020614 President visits World Pork Expo

Des Moines, IA - President Bush, before an audience of friendly farmers, said it would be good for America's economy if Congress would permanently abolish the estate tax.

"For the good of American agriculture, let's make sure that death tax is forever buried and forever done away with," Bush said to cheers. He was joined on the podium by several Iowa lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and GOP Reps. Greg Ganske, Tom Latham and Jim Leach.

Bush spoke exactly a year after he signed his centerpiece 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax package. It included repealing the estate tax, which Bush and other Republicans deride as the "death tax."

With the November elections in mind, the Republican-controlled House voted 256-171 Thursday to make that repeal permanent. However, the effort may stop there, as Senate Democrats say they have the votes to defeat the bill when it comes up later this month.

The issue has long been near the top of the agriculture community's agenda in Washington.

That made Bush's tax cut particularly welcome to visitors to the international livestock event, a huge draw at the Iowa State Fairgrounds that featured stalls handing out free pork samples and showcasing the corporate hog-producing industry alongside displays of prize-winning swine.

A series of morning pig races before about 100 spectators near the hangar-like 4-H building where Bush spoke keyed off the presidential visit.

Appropriately for the day's message, Brother Elroy, the clown-imitating pig trainer for the morning pig races put on by Hedrick's Racing Pigs out of Nickerson, Kan., used a tax analogy to explain why the winning trophy cookie was missing a bite: "I'm like the government," he shouted. "The pigs do all the work. I take 50%."

In the first 10-second race, a pig named George W. Bushhog narrowly edged out Al Boar in their turn around the sawdust-covered oval track. The presidential namesake still finished behind the race winner, Jesse "the Swine" Ventura, however.

Despite statistics showing fewer than 2% of estates actually pay the tax, farm lobbyists argue the tax threatens to wipe out family farming. Asset-rich but cash-poor farm families socked with the tax when a relative dies sometimes are forced to sell the family business to pay what they owe the government, lobbyists say.

Bush touched on other elements of his domestic agenda, urging Congress to give him the trade negotiating authority he seeks and pass his energy proposal. He even slipped in a mention of ethanol, the corn-based fuel additive beloved in the Midwest.

"It's in our nation's national interest to have more forms of energy produced at home," Bush said.

The president also highlighted his just-announced plans for a new Department of Homeland Security, which he discussed with about a dozen lawmakers from both parties in a pre-trip White House huddle Friday morning.

The trip -- one of several Bush has made to Iowa -- also allowed the president to connect with voters in a state that he lost to former Vice President Al Gore in 2000 by only a few thousand votes. The state also holds the nation's first presidential contest, the Iowa caucuses, and could help the Republicans overturn the Democrats' one-vote majority in the Senate, with Ganske trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin.

Under the law enacted last year, the estate tax gradually would go down from 55% to 45% -- with the value of exempt estates rising to $3.5 million -- until the tax disappears in 2010. It then would be automatically resurrected the next year at higher, pre-2001 levels. The GOP bill that passed the House on Thursday would prevent the tax from returning in 2011.

Democrats say repealing the tax entirely is a boon to the wealthy, and favor retaining it only for the biggest inheritances.

Although the day of reckoning is years away, Republicans said the bill to make repeal permanent would bring needed certainty to what is now a chaotic and costly estate planning situation. They said the nation's economic recovery got a key boost from the tax cut, including repeal of the estate tax, and that making it permanent will solidify those gains.

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