House votes end to marriage penalty
By Stephen Dinan 

 
The House passed a permanent end to the income-tax marriage penalty
yesterday, the latest in a series of votes to make parts of last year's
$1.35 trillion tax cut permanent, but the Senate is not likely to act on the
bill.

     Under last year's tax cut, the marriage penalty - the amount a married
couple pay to the Internal Revenue Service above what they would if they
were not married - would have been reimposed in 2011.

     "We don't want to have a $42 billion annual tax increase that goes
into effect Jan. 1, 2011, because people are married," said House Deputy
Majority Whip Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican.

     The measure to make marriage-penalty relief permanent, which has the
backing of the Bush administration, passed the House 271-142, with one
independent and 60 Democrats joining 210 Republicans in voting for it, and
141 Democrats and one independent voting against it.

     Democrats said the bill is irrelevant until 2011, and Republicans'
push to pass it exposes the whole exercise as political theater.

     "There's one big event between today and January 2011, and you know
what it is? It's the November 2002 elections," said Rep. Gerald D. Kleczka,
Wisconsin Democrat. "What we're doing today is nothing but politics to
benefit some members of the House."

     Maryland Democratic Rep. Steny H. Hoyer said Republicans are on a
"fiscal irresponsibility rampage" and said the cost of the bill - $63
billion in the next 10 years and $330 billion the following decade - will
come out of the Social Security Trust Fund.

     Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, said, "At
this point, my sense is we've been there and done that."

     House Democrats advanced their alternative, which would have made
permanent repeal contingent on the future budget picture, but that failed
on a mostly party-line vote.

     Republicans said they would prefer to have the bill passed but are
happy to have the tax issues to run on. They say 35 million couples pay an
average penalty of $1,400 and that most of them make between $50,000 and
$75,000 a year.

     Rep. Jack Kingston, Georgia Republican and head of House Republicans'
"Theme Team," said the marriage penalty may not be as powerful an issue as
the estate tax, which has groups such as the National Federation of
Independent Business pushing it. But he said it makes for an "easy
philosophical difference between Democrats and Republicans."

     "It's just one more tax-relief measure that Tom Daschle's going to sit
on, and that's something House Democrats are going to have to answer for -
their [party´s] leadership," he said.

     To drive the point home, Rep. Jerry Weller, the Illinois Republican
who led the floor fight for the bill yesterday, followed most Democratic
speakers' remarks by noting how many married couples in their districts pay
the marriage penalty.

     Yesterday's vote was the latest in a series House Republicans have
held to make individual parts of the president's package permanent. On
Wednesday, Senate Republicans failed to win the 60 votes needed to make the
repeal of the estate tax permanent. The vote was 54-44.

     Some Republican challengers already have announced they will use that
vote against Democratic senators in November's elections.

     They will target three Democratic senators up for re-election who
voted for the complete Bush tax-cut package but voted against making the
estate-tax repeal permanent. They were Sens. Tim Johnson from South Dakota,
Jean Carnahan from Missouri and Robert G. Torricelli from New Jersey.

     "It's an absolutely huge vote in South Dakota, and Mr. Johnson made a
terrible mistake," said Christine Iverson, spokeswoman for the campaign of
Rep. John Thune, who is running against Mr. Johnson.

     Mr. Johnson voted for the Democrats' alternative plan that they said
would exempt farms and businesses passed within a family from the estate
tax and do it sooner than the Republican plan. His campaign said that vote
is easy to defend.

     "He voted yesterday for the bill that was best for South Dakota's
family farmers and business owners," said Dan Pfeiffer, spokesman for the
campaign. "Why John Thune is so passionately interested in the well-being
of out-of-state millionaires is something he's going to have to explain to
the voters of South Dakota."

     Seven senators who voted in favor of last year's tax cuts voted
against Wednesday's bill: Mr. Johnson, Mrs. Carnahan, Mr. Torricelli, John
B. Breaux of Louisiana, Dianne Feinstein of California, and Herb Kohl of
Wisconsin - all Democrats - and James M. Jeffords of Vermont, the chamber's
lone independent.

     Three Democratic senators up for re-election voted for the tax cuts
both last year and Wednesday: Sen. Max Cleland from Georgia, Sen. Max
Baucus from Montana, and Sen. Mary L. Landrieu from Louisiana. Another
three Democrats not up for re-election also voted for the tax cuts both
times: Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Zell Miller
of Georgia.