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Monday, February 26, 2007
WSJ: AMT fix "an excuse to [repeal] Bush tax cuts"
The Wall Street Journal published a particularly useless, factually-selective, poorly-argued partisan skreed last Friday about "how the AMT's relentless expansion in recent years is [the fault of] none other than William Jefferson Clinton" and how the AMT ("one more liberal monster that was created in the name of soaking the rich") has become "an excuse to justify repealing the Bush tax cuts."
The bottom-line warning of the (by-line-less) Journal piece:
Beware politicians who say they only want to tax the rich. Sooner or later their tax schemes will soak the middle class because that's where the real money is ... money Democrats in Congress would prefer to spend.
Fascinating. So, by this reasoning, Democrats seek excuses not to subject the $632 billion 10-year AMT "fix" to the strictures of PAYGO, while the deficit-fighting, fiscally responsible GOP would want to see it paid for?
Then how do you explain this quotation from the article?:
[A]s Senator Grassley [R-IA, ranking member of the Senater Finance Committee] notes: "This tax was never meant to tax the middle class, so why should we count it as a revenue loss when we make sure they don't have to pay it?"
Posted by Dana Chasin
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