Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
June 5, 2003 -- Page: S7451

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I am certainly going to support this bill and this vehicle. But I did hold it up for a few hours because I am concerned that we are not able to put marriage penalty relief in a permanent position on this bill. However, I have an agreement with the majority leader that he will bring it up this year. Working with the distinguished chairman of the committee, and hopefully with the ranking member, we must fix the marriage penalty.

What we have today is a situation in which we relieve the marriage penalty for 2 years, then for 4 years it comes back, then 2 years later it goes away, and then it comes back for good. This is outrageous. Our married couples do not need a rubber band; they need a Band-Aid. They need to be able to know that when they get married, it is not going to cost them $1,200 a year.

Two Navy lieutenants will lose more than $1,500 a year if the marriage penalty goes away in 2 years; two Army warrant officers will lose $852 a year. This is not right. I have the commitment from leadership that we will take up a bill this year that fixes this inequity, and I hope there will be a bipartisan effort. We cannot let people be unsure about their marriage penalty relief.

I thank the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee and ask him if he will work with me to ensure that we take this up this year so we can get on and fix the child tax credit. Next on the agenda I hope will be marriage penalty relief.