certainly behind the
George W. Bush estate tax repeal agenda.
Rarely do I co-write op-eds for newspapers, but I knew a quadriplegic
conservative who had served under Bush Sr. and was not a believer in repealing
the estate tax and thought we might be successful in getting a rebuttal printed
if not in the Wall Street Journal (Washington Times was definitely out), in the
Washington Post.
Offended by the obvious manipulation of this small group of disabled persons by
the Shirley PR machine and driven on by the unnecessary subsequent apologies of
the members of Responsible Wealth who were made to feel embarrassed that they
had not given any thought to the disability angle of their position, we co-wrote
the following editorial:
Disability "Death Tax" Deception
Recently, a few vocal disabled persons have been claiming publicly that the
estate tax should be repealed because it harms the disabled population. These
individuals have been recruited by a sophisticated public relations effort
sponsored by wealthy interests that wish to perpetuate their wealth
indefinitely. The claim is that millions of individuals have left major estates
for the medical expenses of their children or relatives with disabilities, and
these estates are being taxed away. This contention simply is not plausible. The
estate tax is a tax imposed only on extremely wealthy individuals when they die
— less than 2% of taxpayers (representing fewer than 43,000 estates in 1997)
pay this tax. And two-thirds of the estate tax is paid by the richest 0.2% of
taxpayers. While it is true that many disabled persons have major health care
expenses, the vast majority are from families of modest means. It is certain
that a very small percentage of the disabled population receives inheritances
from estates above the current $675,000 exclusion. And by 2006, the exclusion
for most estates will climb to $1 million. It is not possible that 4 million
disabled people could be adversely affected, as claimed by the repeal
proponents. In the war of rhetoric, the estate tax has been labeled the "death
tax" by proponents who wish to obscure the issue. Who could oppose repeal of a
tax on death? The problem is that this is not a tax on death; it is a tax on
wealth accumulated during life, and it is the essential linchpin that attempts
to ensure a playing field that is not grossly unfair. Even with the estate tax,
overall wealth and income gaps between Americans of different means remain wider
today than at any time since the end of World War II. The US has the greatest
wealth and poverty polarization of any "first world" nation. A 1997 study found
that about 10% of the US population own or control 77% of the nation’s total net
wealth (nonresidential), the top 1% controls 43%. The top 1% of population
maintains a larger share of wealth than the bottom 90%, with the top 10% owning
over twice as much as the rest of the citizenry. As a group, people with
disabilities are among the poorest of all Americans. Based on data from the 1995
Current Population Survey, 38.3% of working-age adults with severe work
disabilities (i.e., unable to work due to a disability) live in poverty,
compared with 30% of those limited in their ability to work and 10.2% of those
not limited in work. The 1998 National Organization on Disability (NOD)/Harris
survey found that 33% of disabled persons live in households with incomes of
less than $15,000; only 12% of adults without disabilities live in such
households. According to these data, disabled people are three to four times as
likely to live in poverty than non-disabled people. Presumably, if these
individuals had family members with substantial means, these family members
would be raising their economic circumstances above the poverty line before
leaving an inheritance. The traditional smokescreen always raised to justify the
elimination of the estate tax is that it forces the next generation to sell the
family farm or business. Just as that problem (if real) could be remedied by
targeted solutions, the new smokescreen concerning taxation of estates needed by
disabled persons could be remedied by legislation that would allow special needs
trust funds to be exempt for such purposes. We should analyze how many disabled
persons are actually being harmed by the estate tax, and remedy their problem to
the extent justified. We will probably find that the problem is not nearly as
large as is being portrayed. Further, abolishing the estate tax may cause new
problems, such as eroding government revenues available for disability programs
upon which the less well off disabled persons rely. Using disabled people to
front for the interests of the wealthiest members of our society is an outrage
and a disgrace.
***
The
op-ed never saw the light of day. This stunned my co-writer, who said he always
got his right of center opinions printed whenever he submitted one and he was
flattened by how "arrogant" the Post had been with him. Was I surprised? Well
after some thought, no. Craig Shirley had paid for his free speech and I
suspected none of the newspapers wanted to buck a prospective paying advertiser
like Shirley by printing another point of view. Paying for the "right" to free
speech seemed to be the only way to overcome the impasse, and we, unlike
Disabled Americans for Death Tax Repeal, being a part of the less well-off
disabled population could not afford that luxury.
Andrew Batavia is a
professor in the School of Policy and Management of Florida International
University and former executive director of the National Council on
disability.
Marta Russell is the author of Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the
Social Contract. She can be reached at
www.disweb.org