You can always count on the Wall Street Journal opinion page to defend anything that rich people do. If all you did was read it, you'd think that whatever is in the interest of the wealthy is also in the interest of the nation. Wealthy people know how to spend money much better than the government. If we just let wealthy people do what they want, everyone will be better off.

With Tax Day 2007 almost a week away, policy experts, legislators, and the media are examining the biggest anomaly in the U.S. tax code: the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Aimed at the 155 richest families who paid zero taxes in 1969, the AMT failed to reach 2,824 untaxed rich families in 2003, while the numbers paying it topped three million.

An announcement appears in today's New York Times of the imminent demise of "a frequently misleading and meaningless buzzword" and its "perversions ... long past time ... to be put to rest ... for good." Bruce Bartlett, senior advisor to Reagan and Bush I, author of Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, and "present at the creation of 'supply-side economics,'" now ridicules its nefarious notion that "all tax cuts raise revenue," adding that

United for a Fair Economy has just come out with a background piece analyzing the four estate tax votes held in the Senate on March 23. The votes show reduced Senate support for repeal of the tax, compared with previous votes on the issue. The findings:

• ten Senators took new positions on the estate tax, supporting estate tax reform rather than repeal or opposing repeal for the first time:
  • Baucus (D-MT), Kyl (R-AZ), Lincoln (D-AR), Lugar (R-IN), Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), Stevens (R-AK), Voinovich (R-OH), Warner (R-VA)