At a hearing before the House Budget Committee last week, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff and current President of the Center for American Progress John Podesta advocated for a long-term approach to reducing deficits and bringing back a balanced budget. For all the hyperventilating over the debt and deficits currently going on in Washington and around the country, Podesta's approach is the closest thing I've seen to a sane plan.

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.”

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 discussing the federal budget deficit, I should be clear that reducing it right now is absolutely the wrong policy to pursue. It will likely strangle the meager recovery that's underway, and attention should primarily be focused on reducing the growing cost of health care. Having said all that, if deficit reduction must be addressed right now, it's important to first understand its composition.