Despite rumors earlier this week that the estate tax might see floor action, the Senate had far too many issues on its plate this week for Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) to schedule a vote. He did, however, file for cloture and we can plan on probably seeing an estate tax vote after Senators return from their August recess. In other estate tax news, this week Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) has floated some new specific numbers regarding reform options. He specifically mentioned a $3.5 million exemption rate and a 15 percent tax rate. While the $3.5 million exemption is much lower than what we have been hearing from him over the past month, the low tax rate still guts the tax. CBPP has estimated, based on Joint Committee on Taxation numbers, that in 2015 the cost of this proposal would be roughly 74 percent of what the total cost of repeal would be.