Congress raid aviation funds to pay for AMT patch

Think those long lines and flight delays are bad now? Think again:

The clock is ticking on the 2007 tax year, and ticking along with it is the political bomb known as the Alternative Minimum Tax that will explode on 20 million middle-income taxpayers if Congress fails to pass relief soon. Trouble is, Democrats need $50 billion to do it, thanks to the "pay as you go" budget rules they imposed on themselves earlier this year.

"Paygo," as it is known, requires that any tax cut be offset by other tax increases or entitlement spending cuts. Take a few seconds to guess how Democrats are now moving to escape this self-imposed straitjacket? If you answered "fiscal trickery," perhaps you once worked on Capitol Hill. And this example is a doozy: We're told that senior Democrats are preparing a raid on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) trust fund to offset the AMT assault on the middle class.

Airline excise taxes (on tickets and fuel, among other things) raise about $10 billion a year. Multiply that by the five years in the paygo budget window, and you happen to hit that $50 billion AMT target. Even better for Democrats, this would mean they don't have to take the political heat for raising taxes on anybody else to offset the AMT. They could thus avoid taxing New York Senator Chuck Schumer's private-equity pals, who are donating so much money this year so Mr. Schumer can elect more Senate Democrats next year.

The big problem here is that the aviation excise tax is supposed to be dedicated to . . . aviation. This includes funding FAA operations, as well as modernizing the air traffic control system, which certainly needs it. Conveniently, the airline tax expires in mid-November, which means Congress can use the tax's renewal under its budget rules to apply that $10 billion to offset AMT relief. So amid growing airline flight delays and congestion, Congress may pilfer that airline money and use it instead to solve a political problem of its own making.