Update in the Post about the current budget debate:

Budget Plan May Block Extension of Tax Cuts (washingtonpost.com)

Congressional budget writers next month will likely draft truncated blueprints for tax-and-spending policies that will effectively ignore President Bush's call to extend his tax cuts beyond their 2010 expiration date, House and Senate budget aides said yesterday. The decision to draft five-year budget plans -- rather than the 10-year plans of recent sessions -- would mean that any effort this year to extend the cuts will take 60 votes to block a Democratic-led filibuster in the 100-member Senate. That is a hurdle that even Republicans say is insurmountable in an election year.

Instead, a senior GOP aide said, Republicans will focus on extending only the most politically popular measures in last year's tax cuts -- the "marriage penalty" cut, the child-credit expansion and the expanded 10-percent tax bracket, which are set to expire Dec. 31. That would force Democrats either to support a budget with tight spending constraints or to oppose the extension of tax cuts aimed primarily at the working poor and the middle class. "If it was killed by a filibuster, that would raise all sorts of political problems for the Democrats," the aide said.