Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
April 27, 2000 -- Page: S2964

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank Senator Roth and Senator Grassley for helping us write a very good bill that will give relief to 21 million married couples in this country; 42 million people will receive a benefit.

When I go through my State and a policeman comes up to me and says, 'I cannot believe how much more I am paying since I got married,' or a schoolteacher or a county clerk or a sheriff's deputy, I wonder what could we be thinking. This is not a tax cut; this is a tax correction. Twenty-one million American couples are paying a penalty only because they are married. That is not right

The President of the United States, in his March 11 radio address, addressed six tax cuts he thinks would be a good idea. Two of those are in the bill we are voting on today. He said:

. . . a tax relief to reduce the marriage penalty, tax relief to reward work and family with an expanded earned income tax credit.

Of the six tax cuts he says he favors, two are in the bill on which we will be voting. One has to ask the fair question: Why would so many of the Democrats refuse to let us bring up the bill that addresses exactly what the President has asked us to send to him?

We sent him marriage tax penalty relief last year. He vetoed the bill. He said there was too much in it; there were too many other tax cuts. I happen to believe there is not a tax cut that I do not like because I think hard-working Americans deserve more relief. We are only using part of the income tax withholding surplus here, not Social Security surplus, not even all of the income tax withholding surplus. We are only using part to give the money back to the people who earned it.

Nevertheless, the President said it was too much. So we said: All right, we are going to send him smaller tax cut bills just as he requested.

We sent him one which removed that terrible added tax on Social Security recipients between the age of 65 and 70 who want to work and make more than $17,000. That is gone. We passed the bill, we sent it to the President, and he signed it.

There must be a real problem on the Democratic side, and I quote the distinguished leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate in Reuters on April 13 of this year when he said

I think the Republican bill is a marriage penalty relief bill in name only. It's a Trojan horse for the other risky tax schemes they have that have been proposed so far this year.

To what risky tax schemes could he be referring? Was it the Social Security earnings tests we eliminated for people who are over 65 and want to work? Was it the education tax credits we have passed and is now in conference to help parents by giving a credit for their children's education starting in kindergarten and going all the way through college? Or is it the small business tax credits he thinks are risky tax schemes to help our small business people create new jobs to keep our economy going?

I do not think one can make the case that this is a risky tax scheme. This is marriage penalty relief for 21 million American couples who are paying the tax only because they got married. In addition, we add more people who will get the earned-income tax credit because they are coming off welfare and are working and feeling good about themselves. We want to encourage them to do that. A family of four making $31,000 will still get an earned-income tax credit when they make $33,000.

There is no excuse. It is time to let us take up amendments on this bill and vote marriage tax penalty relief for the hard-working people of our country.

I yield the floor.