Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
April 12, 2000 -- Page: S2591

MARRIAGE TAX PENALTY RELIEF ACT OF 2000 -- CONTINUED

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, this is a very important debate. I hope we are going to be able to move to pass this bill before people have to write their checks during the weekend deadline for income taxes this year.

Right now, there are negotiations underway between the Republicans and the Democrats about what kind of amendments should be offered. I very much hope that the Democrats will agree to offer some relevant amendments because I think there are surely legitimate disagreements about how we would give marriage tax penalty relief. But I also hope we will not have extraneous amendments offered, no matter how good the cause, which would take away from what President Clinton asked us to do, and that is to send him a marriage tax penalty bill that does not include extraneous legislation. That is what we are attempting to do.

So I hope we can move forward into the amendment phase and talk about our differences. I think the distinguished Senator from Indiana wants tax relief for hard-working married couples. I think we may have a few differences, but in the end I suspect that he and I will both vote for the bill that is passed out of this Senate; that is, if we can get to the vote. That is what I hope we can do.

I think we need to be very careful in the debate, though, about accuracy and what the different proposals are going to do. I heard a Senator earlier today in debate say that this bill on the floor will break the Treasury. I think the distinguished Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, perhaps didn't look at the numbers and didn't match it to the budget resolution because, clearly, this not only doesn't break the Treasury, it doesn't even spend half of the allocation in the budget we passed last week for tax relief. In fact, it is $69 billion over 5 years, and the budget we passed last week is $150 billion over 5 years. So this is not even half.

We do hope to give tax relief to other people in our country. We want to eliminate the marriage tax penalty. We want to let seniors work if they are between 65 and 70 and not be penalized for it, and that bill has already been passed. We want small business tax cuts to make it easier for our small businesses to create the jobs that keep our economy thriving. We would like to give education tax cuts. Under the leadership of Senator Coverdell, we passed education tax cuts that would help people give their children the education enhancements that would increase their education quality. All of these things fit within the $150 billion tax relief in the budget that we passed last week.

I think this is quite responsible and I think it is long overdue. We are talking about a tax correction as much as anything, because it is outrageous to talk about people who are single, working; they get married and they don't get salary increases, but all of a sudden they owe $1,000 more in taxes. It is time to correct this inequity. That is exactly what the bill before us does. It corrects the inequity all the way through the 28-percent tax bracket. It helps people all the way through those income brackets. The differences between the Democrat alternative and the Republican plan that is on the floor are actually quite extensive.

In the first place, the Democrat plan is $100 billion less in tax relief for American families. We are trying to cover more families. Not only are we trying to cover the people who are in the 15-percent bracket and the 28-percent bracket, which takes us through everyone who pays taxes up to $127,000 in joint income, but it also increases the earned-income tax credit for those who don't pay taxes at all. This is what helps a person who has been on welfare who goes to work and actually makes a salary of from $15,000 to $30,000 not have to pay any kind of penalty, even though they don't pay taxes.

We want to add to the $2,000 earned-income tax credit $2,500 more to the salaries that would qualify for the earned-income tax credit. This is an incentive for working people who are in the lowest levels of pay to continue working and to realize that it is more important for them to work and to have an incentive to work than to be on welfare.

The points made by the Senator from Iowa are very appropriate. The Republican plan not only offers more relief, it offers more relief to more people, $100 billion more.

Secondly, the Democrat plan is phased in over a very long period of time. It doesn't become fully effective until 2010. It is very backloaded. Fifty percent of it doesn't even take effect until 2008. We want to try to make that timeframe less, and we want to have significant tax cuts for hard-working American families.

Of course, we truly do believe that people will be able to make the decisions with the money they earn better than they will be able to live with decisions made in Washington, DC. In fact, I think it is very important that people realize, as they are writing their checks on April 15--or Monday, April 17, if they can wait until the very end--that the chances are they are in the 48 percent of the married couples. If they are in that 48 percent that has a penalty, their tax bill next year will be an average of $1,400 less, if we can pass the Republican plan, send it to the President, and if the President will sign it. The President has said he is for tax relief for married couples. We certainly think he should sign the bill. If he doesn't sign the bill, we would really like to know why because this is a better tax cut plan.

There is probably just a difference on what is a marriage bonus. For a married couple where one spouse decides to stay home and raise the children and they don't pay as much in tax as the single person doubled, I don't think that is a bonus. I would not want to tell my daughter, who has three children, that she is not working when she is staying home with them. Thank goodness we have people who want to stay home and raise their children. I don't want to make that decision for them, but I certainly want them to have the option and not be penalized in any way.

I think everything we can do to encourage families to be able to make that choice we should do. I do not consider it a bonus. What I want is total fairness. What I want is, if a person is single and marries another single working person, when they get married there is no penalty whatsoever. The $1,000 we now make them pay because they got married would be spent instead by them, to start building their nest egg, to have their first home, to buy the second car, whatever it is they need, as newlyweds, who are the ones who struggle the hardest. We want them to have the benefit of not having discrimination in the Tax Code.

What we are talking about is tax relief; it is a tax correction. It is saying that we don't want to penalize people for getting married. When 48 percent of the married couples in this country do have that penalty, what we want to do is correct it. I hope the Democrats will work with us to have relevant amendments that could be put forward. This is a good debate. I think we can differ on the way we would give marriage tax penalty relief. But my plea with the Democrats is let us take it up. Don't say that you have to offer extraneous amendments which don't have anything to do with marriage tax penalty, especially when President Clinton has asked us to send him a marriage tax penalty bill. That is what I hope will happen at 5 o'clock.

I hope the President will work with the Democrats and tell them he believes in tax relief. I hope we can pass that relief for the hard-working Americans who deserve a break. I urge my colleagues to help us offer these amendments. Let's debate them and let's give Americans tax relief as they are signing those checks to the Federal Government this week.

Let me say that if the only bill on the floor were the Democratic alternative, I would vote for it because I have voted for it before. It is not a bad plan. But I think the Republican plan is better. Here is why. First of all, our plan helps more people who are in the lower levels, the middle-income levels, who really need this kind of help. We say that if a single person making $35,000 married, or a single person making $30,000, you double the bracket so their combined bracket is going to be the same. They will not be penalized in the 15-percent bracket or the 28-percent bracket. Now, I would be for going all the way through those brackets because I am for tax relief for hard-working Americans.

Ours is a bigger bill. It covers more people. I think it is the better approach. I would be for bracket relief across the board, too, because I think the tax burden is too heavy and we are talking about the income tax surplus, not the Social Security surplus. So this is the money people have sent to Washington that is beyond what the Government needs for the Government to operate. So I think ours is better, but I don't think theirs is bad. I just hope we can give the most tax relief to the most people.