Sam Brownback: “I hope we can discuss as a part of that legislative branch appropriations bill something that affects 21 million…”

“I hope we can discuss as a part of that legislative branch appropriations bill something that affects 21 million American families and it increases their taxes an average of $1,400 per family. It was done to them in 1969, the last year that we balanced the budget, until this year, and we have the ability to deal with it now. That is a thing called the marriage penalty, the marriage penalty tax. I don't know how much of the American public is aware of this tax, but in 1969, there was placed a tax, actually a change in the Tax Code to a point that married couples were taxed more for being married than if they were single. It amounts, on average, to $1,400 per family. It affects around 21 million American families, and it is wrong. It is the wrong kind of tax. It is the wrong kind of notion. It is telling people, in the Tax Code, that we are going to penalize you for being married. This is a wrong idea when we are struggling so much in America today with the maintenance of families, with trying to keep families together, when we are trying to say that the foundational units of a civil society is the American family, and then we are saying, 'Well, yeah, but we're going to tax you.'”