Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
March 4, 2000 -- Page: S2071

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, while the negotiations are going on, I will say it is my intention to offer an amendment, which would be a sense-of-the-Senate amendment, that we would eliminate the marriage tax penalty in this country. Certainly, the sense-of-the-Senate is quite short and pretty clear. The Senate would find that marriage is the foundation of American society; that the Tax Code should not penalize those who choose to marry; that a report to the Treasury Department's Office of Tax Analysis estimates that, in 1999, 48 percent of married couples will pay a marriage penalty under the present system; that averages $1,400 a year. The sense-of-the-Senate amendment will be that Congress shall pass marriage penalty tax elimination legislation that begins a phaseout of this penalty in 2001, pass marriage penalty tax legislation that does not discriminate against stay-at-home spouses, and consider such legislation prior to April 15, 2000.

We are scheduled to debate marriage penalty relief next week. It is certainly appropriate that we say to these people the week they are beginning to write their checks to the IRS: If you are paying $600 more or $1,000 more or $1,400 more just because you are married, help is on the way; the Senate is committed to eliminating this tax.

I do not even think we ought to call it a tax cut. This is a tax correction. This is a correction of an inequity in our code.

That clearly and simply is what my sense-of-the-Senate amendment is. It is provided for in the budget resolution before us. The Senator from New Mexico has provided $150 billion in this budget for tax relief for hard-working Americans.

If one looks at the tax relief we have already passed in the Senate, it still would not reach $150 billion. We passed tax relief for Social Security recipients so people between the ages of 65 and 70 could work without being penalized. We have passed tax relief for small businesspeople who are hard hit with the many regulations and taxes that are put on their businesses. We have provided tax relief for families who are trying to provide enhancements for their children's education. Senator Coverdell has been the lead on that bill which gives people the ability to take tax credits and tax deductions when they have to buy their children computers, books, tutors, or enhance college tuition or private school tuition--whatever the cost is to parents, to give children the enhancement their parents believe they need and that their parents would be able to give from tax cuts. And we add on top of those marriage penalty relief.

We met with some wonderful people this morning--real people--who are suffering from the marriage penalty. The bill that will come up next week has the elimination of that penalty.

Kervin and Marsha Johnson met with us today. Kervin is a District of Columbia police officer. His wife is a Federal employee. They were married last July. This year they will owe $1,000 more in taxes because they got married. They are newlyweds. They were shocked that this happened.

We also met with Eric and Ayla Hemeon. Eric is a volunteer firefighter who also works for a printing company. She works for a small business. They have been married for 2 years and are expecting their first child in about a month. Ayla talked to us about what this means. What it means to them is $1,100 they are paying to Uncle Sam instead of doing something to benefit their first child who is almost here.

We had the two newlyweds, and then we had an older couple who met with our group this morning, Lawrence and Brendalyn Garrison. He is a corrections officer at Lorton, and she is a teacher in Fairfax County. Last year, they paid about a $600 marriage penalty.

When we talked to them about what the bill which will come up next week would do for them, they said: Gosh, do you think you could make it retroactive? Because they have been married for 25 years.

These are real people with real faces who would get marriage penalty relief.