Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 6275) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide individuals temporary relief from the alternative minimum tax, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, the gentleman from Vermont, for not only yielding me this time to discuss the proposed rule for consideration of the alternative minimum tax, but I want to thank him for his friendship in the committee and the professional nature of the way he conducts himself.

Mr. Speaker, today we are going to debate a tax increase on America. No surprise. The American public has gotten used to this. The tax-and- spend Democrat Congress, the new Congress, the new way to run Washington, D.C. has resulted in not only economic failures here in this country the last 18 months but also higher gas prices, the inability that we have to control the flow in energy that comes into this country and has made us now more than ever to where we have to go get our energy overseas, send our money overseas, and not be able to be energy sufficient here in this country.

But now I find out that the excuse for raising taxes on Americans today is that there's a loophole in the tax law--a loophole--and unintended consequences. The bottom line is that it's the tax law, it was therefore reasoned, and the opportunity for us to grow our economy and build jobs and have job creation and to protect the American consumer is why these were parts of the tax law. It is not unintended consequences, it is not a loophole, it is the law, the tax law of the United States that I am very proud of, and I am disappointed to see that the Congress today will be debating new tax increases on the American people.

So I rise in strong opposition to this closed rule, yet another closed rule by this new majority that we have here, and to the underlying legislation, which takes the baffling approach, once again, of raising taxes on Americans and on the American economy during a downturn of our economy, rather than taking a way to prevent a tax increase on hardworking and unsuspecting middle class taxpayers, which sets the stage for even more job-killing tax increases in the very near future just to prevent the current low-tax policies that Republicans in Congress worked so hard to pass and to support on behalf of American taxpayers.

I think it's interesting, Mr. Speaker, that when Republicans bring tax bills to the floor of the House of Representatives, we are able to tout how many jobs our tax bill will create, how many jobs the economy will create. I have never, ever heard of a Democrat tax-and-spend bill that then touts how many jobs will be created, because they don't. They kill jobs. They kill jobs in America every time we do what we are doing today with the new Democrat majority to raise taxes on America.

Under the Democrats' flawed policy of pay-as-you-go logic used to defend this legislation, in just 2 short years--when a number of critically important tax policies like the $1,000 Republican tax credit and the Republican lower tax rate on income and capital gains and dividends are set to expire, that created job growth--the new Democrat majority pay-as-you-go rules will require more than $3.5 trillion in tax increases, and that is what they stand for today, increasing taxes on the American people, killing jobs all across the country, and yet they want to blame President Bush. Just incredible.

It makes no sense to me why we are hamstringing our economy and saddling working families with higher taxes when revenues aren't the problem. Washington is already collecting more taxes as a percentage of GDP than the historical average over the last 40 years.

We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. What Washington really has is a spending problem that this new Democrat majority can't fix and can't solve because they are all about taxing and spending. Federal spending is higher by nearly $530 billion more than the Congressional Budget Office's 2000 projection for the year 2007. So going back to 2000, and they projected how much money we would need to spend, we are $530 billion more this year, thanks to a new Democrat majority, making increased spending the main reason why 99 percent of our Nation's worsened budget picture over the last 7 years is occurring. We have got a downturn in the economy because we are raising taxes and spending to support a bloated government.

Mr. Speaker, the American people have known for a long time that Republican Members of Congress support an economically responsible solution to solving the alternative minimum tax problem. Just contrast this year's Republican budget proposal, which prevented expansion of the AMT for the next 3 years and achieved full repeal in 2013, with the Democrat budget. If you compare them, the Democrat budget, which jammed a $70 billion tax increase into our economy to pay for simply a temporary 1-year fix, and did nothing about AMT for the next 5 years after that. A 1-year fix, raising taxes $70 billion, rather than fixing the problem.

Mr. Speaker, taxpayers are already aware that last month, House Republicans unanimously supported a clean AMT patch without tax increases to prevent more than 25 million families--including 21 million families who didn't owe AMT in 2007--from paying an additional $61.5 billion that's going to come due this next April, just like we did in December of last year and just like we will continue to do if Republicans once again become the majority party in Congress.

What taxpayers may not realize is that House Democrats used to be for the same thing--at least that was until they won the majority. And with it came the opportunity to salivate, to get all this money, and to couple what used to be a bipartisan, commonsense tax prevention policy with massive, unnecessary tax hikes that burden this country, and for 18 months we have seen the promise of higher taxes, and it's killing our economy. As recently as last December, the House passed a ``clean'' AMT patch, without crippling the economy with tax increases, by an overwhelming majority of 352-64.

