John Spratt: “Three times in recent months, officials of the Bush administration have come before our committee, and when asked about…”

“Three times in recent months, officials of the Bush administration have come before our committee, and when asked about the AMT and its impact on middle-income Americans, for whom it was never intended, they have insisted that they could fix the AMT with changes in the tax code, such that there would be no change in revenues. In February 2006, Josh Bolten was the Director of OMB. He told the Budget Committee that the AMT could be 'corrected in the context of overall revenue-neutral tax reform.' In February 2007, Rob Portman was the Director of OMB. He told the Budget Committee that 'our budget assumes that we will have a revenue-neutral correction to the AMT.' Rob Portman was followed by Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, and he said essentially the same thing. The difference between these officials and Chairman Rangel is that Charlie Rangel has delivered. Mr. Rangel has put a revenue-neutral bill on the table, and to boot, extended a few popular tax concessions about to expire, such as the R & E tax credit, while adding few new ones, such as the exclusion of gains on the foreclosure of taxpayers' homes. Mr. Rangel and his committee deserve credit for bringing this bill to the floor, and for preventing the AMT from coming down on 23 million taxpayers, mostly middle-income; and they deserve credit also for sticking to the pay-go principles that we have steadfastly applied for the last 9 to 10 months.”