House OKs Ending Marriage Tax Forever

The House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to extend a popular tax cut for married couples as Republicans push to bolster their tax cutting credentials ahead of the November elections.

The Republican-led House voted 271-142 to make permanent a provision in the $1.35 trillion 10-year tax cut enacted last year that would eliminate the so-called marriage penalty. Working couples often pay more in taxes after marriage than they did when they were single.

The measure is unlikely to be taken up in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.

"With all the work we've got to do, I think it would be difficult to anticipate another tax debate along the lines of what the House may be proposing," said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat. "We've all been very supportive of marriage penalty relief in the past and have voted on it, it seems like hundreds of times."

Voting to eliminate the so-called marriage penalty proved politically popular in the House, and 60 Democrats voted for the Republican-backed bill after the House rejected a Democratic alternative.

President Bush's tax cut last year included a provision providing marriage penalty relief starting in 2005. But the tax cut will expire after 2010 unless Congress acts.

Couples who do not itemize their tax returns would receive the same deduction as two single people. Other changes in the tax brackets would benefit all married couples, and additionally, eligibility for a low-income tax credit would be liberalized.

In all, Rep. Jerry Weller, R-Illinois, said 36 million couples would benefit if the so-called "marriage penalty" tax relief were made permanent, at a savings of $42 billion annually.

Without passage of the measure, added Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Arizona, "We will be in essence putting a tax back on the backs of" working couples in 2011, at an average of $1400 a year.

But Democrats argued there was no rush to make permanent a tax cut that has not yet gone into effect and accused Republicans of playing politics.

"What's happening here is the fact that my (Republican) colleagues want a political issue," said Rep. Robert Matsui, a California Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland., said the bill was part of a "fiscal irresponsibility rampage" by Republicans, coming on the heels of last week's bill making estate tax repeal permanent.

"An election-year ploy," snapped Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas.

Democrats argued that last year's tax cuts turned budget surpluses into deficits and threatened the government's ability to shore up Social Security. They offered an alternative that the House rejected on a vote of 198-213, with one member voting present.

The Democrat alternative added a provision to the Republican-backed bill that would force the administration in 2010 to certify that extending the tax cut would not result on a "raid" on the Social Security trust fund.

But Republicans said the measure would make no difference and accused Democrats of seeking political cover.

"What we are engaging in on the floor with the offering of the Democrat substitute could probably generally be referred to as political baloney," said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, a California Republican.

Republicans are eager to make Bush's tax package -- which cut income tax rates across the board -- permanent. A bill that would do that passed the House in April on a mostly party-line vote, but the Senate is unlikely to take it up.

In the face of Senate inaction, House Republican leaders have been scheduling separate House votes on some of the more politically popular elements of Bush's tax cut. The strategy is to put election-year pressure on Democrats while helping Republican prospects for November.

The House approved a measure last week to make the estate tax repeal permanent and 41 Democrats supported the Republican majority. The Senate blocked a similar Republican-backed measure in a procedural vote Wednesday.