Senate Tax Hikers At It Again

Today, the U.S. Senate will be voting on a bill that temporarily extends present tax law in exchange for permanent tax hikes. If this sounds familiar, it's because they did so just last week--and rejected it.

This time, the Senate Democrat majority will be adding a sweetener to the pot: a one-year AMT "patch" that will prevent more taxpayers from falling into the AMT trap. Unlike the expired tax provisions relating to business and energy, the AMT trap doesn't get "paid for" with permanent tax hikes. The hope of Senate Democrats is that this sweetener will be enough to peel off votes.

As Captain Picard once said, though, "Not good enough, damnit, not good enough!"

One-year, temporary extensions of present tax law should never, ever be paid for with permanent new tax increases. If this becomes standard practice, every year taxes will go up permanently merely to pay for the present tax code. And we all know this is about 2011, when taxes are scheduled to go up by hundreds of billions of dollars. A line must be drawn--here.

ATR will be rating a vote against cloture on this measure.