Charles Rangel: “Mr. Speaker, some time ago, in an effort to make certain that 159 taxpayers who are very wealthy had some tax liability…”

“Mr. Speaker, some time ago, in an effort to make certain that 159 taxpayers who are very wealthy had some tax liability, the Congress at that time passed the alternative minimum tax. What they neglected to do was to index the tax structure for inflation, and as a result we find people making 30, 40, $50,000 caught up as though they were wealthy taxpayers trying to avoid or evade their tax liability. Now, the President should know, as other Presidents, that this is a very, very unfair tax. The truth of the matter is it should not even be in this structure. But in the close to 7 years that the President has been in office, he has not seen fit to give us a tax reform bill so that we can do what everyone in this House would want done, and that is to eliminate this fiscal threat from now some 25 million taxpayers.”