There are a few reasons to think that the idea of estate tax repeal has little of the sway in Congress of even a year ago, when then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) put the issue on the floor every chance he could. First, the GOP is now divided in its approach to the deficit, with the President and some others desperate to restore their credentials as fiscally responsible. Second, even when they had 55 seats in the Senate, the GOP last year could not muster more than 57 votes to invoke cloture and bring estate tax repeal to the floor. A House vote on a Republican motion last week to repeal the estate tax failed, with just 10 Democrats supporting repeal, down from 42 who backed it two years ago. Third, there is a sea-change afoot demonstrated most clearly by the fact that a front-running candidate for president could actually say, in defense of the estate tax at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire of all places: Part of the reason why America has always remained a meritocracy where you have to work for what you get, where you have to get out there, make your case to people, come up with a good idea, is that we never had a class of people sitting on generation after generation after generation of huge inherited wealth. Or, as Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), chair of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures, said in an article in http://www.rollcall.com/issues/53_45/news/20543-1.html" target="_blank">Roll Call ($) today, the estate tax is: My sense is it's not going anywhere now... It's very difficult to argue the wealthy have had a hard time the last six years... I think the steam has gone out of the Republican tax cut agenda.