The only thing worse than House Democrats' tax-and-spend flip-flops on this issue is the fact that their comrades in the other body-- including Finance Chairman Max Baucus--have already recognized the reality that at the end of this day, the AMT patch will not be paid for, and that this cynical exercise meant to provide political cover is in fact dead-on-arrival the moment it passes this House. But let it be said: It's another opportunity for the new Democrat majority to show how much they want tax increases to ruin our economy.

The cost of this political gamesmanship is really quite simple: the exposure of millions of middle class taxpayers to an average tax increase of $2,400, and the increased likelihood of a repeat of last year's mismanaged process in which the late enactment of the patch prevented the IRS from processing AMT-affected returns until about 4 weeks into the filing season. It was a disaster this year as a result of the new majority.

What is worse, Mr. Speaker, is how the Democrat Congress proposed to raise the additional $61 billion of additional taxes just to prevent this tax increase. That's right. We are going to have a tax increase on the tax increase on middle class families who were never intended to pay this.

First, and rather unsurprisingly, this Democrat ``Drill-Nothing'' Congress helps repeal a tax deduction that helps American companies to produce energy for American consumers, but they are going to take that advantage away from consumers. It will only hurt energy exploration in this country, and now what we are going to see is that the American consumer will pay more at the pump.

While this proposal is laughable at best for everyone tuning in on C- SPAN across America today, it is about par for the course for the Democrat Party that also thinks that suing OPEC, not increasing the supply of American energy, will help bring down prices for consumers.

Second, this bill increases taxes on entrepreneurs that create jobs and improve failing companies, and raises the long-term capital gains rate on them from 15 to 35 percent, or even higher. So the people that are the ``goose that are laying the golden egg'' are once again slaughtered by this new Democrat proposal.

Once again, I know that most people around this country watching this debate understand that raising taxes on job creators reduces jobs and hurts our economy. But don't worry. You can blame President Bush for that, for the actions of this Congress.

Unfortunately, this proposal is not a surprise, coming from a Democrat Congress that believes when real estate and credit markets are at their weakest, that is the optimal time to raise taxes and send our economy over the edge.

Finally, the bill goes back on America's word by increasing taxes on transactions with treaty countries by mandating a new reporting requirement on private companies so that the IRS can know directly how much is being paid to merchants every year, including the Social Security or tax identification numbers associated with those transactions.

Mr. Speaker, I have got to hand it to the new Democrat majority. Every single week, they find out a new way to assault the taxpayer, every single week they find a way to raise taxes, to increase spending, and more rules and regulations. They did it again this week. Congratulations to the new Democrat majority.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose this tax increase, and I will tell you that I will continue to stand up on the side of taxpayers and middle class Americans who say enough is enough.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I will tell you--you've already heard me say it--this massive tax increase, once again, not only on the economy, but on Americans, could be done a different way. It could be solved. It could be solved by following through on promises that were made by both parties to do something about the AMT.

We've got to do something. We continue to see middle class Americans caught in the crossfire. Today, we see it's not just a crossfire with inability to solve the problem, it's partially solved for 1 year by raising $61 billion worth of new tax increases on Americans that they will have to pay this next April.

Mr. Speaker, since taking control of Congress in 2007, this Democrat Congress has totally neglected its responsibility to do anything constructive to address the domestic supply issues that have created skyrocketing gas, diesel and energy costs that American families are facing today. As a matter of fact, gas rose 10 cents a gallon across America just in the last few days.

So, today, I urge my colleagues once again to vote with me to defeat the previous question so this House can finally consider real solutions to the energy problems and the high costs that

we are facing. If the previous question is defeated, I will move to amend the rule to allow for consideration of H.R. 5656, which would repeal the ban on acquiring advanced alternative fuels, introduced by my good friend Jeb Hensarling of Texas back in March, almost 3 full months ago.

This legislation would reduce the price of gasoline by allowing the Federal Government to procure advanced alternative fuels derived from diverse sources like oil shale, tar sands and coal-to-liquid technology--in other words, marketplace answers--just by allowing the government to do that.

