The Senate is scheduled to vote later this week on permanently repealing the estate tax. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-AL, wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post last week in which he recommends the permanent repeal of the estate tax. Sadly, the editorial makes use of the same old falsehoods about the estate tax.

One of the arguments is that, while the super-rich can afford the estate tax, people on the cusp of wealth cannot. The oft-provided example -- and it is repeated by Sessions -- is that of the family farm. The farm has a monetary value, and when the farm is passed on after death, the value of the farm is taxed. But since the value of the farm's land isn't liquid until the property is sold, children who receive the land as inheritance must sell some of the land to pay the tax. As a result, many family farms have gone out of business because of the estate tax. Horrors! Sadly, however, this isn't true.

A Washington Post editorial from last year cited a Congressional Budget Office report on the estate tax. Sessions, in his op-ed, mentions that the estate tax "is one of the IRS's most painful taxes," "hits hardest at heirs of small-business owners and family farmers," and other superlatives. But he never mentions another interesting superlative: that it is the most exclusive tax. The CBO report estimates that there were between 4,641 and 5,308 estates owned by farmers in 2000. The Post reports, "The numbers that owed estate tax, the CBO found, were paltry, and the number without enough cash on hand to pay the bill even punier: In 2000, for example, just 1,659 farm estates had taxes due, of which 138 didn't report enough liquid assets to cover their tax liability," This is not a tax that most people are going to have to pay.

The estate tax is a tax only on the super-rich, as there is a $1.5 million exemption currently in place. In 2009, the exemption will increase to $3.5 million. In 2000, "only 300 farm estates in 2000 would have owed any tax at all -- and of those, just 27 would have a tax bill in excess of their liquid assets." Under the 2009 exemption, the CBO projects that "65 farm estates would owe taxes and 13 would not have enough cash to cover the bill."

Sessions even claims that the estate tax is bad for minority-owned business, and cites what is probably the most prominent example of a minority-owned business having to pay the estate tax: the Chicago Defender, which had to pay $3 million in estate tax when its founder died in 1997. Estate tax opponents try to appeal to minorities with this single instance of an African-American-owned business that faced a large estate tax bill, suggesting with this one piece of support that "death taxes are killing black businesses." As argument, this is poor: one incident does not a trend make.

You might expect the world's wealthiest people to be against the estate tax. Warren, Buffett, CEO of the investment firm BerkshireHathaway, has an estimated net worth of $42 billion. And he opposes the--

What a second. No, Warren Buffett is in favor of the estate tax! So is liberal baby-killer, terrorist sympathizer, and Cindy Sheehan puppetmaster George Soros! Are these guys nuts, or just nuts?

The estate tax places the burden of payment on those who can afford to pay. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have an estate tax; indeed, we would have no taxes. But the government needs to run somehow, and the $28 billion tax shortfall that would come from eliminating the estate tax needs to come from somewhere (we need all the money we can to fund stupid wars, illegal wiretapping, and bogus news releases about the Medicare prescription drug plan). Then again, if we cut government revenue, then we can shut the doors on departments we don't like, and we can say, "Well, we just didn't have the money." This sounds a lot less political than "I didn't like the department and I was looking for any way to kill it that I could."