Submitted by joshua lomask, Sep 10, 2007 19:31

Let's be clear. Despite his insinuations, Grover Norquist is no friend to middle and working class Americans. Nor is he very honest. He is, first and foremost, an advocate for reducing the tax burden of the wealthy. There is no doubt that the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which was instituted to ensure that the wealthiest Americans could no longer use fanciful tax schemes to avoid paying their fair share of the national budget, has become a burden to a broad swath of middle income Americans that it was never intended to affect. However, Mr. Norquist's equating the problems presently associated with the AMT with an argument for eliminating it are cute and disingenuous. Nowhere in his essay does he allude to the reason that the AMT has come to affect so many more Americans than was ever intended: the failure to index the minumum income requirements to inflation. That legislative ommission assured that increasing wages would inevitably bring more and more Americans within the scope of the AMT. In fact, Mr Norquist and his supporters in government (notably those "conservative" Republicans who until recently controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency and thus could have resolved this problem years ago) intentionally failed to address this issue. The idea was to ensure that more and more middle income Americans become subject to the AMT in the hope that a growing groundswell of resentment against the AMT would allow them the opportunity to repeal it. In the meantime, the increasing revenue stream from the AMT would give President Bush the economic cover needed to cut the top tax rates while falsely assuring the public that such cuts would not be fiscally irresponsible. What has this irresponsible and duplicitous policy wrought? More middle income Americans have become subject to a tax that was never meant to be levied against them. Furthermore, due to opportunistic tax cuts for the wealthy, an increasing share of the national debt is now the burden of the middle and working class and their children. All this while the United States struggles under a skyrocketing budget deficit and a global war on terrorism. Mr. Norquist's complicity in this chain of events is complete. And now he has the gall to suggest that due to a 30 year old legislative oversight and the cultivation of the unforseen consequences of that omission by his own disciples in government, that the AMT should be eliminated for the good of the middle class! By raising the minimum income requirements and indexing it to future wage inflation rates, the AMT can once again be a reasonable and practical tool against wealthy tax dodgers, Mr. Norquist's real constituency.

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