Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
April 13, 2000 -- Page: S2668

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Iowa, who has done a wonderful job in managing this bill, and more importantly for his role in the Finance Committee to make sure that we have a great marriage tax penalty relief bill.

I thank the Senator from Montana for talking in straight terms, as he always does, about what our priorities are: Does this money belong to the people who earned it or does it belong to the Federal Government in Washington, DC?

I think it is very interesting; when people talk about tax cuts, you can tell immediately how Members are going to vote by how they refer to the tax cuts.

As the Senator from Missouri said earlier, if you are going to be against tax cuts, you are going to say: How much will it cost the Federal Government to give this tax relief? But if you believe that people who earn the money deserve to keep it, then you are going to say: How much is it going to cost the American family if we do not give them back part of the excess that they have sent to Washington in income tax withholding?

I want to make the point again, we are not talking about the Social Security surplus providing money for tax cuts. We are talking about the income tax surplus. That means that people have sent too much to Washington and we are trying to return some of it.

I think it was an interesting argument earlier, on the Democratic side, where it was shown that Federal taxes have gone down in our country. We are trying to lower Federal taxes, but, in fact, what has happened is local taxes have gone up. So all of the neutral sources in our country today tell us that there is, in fact, a higher tax burden on the average American family today than ever before in peacetime. That is a big burden on an average family.

About 40 percent of the average family's income is taken in taxes. That is a fact. And we are in peacetime. We do have a balanced budget. We do not need that much. We should send it right back to the people who earned it, to put in their pockets for them to make the decisions as to how to spend it. That is what we are trying to do today.

I think it is interesting when you listen to the debate. The distinguished Democratic leader yesterday said, in the debate: 'I think the Republican bill is a marriage penalty relief bill in name only. It is a Trojan horse for the other risky tax schemes that have been proposed so far this year.'

I want to go over what we have taken up this year, what we have proposed this year, and just say to the American people: I wonder what the risky tax schemes are.

Is it a risky tax scheme to let people on Social Security between the ages of 65 and 70 work without paying a penalty? Is that a risky tax scheme? Is the education tax credit that Senator Coverdell passed earlier this year to give parents a tax credit to buy education enhancements for their children--the computers, the extra books, the tutors--a risky tax scheme? Or is it the small business tax relief that we passed to try to give our small businesses an opportunity to grow and create new jobs in our country?

I am not sure to which 'risky tax scheme' the Democratic leader refers. But if that is a 'risky tax scheme,' I am guilty because I do believe the hard-working people of this country deserve to keep more of the money they earn.

This marriage tax penalty relief was provided for in the budget we passed last week. We would take only 50 percent of the allocation over a 5-year period. We think that is quite responsible as stewards of our tax dollars.