Bill Lee: “I stand in support of the child tax credit. It is something that this bill goes a long way toward promoting. This is a…”

“I stand in support of the child tax credit. It is something that this bill goes a long way toward promoting. This is a great day in the sense that the Senate is moving forward with promoting the interests of the American family, doing something to weaken, to soften the impact of a little known feature called the parent tax penalty. A lot of people are familiar with the marriage tax penalty in the Tax Code. It is a pernicious feature, one that punishes people for getting married, one that can produce a series of adverse effects simply by saying ``I do.'' That is wrong. Most Americans acknowledge that it is wrong. This bill goes a long way toward undoing that. There is a different thing called the parent tax penalty that, like I say, is less understood, less frequently discussed than it should be. Here is how the parent tax penalty works. It is a basic function of the interaction between the Federal income tax system on the one hand and our Federal senior entitlement programs, on the other--Social Security and Medicare. Here is how it works. Imagine two hypothetical couples, couple A and couple B. Couple A and couple B are identical in every respect but one, and that is that they are identical in their income patterns, charitable contributions, mortgage interests, so on and so forth, except for one characteristic. Couple A has four children, and couple B chooses to remain childless.…”