Mike Levin: “The real issue should be marriage penalty relief. My suggestion is that, if people really want such relief, my…”

“The real issue should be marriage penalty relief. My suggestion is that, if people really want such relief, my Republican colleagues withdraw this effort that is doomed to failure and they do what we have never done on the Committee on Ways and Means, as the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) has said, sit down and work out a marriage penalty relief bill on a bipartisan basis. They never tried to do that. The majority of us favor marriage penalty relief. We can do it on a bipartisan basis. But, instead, we have a bill here that goes way beyond that. It is too broad. It is part of a package that is much too large; and as a result, the package is weighted too much in favor of the very wealthy. No one on the majority side has ever answered this fact: according to CBO, almost half of the tax cut in this bill goes to couples that pay no marriage penalty at all. So let us sit down and do what we should do and work out, if we are serious, a marriage penalty relief bill.”