The opening salvo in the Senate budget resolution amendment process will be fired in the next hour or two, when Finance Committee Chair Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) offers the first amendment in this year's round. The Baucus amendment creates room in the budget numbers to extend some of the temporary 2001 and 2003 tax cuts dealing with

• the marriage penalty
• the child tax credit
• the 10 percent tax bracket
• the estate tax (understood to mean extending the 2009 levels, with indexation)

The amendment is paid for by reducing projected surpluses in 2012 and 2013. Separate legislation would be needed later to actually extend the tax cuts. A similar amendment by Baucus passed 97-1 vote last year and is likely to fare about as well this time. The strategy behind the amendment -- give Democrats, moderates or those in red states, an inoculation against GOP or conservative criticism that they don't support popular (e.g., estate) tax cuts. Maybe it works -- you can have your inoculation cake without being tarred as a gluttonous spendthrift blasting holes in the deficit since 1) under the budget resolution, you can use the semi-fictitious deficits projected for 2012 and 2013 to pay for it 2) the budget resolution is just a resolution -- you're not stuck with law and consequences at the end of the day