[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 98 (Tuesday, July 13, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8310-S8311]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                TAX CUTS

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank Senator Brownback.
  Senator Ashcroft from Missouri, Senator Brownback, I, and many others 
have been talking about the marriage penalty tax for two sessions, and 
even a session before that.
  We were stunned when we discovered 44 percent of married couples in 
the middle-income brackets--in the $40,000 to $60,000 range--were 
paying a penalty just for the privilege of being married.
  We have introduced legislation to cut the marriage tax penalty. In 
fact, both the House and Senate have tax cut plans that we will be 
discussing over the next few months to try to determine what we can 
give back to the hard-working Americans who have been sending their 
money to Washington to fund our Government.
  When we start talking about how we are going to give people their 
money back, I think we have to step back and talk about the basic 
argument, which is: What do we do with the surplus? And are tax cuts 
the right way to spend the surplus?
  I will quote from a Ft. Worth Star-Telegram opinion piece by one of 
the editorial writers on that newspaper, Bill Thompson, from June 30, 
1999.
  He says there is only one question to ask about the budget surplus, 
and that is:

       How should we go about giving the money back to its 
     rightful owners?
       And the rightful owners, surely even the biggest nitwit in 
     Washington can understand, are the taxpayers of the United 
     States of America.
       The federal government is not a private business that can 
     do whatever it wants to with unexpected profits.

  Because, in fact, we are more of a co-op. We are not a business that 
is trying to make a profit and then decide what to do with the profits.

       . . . [T]here should be no discussion about the fate of the 
     money. . . .

  If there is money left over, we give it back to the people who own 
that money. We in Washington, DC. do not own that money. The people who 
earned it own it. It is time we start giving them back the money they 
have earned.
  We are doing what we should be doing. We are cutting back Government 
spending, so people can keep more of the money they earn. If we do not 
give it back to them, we will be abusing the power we have to tax the 
people. We are talking about giving the money back to the people who 
earn it, and the first place we ought to look is to people who are 
married who pay more taxes just because they are married. If they were 
each single they would be paying lower taxes, but because they got 
married the average is $1,400 in the marriage penalty tax. That is 
unconscionable.
  Since 1969, we have seen the marriage tax penalty get worse and worse 
and worse. It was not meant to be that way. Congress did not intend to 
tax married people more. But because more women have gone into the 
workforce to make ends meet and to do better for

[[Page S8311]]

their families, the Tax Code has gotten skewed and the deductions have 
become unfair. So today we are saying the first priority should be to 
eliminate the tax that is more on married people than it would be if 
they were single.
  I yield the remainder of my time to Senator Ashcroft, who is working 
with me on this very important issue. We will give the taxes that 
people are paying to the Government back to them because it does not 
belong to us. It belongs to the people who earn it.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the article by Bill Thompson 
be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

    The Budget Surplus: There's Only One Topic That Needs Discussing

                           (By Bill Thompson)

