Jeff Bingaman: “It shall not be in order in the Senate to consider a bill, amendment, motion, joint resolution, or conference report…”

“It shall not be in order in the Senate to consider a bill, amendment, motion, joint resolution, or conference report that increases the number of taxpayers affected by the alternative minimum tax, except for a measure that extends expiring provisions relating to the child tax credit, the 10-percent tax bracket, and the marriage penalty. Mr. President, this is what I would call a first-things-first amendment. I heard the President, in his State of the Union speech--and we have all heard him on numerous occasions--talk about how we need to make permanent the tax cuts. We had a hearing in the Finance Committee where Secretary Snow, our Secretary of the Treasury, came in and said: We need to make permanent our tax cuts. And my question to him was: What about this looming problem that we all know about, which is called the alternative minimum tax? Now, the alternative minimum tax was put in place with the idea that very wealthy individuals should not be able to avoid all taxes.”