Alcee Hastings: “by continuing the exemption for another year, 1 year, Republicans are incrementally trying to postpone the day of…”

“by continuing the exemption for another year, 1 year, Republicans are incrementally trying to postpone the day of reckoning with the AMT. At some point a decision will have to be made to, number one, repeal some of President Bush's tax cuts or, number two, index the AMT for inflation at a cost of roughly $370 billion or, number three, eliminate the AMT altogether at a cost of $600 billion without the Bush tax cuts, or $900 billion if President Bush's tax cuts remain beyond 2010. What I just said is a part of inside baseball that at best we could feed to the goats the language that we employ here. The mythical Ms. Johnson and Jane and Joe Lunch Bucket understand only one thing and one thing only, that we need to have a debate on how it affects them. No one comes into my office talking about an AMT. But people come into my office talking about health care. People come into the office of our all of us talking about education. People come to our offices to talk about supporting the military in an adequate fashion. And countless, thousands, of Americans come to us talking about either being uninsured or needing to have incentives for small businesses. And yet we find ourselves unable to have a discussion in this House of Representatives that is meaningful as far as economics are concerned. What we get are campaign gimmicks and fancy names of things that do not become the law.”