Section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which this Democrat Congress passed, places artificial and unnecessary restraints on the Department of Defense in getting its fuel from friendly sources, like coal-to-liquid, oil shale and tar sands resources that are all abundant in the United States and Canada. Needless to say, it raises grave national and economic security concerns.

Mr. Speaker, this new Democrat Congress wants us to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to go build another Dubai. They want consumers in this country to pay higher costs. By doing so, it is a national security issue. We must do something. Adding alternatives to the supply chain is what is important.

Mr. Speaker, Canada currently is the largest U.S. oil supplier. It sent 1.8 million barrels per day of crude oil and 500,000 barrels per day of refined products to the United States in 2006. According to the Canadian Government, about half of the Canadian crude is derived from oil sands, with the oil sands production forecast to reach about 3 million barrels a day in 2015. Section 526, passed by this Democrat House, choked this flow of fuel from one of our Nation's most reliable allies and economic partners, and it increased our military's reliance on fuels from unfriendly and unstable governments around the world.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have the text of that amendment and the extraneous material inserted into the Record prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote for our military, for energy independence for Americans, and to help American consumers in this time of need and to support our economy by increasing the amount of oil we import and produce from friendly and reliable sources like Canada and from our own American, buy-American proven resources, these advanced alternative fuels, by voting to defeat the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Today's bill, Mr. Speaker, represents a clear difference between the two parties in the House when it comes to tax policy. Republicans believe that Congress should not raise taxes on one group of taxpayers in order to prevent a tax increase on another set of taxpayers. To say that another way, we don't believe we ought to have to raise taxes to preserve something that's already in the Tax Code.

Now, we are certainly for continuing to patch the alternative minimum tax. That's been the practice for the last several years. The President, in his budget for the last several years, has had an AMT patch in his budget without increasing taxes on somebody else. So we are certainly for that. But we are not for imposing a tax increase in a like amount on another set of taxpayers. That just doesn't make sense to us.

Without this patch, another 21 million families would come under the AMT, and their average tax increase would be about $2,400 per taxpayer. So we certainly want to prevent that. But in 2007, we had the patch in place; so we did not collect the AMT revenue from those 21 million taxpayers. And yet we collected, last year, in revenues to the Federal Government, about 18.7, 18.8 percent of gross domestic product. The historic average of revenues coming into the Federal Government for the last 40 years has been about 18.3 percent of GDP. So last year with the AMT patch in place, those 21 million taxpayers protected from the AMT, we brought in substantially more in revenues to the Federal Government than we have historically.

So why, then, should we be so intent on increasing taxes to prevent those 21 million taxpayers from paying $2,400 apiece more in taxes in 2008? The only explanation is somebody just wants to get more revenue into the Federal Government. Now, they may say, well, we want to do that because the deficit is really high and we want to get the deficit down. Well, I wonder, if we took a poll across America, how many Americans would say, ``Yes, I want to get the deficit down and I want to do it by raising taxes'' and how many Americans would say, ``Yes, I want to get the deficit down, but I want to do it by controlling spending''? My guess is more Americans would say, ``I want to get the deficit down by controlling spending.'' But the PAYGO rules that are in effect, while they give us the opportunity to reduce spending to ``pay for'' all of these things, not once have we seen a cut in spending being offered by the majority to pay for any of these items. It's always a tax increase.

So, yes, if you want to get the deficit down to zero, you can do it by increasing taxes, and under the PAYGO baseline, if we were to follow it, we would continue to increase the take of the Federal Government from American taxpayers until at the end of a 10-year window we'd be taking in 20.5 percent of GDP, an historic high, or pretty close to an historic high, and certainly only a couple times in our Nation's history have we even approached that level of revenues coming into the Federal Government.

Now, I think it's a legitimate question as to what is the appropriate level of GDP that we should bring in to the Federal Government, and Chairman Rangel alluded to that in his statement by saying that, I believe he said, the President hasn't offered a tax reform plan. That's true, I guess, he hasn't. But you know what? Under the Constitution, the President can't even introduce a bill, much less pass one. That's the job of the Congress.

So if we want to do tax reform, which I think is appropriate, we ought to have this discussion about what is the appropriate level of revenue that we should bring in? What is the appropriate take of the Federal Government of everything that Americans make? Is it 18.3 percent, the historic average? Is it 18.7 percent, what we took in last year? Or is it 20.5 percent? I don't know what the magic number is, but that's a legitimate debate, and we ought to have that debate in the context of writing a new tax system for the United States that is more modern, more efficient, and more competitive. So I hope that the chairman will, in his constitutional prerogative as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, undertake that task, have that debate, so that we can solve this problem once and for all of the AMT, the complexity of the code, and the continuing diminution of competitiveness that we enjoy with our tax system, vis-a-vis our competitors around the world.

