Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
August 5, 1999 -- Page: S10310

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman of the committee for giving us tax relief for the hard-working American family.

We have heard a lot of debate in this Chamber in the last few hours, but it comes down to a very simple issue, and that is whether we are for giving the people who earn the money the right to decide how to spend it. It comes down to one basic issue. We are for tax cuts, and I think the question is, Is the President for tax cuts? He campaigned saying he was for tax cuts for middle-income people, but the President has not supported tax cuts yet.

In fact, the major area of tax policy that the President gave us was the largest increase in the history of America. We are trying to cut back on those tax increases because we have a surplus and because we believe that the surplus should be shared with the people who gave it to us in the first place.

A lot has been said about Social Security and whether we are going to maintain the stability of Social Security. The answer is emphatically, we are; $2 trillion will come in over the next 10 years in Social Security surplus. The Republican plan that is before us today totally keeps that $2 trillion for Social Security stability.

The other $1 trillion in surplus over the next 10 years is in income tax surplus, withholding surplus, people's hard-earned money that they have sent to Washington in too great a quantity. It is that $1 trillion that we are talking about. We are talking about giving 25 cents per dollar of that trillion back to the people who earn it, and we think that is not only fair; it is required.

I worked very hard with Senator Ashcroft and Senator Brownback to eliminate the marriage tax penalty. This bill does it. We double the standard deduction so that people will not have a penalty because they get married. And, most of all, the people who need it the most are going to have total elimination of the tax on marriage. That is the schoolteacher and the nurse who get married and all of a sudden are in a double bracket, from 15 percent to 28 percent. One earns $25,000, the other earns $33,000, and together they go into the 28-percent bracket today. This bill eliminates that from the Tax Code forever, period--gone.

The President has said he is going to veto that tax relief, and I don't understand it.

Let me talk about what it does for women. Of course, the marriage penalty tax hurts women. But we also know that women live longer and they have smaller pensions. They have smaller pensions because women go in and out of the workplace, and they lose the ability to have that growth in geometric proportions in their pensions. That has been an inequity for women in our country. We eliminate that in this bill, or at least we try. We help by allowing women over 50 who come back into the workplace to be able to set aside 50 percent more in their pensions to start catching up. So where most people--all of us--have a $10,000 limit on a 401(k), a woman over 50 who comes back into the workforce after raising her children will be able to have a $15,000 set-aside in her 401(k). We also give help on IRAs.

It is very important to a woman who is going to live longer to have equal pension rights because she is more likely to have children, raise her children, maybe through the 1st grade or maybe through the 12th grade. We want to make sure we equalize that and recognize it. We have done that. Yet the President says he is going to veto this bill.

We have tax credits in this bill for those who would take care of their elderly parents, or an elderly relative, because we know one of the hardest things families face is how to take care of an elderly relative who doesn't want to go into a nursing home. Families would like to keep them. Sometimes they don't even want to do that, but long-term care is so expensive that they can't afford it. So we have credits for long-term care insurance, and we have credits for those who would care for their elderly parents.

So this bill lowers capital gains, lowers the death tax; it gives a benefit to everyone. The working people of this country deserve it. I hope the Senate will pass it. I hope the President will sign it and make good on all of our pledges to give the working people of this country relief.

Thank you, Mr. President.