08/11/06 Tax Cut & Wage Hike

Tax cut & wage hike. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. If a measure that combines a permanent estate tax reduction with a minimum wage increase comes before the Senate again next month - it would likely receive at least 58-votes. That number includes a fifth Democrat who supports the estate tax compromise - but was unavailable for the first vote. While 58 is more than the 57 supporting the measure in the most recent vote - it`s still two votes shy of the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture or end a filibuster. And American Farm Bureau Tax Specialist Pat Wolff says Farm Bureau has no plans to resurrect its anti-estate tax campaign during the Congressional recess this month. Given that narrow three vote defeat of the permanent reduction last week - Wolff says the death tax fight is all up hill. After all - she says the latest vote followed an all-out push by Farm Bureau. WOLFF: Unfortunately that effort failed. We still came up short. So unless there's some external force that changes peoples minds, I'm not sure what the fall will bring for death tax reform. The bill is made up of three parts - including the death tax relief - a minimum wage hike - and an extension of expiring tax breaks. And Wolff says there`s an effort to separate the bill into those parts. But Wolff says she isn`t convinced that strategy will work either. And moving to scale estate tax relief back even further - Wolff says - could result in a loss of support. WOLFF: The bill that was on the Senate floor last week was already a considerable compromise; considerably scaled back from death tax repeal and if you scaled it back even more, it's questionable whether or not the business community would support it. Now here's today's Washington Grange Report. (GRANGE) That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.