This bill employs some pay-fors, some tax increases, that I believe would be onerous and would add to the lack of competitiveness in our Tax Code. For example, there is a provision that would, for the first time, ignore tax treaties that we have entered into in good faith with other countries around the world and would impose upon companies doing business, foreign companies doing business, through a United States subsidiary in this country, creating jobs in this country, a 30 percent tax, despite the fact that we have a tax treaty that says that company would get a deduction for that income and would not have to pay that 30 percent tax because they'd be paying taxes in the country where we have a tax treaty.

Now, yes, they say, well, but the ultimate parent is somewhere where there's not a tax treaty, but that still violates the spirit of the tax treaty that we have with the country where the immediate parent of the United States subsidiary resides. That change in our Tax Code would discourage at the margin that capital from coming to this country, being invested in this country, and creating jobs in this country.

Those companies that I'm talking about employ a substantial number of Americans; 5.3 million Americans are employed by those kinds of companies. Do we want to jeopardize those jobs? And 19 percent of all United States exports, helping us a little bit to get the balance of trade going our way, 19 percent of all exports come from companies like that. And just last year they reinvested nearly $71 billion back into their United States operations. That's capital, that's investment that we should want here and not discourage through tax changes like the one in this bill.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would say to the Members of this body that we ought to reject the majority's offering that they put forward today to save 21 million taxpayers from coming under the AMT because they would impose a like amount of tax increase on another set of taxpayers. Let's not increase taxes on any set of taxpayers, certainly not in this fragile economy.

We will later offer a motion to recommit that corrects the error, that strips the bill of the pay-fors, and it would allow this body to vote on a clean AMT patch to save those 21 million taxpayers from the increased tax burden but not increase taxes on somebody else.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

I am opposed to the bill in its current form.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The majority's use of PAYGO has really twisted the logic of this bumper-sticker-turned-budget-tool into a pretzel. In the last 2 weeks, when PAYGO stood in the way of more government spending, it was ignored or openly waived. But, today, the majority insists on new permanent tax increases in exchange for a 1-year extension of needed tax relief. That is not a good deal for anybody--a permanent tax increase to pay for a temporary tax relief.

The motion that we have before us would save us from that fate. It would remove the tax increases in the bill, including the particularly misguided higher taxes on energy production that would discourage production here at home, that would further increase our energy insecurity, that would reduce our energy supplies, and that would increase prices.

Is that what we want to do? Do we want to increase the price of gasoline? That is what the effect of this would be. This is a tax increase on oil and gas companies--the companies that produce the oil, the gasoline that we buy. Do we think that, if we increase taxes on them, they are just going to absorb that? Of course not. They will pass it through to the consumer, which will mean higher gasoline prices.

This is a terribly misguided part of this bill. The motion to recommit would get rid of that ill-advised tax increase. So we get rid of all the pay-fors in the bill. That's the first thing that the motion to recommit does.

The second thing we do is we do provide some relief in this bill from high gasoline prices to volunteers who use their vehicles to help charities carry out their work. A lot of charities are telling us that they are losing volunteers because of the high price of gasoline.

Now, the IRS has some authority to modify the tax deduction that people can get from using gasoline in certain situations. So the IRS did, this week in fact, implement a midyear increase in the standard mileage deduction rates, increasing to 58\1/2\ cents the allowable deduction for expenses incurred in operating a vehicle while carrying on a trade or business, and raising to 27 cents per mile the deduction for gasoline costs associated with transportation primarily for and essential to receiving medical care and for travel while moving.

But the IRS could not raise the deduction that can be claimed by individuals who use their car for charitable purposes, such as for delivering Meals on Wheels. That has to be done legislatively. So our motion to recommit would do just that. We would set the allowable deduction for gasoline expenses for charitable purposes at the same rate for medical care and for travel while moving, 27 cents per mile.

Meals on Wheels is one of those charities that has told us that they are losing volunteers because of gas prices. Nearly half indicated that increases in gas prices had forced them to eliminate meal delivery routes or to consolidate their meal services.

