by Marta Russell

Conservative PR man Craig Shirley recently created a front group called Disabled Americans for Death Tax Repeal (DADTR), which ran full-page advertisements in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times, urging Congress to abolish the federal estate tax.

DADTR was created to spin the public debate over the estate tax, bringing in disabled people as a way of suggesting that repealing the tax would actually hurt the needy. As a disabled person myself and a the author of a book about disability policy and politics, I was particularly offended by the deceptive nature of its arguments.

DADTR is headed by a photogenic woman named Erin O'Leary who says she suffers from multiple sclerosis. It says the federal estate tax hurts disabled people by preventing mothers and fathers to assist their disabled children with long-term care needs after their death. It claims 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 is simply not plausible. The federal estate tax applies only to extremely wealthy individuals when they die. Estates worth less than $675,000 are excluded from taxation. Already less than 2% of taxpayers pay this tax (representing fewer than 43,000 estates in 1997), and legislation has been passed that will increase the exclusion to $1 million in 2006. In dollar terms, two-thirds of the estate tax is paid by the richest 0.2% of taxpayers. The mere fact that the Bush administration is talking about repealing it gives some indication of its loyalty to the interests of rich people.

While it is true that many disabled persons have major health care expenses, the vast majority are from families of modest means. Only a very small percentage of the disabled population receives inheritances from estates above the current $675,000 exclusion. It is simply impossible that 4 million disabled people could be adversely affected by the estate tax, as DADTR claims.

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 owns or controls 77% of the nation's total net wealth (nonresidential), and 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. In other words, disabled people are three to four times as likely to live in poverty as people who are not disabled. 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.

DADTR's use of the term "death tax" is also a misleading use of rhetoric. Who could oppose repeal of a tax on death? But the estate tax 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.

The traditional smokescreen used to justify the elimination of the estate tax is that it forces the next generation to sell the family farm or business. Even if that problem were real, it could be remedied by targeted solutions. Similarly, DADTR's 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.

Actually, abolishing the estate tax is likely to cause new problems for disabled people, by eroding government revenues available for programs upon which disabled people rely.

Attacking Responsible Wealth

In its effort to make the estate tax look like a burden on the needy, DADTR has gone out of its way to attack Responsible Wealth, a group formed by wealthy people who see the need for decent wages and equitable taxes to ensure the well-being of the rest of the population.

DADTR describes Responsible Wealth's position on the estate tax as "a misguided advertising campaign by a group of multi-millionaires and billionaires . . . 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." DADTR's Erin O'Leary said she was "deeply offended by the callous and heartless comments made by this group. 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."

I asked around disability circles as to who this O'Leary person might be. No one had heard of her, but my investigation of Craig Shirley turned up quite a cornucopia of insight. Much of his work comes from various conservative groups like the National Rifle Association that use him to get their views on talk radio. In recent years, he has worked for the Kuwaiti government and for interests connected to Haiti's military dictatorship. The press contact person for Disabled Americans for Death Tax Repeal is Diana Banister, who works for Shirley and is the also the contact person for an effort against election campaign finance reform. George Stephanopoulos tagged Shirley "an adviser to the Dole campaign, a paid agent to the tobacco lobby, a paid agent of the gun lobby."

Offended by Shirley's use of disabled people as props in his PR campaign, I contacted Andrew Batavia, a professor in the School of Policy and Management of Florida International University and former executive director of the National Council on Disability. Batavia is politically conservative himself and served under George Bush Sr. He is also a quadriplegic and, like myself, he opposes repealing the estate tax. We decided to write a joint rebuttal to the DADTR and thought we might be successful in getting it printed in the Washington Post if not in the Wall Street Journal. (Given the tendentious conservatism of the Washington Times, we assumed our chances there were slim.)

"Recently, a few vocal disabled persons have been claiming publicly that the estate tax should be repealed because it harms the disabled population," we wrote. "These individuals have been recruited by a sophisticated public relations effort sponsored by wealthy interests that wish to perpetuate their wealth indefinitely. . . . Using disabled people to front for the interests of the wealthiest members of our society is an outrage and a disgrace."

Our op-ed never saw the light of day. This astonished Batavia, who said he always got his right-of-center opinions printed whenever he submitted one. He was stunned, he said, by how "arrogant" the Washington Post had been with him. Was I surprised? After some thought, no. Craig Shirley had paid for his free speech, and I suspect that none of the newspapers wanted to buck a prospective paying advertiser by printing an opposing point of view. Paying for the "right" to free speech seemed to be our only way to overcome the impasse, and unlike Disabled Americans for Death Tax Repeal, we could not afford that luxury.

Marta Russell is the author of Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract. She can be reached at ap888@lafn.org or at www.disweb.org. A version of this article first appeared in the Alternative Press Review (www.altpr.org).