After months of delays and anticipation, House Ways and Means Chair Charles Rangel (D-NY) finally unveiled his self-described "mother of all tax bills" last week, the Tax Reduction and Reform Act. The revenue-neutral trillion-dollar bill proposes the abolition of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a package of "offsets" to pay for it, and a progressive redistribution of the regular income tax.

The first test of the bill's viability comes tomorrow, when the Ways and Means Committee considers a small, short-term piece of the bill, the Temporary Tax Relief Act. The bill consists of a one-year "patch" to keep 19 million more taxpayers from having to pay the AMT and a one-year extension of various popular tax credits and deductions for R&D, state and local taxes, teachers' supplies expenses, and other goodies.

What's not to like about the Temporary Tax Relief Act? No one wants to see the number of AMT taxpayers leap from 4.2 million to 23 million, especially as we head into an election year. But this will happen unless a hold-harmless patch is enacted as it has been successively over the last six years. And each of the several dozen tax credits and deductions – referred to collectively as "extenders" – has a powerful constituency to keep it alive and well.

But for all that, no one predicts smooth sailing for the Temporary Tax Relief Act. The sticking point is that Congress committed itself to "pay-as-you-go" (PAYGO) fiscal responsibility rules adopted earlier this year. PAYGO -- a vital fiscal disciple measure that helped eliminate budget deficits when it was in effect during the Clinton years – requires that any bill that increases entitlement (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) spending or cuts taxes must be offset by spending cuts or tax increases in equal or "offsetting" amounts, so as not to increase the federal deficit.

Rangel says that he hasn't decided which offsets to use to pay for the Temporary Tax Relief Act. He has said that the leading candidates for offsets include higher taxes on the “carried interest” earned by private equity managers, tougher rules on tax shelters, deferred compensation restrictions on hedge fund managers, and new requirements on reporting capital gains.

But one thing is clear: he and the Democratic House leadership have been unequivocal in their insistence that the bill adhere to the PAYGO principles and be revenue-neutral at the end of the day.

Tomorrow morning, Rangel will invite debate and amendments on a version of the Temporary Tax Relief Act that does not include any offsets at the outset of the Ways and Means Committee "mark-up" of the bill – when the bill is considered, amended (or not), and voted on. Many members of Congress, particularly in the Senate, have wavered in their support for offsets, but even the most skeptical Democrats have said they will support the Temporary Tax Relief bill, even if it includes offsets.

They may hold their noses, but Democrats are committed enough to the PAYGO principles and fiscal responsibility that they are not too big a price to pay for passage of the Temporary Tax Relief Act.

So what's the problem? Unbeknownst to most people, the GOP has dropped its traditional hawkishness on the federal budget deficit. The new position was articulated a couple of years ago by none other than Vice President Cheney, when he announced that "deficits don't matter." And, true to form, spending under President Bush has gone through the roof, adding over $3.5 trillion in only six years to bring the national debt up to a whopping $9 trillion. So, according to most Republicans, the offsets that Rangel proposes are not merely off-target, but downright off-ensive.

The top GOP member of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) captured the sentiment in the Senate perfectly yesterday: "Republicans are pretty united in the Senate to ensure there are no offsets." Translation: we're pretty united in indifference to the $9 trillion national debt.

Let them explain that to the 19 million Americans who could pay for that attitude – pay AMT taxes for the first time, that is.