Wow, this is obnoxious. Despite the fact that millions of people believe that Bush has actually made tax cuts, which in reality is not the whole truth, the administration is working on a more targetted bit of tax policy: keeping the Alternative Minimum Tax. Due to some technicalities, the AMT will begin to apply to many more people than originally intended. Now, guess where those people live?

Greg Jenner, the Treasury Department’s acting assistant secretary for tax policy, said yesterday. ”It is probably a correct assumption that Massachusetts, New York, and California will bear more of a burden under the AMT

Surely this is just coincidence, right? Here’s what the man who’s been called the architect of Bush’s tax policy has to say:

Some Republicans have suggested leaving the minimum tax in place because those hardest hit tend to be in states that did not support Bush, including Massachusetts, California, and New York. ”It is a tax of people living in ‘blue’ states,” said Grover Norquist, the conservative activist who heads Americans for Tax Reform.

He said the tax was originally conceived by liberal Democrats as a way of imposing higher taxes mostly on wealthier Republicans, and he suggested that it be used as a bargaining chip by the White House when Bush tries to enact his tax agenda. The minimum tax should be repealed only when Democrats ‘’say they are sorry and offer to give us something in return,” Norquist said.

This is yet another thing about this administration that should give a real conservative pause. Either taxes should be cut or not. I can see how someone who believes in principle that taxes should be low might allow for exceptions. But not exceptions based on election results.

I also wonder if Grover Norquist remembers that people around here haven’t always reacted so well when they feel a tax is unjust.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 18th, 2004 at 8:46 pm and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.