Unfortunately, the GOP will not point out the failures of the Dem controlled Congress much like in 2006 when they did not attack the Dem's philosophy. Now, we know that the Dems are simply socialist-pacifists. Yet, the GOP doesn't seem on the attack. Even the Prez guys are attacking each other. Only Rudy has attacked the Dems and Hil and Obama. It is time for some unity in the Party or we lose the entire ball of wax.

A possible fix to AMT would be go back to 1969 (or whenever it was enacted) and just inflate everything from there to current dollars. The problem with doing that is that congress has gotten fat and happy spending the AMT tax collections that never should have happened in the first place.

A political problem that I see is that the 20 million Americans who would have been hit had congress not done something, don't even realize that they would have been paying anything extra. (Kind of like a terrorist attack -- if it has been thwarted, do you even know it was planned?)

It's not an important issue until it hits your pocketbook. And this has been a hot button of mine for a number of years because I have been paying it. And I am not "rich".

Well, before you blame the Democrats for the delay, remember they wanted to pass a bill earlier, that included a tax on some off-shore wealthy tax dodgers, to make up for the lost income. But the Republicans (even though a minority, they can stop things in the Senate) and Bush said no, lower taxes, keep on spending, run up the deficit even more. What happened? I thought the Republicans were the ones who always claimed to be conservative money managers, and Democrats the ones who ran up the big deficits. But for the last decade it's been the other way around, with the Republicans running around like a drunk kid with a credit card.

Just a second. The exemption on the AMT would have gone down by $20K from last year if there had been no fix. A decrease in the exemption would have resulted in a potential tax increase of about $4K and it would have snagged more people. The Dems tried to offset the tax increase that never happened (nor was meant to happen), meaning they tried to pocket the additional taxes. It was all smoke and mirrors in order to get the additional taxes out of someone else's pocket.

If you don't understand how the AMT is calculated then you can't possibly understand why the GOP objected to what the Dems were trying to do. Yes, the GOP members who blocked this WERE being conservative money managers. They stopped a tax increase that never was meant to be there in the first place.

No doubt, had Bush fought the Republican Congresses and divided Congresses as hard as he is fighting this Democratic Congress, the Republic would have been far better served.

Until someone invents a time machine, however, we can't go back and change any of those mistakes. We play the cards we have today. As COgirl points out, there was a pre-programmed exemption in existing law which would have hit a lot of middle income to upper-middle income families very hard - their state and local taxes would no longer be fully deductible, in effect, because the AMT required a minimum federal tax on a given level of adjusted income.

As to "fiscal responsibility," I humbly submit that in a $3 trillion budget, we could rather easily find plenty to cut, alleviating any need for "offsetting" tax increases.

Start with the Toilet Museums, and go from there.

Amen, Jim!

I think what people don't think about when it comes to fiscal responsibility that "as bad" as GOP might seem, imagine what the spending would have been like had the Dems had their way. Much of the spending approved by the Republican congress was a compromise (downward) from the level the Dems wanted to spend.

People in glass houses should not throw stones.

Lay off the dem's. They need the extra pork to pay off their voters or no one would vote for them. They have no constructive idea's so they pass out the dollars. No dem wanted to get into the offshore accounts since the dem's are far and away the richest (money stolen from the taxpayers) in congress and most have millions hidden away in offshore accounts (pay no taxes), including Shrillary, Silky, Hanoi John and the Swimmer Ted. If the Hsu fits the democrats must wear it.