As arguments for repealing the estate tax go, Chuck Grassley certainly … has one. Actually, the senator from Iowa has two, one on principle and the other based on scolding people over how they use their own money. Guess which one got the most attention this weekend?

In comments published by the Des Moines Register on Saturday, Grassley explained why the Senate version of tax reform includes a traditional Republican repeal of the estate tax:

Grassley was adamant about the need for change, even if farmers and small business owners represent a tiny minority of estate tax payers. The reason, he said, is as much philosophical as practical.

An estate tax effectively and unfairly taxes a person’s earnings twice, he argued: first when they earn it and again when they die. And, he added, it penalizes savers without touching spenders.

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

If Grassley wants to stop boozers and womanizers, he’d have his hands full just focusing on his Capitol Hill colleagues. Nothing says “I’m a man of the people” like attempting to craft laws to punish people for their social activities, amirite?

This is everything right and wrong with the current Republican tax-reform effort in a nutshell. His first argument on the estate tax is dead-on correct. The estate tax’s true offense to ordered liberty is that it double-dips. Accumulated wealth exists from earnings already subject to taxation, and further taxation by passing the estate to one’s heirs is an injustice that in some cases needlessly complicates an already emotional process. It’s a form of double jeopardy, at least in principle.

In the very next breath, however, Grassley commits the same sin that has plagued the tax system for decades, which is Congress’ desire to commit social engineering through it. The point of limited taxation is that the money belongs to the people who earned it, not the government elected by those people. If I want to spend my money on dinner with a woman, the latest Roman-numeral cookie-cutter superhero flick, followed up by a few drinks at the local bar, that’s my business and not that of Chuck Grassley. (In my case specifically, it would also be my wife’s business, and I’d face a very different kind of taxation.)  Those choices should neither be abetted nor punished through the federal tax system.

Conservatives have argued for decades to eliminate the kind of social engineering Grassley endorses here. A decade ago, we had competing tax proposals for either a flat tax or a repeal of the 16th Amendment and the use of a consumption tax to replace the current income tax. Now that Republicans finally have control of Washington, the best that they can do is merely an adjustment to the existing labyrinthine system — especially true of the Senate version — that leaves in place all of the manipulative capabilities for social engineering in both the corporate and individual tax systems.

Finally, while eliminating the estate tax is a theoretically principled step, it should have been waaaaaaay down the list for true reform. As the DMR points out, it doesn’t actually impact very many taxpayers anyway, thanks to a high threshold for its application (currently $5 million in estate assets for single heirs, $11 million for married). In Iowa, that would impact perhaps 10% of all farms before allowable deductions that would raise the threshold even higher. And the Senate bill doesn’t even repeal the tax — it only raises the thresholds to $11 million/$22 million. That also is an adjustment, not a reform, so Grassley can’t even stand on the principle he proposes.

Republicans had an opportunity to be bold; instead, they’re perpetuating the problem. In honor of that, I think I’ll get a case of Jameson’s, a shelf of new Blu-Ray films, and celebrate the victory of the swamp until the 2018 elections. As for the womanizing, Grassley has no worries. My wife is all over that one.