Ron Kind: “I would hope that as this process moves forward, we can get together and have an honest discussion of what needs to be…”

“I would hope that as this process moves forward, we can get together and have an honest discussion of what needs to be offset, what should be extended, and how we are going to provide tax relief to 23 million Americans who would otherwise get caught up in the creeping alternative minimum tax. And that's why today I rise in support of the rule and the underlying bill, and I commend the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel, for helping us bring forward a bill that is not only fiscally sound but morally responsible. There are some elements of common agreement. We all here agree that we want to stop the AMT from hitting 23 million more Americans, 56,000 in my congressional district alone in Wisconsin. The big difference is we pay for it; they don't. We did, as we promised the American people we would do when we became the majority this year, reinstitute pay-as-you-go budgeting rules, something that was in place in the 1990s that gave us 4 years of budget surpluses. We are paying down the national debt rather than adding to it.”