Senate Finance chair Charles Grassley (R-IA) is once again using reason to try to wrest the oft-deferred package of tax credit extensions from the smothering grip of the moribund trifecta (which also includes a massive estate tax cut, and a modest minimum wage hike).

Last week, he cited the high cost of printing IRS forms late as a reason to pass the extenders before FY 2007 starts on Oct. 1. This week he is pointing to a report that 19.2 million individuals would be affected by a similar delay in extending three of these credits -- state and local sales taxes, college tuition and fees, and teachers' purchase of school supplies:

The higher numbers are all the more reason to extend these tax breaks this week and not wait until the lame duck session. Waiting will create headaches and hardship for tens of millions of taxpayers.

And as noted in a recent Watcher article, Grassley's prediction that Democrats would score political points from the "do-nothing Congress" inaction on extenders is panning out.

Despite the putative costs to taxpayers and to GOP candidates -- and Grassley's appeal to reason -- there are no signs that the GOP leadership will bring the trifecta or any of its three component parts up for a vote in either chamber prior to pre-election adjournment this week.

For Dana's take on what Sen. Frist's next move on the "trifecta" bill might be, check out his new post on TPM Cafe.

Last Friday, the four GOP Senators tapped by Bill Frist to find enough sweeteners to get the Democratic votes needed to pass the three-part package known as the “trifecta” were due to offer Frist a legislative option.

But no such recommendation issued from them and, at this point, the only chance for action on the package before Congress’ pre-election adjournment would if Frist, heeding his colleagues' cries from the campaign trail, allows a stand-alone vote on the popular extenders. Don't expect Frist to extend himself.

The death of the death of the death tax could be imminent.

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said yesterday it was "doubtful," that the House would consider a new or conference version of H.R. 5970, the "trifecta" bill, prior to pre-midterm adjournment. The trifecta, weighted down by a $750 billion estate tax cut, passed the House in July, but failed in the Senate by three votes on a procedural motion in early August.

Per the Washington Post, "headed nowhere [is] the permanent estate tax repeal that Republicans have tried all year to push across the finish line."

Boehner, seeing no sign that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and his trusty trifecta troupe of four Senate colleagues (Gregg, Kyl, Grassley, and Lott) can pull a rabbit out of their hats and somehow get the estate tax poison pellet through the Senate, seems ready to pull the plug.

"I'm not sure there is time," Grassley said yesterday. But he leaves himself this out:

I have not had a conversation with [House Ways and Means Committee chair William] Thomas about this… I am apparently going to have a conversation with him, but I don't know what he's going to lay out so it's hard for me to comment on what I think about what he's going to lay out that I don't know."

Though Thomas is a champion of estate tax repeal, he may be hearing the sounds of silence emanating from the Senate and join Boehner in saying the last rites for the death of the death tax… for now.

A repeal of the estate tax may decrease charitable giving, yet charities have been largely silent on the issue. From Bloomberg News:

That's the dilemma facing charities, universities, museums and other organizations that rely on donations as Senate Republicans consider another vote on permanently reducing the tax as early as this week. Most of the organizations are following [James] Tisch's advice, keeping mum on the issue in deference to their most generous patrons: the very wealthy who often serve on their boards.

``It's very difficult for some of them to confront their own board members,'' says Diana Aviv, president of the Independent Sector, a Washington-based umbrella for more than 500 non-profit groups that is the only organization of its kind lobbying to keep the estate tax.

Repeal of the estate tax would remove or reduce incentives for wealthy individuals to donate, potentially their non-profit beneficiaries as much as $25 billion a year, according to a Congressional Budget Office study.

This shouldn't be an issue. How can these wealthy folks, on the one hand, say they support the social services that charities provide, and on the other, support a tax cut that would lead to drastic reductions in both government and charitable social services?

Tisch, whose family has billions of dollars in assets, says he favors keeping a form of the estate tax that imposes a levy on unrealized capital gains at death. He also says charities should stay out of the fight because it ``dilutes'' their charitable mission when they become involved in policy debates in which they have little or no expertise.

It also "dilutes" the "charitable mission" of wealthy donors when they use their influence over charities to promote their political interests. The estate tax is in the interests of charities, for many reasons. You don't need to be a wealthy donor to understand that. Charities that do understand what their interests are ought to be able to represent themselves in a political debate on which their operation greatly depends. It would "dilute" their mission not to.

Donors who, with these kinds of threats, limit the free-speech of charities should be ashamed of themselves. They have turned an act of generosity and public-spiritedness into giving hush-money that furthers only their narrow self-interest. If the people who control charities are to be good stewards, they ought to let charities fight for their survival.

Be sure to check out our own Dana Chasin guest blogging over at TPM Cafe this month on the trifecta bill and the estate tax. Frist has now charged four Republican Senators with the task of figure out how to ram through his failed strategy on the estate tax before they recess for the year.

Get all the latest details at TPM Cafe: Trifecta Failure -- The Fingerprint File.

Congress Daily reported today that dissension within the business community over Bill Frist’s trifecta strategy — his insistence on linking the estate tax cut with the tax credit extensions -- boiled over at a White House meeting last Wednesday.

The meeting exposed the conflict between companies with bottom-line interests in the R&D and work opportunity tax credit extensions and others in the business community who support Frist’s unwavering dedication to the estate tax. As we've noted repeatedly, the former would fly through Congress in a heartbeat, if liberated from the trifecta, while the estate tax is the albatross suffocating the bill.

Lobbyists and trade associations representing R&D and work opportunity credit users hitherto scared to step on Frist’s toes are taking to Capital Hill on Thursday to urge Frist to abandon his fixation with the trifecta.

Frist has given his trifecta taskforce of Finance Chair Charles Grassley, Budget Chair Judd Gregg, Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and Trent Lott (R-MS) until the end of this week to come up with a strategy for tweaking the bill so it can pass the Senate.

The 109th Congress reconvenes today for a last month of session (barring a lame-duck session) before a pre-election recess scheduled to start September 29. Among the many tax and budget issues that may see action this month, all three left over from the defeated “trifecta” bill -- which combined estate tax reduction, a minimum wage increase, and a tax extenders package -- are reportedly on the agenda. OMB Watch resumes its focus on these:

• Estate Tax -- Despite ambivalence from some GOP Senators worried about another loss on the issue and Congress’ do-nothing image, Majority Leader Frist is said to be poised “for one more battle” to make deep cuts in the estate tax. But would any Democratic votes switch from the last roll call on the issue on Aug. 3, when the GOP fell three votes short of the 60 needed to proceed to a motion to debate the trifecta bill?

  
  

• Tax Extenders -- Business lobbyists and others are agitating for the extension of a set of popular tax breaks -- including the research and development credit, college tuition deduction and the state and local income tax deduction -- which went down to defeat last month as part of the trifecta. But unless these breaks are de-coupled from the estate tax, they may need to wait until a lame-duck session. Alternatively, they could be added to an expected technical corrections bill for the recently-passed pension reform act.

  
  

• Minimum Wage -- The sticking point for Democrats who support a minimum wage hike was the provision in the trifecta bill that would lower the wages of employees in seven states where state laws require employers to pay the full minimum wage atop tips they earn. In a potential compromise, Republicans are said to be willing to tinker with the “tip credit” language to assuage those concerns and buy more votes.

Would the trifecta fare any better this time around? Can enough fixes and compromises be found to pass it? Is there even time for Frist to try it again this month? After last month's loss, can humpty dumpty ever be put back together?