Interesting article this morning on Bloomberg.com: House and Senate Face Tough Negotiations Over Final Tax Measure (by Ryan J. Donmoyer):

Congressional Republicans will face a tough task when they try to wrap up their budget legislation for next year: how to shoehorn about $100 billion in tax breaks into a measure that can only accommodate $70 billion in cuts. The House voted 234-197 yesterday to approve a $56.6 measure that extends the 15 percent rate on dividends and capital gains until 2010. The Senate last month passed $68 billion in tax cuts, the bulk of which would pay for preventing 15 million households from receiving a $30 billion tax increase under the alternative minimum tax next year. The two chambers haven’t scheduled negotiations aimed at crafting a compromise. Republicans said they must now find ways to accommodate both measures in the final legislation — either by paring them back, passing the Senate’s minimum tax fix separately, stripping out some of the dozens of other tax breaks or adopting some of the Senate’s $18.8 billion in tax increases for oil companies and users of tax shelters.