mr. speaker , you say one thing for political cover , and then you do another thing for your friends . 
that is what we are doing here today . 
just last month the speaker said , `` i will tell you that the most mean-spirited thing we can do is leave our children with a debt they can not pay. '' that came from the speaker . 
that did not come from our side . 
that is the authority of the majority in this house . 
well , the words were right . 
but , you know , the speaker knows , and i know him well , he went to a college where you know about the bible . 
and there is a bible verse that says , by their deeds ye shall know them . 
and it is the deeds out here that really make the difference . 
now , the difference between what happened yesterday and what is happening in the gentleman from new york 's bill is very simply this . 
yesterday you sent a signal . 
you sent a press release . 
you sent a message out up into the ether knowing , absolutely knowing , it would not pass , because it is not protected in the senate . 
you know that . 
you know how to run this place . 
you can confuse the people , but you can not confuse anybody who knows what is going on in here . 
the fact is that the gentleman from new york 's proposal is one that puts it in law and protects it so that we can do something about the amt . 
let me say something about the amt . 
i bet you most people listening to this do not know what amt stands for . 
it stands for alternative minimum tax . 
it was put in in 1986 because there were people at the top of the scale who were not paying one single penny of tax . 
so it was decided in this body that everybody who benefits from the united states of america should pay some taxes for a civil society . 
the failure to index that tax has allowed it to creep down to people making $ 75 , 000 or $ 100 , 000 ; and suddenly , instead of being a few people at the top , it is now 14 or 20 million , depending on how you want to figure . 
that was never the intent . 
from 1994 to the present , you have allowed it to go from covering 200 , 000 people to 14-plus million people . 
you want to use that as an excuse for trying to get rid of the tax structure . 
and we know that it was intended and you know it was intended to tax everybody in this country . 
the repeal that you tried to put through here under clinton was an attempt to let the top off taxes at all . 
you simply wanted to give them an internal tax holiday if they could figure out how to manipulate the tax structure . 
the average janitor does not have a way to manipulate the system . 
and that is why the gentleman from new york 's ( mr. rangel ) xz4003330 is the only honest way if you want to protect the middle class . 
i urge your vote for the alternative minimum tax proposal . 
