In fact, the potential of the AMT to strike a great many people in the future is the reason it has never been fixed. It's not just that the AMT raises lots of money in the current year. Given Congress' failure to fix it permanently, it always seems as if the AMT is poised to raise huge sums of money in the coming years, which allows federal budgeters to project soaring revenues in the future. "It promises the revenues that make everybody's fiscally responsible projections look realistic," said Maya MacGuineas, director of the fiscal policy program at the New America Foundation.