It's been a while since taxes were a potent political issue. It was almost 20 years ago that George H.W. Bush invited voters to "read my lips" and a baker's dozen years since Republicans captured Congress by decrying the Clinton tax increases. George W. Bush did promise to cut taxes, but it didn't help him much in 2000, and the ensuing economic recovery didn't help him much in 2004.
But taxes could be an issue in 2008, as the federal tax structure is poised to change in the next few years.
First, the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in 2010, and the Democrats, who seem almost sure to hold or expand their majorities in the next Congress, seem determined not to extend some or all of them. So taxes at least on high earners are likely to rise. And secondly, the alternative minimum tax, passed in 1969 to prevent a handful of millionaires from avoiding income tax altogether, is now slated to hit more than 20 percent of taxpayers. And that percentage is due to rise every year because the AMT is not indexed for inflation.
The paradox is that the same Democrats who want to increase top-bracket income and capital-gains tax rates are desperately eager to spare relatively high earners from the AMT -- so desperate that Senate Democrats agreed to waive the "paygo" rule they reinstated when they took control.
Paygo requires that a tax cut be offset by a tax increase or a spending cut of corresponding dollar amounts. But when the Senate early this month passed its $50 billion AMT "patch" exempting 230 million taxpayers from the AMT for one year, it waived the paygo rule.
House Democrats are simmering, but they will probably have to go along. There's a process argument for waiving paygo, which is that future AMT revenues are fictitious because no Congress will allow the tax to go into effect. But it's nonetheless embarrassing for Democrats to renounce a rule they adopted as a guarantee of their fiscal responsibility.
The reason Democrats risked this embarrassment is that the AMT tends to fall on voters in places with high state and local government spending and taxes -- Democratic places like Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and California.
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