Reducing spending should be step two.

I’m not optimistic:

Key House leaders are pushing to sharply limit the scope of the alternative minimum tax, providing relief to many families who already pay the unpopular levy as well as millions more who would be hit for the first time next year.

“This system originally designed to catch millionaires who were avoiding taxes with excessive deductions has gone seriously awry. It is my intention to offer a permanent solution to AMT,” Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on select revenue measures, said yesterday during the first of two hearings on the issue.

No good solution will arise from an underlying assumption that adds excessive to deductions. If a deduction is excessive, Congress is to blame for creating that deduction. It is to blame for complicating the tax code with social engineering garbage. It sold the tax code to willing bidders and now we’re supposed to believe it wants to fix that at the same time it places blame on “the rich”. For example:

“We may be talking about redirecting those tax cuts,” [Rep. Charles] Rangel said this weekend on “Fox News Sunday.” “Within the system, there can be more equity without increasing the tax burden.”

Let’s just write the non-solution’s script now. Include the rich, the poor, income inequality, fairness, working taxpayers, middle class, economic uncertainty, job insecurity, and family values. Agitate. Pour during October. Repeat in 2008.

The worst part is the reality that this diversionary scheme works.