With all the serious work before Congress, it is a colossal waste of time to have to rebut the false claims and warped premises of ardent estate-tax cutters. Ms. Lincoln’s and Mr. Kyl’s colleagues in the Senate should make short work of it and move on to urgent matters.

In addition to creating the false impression that the estate tax eventually hits everyone  by mislabeling it a “death tax”  opponents routinely denounce the 45 percent top tax rate as confiscatory. In fact, the rate applies only to the portion of the estate that exceeds the exemption. As a result, even estates worth more than $20 million end up paying only about 20 percent in taxes.

Another misleading argument is that the estate tax represents double taxation. In truth, much of the wealth that is taxed at death has never been taxed before. That’s because such wealth is often accrued in the form of capital gains on stocks, real estate and other investments. Capital gains are not taxed until an asset is sold. Obviously, if someone dies owning an asset, he or she never sold it and thus never paid tax on the gain.

If those arguments aren’t enough to stop the Lincoln-Kyl show, lawmakers should consider this: The estate tax creates a big incentive for high-end philanthropy, because charitable bequests are exempt. On Tuesday, Independent Sector, a nonpartisan charitable coalition representing thousands of public charities, private foundations and corporate-giving programs, urged the Senate to reject the Lincoln-Kyl amendment and to keep the tax as proposed in the Obama budget.

Finally, reducing the estate tax from the level proposed by Mr. Obama would cost an additional $250 billion in forgone revenue over 10 years, at a time when the nation already has to borrow heavily for real needs. Ms. Lincoln and Mr. Kyl have made rumblings about offering a way to offset that cost. Let’s hear what they say, and once we see how they’ve come up with a quarter-trillion dollars, let’s talk about better ways to use the money.