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The House passed H.R. 8, the Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act of 2003, in a 264-163 vote. The House defeated, 188 to 239, the Pomeroy substitute amendment that would have increased the death tax exemption to $3 million.

According to American Farm Bureau Federation, families own 99 percent of the nation's farms and ranches. Unless death taxes are repealed, Farm Bureau said, many of those family farms are at risk of going out of business when the owner dies, because surviving family members must sell assets in order to pay death taxes with rates as high as 49 percent.

Eliminating the death tax would also help stem the loss of farmland to development, said AFBF President Bob Stallman.

"Children must decide whether they intend to continue the family business. When faced with the realization that their family farm may not survive death taxes, many choose to leave the farm," Stallman explained. "Without children interested in the business, it is common for farmers to sell. Where there are alternative uses for farmland, land is often developed for other uses and open space is lost."

AFBF's Public Policy Executive Director Dick Newpher, said the elimination of death taxes has been part of the discussion in Washington, D.C., since 2001, when Congress voted to phase out death taxes over the next nine years, repealing them in full for only one year – 2010. The tax will resurrect in 2011 unless Congress permanently repeals it before then.