Kent Conrad: “first of all I thank the Senator from Texas for supporting the fundamental idea of moving up marriage penalty relief. I…”

“first of all I thank the Senator from Texas for supporting the fundamental idea of moving up marriage penalty relief. I would just differentiate our proposals in this way. The proposal I am offering would give the full marriage penalty relief starting immediately. The Senator from Texas would provide the relief starting immediately but phase it in over an extended period of time; we would not get the full phase-in until 2008. That would just be on one of the provisions dealing with marriage penalty. As I understand it, she does not deal with the other provisions at all. In addition, there is a difference in the pay-for. The pay-for on our side is to ask those at the highest income levels, the highest tax brackets, to simply have their tax cut deferred for a number of years. We get to the same level over the period of the 10 years in tax rates, tax brackets. We ask the fewer than 1 percent of the people who are in the very top tax bracket and the approximately 2 percent of the people who are in the next tax bracket to defer additional reductions so we can provide marriage penalty relief starting immediately. The Senator from Texas has a totally different pay-for. She goes after student loan money; she goes after the education IRA money; she goes after the alternative minimum tax money. I do not think that is the way we want to pay for this. I don't think we want to pay for moving up marriage penalty relief by going after the student loan interest money.”