Millionaires don’t blow their cash on ‘booze & women’ – Republican senator

While defending his government’s plan to scrap so-called ‘death taxes’ on individual estates, a Republican senator said it won’t affect those busy “spending every darn penny ... on booze or women.”

One can assume Iowa’s Chuck Grassley meant people who aren’t millionaires. The senate reform measure would double the exemption rate on estates from $5.5 million to $11 million, meaning such multi-million inheritances would be tax-free.

Grassley made his controversial remarks in an interview with the Des Moines Register at the weekend, in which he praised those who are investing as opposed to those (read working class people) who aren’t.

“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing — as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies,” Grassley told the publication.

The senator chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, and was formerly chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the panel which played a major role in curbing the estate tax. Also known as the ‘death tax,’ it’s a 40-percent levy on the wealth of a person after he or she dies.

READ MORE: Stranger things in the Republican tax bill

The Senate’s proposals are tamer than the House version of the tax bill, which wants to get rid of the estate tax altogether. We’ll have to wait and see which version of the law makes it into the statute books.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the elimination of the death tax only benefits a tiny fraction of taxpayers – about 0.002 percent.

Grassley’s comments were derided on social media, where many perceived the seven-term senator’s remarks to be an attack on the working class.