Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
September 23, 2004 -- Page: S9563

WORKING FAMILIES TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2004 -- CONFERENCE REPORT

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee for getting this bill through. These family tax breaks are very important. The most time I have spent on anything in my time in the Senate has been for family tax relief, and particularly marriage penalty relief.

The first bill I introduced on this subject was several years ago to try to stop the penalty that people get when there are two working individuals and they get married because then they go into a higher tax bracket, and they get taxed more than if they had stayed single. That is the worst thing we could do in our society because, of course, we know that marriage is very helpful to family stability. It has been shown that children in families where there is a husband and a wife are less likely to suffer child abuse and more likely to do well in school. It has been shown time and time again that families do better in the area of raising their children when there are two parents in the household. But we have had a Tax Code that has discriminated against marriage. That is absolutely ludicrous.

Last year, with my colleagues and President Bush, we passed a $350 billion tax cut. This is an economic growth package that is working. We have seen the fruits of our labor. The economy is coming back. The stock market has stabilized. Jobs are being created. So we have freed the economic engines of our economy by keeping more money in small business and more money in the pocketbooks of families.

One of the most important provisions provided immediate marriage penalty relief, making the standard deduction double that of single people and enlarging the 15-percent tax bracket for married joint filers to twice that of single filers. This provision saved 52 million married couples, 3.6 million of whom are in Texas, up to $600 on their 2003 tax bills.

Enacting the marriage penalty relief was a giant step toward tax fairness. But the bill before us tonight is necessary to keep those tax cuts in place. Since the size of the bill was restricted to $350 billion last year, the marriage penalty relief provision is only effective for 2 years. So if we do not act on the bill tonight, and pass it, marriage could be a taxable event once again in 2005. Without relief, 48 percent of married couples would lose the tax relief they have gained in the last 2 years.

Besides lower taxes, the other thing that is so important for our Tax Code is to have predictable taxes so a family can plan on what they are going to have in their budgets. That is why I hope eventually we will be able to make these tax cuts permanent. But at least today we are going to take a major step in the right direction for predictability of the tax cuts.

Marriage penalty relief will now be able to be counted on from today through 2010, if we pass the bill before us tonight. I think that is a major step in the right direction. Hopefully, between now and 2010 Congress will see fit, working with President Bush, to make this relief permanent. Then our families will know exactly what they are going to have to spend, and they will have more in their pocketbooks as well.

I think it is very important to say this is not something that was easy. We know it was not. There are people who wanted to take the tax cuts away, so acting was very necessary to keep the child tax credit, to keep marriage penalty relief, and to give the overall relief to families in our country. But you can tell it has taken until the last month of this session to do it because many people wanted to put these tax cuts into other spending priorities.

I cannot think of anything better than having the money go back in the pocketbooks of those who earn it so they can spend it for their families the way they want to.

Mr. President, I know my time is expiring, but I just urge my colleagues to pass this bill. I thank the distinguished chairman and ranking member for making sure that marriage penalty relief is in the bill before us tonight so that we can count on now through 2010 that this will be available for people getting married in our country, to raise their families in the way they choose to do it.