John Kerry: “What my amendment seeks to do is address that problem to the best of our ability by providing an exemption to all…”

“What my amendment seeks to do is address that problem to the best of our ability by providing an exemption to all taxpayers at the income level of $100,000 or less from being put into the alternative minimum tax. Today, there are 1.3 million Americans in the alternative minimum tax who paid it last year. Because of this bill and the lack of indexing for inflation, the result will be that almost 17 million Americans will pay about $40 billion by the year 2010 as a consequence of being pushed into a new bracket. So we are telling people they are going to get a tax cut, but in effect they are not because there is a serious alternative minimum tax problem. I ask colleagues to help make it a fair tax bill for all Americans.”