According to the most recent census, less than 25 percent of our children live in two parent households. Think about what that means. Three out of every four children don't know what it is like to have mommy and daddy live in the same house. Most of those children will eventually become adult parents. What type of families will they create?
I ask this question because Thursday, the United States Senate refused, 73-27, to immediately end the marriage tax penalty. As a result, the tax penalty on being married will remain in place until 2006. Then, the government will start phasing in an elimination of the tax over the next five years.
If we believe the Senate, 11 years from now, the marriage tax penalty will finally be history. Right.
Today, if you are single and living in sin, the federal government pays you a bonus for not getting married. Because of how it calculates standard deductions, couples who have the same taxable income pay different taxes depending upon their marital status. As crazy as it seems, if you are married, you pay more.
This makes no sense. It punishes the 50 million families that are trying to do the right thing. And no one seems to care.
As it now stands, the only relief that married couples will see is a new 10 percent tax bracket covering the first $12,000 of their earnings. This will save married couples $600. However, the 10 percent provision also applies to the first $6,000 of a single person's income. So the net savings for a married couple is only $300. The Senate thinks that is fine. It is wrong.
What in the name of all that is good are these people thinking? Why do they continue to punish those of us who have decided to marry and stay married? And where, oh where, is the lobby for that rarest of being in America -- people who are married with kids?
Kids living in single-parent households and the marriage tax penalty are joined at the hip. They represent the abject failure of our political representatives to take action to strengthen families. The decision the Senate made on Thursday tells our young adults that it doesn't pay to get married. That's a horrible message.
Nevertheless, we can't blame Congress. When three-fourths of the Senate votes against ending the marriage tax penalty, it says that its members know that this issue will not hurt their reelection chances. When they delay the phase out of the marriage tax penalty until 2006, they are telling us that no one cares about our government's war against our married couples. When the phones of Congress remain silent as they walk away from you and me again, we are proving that they are right.
Because in fact, most people don't care. There will be no political price to pay for Congress' continued war on married couples. End of discussion.
Well, it doesn't have to be that way. However, America will continue to slide into the abyss unless you and I take up our phones and call Congress. Tell the people who work for you that it is time that they ended the marriage tax penalty immediately. Not next year, not in 2006, not in 2011, but today.
You have a choice. You can call, or you can do nothing. If you do nothing, don't be surprised when the EPA declares married couples an endangered species. Because the message from Washington is that it doesn't pay to get married.