[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 91 (Friday, July 14, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6817-S6819]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   MARRIAGE TAX PENALTY RELIEF RECONCILIATION ACT OF 2000--Continued

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to share a few thoughts on 
the marriage penalty tax and why I believe it is long past time to 
remove that tax from our body politic.
  I would also like to share a few thoughts on my excitement and thrill 
about seeing the vote earlier today in

[[Page S6818]]

which we joined the overwhelming vote of the House of Representatives 
in eliminating the death tax. I believe it is a tax that causes an 
extraordinary burden on the American economy. It disrupts the small, 
closely-held businesses in America. It actually impedes smaller, 
growing, profitable businesses that are reaching the levels to compete 
with a Wal-Mart, or a Home Depot, or a Car Quest store--the companies 
that are doing so well locally. Then 10, 15, or 20 years down the road, 
bam, the leading stockholder dies and the corporation owes $6 million, 
$8 million, $10 million, $12 million, or $30 million in estate taxes. 
They either have to sell off their corporation, go into debt, or do 
whatever to pay it. People do not understand it.
  If you start an auto parts store chain, and I know of an example of 
this, and build up to 27 stores, and the senior man who owns the 
business dies, they evaluate every single store, every part on every 
counter in those stores as if it is for sale. Say it is worth $50 
million and the family has been investing, every day, all of the 
profits, basically in expanding the business, and the tax they owe, 55 
percent, is on the entire value of the corporation? So where do they 
get the money?
  What I know happened in a company as I am describing, the family 
faced a major decision. What did they decide to do? They sold out to 
Car Quest, a national corporation. There is nothing wrong with it, it 
is a fine company, but instead of being a competitor to Car Quest and 
Auto Zone and the other big dealers, they were out of business. The 
customers lost. The hometown distribution center in Alabama, where that 
company was, closed down and they had the Car Quest distribution center 
in another part of the State.
  We are chopping off the heads of growing, vibrant corporations, just 
as they get to the point to compete with the big multinational and 
national corporations worth billions of dollars. We ought not to be 
doing that. It is not good public policy. It brings in very little 
money. I don't think we ought to be afraid about projections of how 
much it would cost. It is certainly not going to cost much in the next 
10 years. At the rate of growth of this economy, we will be more than 
able to pay for it, and these numbers do not include the strength and 
aid the elimination of this tax will give to the American economy.
  But the power to tax is a major power of our National Government. 
When you take money from individual American citizens, you take their 
wealth from them, as we do in the Government every day when we collect 
taxes. We take their autonomy, their freedom, their independence, and 
their power over the things they have earned. It is a diminishment of 
the strength and independence and autonomy of a citizen, when you 
increase taxes. It is an increase in the power, the strength, the 
domination of the Government who takes that tax.
  When we have a time in this Nation that we are growing and vibrant 
and we have some extra money coming in, we have a choice. Are we going 
to keep taking that money or are we going to allow it to go back to the 
American people? I have seen the studies from the Office of Management 
and Budget that show, as a percentage of the total gross domestic 
product, the Government is taking more money today than at any time 
since the height of World War II. In 1992, when President Clinton took 
office, the percentage of the gross domestic product, the total of all 
goods and services produced in our Nation going to the Federal 
Government, was 17.6 percent. It is now hitting about 20.9 percent, the 
largest in history since the peak of World War II when we had a life-
and-death struggle going on in the world.
  I am, first of all, a supporter of tax cuts because I believe they 
restore and move us in the direction we ought to head, and that is our 
heritage as Americans. I spent some time recently in Europe. We were 
stunned to find the Europeans are paying, on average, 67 percent of 
their income to the government. Their economies are not nearly what 
ours is. We have much lower unemployment. The highest growth rate in 
gross domestic product in the world last year, among industrial 
nations, was the United States.
  I remember reading an article in USA Today, and they interviewed 
three businessmen--one each from Germany, Japan, and England. They 
asked them why our economy was better than theirs. They said 
unanimously it is because the United States had less taxes, less 
regulation, and a greater commitment to the free market.

