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Thursday, January 04, 2007
An AMT Exception for PAYGO?
Tomorrow, the U.S. House is expected to reinstate PAYGO budgeting rules -- with teeth.
Under the House rule, any bill, joint resolution, amendment, or conference report affecting direct spending and revenues have the net effect of increasing the deficit or reducing the surplus for either the period comprising the current fiscal year and the five or ten following fiscal years will be out of order.
We have wondered and worried how that would square with House Ways & Means chair Charlie Rangel's imperative, fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), among other policy priorities.
Here comes House Budget chair John Spratt (D-SC) with a way for Congress to keep more taxpayers from having to pay the AMT.
Yesterday, Spratt said that under the rule, there will be no exemptions to paygo. But, per Reuters, he added yesterday:
That's not to say that you couldn't come back later in a budget resolution and have some sort of a dispensation from the rule for a certain-sized tax cut.
A "certain-size tax cut"? Is this where John Stewart asks John Spratt, "OK, just how many teeth will PAYGO have?"
Posted by Dana Chasin
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