House votes to make Estate Tax repeal permanent.

Now, this is going to be fun. I like any issue which firmly and clearly divides the basic philosophies of the Democrats and Republicans, as it helps voters clarify their own positions.

There will be a lot of noise on how this will affect the Federal Budget, which as usual is still growing like a dead cow in the Texas sun. My take is much simpler of course: every nickel left in the private sector is a victory, every nickel in Ted Kennedy's fat little hands is a loss. No one ever bothers to ask the American citizen if a tax hike is going to put a dent in their budgets. Let the government tighten its belt for a change.

Democrats in the Senate are going to treat this bill like one of those little burning paper bags you find on your porch on Halloween. You certainly don't want it, but stomping on it isn't a good idea either.

Nobody wants to be seen as "against" low taxes, although the semantic exercises the Democrats go through to be against tax cuts while being for low taxes have to be seen to be believed. Notice that for all the crap they give Bush's tax cuts, not one Democrat has yet proposed legislation to actually scrap them.

The standard routine will be to portray the end of the Death Tax as a "giveaway" to the rich. We'll see if this works--leftist indoctrination has made this statement almost a Pavlovian trigger, and it has worked well in the past. Step Two will be to drag some terrified old person in front of the cameras by their welfare leash and hold a cigarette lighter under their Social Security check to show what the Democrats will do if taxes are cut. Democrats really get a lot of mileage out of their obedient pet constituents. Every sentence from the Democrats in this debate will involve either Social Security, or that brand-new shackle they hope to weld onto the elderly, prescription coverage.

Bush has already been touting the cut to farmers, who have a lot to gain from it despite some exemptions. Our past is well-littered with the corpses of family farms that have fallen to the taxman and ended up in some corporate farming bin. Small businesses also have a lot to gain, for similar reasons. The Republicans are at a small disadvantage since the actual end of the tax is still years away, and it's difficult to get voters worked up about things "down the road."

Of course, it will never come to a real vote in the Senate (sound of Democratic Senators sighing in relief) since Tom Daschle's beryllium steel ass is still firmly wedged in the Senate door, but the debate should be entertaining anyway.