The voted this afternoon (233-189) to pass a fully-offset, one-year AMT patch that would prevent some 25 million Americans from falling into an alternate tax universe in which their tax bills would jump by an average of $2,000. The bill's $61.6 billion cost is fully offset mostly by:

• Treating income of equity fund managers as income, rather than capital gains
• Revoking some tax cuts for oil companies
• Closing a loophole currently enjoyed by some foreign-owned firms using tax havens
• Tighter tax enforcement of merchant credit card payments

These offsets, however, will most likely be stripped by the PAYGO-phobic Senate when it considers the measure.