       Nothing will get the politicians' juices flowing like an 
     avalanche of money. Put large piles of cash in front of a 
     herd of politicians, and the ensuing stampede will crush 
     everything in its path.
       Nowhere is this truer than in Washington, D.C., where the 
     latest predictions of burgeoning federal budget surpluses 
     have the president, Congress and everyone in between all but 
     trampling one another in their fervor to dive into those 
     irresistible mountains of money.
       Not surprisingly, all the official and semiofficial public 
     pronouncements, all the expert analyses and all the wide-eyed 
     speculation about the fate of the extra money seem to arrive 
     at the same conclusion: The politicians will spend it.
       In fact, the only question that anyone who's anyone seems 
     to be asking about this ``windfall'' revenue is: How should 
     we spend it?
       Well, call me naive or simple-minded or just plain dumb--
     many readers do so on a regular basis, after all--but in my 
     humble opinion the deep-thinkers are asking the wrong 
     question. The only legitimate question that anybody should be 
     asking about the federal budget surplus is: How should we go 
     about giving the money back to its rightful owners?
       And the rightful owners, surely even the biggest nitwit in 
     Washington can understand, are the taxpayers of the United 
     States of America.
       The federal government is not a private business that can 
     do whatever it wants to with unexpected profits. It's not 
     even one of those publicly traded corporations that can 
     choose among options such as reinvesting in the company 
     sharing the profits with employees or distributing the money 
     to stockholders by means of increased dividends.
       Government collects money from citizens in the form of 
     taxes and fees for the purpose of providing designated 
     services to those very same citizens. If for some reason the 
     government should happen to collect more money than it needs 
     to provide the designated services, there should be no 
     discussion about the fate of the money: It goes back to the 
     taxpayers who worked it over in the first place.
       For politicians and bureaucrats to suggest that they are so 
     much as considering any other use of a budget surplus should 
     be looked upon as the worst sort of fiscal malfeasance.
       True enough, the idea of using some of the budget surplus 
     to bail out fiscally endangered programs such as Social 
     Security and Medicare sounds tempting. But there's a 
     problem--two problems, actually.
       Problem No. 1 is that these breathtaking estimates of 
     budget surpluses totaling trillions of dollars over the next 
     15 years are just that--estimates. An unexpected downturn in 
     the nation's economy could blow the projections sky high and 
     leave the taxpayers with mind-boggling financial commitments 
     to those programs--and no money to meet them.
       Problem No. 2: The commitment of future budget surpluses to 
     these expensive entitlements is a phony solution that 
     distracts attention from the desperate need for fundamental 
     reforms to programs whose escalating costs simply must be 
     brought under control sooner or later.
       President Clinton's proposal to dedicate a portion of any 
     budget surplus to pay down the national debt seems reasonable 
     enough at firs glance. But consider this: How can Clinton 
     brag about cutting up Washington's credit card when his plan 
     to pay off the card's outstanding balance hinges on projected 
     income?
       We should be paying off the debt with actual revenue that 
     would be available for debt reduction if the government would 
     cut expenses instead of constantly seeking new ways to spend 
     the taxpayers' money.
       No, this raging debate about how to spend the surplus is 
     the wrong debate. The only question that politicians need to 
     debate is whether to give the money back to the taxpayers in 
     the form of a reduction in income tax rates, or through some 
     sort of tax credit that enables taxpayers to deduct their 
     share of the surplus from their tax bills.
       The money belongs to the people. It should be returned to 
     the people.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for her 
kind remarks and for allowing me to speak on this important issue.
  Americans are now paying taxes at a higher rate than ever before. The 
burden and cost of the government are more, and the Federal Government 
is responsible for the overwhelming lion's share. As a matter of fact, 
we are not just responsible for the Federal taxes, because we have 
mandated so many programs on State and local governments we are 
responsible for a lot of what they are taxing people. So we are being 
taxed at the highest rates in history--at the highest rates in history.
  Now we announced, in spite of that, we are paying more in those taxes 
than it costs to run Government. We are paying more in than it costs to 
fund the programs we are getting. If you go to a grocery store and you 
are buying $8 worth of groceries and you give them a $10 bill, you are 
paying more than it costs for the service and they give you a couple of 
dollars in change.
  There is a stunning debate in Washington. We are debating over 
whether or not to give people the change back. They are paying more 
than is required for the programs they have requested, and we are 
debating whether or not we are going to give them the change back. We 
ought to give the money back. They own it. They have overpaid.
  No. 1, we are paying the highest taxes in history. No. 2, those taxes 
pay for more than what our programs cost; therefore, we are overpaying. 
No. 3, we ought to refund that overpayment to the American people.
  I submit among those who ought to be the first in line to get money 
back are those who have been particularly abused, those who have been 
the subject of discrimination, those who have been the subject of 
wrongful taking of the money by Government. That is where you come to 
this class of people who are not normally thought of as being a special 
class. They are married people. Forty-two percent of all the married 
people in the United States end up penalized for being married. That is 
21 million families. Mr. President, 21 million families pay an average 
of over $100 a month--that is $1,400 a year--because we have what is 
called the marriage penalty tax.
  Before we decide on tax relief for the population generally, let's 
take some of these gross inequities out of the system, especially 
inequities that target one of the most important, if not the most 
important, components of the community we call America--our families. 
Our families are the most important department of social services, the 
most important department of education. The most important fundamental 
component of the culture is the family. It is where we will either 
succeed or fail in the next century. Our Tax Code has been focusing on 
those families and has been saying we are going to take from you more 
than we would take from anybody else.
  This idea of penalizing people for being married is a bankrupt idea, 
and it is time to take the marriage penalty part of this law and 
administer the death penalty to the marriage tax.
  I say it is time for us to end the marriage penalty. This will mean a 
substantial improvement in income for people who have been suffering 
discrimination because they are married. It is time for us to end the 
marriage penalty in the tax law.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Chair.

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