  I asked Chairman Alan Greenspan, the architect, many say, of this 
growth economy we are in, did he agree with that. He immediately looked 
up at me and he said: I absolutely agree with that.
  So my concern, my drive, is not to try to see if I can get votes by 
promising people we are going to reduce their taxes. What I want to see 
is our Nation establish its heritage of private sector development and 
growth that is allowing us to lead the world, without doubt, 
economically, industrially, environmentally, and scientifically. When 
you talk to people in Europe, they take it as a given that our economy 
is stronger than theirs. They do not even discuss the subject. They try 
to say why they chose a different path, but they acknowledge the 
strength of our American economy.
  I have one more prefatory statement. A tax is a penalty. A gift of 
money is a subsidy. Things you penalize, you get less of. Things you 
subsidize, you get more of. I think that is a fundamental law of human 
nature and of the economy, little to be disputed at this point.
  So the next tax we need to be talking about is a tax on marriage. In 
this Nation, we impose a tax on the institution of marriage. As we all 
know, marriage is the cornerstone of strength in any society. We have 
seen study after study, ever since Dan Quayle raised the issue and 
Atlantic Monthly wrote an article that Dan Quayle was right, that the 
marriage breakup is damaging to our country. We have created a tax 
policy in this country that penalizes the institution of marriage and 
subsidizes singleness.
  I had a staff person make a statement to me a couple of years ago 
that stunned me. She said: Jeff, you know we were divorced in January. 
We got a $1,600 improvement on our taxes by being divorced. If we had 
been smart enough to have divorced in December, we would have saved 
$1,600 both years.
  We are in the business now in this country of paying people a tax 
bonus for divorce. We are causing them to suffer a tax penalty, on 
average of $1,400, if they get married. That is not good public policy. 
It is wrong. It is unfair. It should not continue. The President has 
indicated in his State of the Union Address it ought to be eliminated. 
I do not know who would be against that. It is time to end it now, and 
this Senate is going to do so. We are going to do it. I expect the 
President will sign it. I certainly hope so.
  We have a surplus now of record proportions, of $1 trillion outside 
Social Security. I hear a number of my fellow Members of the Senate on 
the other side of the aisle who express concern if we have a few tax 
cuts that represent only a small part of the $1 trillion in the non-
Social Security surplus we are going to have in the next 10 years, over 
$1 trillion in non-Social Security surplus applying every dime of the 
Social Security surplus to the Social Security fund, that somehow we 
are going to be disrupting and spending all that surplus. The tax cuts 
proposed are not going to use all of the surplus.
  Not only will we pay down the debt with the Social Security surplus, 
we will be paying down debt with the other surplus we have, unless we 
go into a spending frenzy--which I reject.
  We will also have money to expand spending programs. Our spending is 
up this year. But every time we get an estimate of the surplus we are 
looking at over the next decade, those estimates are higher than 
before. Our economy continues to be strong, and allowing people to keep 
their money will help keep the economy vibrant and strong.
  I am excited about this vote we will be undertaking soon to eliminate 
the penalty on a very important institution in this country, and that 
is marriage. We did make progress 2\1/2\ years ago, when we passed a 
child tax credit. A family of three would be able to receive $1,500, if 
their income is not too high, in tax rebates for those three children; 
over $100 a month that they can use for shoes, or to fix the muffler on 
the car, to buy a set of tires, let the child go to camp for the 
summer, or maybe take a vacation together. It is real money for real 
families.
  Some think Government is not working if we allow families to spend 
the

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money as they see fit; that we are somehow unconcerned about children; 
we are somehow unconcerned about families if we do not take the money 
from them and give it back to them and tell them how to spend it. That 
proves we are concerned?
  I say baloney. If you respect American families and you respect 
American people, free and independent citizens that we are, you let 
them keep as much of the money you can, to spend as they wish, and they 
will use it wisely.
  I am excited about this vote and this debate. I welcome it. The 
American people are going to understand the absolute insanity of a tax 
on the institution of marriage and reject it. We will allow the 
American people to keep some money that they can spend as they choose 
on the things that are important to them.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.

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