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 )  is the only honest way if you want to protect the middle class .  i urge your vote for the alternative minimum tax proposal .  