Don Nickles: “Mr. President, I compliment my colleagues, several of whom have worked very hard to make sure we eliminate the marriage…”

“Mr. President, I compliment my colleagues, several of whom have worked very hard to make sure we eliminate the marriage penalty. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Sam Brownback, Senator Ashcroft, and Senator Santorum have been pushing and pushing to eliminate one of the most unfair penalties in the Tax Code, the marriage penalty. Now we have a chance to do that. We are going to vote on that on Monday. We are going to pass it--at least I hope we do--and I hope the President will sign it. The President said in his State of the Union Address that we need to eliminate the marriage penalty. He didn't propose it. He had a little something in his budget but very little. We have taken that and we are now considering a bill to basically eliminate the marriage penalty. A lot of people don't know what that is. It says that if people file a joint return, they pay more than they would have paid as single individuals. Some people say: Wait a minute. The Republican proposal, or the proposal we passed out of the Finance Committee, does more than that; it has a marriage bonus. We say that we should basically double the income tax brackets for individuals and for couples.”