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 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.

The reality of a $10 trillion national debt -- and the realization that a tax paid by the 30 thousand richest Americans (out of 300 million) helps contain it -- prevailed in yesterday's 212-196 House vote defeating a measure to repeal the estate tax.

Not everyone sees it this way, of course. Among the unreconstructed fiscal ostriches is House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (MO), who commented after the vote that the estate tax is

one of the least equitable, most economically harmful taxes ever dreamed up by the federal government... It's only a matter of time before every American taxpayer is directly, and dramatically, affected. It's a tax that penalizes the wrong people for doing the right things -- and it costs the American economy hundreds of thousands of jobs each year.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs? Okaaay...

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, it's worth noting that prior to yesterday's vote, the House had voted for estate tax repeal five consecutive times since 2001.

And who says the opposite of progress is... Congress?

Later today, the Senate Finance Committee is expected an amendment sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-IA) that would cut the federal estate tax, claiming that the tax is hurting family farms by forcing family farmers to sell their farms in order to pay the tax. We'd like to see one example of a family having to sell their farm in order to pay for the estate tax.

According to the Emrgency Campaign for America's Priorities, in 2001, the pro-repeal American Farm Bureau could not provide the New York Times with a single example of a family having to sell its farm to cover its estate tax liability -- and that was when the exemption was about 30 percent of what it is today.

CBO estimates that each year, out of around 2.5 million people who die in the entire country, only about 120 are farm owners who owe estate taxes. Each year, only 15 of the farms would not have enough liquid assets to pay the tax -- about .003% of the farms in the U.S. As the Urban Institute points out:

Family-owned farms and closely held businesses receive especially generous treatment under the estate tax. Farmers and small business owners may reduce the value of their real estate using a special formula as long as their heirs maintain its use as a family-owned farm or business and do not sell it to a nonrelative for at least 10 years. Special use valuation can reduce the value of the real property portion of most farms by 40 to 70 percent of its market value. In addition, estates in which farm and business assets make up more than 35 percent of the gross estate may pay their estate tax in installments over 14 years at reduced interest rates.

See also: CTJ's Do Family Farms Need More Estate Tax Breaks? and the most recent state-specific estate tax numbers.

I think if Sen. Kyl could produce one American family that had to sell the farm to pay its estate taxes, they'd be more famous than Harry and Louise.

UPDATE: Sen. Kyl has just withdrawn his estate tax amendment .. for now.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has released a new analysis examining a dangerous proposal to allow for an unlimited exemption within the estate tax for farmland. CBPP believes this proposal might be offered as an amendment to the Senate Finance committee markup of the farm bill.