As the media is mostly focused on the health care fight in Congress, the most powerful forces in our nation are quietly gearing up for their next attempt to raid the U. S. Treasury on behalf of the wealthiest Americans, to the detriment of the rest of us.

These forces are campaigning to weaken the estate tax, imposed on the transfer of property by the wealthy to their heirs when they die. Some of the wealthiest Americans — like the Waltons of Wal-Mart fame — are funding the campaign. The tax will simply go out of existence if Congress doesn’t reauthorize it by the end of the year.

Since the time of President Theodore Roosevelt, the estate tax has helped fund our most urgent needs, while limiting the ability of the extremely wealthy to accumulate vast fortunes from generation to generation. An added benefit is that the tax encourages the wealthy to donate to hospitals, soup kitchens and other charities.

The near economic collapse of just a year ago demands dramatic action. That means ramping up federal expenditures — not cutting them. The estimated cost of one of the proposals to weaken the estate tax is around $440 billion over 10 years, an amount we simply can’t afford in this period of deficits.

Despite some signs of recovery, the nation’s unemployment rate is still hovering around 10 percent. The 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse that killed 13 was one dramatic illustration of the cost of neglecting our public infrastructure.

Despite the steady drumbeat against federal taxes, the fact remains that almost everything we care about — from roads, to medical research, to education — receives federal funding. If this funding is not maintained, communities throughout New York will face the choice of dire service cuts or picking up the tab, leading to local tax increases.

With the state unemployment rate now at its highest since 1983, taxpayer fairness has to be our first priority. And that means a fundamental re-examination of the policies of the Bush years, when Congress passed tax cuts heavily titled toward the rich, costing the U. S. Treasury $2.5 trillion.

Over the past nine years, the estate tax has been cut seven times. Right now, only the top quarter of 1 percent of estates, those over $3.5 million per individual ($7 million per couple), have to pay the tax. Those nearly as wealthy don’t have to pay a penny anymore.

As Bill Gates Sr., father of the Microsoft billionaire, recently said: “No one accumulates a fortune without the help of our society’s investments.” Congress must at least maintain the estate tax at its current level.

Next year, many of the Bush tax cuts will expire. How Congress addresses the estate tax will signal whether its priority is meeting the needs of the struggling poor and middle class or continuing to cater to the wealthiest Americans.

Diana Cihak works on health care and federal budget issues in Western New York for Citizen Action of New York. Bob Cohen is the policy director of the Public Policy and Education Fund.