When tax cuts become a Democratic platform

An idea whose time has come. Again, and again, and again.

The good:

Between now and the end of May, House Democratic leaders hope to draft a permanent overhaul of the [Alternative Minimum Tax] that would effectively exclude anyone who earns less than about $200,000 a year — about 97 percent of taxpayers.

The bad:

But that plan would leave a $1 trillion hole in the federal budget over the next decade, which Democrats would have to replace with revenues from other places or with spending cuts, under new “pay as you go” budget rules. Just postponing the expansion of the tax for one more year would reduce revenues by about $50 billion, according to Congressional budget projections.

And the ugly...

After his re-election in 2004, Mr. Bush vowed to overhaul the income tax and abolish the alternative minimum tax as part of the process. But even though he received recommendations from a handpicked advisory panel, Mr. Bush ignored the proposals and never came out with a plan of his own.

Well, I can see as how that would be difficult, what with not even being able to come up with a thought of his own. Oh but I exaggerate, I guess the war was his idea.

The Democrats themselves are divided on how to alter the alternative minimum tax. The Democrats’ chief tax-writer in the Senate, Max Baucus of Montana, has shown little enthusiasm for replacing it with tax increases in other areas. Earlier this year,... Mr. Grassley introduced a bill that would repeal the tax entirely, without trying to recoup the lost revenue from tax increases elsewhere. Mr. Baucus joined in sponsoring that bill.

Gramm-Rudman who?

And in yet another moment of lucid congressional logic...

“You’re talking about replacing a hidden tax which most people don’t even know about with an explicit tax,” said Leonard Burman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “On policy grounds, it’s a good idea. On political grounds, it’s a lot easier to have the tax hidden.”

Good plan! Making the code so complex that the public doesn't even know they're paying taxes is certainly air-tight public policy.

Why is this not a bipartisan issue? Blame the Dems for this radical leftist plague of fiscal conservatism.

The House Democrats’ embrace of tax-cutting rhetoric stems in part from a pragmatic consideration: the alternative minimum tax has a disproportionate impact on Democratic-leaning states. That is because those states tend to have higher incomes, higher property values and higher state and local taxes — all factors that expose people under the alternative tax formula.

A new analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal research group, predicts that almost one-quarter of all taxpayers in Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts will have to pay the alternative tax in 2007 unless Congress freezes it again. About one-fifth of all taxpayers in New York and California would be exposed.

RIP AMT