Word: minimum
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...House passed a plan that would raise taxes on the lofty fees and bonuses that hedge-fund and private-equity managers receive. This has placed Senate Democrats, who will next take up the measure, in a quandary. They are compelled to fix the alternative minimum tax (AMT), which hurts big swaths of the middle class even though it was created to ensure that the very rich could not entirely escape paying income tax. But in doing so, the Democrats might have to raise taxes on a particularly lucrative donor base...
...bill, which cruised through the Senate Agriculture Committee without a dissenting vote. They blocked it because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to let them bog down the floor debate with scores of unrelated amendments designed to box Democrats into uncomfortable votes on issues like immigration and the alternative minimum tax. Most Senate Republicans like the farm bill just fine - Richard Lugar of Indiana is an honorable exception - but not as much as they like attacking the do-nothing Democratic Congress. They needed 40 votes to block Reid's effort to shut off debate, and they got 42, so Reid...
Everything that happens in the tea industry, of course, depends on its workers. The Plantation Labor Act of 1951 guarantees not just a minimum wage for workers in tea, coffee and rubber but also housing, education, medical care and drinking water. Those benefits add about 11% to production costs and are the main reason Indian tea costs about $1.62 a kg to produce, compared with $1.23 in Sri Lanka, $1.16 in Kenya and 84¢ in Malawi. Strong unions in India's tea-growing regions have fought to preserve those benefits. Tea-estate workers are paid on average...
Congressional Democrats must feel a little disoriented by the emerging battle over how to pay for this year's fix for the Alternative Minimum Tax. The party that usually never misses an opportunity to portray itself as the champion of the working class suddenly isn't so wild about making a certain share of wealthy Americans pony up more cash to alleviate the impact of the AMT on millions of middle-class Americans. And for once, the Dems will be downright relieved if President Bush delivers on his veto threat, in this case effectively taking the difficult decision...
...billion measure at issue, passed last week by the House of Representatives, is the latest one-year band-aid to fix the AMT. Created in 1969 to ensure that the rich would pay at least a minimum amount of tax annually, the AMT has ended up walloping an increasing share of the middle class. This year 21 million "ordinary" Americans will be hit by it if Congress doesn...