Thomas Daschle: “maybe you have to be in the minority to appreciate the position in which the minority has now been put once again. The…”

“maybe you have to be in the minority to appreciate the position in which the minority has now been put once again. The Republican majority is saying, first and foremost, we want to debate the marriage tax penalty. We say to that, absolutely; we want to debate the marriage tax penalty. We strongly support marriage tax penalty relief. Then they say, we want you to limit your amendments. So we say, OK, we will limit our amendments. Then they say, we not only want you to limit your amendments, we want to be able to tell you which amendments you can offer. After saying first of all we will debate the marriage tax penalty, after secondly saying we will limit amendments, to give the majority now the right to dictate to the minority that they have the ability to determine what the context, what the definition, what the scope of our amendments ought to be, it seems to me to be an abrogation of all that is fair in debating an important issue such as this. If we are going to spend $248 billion, there are other ways in which we can spend that money. Every one of these amendments in that context is relevant. Should we spend $248 billion on a marriage tax relief bill, 60 percent of which does not go to those experiencing a marriage tax penalty? Sixty percent of that $248 billion does not have anything to do with the marriage tax penalty. It goes in most cases to people who get a marriage bonus. We are saying let's fix the marriage tax penalty.”