[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15565-15566]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                TAX CUTS

  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, the chairman of the Finance Committee 
will be coming out with his mark on tax cuts, and this is a critically 
important issue. It is an important one for the country. It is 
important, now that we are looking forward to having some surplus, that 
we say to the American people: You have been overpaying your taxes, and 
we want to give some of that back to you. This is over and above Social 
Security, the amount of the payroll tax that is going to Social 
Security. So we are setting aside the Social Security trust funds--a 
lockbox is what we call it, a lockbox for the Social Security surplus--
and with the remainder talking about tax cuts, serious tax cuts.
  One issue we want to discuss this morning is doing away with the 
marriage penalty. It seems extraordinary to me that we would have a tax 
policy in this country that actually penalizes people for getting 
married. With all the problems we have with families in our society, it 
seems, if anything, we would want to do just the opposite--we would 
want to give people a benefit for being married rather than taxing them 
for being married. And yet the way the code has evolved, today 21 
million American married couples pay an average of $1,400 more in taxes 
just for the privilege of being married.
  I think that is wrong. The Government should not use the coercive 
power of the Tax Code to erode one of the foundational units of our 
society, that of marriage. We should stop the taxation. We should put a 
stop to the marriage penalty tax. This year we can change that.
  I am encouraged that the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator 
Roth, and his committee have put forward efforts to alleviate the 
marriage penalty. We have a unique opportunity to put that issue behind 
us.
  I want to draw Senators' attention to another issue under the 
marriage penalty area which has not been talked about that much. That 
is the earned-income tax credit bias against married couples. A 
significant share of the marriage penalty occurs to low-income couples. 
It is caused by the loss of the earned-income tax credit when 
individuals' incomes are combined.
  What happens is, you have two-wage-earner families that, if they were 
not married, if they were single and filing separately, would qualify 
for the earned-income tax credit. But if they get married and they earn 
over this mark, they get penalized again for being married.
  Estimates by the CBO indicate that what we can do is double, for two-
wage-earner families, the amount of income that can be received and 
still qualify for the earned-income tax credit. Virtually all the 
benefits of this adjustment in the earned-income tax credit would go to 
couples with incomes below $50,000. There are nearly 3.7 million 
couples in America today that do not receive the earned-income tax 
credit that would, if we double the amount that they can make, still 
qualify for the earned-income tax credit.
  I point this out because people struggle mightily to raise families, 
and the notion that we would tax and then tax again low-income 
families, keeping them from receiving a benefit because they are 
married, makes absolutely no policy sense at all.
  I don't see how on Earth anybody can argue this is a good idea or 
this is the right thing to do. I am hopeful the chairman of the Finance 
Committee has focused on this. We can do this. I hope the President 
will be willing to work with Members of Congress in both the House and 
the Senate in crafting a tax package we can all agree with, so the 
American people can stop overpaying their taxes--which they are 
currently doing.
  The CBO is now projecting an onbudget surplus of $14 billion in 
fiscal year 2000, with the surplus growing to $996 billion over the 10-
year period beginning in fiscal year 2000. We have this opportunity to 
eliminate the marriage penalty tax and to do away with

[[Page 15566]]

paying the marriage penalty tax on upper-income levels and for those 
not being given the earned-income tax credit on the lower-income level.
  Of course, the surging surplus I was discussing is as a result of 
payroll tax receipts. I continue to emphasize that.
  The majority side wants to put a lockbox around any Social Security 
surplus and have that maintained only for Social Security. We can do 
these things. We need to work across the aisle. We need to work with 
the President. I hope he will be willing to work with Members as we 
move forward in dealing with the marriage penalty tax, which is a 
terrible signal to send across society, to send to people across 
America. We will be working with the chairman of the Finance Committee. 
I hope this is one tax that can find its death in this round of tax 
cuts. We will hopefully be going to reconciliation and discussing tax 
cuts this month. It is a very important topic we will discuss.
  I encourage people paying a marriage penalty tax to contact Members 
regarding how the marriage penalty tax has directly impacted your 
lives. I have had any number of couples write saying: We wanted to get 
married but we found out we were going to pay this huge tax for getting 
married and we could not afford to do that; this is money we wanted to 
use for a downpayment of a house or to get a car that would work.
  They were not able to do it because of the pernicious fiscal effect 
of the marriage penalty tax. It is a terrible signal we are sending 
across our society.
  Senator Hutchison from Texas has been a leader on this issue of 
dealing with the marriage penalty tax. She has come to the floor, as 
well, to discuss what we can do. Now is the time to eliminate this 
marriage penalty tax.
  I yield the floor.

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