[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 32 (Tuesday, March 21, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1481-S1482]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE MARRIAGE PENALTY TAX

  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, what I want to spend some time on this 
morning is a very important matter that is coming up before the Senate 
shortly--a taxation issue the House has already passed. It is a tax a 
number of us have been working to get rid of for years. We are within 
sight of getting that done now, but we do have to get it done. People 
in this body could still block it from happening. I want to make sure 
we get it through, and that is the elimination of the marriage penalty 
tax.
  I have spoken about it on the floor a lot of times, perhaps too many. 
But we are so close to finally getting this done for the 21 million 
American couples who pay this tax that we really just have to see it 
through. What I am most fearful of is, once we get the bill out of the 
Finance Committee--they are working on it now, to eliminate this 
marriage penalty tax--it will come through the Finance Committee, it 
will be a good bill, it will do much to eliminate the marriage penalty 
tax--not all of it but much of it--but we will get it up on the floor 
and someone will say, ``No, I don't want to get it through,'' or, 
``Yes, I agree with you, but it has to have this rider dealing with 
pharmaceuticals for Medicare patients,'' or dealing with minimum wage 
or dealing with some other issue that is extraneous to this important 
signal we send to America.
  I want us to get this bill through this Congress. It has cleared the 
House. The House has done its job. It is now in the Finance Committee 
in the Senate. We will soon have it here on the floor. Let's take it 
up, let's pass it, let's give it to the President, and do it before 
April 15 so the President can have that, so we can give some notion of 
relief to working couples across this country.

  Senator Ashcroft and I and Senator Hutchison of Texas have been 
working on this issue for some time. This past week, while we were not 
in session, Senator Ashcroft and I held a press conference in Kansas 
City. We had four couples from Kansas who are currently paying the 
marriage penalty tax. They think it is ridiculous. They think it is a 
bad signal we send. One gentleman there, one husband, stated he and his 
wife did not get married for 2 years because of the marriage penalty 
tax. They were in college at the time. They knew they wanted to get 
married, but they thought, they could not afford to do this because 
they would have to pay roughly, in their case, about $600 more a year 
in taxes if they got married. They were in college and they said: We 
can't afford it; $600 is important; we cannot afford to do this. So 
they didn't. But they were not happy they were forced by their Tax Code 
not to get married.
  You would think, actually, we would be giving them $600 to get 
married. This is a positive institution. It is something that is 
important for the country. It is a clear signal of support for family 
values, which we all say we are for. We ought to at least send that 
positive signal, but we don't. Those are four families, each of them 
who could use the average of $1,400 a year that most couples pay in a 
marriage penalty.
  Those are only four, though, in Kansas. I want to show with this 
chart, we

[[Page S1482]]

actually have 259,000 couples who are paying this marriage penalty tax. 
What we are talking about eliminating is this portion of it, the 
marriage penalty that actually exists about 66 different places in the 
Tax Code. So we are going to have a lot of other places we need to 
ferret this out.
  At the end of the day, I hope we sunset this Tax Code, reform the 
whole thing, go to a flatter, simpler, fairer system. But that is for 
another time.
  I want to point out, for Members or others who are watching, how 
pervasive this marriage penalty tax is in their States. You can go down 
any of the States here: In Wyoming, where the Presiding Officer is 
from, 45,336 couples pay a marriage penalty, a tax on being married. 
That is in Wyoming. You can go anyplace. In Connecticut, 347,306 
couples pay that; in Washington DC, 27,117. Go to the big population 
States, there are more there: New York, 1.5 million; California, 2.752 
million couples paying a marriage penalty tax. It is all across the 
board, all across the country, that couples, for the privilege of being 
married, pay this tax.
  People know about it. Now we are seeing public opinion polls that 
show people know they are paying a tax for the privilege of being 
married. As my colleagues can see, this is not an issue that just 
affects a few people in a few States; it affects America's working 
families. It simply must be corrected this year.
  I say to my colleagues, do not hook any riders to this bill that will 
kill it and then say you are for eliminating the marriage penalty tax. 
If you hook riders to this bill that will kill it, you are against 
eliminating the marriage penalty tax.
  Further, I point out to people, the marriage penalty tax affects 
America's children. I have many letters from people which demonstrate 
that. In fact, Gary and Charla Gipson commented in a letter they wrote 
on this subject:

       If we are really interested in ``putting children first,'' 
     then why would this country penalize the very situation 
     (marriage) where kids do best? When parents are truly 
     committed to each other, through their marriage vows, their 
     children's outcomes are enhanced.

  I do not want to take the full length of time to talk about this bill 
today because we have talked about it enough in the past. But I do want 
to make sure people understand that this does affect two-wage earner 
couples making between $20,000 and $75,000 a year.
  Clearly, we need to make the elimination of the marriage penalty tax 
a priority to help all of these families, not just a few. The House 
bill does much of this. I think we can put forward an even better bill 
in the Senate that takes away more of the marriage penalty tax than 
even the House version does.

  America's families deserve this break. I would like to be able to 
tell my families back in Kansas that, yes, this Congress does stand for 
family values. One of the things we are doing to help support these 
families is eliminating the marriage penalty tax. It is a good and 
positive and right signal that we can send at a time we are having so 
much trouble with families.
  I just came from a Commerce Committee hearing where we were talking 
about and had testimony regarding the impact of interactive violent 
video games on children. There the concern was the increased level of 
overall violence in this society, and even the interactive nature of it 
in video games and its negative impact on children.
  Constantly, people in that hearing were saying: I hope parents know 
what video games their children are playing. We hope the parents are 
working with their children and communicating on this issue. In each 
case, they were talking about the role and the need and the importance 
of parents and their active participation.
  What better signal can we send than to say we believe that is true 
and we are not going to penalize you for being married parents. We are 
not going to penalize you for being in that situation. We are going to 
remove this marriage penalty tax and let you keep an average of $1,400 
per year. We have a chance to pass this legislation. We have the time 
to do it. This is the appointed hour for us.
  I also want to send a signal to the President that I think we are 
going to get this bill through this Senate. We have gotten it through 
the House. I am calling on the President to sign this bill, sign the 
marriage penalty tax elimination bill, and not to obfuscate the issue 
or say that it is about something else or it is too expensive. If it is 
too expensive for Government, imagine how expensive it is for these 21 
million American couples who are out there paying this extra tax.
  Is it really too expensive for us to invest a little bit of money in 
these working families to encourage them, to support them, to say they 
have the most important task in America; that is, raising our next 
generation? We should be saying to them: You deserve a break today. You 
deserve to be able to have this support coming to you from this 
Government instead of being taxed. You should be supported.
  If anything, we should subsidize the family situation rather than tax 
it.
  Mr. President, please sign this bill when it gets to you so we can do 
away with this onerous burden.
  There may be other colleagues who will come to the floor later to 
talk about this issue but at this time that is the extent of my 
comments on this particular topic.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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