Political Quotes

“Each year Congress is required to fix the AMT because without such a fix--around here it is called a patch--but without such a fix, it would apply to, last year 22 million people, this year 26 million people. It was never intended to apply to those people. It was originated about 20 years ago because there were a couple hundred millionaires who were not paying taxes because of all of their credits, deductions, offsets, and so on. People in Congress thought that was not right, so we said: Well, no matter what, even if you have enough other tax shelters to eliminate your tax liability, we are going to make you pay an alternative minimum tax, no matter what. But it was not indexed for inflation, so now everyone is going to have to be paying it. Each year Congress says: Well, we did not intend that, so we will fix it so you do not have to pay it this year. The question is not whether we are going to relieve taxpayers from that--we will--but whether the rules of the Democratic majority that it has to be paid for will, in fact, be implemented so that we have to raise taxes in order to save taxes, save people from having to pay taxes.”