Spencer Cox: “we are all in favor of eliminating the marriage penalty is what I understand from listening to the debate. The only…”

“we are all in favor of eliminating the marriage penalty is what I understand from listening to the debate. The only objection that some colleagues raise is that this is not the right time to do it. It is too soon. We have only been trying to repeal the marriage penalty since 1981. We have not had enough hearings on it, only in successive Congresses going back decades. We should pay off the national debt first. There are a number of reasons we should continue to discriminate apparently, but nothing in my view is more important than eliminating this horrible discrimination now. From 1913 to 1948, we did not discriminate in our Tax Code. We began discriminating in the Tax Code to protect working men who did not live in community property States, because people in community property States could income-split and reduce their rate of tax, and those working men in other States could not do it. Their wives did not work according to the way that the Congress looked at it. As a matter of fact, back when we adopted our income tax code, less than 3 percent of women worked. But in the second half of the 20th century, we watched those numbers change dramatically. By 1997, the number of working women was 100 percent greater than what it had been in 1947. Today the marriage penalty is not just a tax on marriage. It is a tax explicitly on working women.”