AMT Relief Act of 2007

AMT RELIEF ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - December 12, 2007)

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Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal).

I want to say at the outset that I am pleased that Mr. McCrery is on the floor. There will be other times to say this, but Mr. McCrery is one of the respected Members of this House. I think he serves us well as ranking member of the Ways and Means. I know he'd rather be chairman of the Ways and Means, but we like him as ranking member. He has indicated he is not going to be with us in the next Congress. That's regrettable because he is one of the good Members of this Congress, and I want to say that to my friend.

Now, let me talk about the question at hand. Mr. Speaker, we debate here in the House, and many Americans have the opportunity to see this debate. This debate is a relatively simple

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debate. It's not just about the alternative minimum tax or the consequences of not putting a so-called patch, and nobody in America knows what that means but simply it means saying that the alternative minimum tax won't affect 25 or so million people in America. None of us on either side of the aisle want that to happen. The issue is not whether or not any of us feel that ought to happen. It is do you pay for it? Do you provide for the revenue fix that will be necessary if we cut that revenue?

Let me say to my friend from Louisiana, he has said a number of times on this floor that the President didn't count the revenue for this year from the AMT. He didn't provide the money to pay for it. He simply didn't anticipate the revenue. What he did not say, however, is that the President did anticipate the revenue for the next 9 years. Furthermore, the President anticipated in 2006 that we would have the revenue generated by the AMT in the year we're going to so-called fix, so that the administration sent us a budget counting on this revenue that we are about to say we won't receive.

So I tell my friend from Louisiana, it is somewhat misleading, I think, not intentionally, I understand, to say that the President didn't rely on the revenue for this budget. That's true. He relied on it last year and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that and in 2001. And he relied on it, I tell my friend, to offset your tax cuts because, as you recall, in your 2003 tax cut, part of the revenue that was anticipated was this revenue that the gentleman says he does not want to collect and that the President is not relying on for 2007. He's accurate but in a very narrow sense, because the President has relied upon it every other year.

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