[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 139 (Wednesday, October 8, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H8691-H8692]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      MARRIAGE TAX ELIMINATION ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to attend last night the special 
order by the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Weller] and the gentleman 
from Indiana [Mr. McIntosh], who brought attention to our body, and to 
the people

[[Page H8692]]

who are interested in what goes on in this Chamber, about a very 
important piece of legislation. It is called the Marriage Tax 
Elimination Act.

                              {time}  1730

  This is something that will be of interest to all Americans. We have 
a situation in this country now where, believe it or not, among the 
many other facts that we see in our tax system and the way it is 
handled by the IRS, we see the extraordinary fact that there is a 
penalty, a tax penalty for marriage.
  This is at a time when we realize the sanctity of marriage, how 
important it is to our family values, how important it is to the 
education of our youth, the well-being of our Nation in so many ways, 
and certainly just the quality of our life. We even talk here quite 
often about our family-friendly Congress and family values. So when we 
look at our Tax Code and we uncover the fact that there is a penalty 
for being married, we wonder why in the world that is.
  The first thing you might want to say is, how much is this penalty? 
Is this really something that matters? The answer is yes.
  I understand that the average penalty for marriage is $1,400. That is 
a fair amount of money. It seems to me that would matter to most 
Americans, to have to pay $1,400 more just because you were married. 
Then on top of that, if you say how many people does this really 
affect, clearly not everybody.
  The answer is, when we take a look at statistics, it is about 21 
million American couples which obviously means 42 million Americans. 
That is a huge amount of people to be impacted by a tax which we cannot 
quite figure out why we have got it.
  So we now have a piece of legislation that we think is important to 
move forward and I am pleased to say that as a cosponsor, original 
cosponsor, that the Marriage Tax Elimination Act is going to see the 
light of day and we are going to, I believe, take action in this body 
to correct something that certainly needs to be corrected.
  It is probably interesting to note for most Americans that the 
average family today pays more in taxes than for food, clothing and 
shelter combined. Many Members say that. But think about that, think 
about your hard-earned dollars, if you go out and go about your job, 
the sacrifices you make to work hard, the time away you have from your 
family, other pursuits you are interested in. You are giving away today 
in taxes more than you are paying for your food, your clothing and your 
shelter, which are of course the first areas of responsibility for 
those in the home. That is an amazing statistic and yet we just seem to 
sort of take it for granted.
  We know now that we have got to completely overhaul our Tax Code and 
we are planning to do that. We are about to start a great debate across 
the Nation. Our colleagues, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey], the 
gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin], and perhaps others are going to 
go out and bring the tax debate to the people in a meaningful and 
understandable way in the next few weeks.
  I am sure they will be saying the same responses as we hear in our 
offices and that we hear back in our districts when we go home, from 
people who say the present tax system is unfair, it is inequitable to 
Americans, it is not efficient, it is not a good way to collect 
revenues for the government, but most of all, it is absolutely 
incomprehensible. And we all know the story about putting all the 
experts in the room with the same set of facts and they will all come 
up with a different tax liability, a different tax conclusion after 
reading the reams and reams of documents that are supposed to guide us 
through how we pay our taxes and go about that responsibility.
  So while we are talking about overhauling the Tax Code, while we are 
talking about reining in the abuses of the family-unfriendly and the 
consumer-unfriendly IRS, we are also talking about a very narrow 
specific slice of American life, and that is married people. I think it 
is very important that we send that message out, that for those people 
who are interested in fair treatment under the Tax Code and for those 
people who are interested in getting married and wanting to stay 
married, it seems to me they need to know that we are aware that there 
is a penalty. We think the penalty is wrong and unfair and we are going 
to do our best to remove that penalty.
  The cloud on the horizon for us, sadly enough, is that we did this a 
few years ago in our Contract With America. Unfortunately President 
Clinton vetoed that. I hope if we give him a clearer picture of what is 
going on and how much this matters to Americans, that this time when we 
pass the legislation we will have his support to repeal the marriage 
tax rather than his veto.

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