Most Americans don&8217;t seem too concerned about the present debate over the alternative minimum tax. They tell themselves that, heck, they aren&8217;t millionaires so they don&8217;t need to worry about the alternative minimum tax.

What they don&8217;t realize is that if they don&8217;t speak up, they, too, could end up paying the tax. The rich don&8217;t want to pay it, so they want to move it onto the middle class, just like they have been successful in doing with federal income taxes in general since the 1980s.

In 1969, the alternative minimum tax was created to keep 155 super-rich families from sheltering their income from the Internal Revenue Service. Quite often, taxes adjust as inflation rises. This one didn&8217;t, and so ever-larger numbers of taxpayers &8212; though usually wealthy taxpayers &8212; have become subject to the tax.

But if Congress doesn&8217;t produce an exemption by the end of December, about 23 million new taxpayers could pay the higher tax rate required by the alternative minimum tax. Some of those taxpayers could have incomes as low as $75,000. That&8217;s not for whom the tax was intended.

In other words, if Congress and President Bush don&8217;t figure this issue out, middle-class people who aren&8217;t concerned about the tax now will wake up next year paying a tax they never had to pay before. In April, there could be some very upset taxpayers.

If you don&8217;t want to pay more taxes, you&8217;d better pay attention.

So what&8217;s the hold up in Washington?

Both sides want to scrap the alternative minimum tax, but that begs the question of how to offset the lost revenue of $50 billion.

Democrats in Congress want to raise taxes on wealthy investors. Bush and the Republicans don&8217;t see an offset as necessary because they can just put the expense to America&8217;s credit card &8212; i.e., increase the federal debt &8212; and let children and grandchildren pay it off.

The clock is ticking. It is time for Americans to care about this issue.