Arizona Senator Jon Kyl has an interesting approach to legislating. 1,100,000 workers are set to lose their unemployment benefits and health coverage through the COBRA program. Senator Harry Reid from Nevada is trying to extend these benefits for the next year and provide Medicaid relief to states like Arizona. Jon Kyl has decided to block this effort in order to preserve a massive tax break for those who inherit millions of dollars:

On Wednesday, a top Republican leader said a deal on the bill would depend on working out the fate of the expired estate tax…Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said that Republicans will block consideration of the new bill unless they get “a path forward fairly soon” on the estate tax.

Not only are 1.1 million workers scheduled to lose their unemployment insurance in March, 2.7 million are on track to lose them by April, while unemployment is still at 9.7 percent and there are six unemployed workers for every job opening. 6.3 million Americans have been unemployed for six months or longer, which is the most since the government began keeping track in 1948 and “more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

Despite all this, Jon Kyl is insisting nothing can move forward to help middle and lower income families in dire economic straits until those wealthy few are protected from having to pay taxes when they inherit millions of dollars. Due to a Bush-era budgeting gimmick, there is no estate tax for those who inherit money in 2010. This tax will be reinstated in 2011 at the level it was when Bill Clinton was president. Kyl’s proposal to slash the estate tax rate and increase its exemption would cost $250 billion over ten years, with 99 percent of the benefit going to the heirs of multi-millionaires. Under 2009 law, only 0.2 percent of estates are subject to the estate tax at all.

The fact that Kyl has vowed to stop the business of the Senate to deal with this non-urgent issue for 99.8% of households is particularly galling given what children in his state are facing. Arizona has been hit particularly hard by the economic downturn and the housing crisis. And the Governor and legislature are proposing policies that will hurt children and families far more than the reimposition of the estate tax. If the budget were enacted, it would:

• Eliminate the state’s children’s health insurance program (KidsCare), which covers 47,000 children
• Repeal Medicaid coverage for 310,000 childless adults and 3,000 adults with serious mental illness
• Make deep cuts to support for early learning by eliminating preschool for 4,328 children and K?3 education support for more than 77,000 students
• Reduce the number of months that low-income families can receive cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, immediately eliminating assistance for 10,000 families

Last year, Jon Kyl voted against expanding the KidsCare program to 100,000 more children. He voted against the economic stimulus program that provided nearly two billion dollars in Medicaid for children, prevented a billion dollars cut in children’s programs, and invested several hundreds of million dollars in education programs and programs for disabled children in Arizona. He voted against the federal budget that increased funding for Head Start and many other children’s programs, and was just one of votes against expanding afterschool programs.

So while the Governor and legislature are making tough decisions that will hurt the health, safety, and education of Arizona children, Senator Kyl in Washington DC is blocking needed relief so that a few millionaires can avoid paying money on the millions of dollars they inherit. And people wonder why Washington is broken.