Rod Grams: “first, I want to take a couple of minutes, Mr. President, to compliment my colleague from Kansas on what he is doing in…”

“first, I want to take a couple of minutes, Mr. President, to compliment my colleague from Kansas on what he is doing in talking about this marriage penalty and advocating more tax relief for American families. He has done a great job. I agree with him wholeheartedly, because when you look at the marriage penalty, bottom line, this is an unfair tax that has been imposed on something like 21 million couples in this country. It penalizes them for actually being married rather than encouraging and supporting the institution of marriage. We have a Tax Code that actually penalizes couples if they get married. A couple of months back, President Clinton was asked a question about the marriage penalty. I believe he admitted that it was unfair. Then he was asked, ``Why don't we get rid of it?'' The bottom line is that Government somehow cannot get along without this money. It is $29.1 billion a year, I believe. The Government can't get along without that money. Somehow families can get along without it, but the Government can't. Nobody calls up the families and says: If we have this unfair tax, are you able to get along without the money? Nobody calls the families. They just have to do more with less, or get along without it. The bottom line is that, in our Tax Code, somehow our Government is willing to collect taxes unfairly.…”