ThinkProgress points us to a New York Times article in which Warren Buffett states his opposition to estate tax repeal: Mr. Buffett said repealing the estate tax "would be a terrible mistake," the equivalent of "choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics."...

Last week, the House approved Rep. Bill Thomas’ (R-CA) estate tax repeal reduction bill. This week, the Senate will take up the issue when it begins debate on estate tax near-repeal. Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-TN) is expected to ask for a vote to end debate to bring the Senate’s version of the house bill to a full floor vote. To garner the 60 votes needed to end debate Frist will have to convince three Democrats to vote for cloture. Because of your e-mails two weeks ago, the Senate was persuaded to refuse to kill the estate tax. We’ll do it again this week! Take Action!

The House approved (247-172) Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Line Item Veto bill. The bill, also referred to as "line-item rescission", would give the president the power to force Congress to vote on specific line items on bills sent to him by Congress. President Clinton signed (and used) a more potent version of line-item veto, but it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The Senate voted yesterday (twice) to keep low-wage workers in poverty.* The first vote was on a Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) plan to increase the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour over two years. The measure was an amendment to the FY2007 Defense appropriations bill. The second vote to keep the minimum wage at the 1949 level** was on a Republican bill, introduced by Sen. Mike Enzi’s (R-WY), and would have increased the minimum wage to $6.25 per hour.