Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
January 22, 2001 -- Page: S164

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, for 4 years now, I have introduced a bill to eliminate the marriage penalty tax. I have said all of these years that I do not think Americans should have to choose between love and money. They should be able to get married and not be penalized because they do. But in fact 25 million married couples in America today do pay a penalty just because they got married. The sad thing is, the average penalty they pay is about $1,400. That is $1,400 that a young couple would like to have as they are starting their lives together, for the things they want: Like the down payment on the new house or the new car or the expenses associated with having children. We want them to be able to have the money they earn to make their choices rather than having Uncle Sam take $1,400 more just because of what amounts to a glitch in the Tax Code that requires these married couples to pay this penalty.

The bill I have just introduced today, S. 11, is cosponsored by Senators BROWNBACK, LOTT, NICKLES, ALLEN, BUNNING, BURNS, CRAPO, FRIST, GRAMM, HAGEL, KYL, ENSIGN, MCCONNELL, MURKOWSKI and WARNER.

This is a bill that I hope will have broad bipartisan support because, in fact, we have passed it twice and sent it to the President with bipartisan majorities in the past. The President has chose to veto the bills before, but today we have a new President who I believe will sign marriage penalty relief. It was part of President Bush's campaign. When we send him Marriage penalty relief for the third time in a bipartisan way in Congress, I believe President Bush will sign it.

I am very pleased this bill will double the standard deduction for married couples. Today, if you get married the standard deduction that two single people would have is not double. We want to double the standard deduction. Two people getting married who have two incomes but do not itemize would receive a increase of $1,500 in their standard deduction. That is what we want to do.

Secondly, we will double each tax bracket for married couples filing a joint return. For example, if a couple is in the 15-percent income tax bracket but they get married and are thrown into the 30-percent bracket, we want to provide them relief such that they will effectively remain in the 15 percent bracket. This bill would widen the 15-percent bracket by $9,000 for married couples.

Congress passed this legislation, and it was vetoed. Today, I am introducing this bill. I know we are going to pass it in this Congress, and I know it will be signed. This is the beginning of a new day in our United States of America, and we are going to eliminate the marriage penalty this year. I will count on it.