With the estate tax down and out for the time being, groups that for decades have sought to repeal the tax are gathering to make a push in Congress to keep the estate tax from coming back. In a recent online piece, John McKinnon of the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper whose editorial board never saw a tax repeal proposal that it didn’t like, wrote a short profile on the "small business group" the American Family Business Institute (AFBI), which McKinnon describes as currently waging an “all-out campaign for a permanent repeal.”

Oh, boy, it's that time of the month again, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released its Monthly Budget Review (MBR) for December. Let's see, the government spent a little less than it did at this time last year, but it continued to take in less money, which, along with the deficits in October and November, created an approximately $390 billion budget deficit through the first quarter of fiscal year 2010. Overall, the MBR continues to paint a rather ugly picture of government finances.

Just before senators departed for the Christmas holiday, they wrapped up most of their pressing business for the year, including health care reform and an extension of the debt ceiling, but they failed to address the expiring estate tax. Because of the Senate's inaction, the estate tax effectively died on Jan. 1 and will stay dead until Jan. 1, 2011. That is until senators return from their winter break and resurrect the tax, which top tax writers on Capitol Hill are promising to do before March.

When Senate Republicans and Democrats reached a compromise on Tuesday to allow a final health care vote earlier than planned on Christmas Eve, they also made room to finish off the year with a vote to raise the nation's debt limit temporarily.