Mr. Speaker, these high gasoline prices are, in fact, having a very deleterious effect on charities and on Meals on Wheels in particular. I won't go into some of the details that we have been given by Meals on Wheels about the state of some of our seniors, but needless to say, it's not a pretty picture.

So this would give those charities some relief, Mr. Speaker, and it would allow them, we think, to get some of those volunteers back in active service to relieve some of these problems that we have.

So, Mr. Speaker, our motion to recommit does two things. It takes out the tax increases in this bill, leaving in place the AMT patch to give tax relief to those taxpayers who would otherwise be subjected to a $2,400-apiece increase in taxes, and number two, it increases the deduction, the mileage deduction, for vehicle use for charitable purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I urge its adoption.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1297 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to insert extraneous materials into the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 1297 provides for consideration of H.R. 6275, the Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008, under a closed rule. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate, controlled by the Committee on Ways and Means.

As Americans know, the alternative minimum tax was enacted in 1969 with a very legitimate intent: to ensure fairness in our tax system by avoiding the situation where very wealthy individuals don't pay taxes and to close loopholes. It is in the same spirit of fairness that we consider legislation today that will keep the middle class out of being hit by the alternative minimum tax when it was never intended that they would be caught up in its web and who have been because of inflation and because of no adjustments in the Tax Code.

The Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008 will provide, one, 25 million Americans with over $61 billion in tax relief. Two, it offers property tax relief to homeowners and expands the child and adoption credits to parents. Nearly 50,000 families in my own State of Vermont, Mr. Speaker, will see tax relief from this legislation.

However, in order for the tax relief to be fair, we have to ensure that the cost of the tax relief is not simply passed on, the credit card debt, to our children, and we have already saddled the next generation with $9 trillion in debt, costing us $1 billion a day in interest payments, money that could be spent on other, much more productive things. Enacting an AMT patch today when we don't pay for it would simply shift that $62 billion burden from the middle class on to their children and their grandchildren. What we fail to pay today they will be forced to pay tomorrow with interest.

Furthermore, we do pay for this tax relief by improving the Tax Code. With the bill's offsets, we are closing two very large tax loopholes, one that has benefited very wealthy hedge fund managers at the expense of middle class taxpayers, and let me talk about that first.

The ``carried-interest'' loophole. It is a preferential rate of capital gains tax, a 15 percent rate that gets applied to income earned by many people who do financial work.

Right now, under current law, the income earned by many investment fund managers at a private equity firm, and hedge funds, are taxed at the lower capital gains tax rate. So you have this very unjustified situation where some of these folks who are making, in some cases, billions of dollars, pay a tax rate lower than the secretaries who work in their firms, and they do this when they don't actually put their capital at risk but manage the capital of others.

A second loophole that is closed in this bill stops major oil companies from receiving what is called a special domestic production subsidy through the Tax Code. As we all know, record gas prices, the record cost of a barrel of oil is resulting in oil company profits that are unparalleled in the history of this country, in some cases, as high as $11 billion in a single 3-month period. So it's clear that those companies are doing very well and that they do not need continued taxpayer assistance.

I commend Chairman Rangel and Chairman Neal and the Committee on Ways and Means for their excellent work on this legislation, and I encourage my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am the last speaker on our side. I will reserve the balance of my time until the gentleman from Texas has an opportunity to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, my friend from Texas characterizes a bill that will provide tax relief to 25 million Americans as a tax increase, and it is just flat out wrong. There are 25 million Americans. These are folks who earn between $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a year, who, if we do not pass this legislation, will find themselves essentially being the target of legislation that was intended in 1969 to have millionaires pay their fair share.

We are talking about soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who get a job as a police officer or as a carpenter. We are talking about some our school teachers all across the country. We are talking about sanitation workers who are struggling hard on $40,000 or $50,000 a year, oftentimes with two people in that family who are working, raising three or four kids. We are saying in this legislation that we are going to protect you, because we know you need to have that money to pay your bills.

We also have to level with the American people. This is going to be $61 billion in tax relief for those incredibly hard-working Americans who are getting clobbered by these $4-plus gas prices. They can't fill up their tank. They have got cars or SUVs or trucks that they have to drive, and they don't have the money to get something that is a little bit more fuel efficient. A lot of them have long commutes. This legislation is going to give them the opportunity to keep a little bit more money in their pocket so they can make it from one end of the week to the other and can pay their bills.

