Neal Dunn: “the Tax Code has many unfair and inexplicable provisions, but none is more harmful to young people wishing to marry and…”

“the Tax Code has many unfair and inexplicable provisions, but none is more harmful to young people wishing to marry and young families than the marriage penalty, the bill we are debating today. To increase the tax burden on a couple simply because they choose to marry is unjust. We ask for neutrality, to get in there and give extra credit to married people, or support single people ahead of married people, and this is the bill we are debating today. Last year we passed the bill that alleviates the marriage penalty, but the problem is that it returns in 2011. So now we need to make it permanent. I find it amusing, if not unexplainable, that the opponents of this bill are talking on the one hand about how we are impacting the deficit situation in the United States by the passage of the bill we are debating today and, on the other hand, being truthful by saying that this bill does not take effect until 2011. So you cannot have it both ways. We do not impact the financial situation of the United States by which we are all very concerned, but by the time this bill would go into effect, in fact, it would be January 1, 2011. Every number that we have puts us in the surplus position, whether it is in the Social Security Trust Fund or the national budget by that year. So double-counting the dollars that would provide for the extension permanently of the marriage penalty is political. It is not fair. The marriage penalty is discriminatory to working women.”