4-16 IAN E-Steak Tax

 In a recent conversation with  National Cattlemen’s Beef Association  spokesman Mike Deering, he had just told me that the estate tax was something that had a very real chance of putting farmers and ranchers out of business. I asked him a question and if he hadn’t chuckled, we all would have cried. “You live in Washington, right? Yes. Do you ever see politicians going into a restaurant and ordering beef? Yes, it’s funny. A lot of the receptions or events that members of Congress go to, beef is usually on the menu. We want to be sure that that continues to be the case. We want to be sure that it is US beef that they are able to eat and one of the best ways to make sure that happens is to get rid of this estate tax. I was thinking, I wonder what they are going to do, when they don’t have any more good American beef. They will eat Chinese beef? I don’t know that the Chinese would have the ability to meet that demand here because Americans love their beef and we want to be able to be sure to provide the American consumer with a safe and affordable product. If you take that land out of production agriculture is very difficult to gain it back. We need to be doing everything we can to make sure that farmers and ranchers have all the tools they need to meet that growing demand so that we aren’t facing a food crisis. If you keep breaking up operations with the estate tax, that could very well be a future that we would have to face.