Now, the question is for this Congress, do we pay for it, or do we put it on the credit card? As to what my friend from Texas is characterizing as a tax increase, let me go through it, because I think Americans have a commitment to fairness, and I think Americans know a very commonsense proposition, and that is we have all got to bear the burden. We all have to pay our share of the load.

There are two very glaring situations in the Tax Code, and attention should be paid to them, and it is overdue. One is this hedge fund exemption, where folks who make an awful lot of money pay at a capital gains rate. What is unfair about it? If you are a financial advisor, if you or I ask someone to help us figure how to invest our money, we pay them a fee, and of whatever earnings they get, they pay a regular tax rate just like any other American. Whatever that rate is--15, 20, 35 percent--that is what they pay.

If you are a hedge fund executive and you make billions, because of this provision in the Tax Code, which I am calling a loophole, they get to pay at a 15 percent rate. That is costing the treasury billions of dollars, and it is also a glaring unfairness, because you literally have a situation where the hedge fund manager who is doing the same work as another financial advisor down the street pays one rate, 15 percent, while the other person doing the same work, working just as hard but who is perhaps making less money, pays 35 percent.

You also have this bizarre situation where the person making this immense amount of money pays a much lower tax rate than the secretary, than the back office help in that very same firm. I think most Americans see a basic fairness, and let's have the income tax rate apply to earned income. That is what this provision does.

The second question is on the oil company exemption, and I am using the word ``loophole.'' What is a ``loophole''? I think, commonly, you know it when you see it. What a ``loophole'' is in this case is giving taxpayer benefit to very successful companies that do very well in what they do--explore for oil, sell it. We are taking money from the taxpayers of America to give it to major American and foreign oil companies. These are mature industries that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, and they don't need taxpayer help.

So this legislation provides 25 million Americans with tax relief, and it is the folks who need it. It asks other Americans, the hedge fund executives, to pay at the income tax rate, and it has oil companies foregoing what has been an incredibly good deal--tax credits that they get at the expense of the American taxpayer.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I call up the bill (H.R. 6275) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide individuals temporary relief from the alternative minimum tax, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, some time ago, in an effort to make certain that 159 taxpayers who are very wealthy had some tax liability, the Congress at that time passed the alternative minimum tax. What they neglected to do was to index the tax structure for inflation, and as a result we find people making 30, 40, $50,000 caught up as though they were wealthy taxpayers trying to avoid or evade their tax liability.

Now, the President should know, as other Presidents, that this is a very, very unfair tax. The truth of the matter is it should not even be in this structure. But in the close to 7 years that the President has been in office, he has not seen fit to give us a tax reform bill so that we can do what everyone in this House would want done, and that is to eliminate this fiscal threat from now some 25 million taxpayers.

So what do we have to do? Every year we have to come down and so- called ``patch it'' because, politically speaking, no one is going to go home and say that they did nothing about it.

So what is the difference between what we want to do in the majority and the other side? Well, if you listen carefully, you would see that the President has put this AMT in every budget except the one we have this year, which means that in the budget he never intends to remove it or have it removed. What does putting it in the budget mean? It means that you expect the money that would be coming from the alternative minimum tax to be there to spend. I can understand that, except that Congress says that we're not going to collect that money. So what we would believe is that if we're taking $61 billion out of the economy that we shouldn't go to China and Japan and ask them once again to bail us out but we should take a look at the Tax Code and to find out just what things in the Tax Code, what preferential treatment, what loopholes are there so that when we repair the AMT, at least for this year, we will be able to say we didn't borrow the money and we didn't put this burden on our children and our grandchildren.

So the four areas that we concentrated on to raise the money to get this bill passed is the carried interest. What is that? All it says is that if two groups of people, one a corporation and the other a partnership, are managing someone else's money and if, indeed, they don't put their own money in it, that the tax rate should be 35 percent. Somehow a group has manipulated the system, made themselves a partnership, said they didn't put in their own money, but they still consider it a capital investment, and they are now taxed at the rate of 15 percent. We think it's unequal, it's wrong, and we correct it.

The other area that we have a concern about is people who use tax havens for money earned in the United States to avoid taxes. They put it overseas. In the area of credit cards, we have the major credit card holders that reimburse vendors, and all we ask the vendors to do is to report the money they've had for reimbursement. And then, of course, we have our oil industry that received tax credits that they were not entitled to, and certainly at the obscene profits they're making, I hate to believe that someone believes that the government should further subsidize the moneys that they're making.

