The Senate has just completed roll-call votes on the following estate tax amendments:

• Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), to allow the Finance Committee to craft deficit-neutral legislation to reform the estate tax by establishing an individual exemption of $5 million and a tax rate of 35 percent for the portion of estates above this amount. Rejected, 25-74.

The amendment by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), referred to below, was not only first in order but first in significance among the amendments adopted yesterday during the Senate budget resolution floor debate. At a cost of about $195 billion over 2010-12, consuming all of the budget surplus projected in the resolution, the amendment

• extends middle class tax cuts including the 10 percent tax bracket, marriage penalty relief, and the child tax credit, strengthens the adoption tax credit, and provides combat pay under the EITC

Can you guess which disaster this Washington Post article is about? In a stinging, wide-ranging assessment of..efforts, .... said that...had no strategy for restoring either government institutions or infrastructure. And in the years since, other agencies joined the effort without an overall plan and without a structure in place to organize and execute a task of such magnitude. Lines of authority remained unclear in the...effort. With a demand for speed and a shortage of government personnel, much of the oversight was turned over to the contractors doing the work. There was little coordination among the various agencies. The result was a series of missed opportunities to address the unraveling situation.... A. Hurricane Katrina. B. The Iraq war reconstruction C. The Afghanistan war D. It's an article from the future- it's about how they'll handle the next disaster.

Freshman House Member Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has let a New York Times reporter in on the process and pitfalls of selecting pet projects in her district for earmark approrpriations. The view from what the reporter calls "a rare spectator's seat" is described in an article appearing in today's Times. An open and transparent process becomes all the more important, as congressional appropriations for local projects rise: