On June 22 the U.S. House of Representatives approved a resolution to consider a bill to permanently eliminate the Estate Tax (skillfully spun by the Republican neo-cons as "death tax").

If Congress approves this bill and it is signed into law, it will mean our treasury will realize an additional deficit of  $283,000,000,000 (that's BILLION) over the next decade, a time when our soaring national deficit can least afford this additional blow.

The recent failure in the Senate to repeal the estate tax stands as a rare victory for sane fiscal policy.  The NYT editorialized about the event under the heading "What Passes for Good News."

In fact, the Senate vote came alarming close to ending a tax on inheritances of the richest half-a-percent of households, with a majority of Senators (57--but they needed 60 for a repeal) supporting a measure which would have cost the treasury $800 billion over 10 years at a time of ballooning budget deficits and war.

Of course, the politics of the repeal were the focus of most analyses--would the White House be adhered to or get rebuffed on an issue dear to them--but the economics of the tax cut are deeply revealing of the fundamental flaw of economic policy today.

And that flaw is this: we have, over the past three decades, shifted from we're-in-this-together (WITT) economics to you're-on-your-own (YOYO) economics.

With their focus solidly on the gay marriage amendment and estate tax repeal, the conservative movement is busy rearranging deck chairs on...well, not quite the Titanic, but on a rotting ship of state.

Major News, as of a few minutes ago: Success in the Senate!

The U.S. Senate on Thursday killed a bill backed by President George W. Bush that would have permanently repealed estate taxes. On a vote of 57-41, the Senate blocked consideration of a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would wipe out what Republicans call the "death tax." Republican backers had acknowledged they were short of votes for full repeal, but they had hoped to offer an alternative that would have reduced the tax rate and exempted all but the wealthiest estates from the tax.

Frist had thought he was two votes short. So much for his judgment. Despite this success, contact your Senators and congratulate them, encourage them to continue to fight for middle-class Americans, and vote for the best interests of the country. Today's the day Bill Frist will try to ram the vote through on repealing the Estate Tax--the so-called "Paris Hilton" tax.

While this tax benefits only the top 1% of all Americans, and the 14 families (including the Wal-Mart heirs, the Mars heirs, and others) pushing this have lobbyied long and hard for the repeal, the netroots have an important part to play here.

If you haven't already contacted your Senator, DO SO TODAY!!!

Surely Frist is concerned only about his own financial interests here, but he's also counting on the fact that we'll all be distracted by the Al-Zarqawi news and other items.

Begin by contacting two important "wobbly" Democrats:  Maria Cantwell and Mark Pryor.

Background below the fold.

In the days before GPS, a ship approaching a rocky coast had to be careful.  Navigating toward safe harbor, especially on a dark foggy night, brought with it a very real chance of destruction.  No matter how powerful, graceful, or well-designed the vessel, it could be in a moment rendered into little more than flotsam strewn across the beach.

If the ordinary problems were not enough, ships had to also face a more devious opponent: wreckers.  For centuries, maritime salvage laws gave complete ownership of a wreck to those who discovered it.  The incentive generated by these rules brought the unscrupulous out on foggy nights to try and fool wayward ships.  They would start lights, sometimes several, or order to deceive ships into thinking they were spotting lighthouses, movements of carriages along a seaside road, or other ships in a harbor.  By this means, wreakers lured hundreds of vessels onto the rocks, killed any surviving crew, and made off with the contents of the wrecks.

Forgive me the extended metaphor, and I'm sure many of you can already guess where I'm going with us.  If the ships are legislation, the Republicans are determined to provide the fog in which they can lose their way.  And they're building up the rocks on which legislation can founder.   And they're setting the false lights.