Charles Rangel: “at the end of this day, notwithstanding the philosophical arguments that we have exchanged on this floor and whatever…”

“at the end of this day, notwithstanding the philosophical arguments that we have exchanged on this floor and whatever they do in the other body, the American people and taxpayers are going to ask the question, Did this Congress deliberately allow a $50 billion tax burden to fall on their shoulders? And we have to be in the position to say we have a long way to go in getting our tax reform straight. But it would be just so totally unfair for people to say that because of our differences of opinion that on this close to Christmas Day, we have blessed them with billions of dollars of a tax burden that they should not have. It was the Congress that allowed this to go forward in 1969 without fixing it for indexing. And I hope it will be this Congress that would say that we remove this burden. I do really hope that even though this President has only 1 year left in his term of office that somewhere, maybe the Treasury Secretary, maybe the Republican leadership, that they might come forward with any plan or some plan to remove the alternative minimum tax.”