At a press conference last week, White House press secretary Tony Snow applies the administration's familiar "let's you and him fight" strategy (that's worked so well to paralyze the entitlement reform discussion) to AMT reform: ... the alternative minimum tax is -- it's a cruel tax and it's an unacceptable tax. It needs to be fixed. We have 20 months to do it. And I certainly am not going to negotiate against myself or against anybody else in talking -- the question may be for you to ask, to turn back to those who are advocating tax increases is, would you consider not raising taxes on people? "OK, we'll get right back to you, Tony, after we're through negotiating with ourselves." The most galling aspect of Snow's snide statement isn't so much the tiresome aspersions he's casting on Democrats struggling to find revenue-neutral solutions to AMT's bracket creep. It's his brandishing the tax increase issue long after the administration has already made clear that it could support a net-revenue-neutral solution, even if it includes a tax hike element.