It's worth saying, too, that issues like the AMT and college tuition deductibility are inevitable and annoying focuses of the Democratic Party. They are, in effect, attempts at economic relief for the middle and upper middle classes. The middle class sort of controls electoral politics in this country, so such focuses are inevitable. What would be nice is if the Democrats had the spine or vision to parlay the need to reform the Alternative Minimum Tax into a push for a wholesale tax simplification, along the lines of what Ron Wyden has proposed. That would allow for much more progressive outcomes even as the public argument focused on the need to change a policy the middle class loathed.