So, Mr. Speaker, it's going to be interesting to see how the other side explains as to why they don't have to pay for this. Certainly, if indeed we do nothing, $61 billion of tax burden is going to fall on 25 million good American taxpayers, and we want to fill that

gap of the $61 billion. The other side says it doesn't exist, and so I can't wait to sit down so I can listen to their very interesting argument.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I have no further speakers, Mr. Speaker.

General Leave

I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 6275, as amended.

I yield back the balance of my time, and ask for a vote in favor of the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Certainly, the gentleman from Louisiana knows that we would be willing to work on the charitable deduction as it relates to the changes that were made by the administration, but basically, what he is saying is that, as to the $61 billion in tax

loopholes that we have raised, they would rather borrow the money than fill the gap that relieving the people of this tax burden would have.

So we both agree that 25 million people shouldn't suffer with this $61 billion tax increase, but he would have you believe that, if you take this out, you wouldn't have to put anything in. Well, what you're putting in is the future of our children and of our grandchildren.

I ask that this motion to recommit be rejected.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the AMT Relief Act. Once again, we are considering a one-year ``patch'' for the AMT. This bill will protect over 25 million families who would otherwise be forced to pay higher taxes under the AMT through no fault of their own.

We all know that the AMT was never meant to apply to middle-class families, and I think we all agree that we need to find a permanent fix to this problem.

But once again, the minority wants to insist that we provide this tax relief in a fiscally irresponsible manner. Patching the AMT for 2008 without offsets would increase the deficit by $61 billion. Our colleagues in the minority will argue that because Congress never meant for this to happen, or that because it maintains the status quo for taxpayers, we don't have to pay for it.

The reality is that we pay for it one way or another. The minority would have us borrow the money and make our children pay for it.

Let me say a word about the offsets we've used here, because this bill is paid for with provisions that end basic inequities in our tax code.

The Joint Committee on Taxation's revenue estimate for the carried interest provision indicates that over $150 billion in income will be taxed at capital gains rates rather than ordinary income rates if we do not make this change. This is a lot of income, and according to the Joint Committee, this is not going to ``mom and pop'' operations, a common reference by those arguing against this provision.

For anyone who thinks there are ``mom and pop'' private equity funds, or that this is essentially about ``mom and pop'' real estate developers, let me quote the Joint Committee on Taxation. In a memo to the Ways and Means Committee staff, the Joint Committee writes: ``We assumed that nearly all recipients [of carried interest] would be at the highest marginal tax rate.'' The top tax bracket for married couples starts at $357,000 in taxable income. Claims made that the carried interest issue is about ``mom and pop'' business owners just are not credible.

More generally though, treating carried interest as ordinary income is not about raising taxes, it's about fairness. Investment fund managers should not pay a lower tax rate on their compensation for services than other Americans. The only thing this does is say to the fund managers, if you're providing a service, in this case managing assets for your investors, you ought to be taxed on that compensation at the same rates as everyone else.

If they have their own money in the funds they manage, they will still get capital gains treatment on that portion of the profits. This is no different in concept than options for corporate executives. They are both incentive compensation to encourage performance, and carried interest should be taxed at ordinary rates like stock options.

The argument that this proposal will hurt economic growth or even pension plans is just disingenuous. If it will hurt growth, why have senior economic advisers to the last three Republican Presidents publicly supported this proposal? Real estate partnerships, including those that don't use carried interest at all, earn less than 10 percent of all income from real estate development and construction.

Regarding the oil and gas provisions, I think it's important to look at the history of how these companies got these subsidies in the first place. In 2004 we had to replace the FSC provisions of our tax code because of a WTO ruling. We replaced them with a deduction to encourage domestic manufacturing.

The minority, then in the majority, added the oil and gas industries to what was supposd to be a deduction for manufacturers, even though the FSC provisions we were replacing had nothing to do with oil and gas. This was an unjustified giveaway then, and it is only fair that we correct the situation, especially now that oil companies are earning record profits. ExxonMobil alone earned $40.6 billion in 2007, a U.S. corporate record.

So, Mr. Speaker, this bill protects middle-class families from the AMT, it's fiscally responsible and it makes our tax code fairer. I urge all my colleagues to support it.