Jeremiah Smith: “we did spend some time today debating the elimination of the marriage penalty tax. This is something I have been working…”

“we did spend some time today debating the elimination of the marriage penalty tax. This is something I have been working on for all the years I have been in Congress in the Senate. I look forward to the day we can repeal it. I was hoping we would have this vote in the near future. I very much regret the delay that was imposed upon us by the minority because by putting nongermane amendments on this, we slow down what we could accomplish here in the very near future, which is finally to eliminate the marriage tax penalty. I have an amendment prepared to implement elimination of the marriage tax penalty a lot sooner. I am contemplating offering that. I will see how much support there is for it. Before I do that, however, instead of the proposed phase-in period of 6 years, which is the underlying proposal, my amendment would eliminate the marriage penalty tax immediately, bringing working parents tax relief right away. According to the Congressional Research Service, as this graph shows, the additional savings my plan would bring married couples over the Roth plan would be almost $3,000. If you look at the years, we go from $69 versus $879 in 2002, all the way over to 2008, where it evens out. The point is, these are savings for a married couple--about $810 in the first year, 2002--if we put it into effect immediately. With today's cost of living exploding, education, tuition, high prices at the pump, that is a substantial savings for an ordinary working family.”