Classic Senate... Easy to reach compromises when you agree to everyone's tax cut without paying for them. There is no need to make choices or decide whether the tax cut is worthwhile if we don't have to pay for it. -- Anonymous House Democratic leadership aide, regarding Senate housing stimulus package

If Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Chair and Ranking Member, Sens. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Richard Shelby (R-AL), respectively, can hammer out a compromise by tomorrow morning, the Senate may vote as early as tomorrow afternoon on a housing stimulus package that purports to address the alarming increase in the number of foreclosures in the U.S. "[F]oreclosures of this magnitude are on par with the severity of foreclosures during the Great Depression," said Dodd in a Senate floor statement today.

There are a few noteworthy findings in this CRS report on the estate tax:

• Estate tax repeal would account for over 25 percent permanent extension of the 2001-2003 Bush tax cuts
• In 2006, 0.93 percent of deaths resulted in taxable returns. In 2002, that number was 1.86 percent.
• Estate and gift tax revenues accounted for 1.0 percent of federal revenue in 2006 - a decrease from 1.4 percent in 2002.

Following the flurry of the fourty-four budget resolution amendment roll call votes last week, this much is clear: repeal of the estate tax is now a non-starter in Congress. In years past, the budget resolution vote-a-rama has been an annual rite of repeal for the tax. But unless an amendment on it comes up when the resolution comes out of conference and hits the floor next month, 2008 may well be the first year since the current estate tax law was enacted in 2001 that full repeal of the tax has not even so much as come up for a vote in Congress. That's progress.