Referring to the $1 trillion dollar, 10-year cost of AMT repeal, as we did here, suggests a greater cost than necessary to protect middle-class taxpayers from AMT liability via reform, a distinction we have drawn before in discussing long-term approaches to the AMT. A paper today from the Center on Budget (CBPP) addresses some myths surrounding the AMT, among them, that the only way to protect middle-class households from the AMT is to repeal it. But as we've shown and CBPP concedes, even though a fix that better targets relief toward middle-income households would be "considerably less expensive than repeal," it would still cost hundreds of billions of dollars over ten years, whether or not the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts are extended. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) says "it's ridiculous to rely on revenue that was never supposed to be collected in the first place. Another trap is raising taxes to 'pay' for AMT repeal. It's unfair to raise taxes to repeal something with serious unintended consequences like the AMT." But this doesn't necessarily mean offsets aren't necessary, so Rangel and Co. should count on a lot of offseting mining ahead of them.