Sam Brownback: “A number of groups have taken notice of this issue of a marriage tax penalty and think that it is clearly time and it is…”

“A number of groups have taken notice of this issue of a marriage tax penalty and think that it is clearly time and it is important that we at this time address this particular issue. The Independent Women's Forum has sent a letter urging Congress to "put the Tax Code where its rhetoric is." I think that is a real interesting way they state that in the letter. "We should put the Tax Code where the Congress' rhetoric is." We talk a lot about families, values, and virtues, and those sorts of institutions that make for a civil society. We talk endlessly about those things. Yet, then we tax them; we tax them disproportionately. This group has the courage to be able to identify, well, I guess then you guys really don't mean it. You will say one thing and do another. The Independent Women's Forum urges Congress to put the Tax Code where its rhetoric is and eliminate marriage penalties. Serious steps to reform tax laws would mean real liberation to those who work and those who may have to in the future. Marriage taxes can impose a nearly 50-percent marginal tax rate on second earners. They are saying in their publication, most of which are spouses, obviously, this is a State-sponsored discrimination, the unintended consequence of which is to discourage--they are saying here--women from entering the labor force.”