Wall St. Journal:  “The health care debate is one thing, but the current situation involving the federal estate tax really makes you question if the good folks in Congress have any idea what they’re doing.  By failing to act on the estate tax, lawmakers have almost assuredly planted seeds for a good bit of litigation to kick off the next decade. . . . Dick Patten, president of the American Family Business Foundation, a Washington group that has campaigned against the estate tax], said: ‘I can guarantee this: if they succeed in getting retroactive in hiking the death tax from zero to 45%, there are going to be lawsuits.  It’s going to be messy, it’s going to be noisy”.”

See “Estate Tax Expiration Sets Up Battle on Retroactive Restoration.”