Porter Goss: “This is something that will be of interest to all Americans. We have a situation in this country now where, believe it…”

“This is something that will be of interest to all Americans. We have a situation in this country now where, believe it or not, among the many other facts that we see in our tax system and the way it is handled by the IRS, we see the extraordinary fact that there is a penalty, a tax penalty for marriage. This is at a time when we realize the sanctity of marriage, how important it is to our family values, how important it is to the education of our youth, the well-being of our Nation in so many ways, and certainly just the quality of our life. So when we look at our Tax Code and we uncover the fact that there is a penalty for being married, we wonder why in the world that is. The first thing you might want to say is, how much is this penalty? Is this really something that matters? The answer is yes. I understand that the average penalty for marriage is $1,400. That is a fair amount of money. It seems to me that would matter to most Americans, to have to pay $1,400 more just because you were married.”