There have been a number of rumors about how the House intends to pass the Obama/McConnell tax cut bill, many involving interesting procedural tricks and various counter-proposals.
It turns out most of those rumors were wrong. Tomorrow, the House will vote on an alternative extension of the estate tax, and if that fails, there will just be a straight-up vote on the Senate language.
The House Rules Committee has just released the rule for considering the Senate Amendment to the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to the Bill H.R. 4853. In regular English, that's the Senate-passed tax cut bill.
The rule provides for three hours of debate. After debate, there will be a vote on agreeing to the Senate amendment with the Pomeroy Amendment. I'll update here when more on this amendment is available, but the Rules Committee describes it as an extension of the 2009 estate tax rates (45%) through the end of 2012, instead of 35% as provided by the Senate.
If this vote fails, there will then be a vote on simply agreeing to the Senate's bill.
If either of these votes pass, the House concurs in all of the Senate language that isn't related to the estate tax. No amendments (such as the Sherman Amendment discussed earlier today) have been permitted relating to the payroll tax cuts or any other provision of this bill. Also, there's no way to support the alternative estate tax language without also voting for the rest of the bill.
Update [2010-12-15 20:9:31 by Goobergunch]: The text of the Pomeroy Amendment has been posted.