Sam Brownback: “Make no mistake about the motivation here. Our motivation is to eliminate the marriage penalty tax. That is pure and…”

“Make no mistake about the motivation here. Our motivation is to eliminate the marriage penalty tax. That is pure and simple. That is what we have been saying for the last couple of hours. It is to eliminate the marriage penalty tax. We wanted to have this debate at this point in time and juncture because there are less than 30 legislative days until we finish up. Signals that have been coming out haven't been much about tax cuts. They have been mostly about spending. We wanted to send a very clear signal we are for cutting taxes, and in particular, first and foremost, the marriage penalty tax. We needed to have some way to be able to have that debate. We spent a lot of time here on the Senate floor--we spent 4 weeks on a tobacco bill. We spent a lot of time on a lot of other issues. We have not spent much time on tax cuts. We are limited on the number of things we can talk about, and the vehicles we can talk about them on. This was one we could, and we decided it is getting to the end of this session, we have to start talking about tax cuts. We have to start talking about families. This is one of the things that we can talk about, the marriage penalty tax.”