[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 141-142]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



      TAX RELIEF FOR FAMILIES: ELIMINATION OF MARRIAGE TAX PENALTY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Weller) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. WELLER. Mr. Speaker, it is great to be back here for another 
session of good and hard work.
  I represent a pretty diverse district. I represent the south side of 
Chicago, the south suburbs, and Cook and Will counties, a lot of 
industrial as well as farm communities. And even though this district 
that I represent is so very, very diverse, I find there is a common 
message; and that is the folks back home want us to come here, 
Republicans and Democrats, and work together to find solutions to the 
challenges that we face.
  That is why I am so proud that over the last 5 years we have done so 
many things we were told we could not do. We balanced the budget for 
the first time in 28 years. We gave a middle-class tax cut for the 
first time in 16 years. We reformed our welfare system for the first 
time in a generation. And a great accomplishment just this past year 
was we stopped the raid on Social Security for the first time in 30 
years.
  That is progress on our agenda, and we are continuing to move forward 
to find better ways to help find solutions.
  Our agenda is pretty simple, paying down the public national debt, 
saving Social Security and Medicare, helping our local schools. And we 
also want to bring fairness to the Tax Code. That is one of the issues 
I want to talk about today. Because I believe that as we work to bring 
fairness to the Tax Code, particularly to middle-class working 
families, that we should focus first on the most unfair consequence of 
our current complicated Tax Code and that is the marriage tax penalty 
which is suffered by almost 21 million married, working couples.
  Let me explain what the marriage tax penalty is. Under our current 
Tax Code, if they are married, both husband and wife are working, they 
pay more in taxes than they do if they stay single.
  Let me give this example, a marriage tax penalty example: A machinist 
and a schoolteacher, middle-class working folks in Joliet, Illinois, 
with a combined income of $63,000 pay more. And here is how they do it. 
If they have a machinist making $31,500, he is in the 15 percent tax 
bracket. If he marries a schoolteacher with an identical income of 
$31,500, under our Tax Code they file jointly. Their combined income of 
$63,000 pushes them into the 28 percent tax bracket. And for this 
machinist and schoolteacher, they pay the average marriage tax penalty 
of almost $1,400 more just because they are married under our Tax Code.
  Now, if they chose to live together instead of getting married, they 
would have saved that $1,400. Our Tax Code punishes them if they choose 
to get married. That is just wrong.
  It is a pretty fair question: Is it right, is it fair that, under our 
Tax Code, this machinist and schoolteacher in Joliet, Illinois, pay 
more in higher taxes?
  Let me give my colleagues another example here of two schoolteachers 
also of Joliet, Illinois, Michelle and Shad Hallihan. They were just 
married in the last couple of years, a wonderful young couple. I have 
had a chance to sit down and talk with them. And, of course, I have a 
nice wedding photo.
  The point is that Shad has taught a little longer than Michelle, and 
he makes $38,000 a year. His wife Michelle makes $23,500. Because they 
chose to get married, to live together in holy matrimony, they suffer 
the marriage tax penalty because their combined income when they file 
jointly pushes them into the 28 percent tax bracket.
  For them, for Michelle and Shad Hallihan in Joliet, Illinois, two 
schoolteachers, they pay almost a thousand dollars more. Michelle has 
pointed out to me, since they have just had a baby, that is almost 
3,000 diapers that $1,000 of marriage tax penalty would pay for in that 
family if they were allowed to keep it.
  Now, the Republicans in this Congress believe that eliminating the 
marriage tax penalty should be a priority; and we believe that, in this 
era of budget surpluses, when the Federal Government is taking in more 
than we have been spending, that we should give some of it back. We 
want to focus that on bringing fairness to the Tax Code.
  This past year we sent to the President legislation that would have 
wiped out the marriage tax penalty for people like Michelle and Shad 
Hallihan. Unfortunately, the President and Vice President Gore chose to 
veto that legislation because they wanted to spend the money on new 
Government programs.

[[Page 142]]

  My colleagues, should it not be a priority to help people like 
Michelle and Shad Hallihan, married working couples who work hard and 
who are unfairly treated by our Tax Code?
  We have legislation today which now has 230 cosponsors, a bipartisan 
majority of this House, that is cosponsoring the Marriage Tax 
Elimination Act, H.R. 6, cosponsored by myself and the gentleman from 
Missouri (Mr. Danner) and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. McIntosh) as 
well as 230 Members of the House.
  That is why it is so important, we want to bring fairness to the Tax 
Code. That is why I am so pleased that the leadership of this House, 
led by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), the Speaker of the 
House, has made a decision to move a stand-alone piece of legislation, 
a stand-alone bill, which wipes out the marriage tax penalty for the 
vast majority of those who suffer. In the next few weeks, the Speaker 
intends to bring that legislation to the floor. That is good news as we 
work to bring fairness to the Tax Code by eliminating the marriage tax 
penalty.
  I was just informed earlier today that the President in his State of 
the Union Speech tonight is going to discuss eliminating the marriage 
tax penalty. That is good news. Because it is time to make it a 
bipartisan effort. And while the President and Vice President Gore 
vetoed the legislation last year, he is now coming our way. I am very 
pleased. Let us make it a bipartisan effort. Let us wipe out the 
marriage tax penalty and let us send the President a stand-alone bill 
and let us bring fairness to the Tax Code.

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