" If your parents spend their lives accumulating a couple million dollars in assets they want to pass onto the children, you should not have to liquidate their entire estate just to give nearly half in taxes the day after they die."

Why not?

If they did more careful planning, a bunch of stuff would be in trust(s), or have been gifted before hand.

I see no reason why taxing capital gains belong to an estate is bad policy -- otherwise they go untaxed.

And for the record, we're 1%-ers likely to get hit by these proposals. It'd be good for the country if we and everyone who made this much paid more, and I'd love to soak the 0.1% and the 0.01%.