Hmm...
Legalizing same-sex marriages in all 50 U.S. states would boost government finances by roughly $400 million to $900 million annually over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Although same-sex couples would be able to collect Social Security benefits for spouses, some couples could be subject to the so-called marriage penalty when filing a joint tax return. Also, some couples may no longer be allowed to receive Medicaid and other benefits for low-income people once both incomes are counted, the budget office said in a report dated Monday.
"On net, those impacts would improve the budget's bottom line to a small extent," the report said, estimating the gain at less than $1 billion. The Congressional Budget Office is a nonpartisan agency that does official budget forecasts for Congress. Republican lawmakers advocating a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage have cited the potential costs of those unions to the government....
On the one hand, this is one of the few arguments likely to give more moderate conservatives a bit of pause, when the civil liberties arguments fail. And it comes out of the (theoretically) nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which is a plus; nobody there is supposed to have an axe to grind on the matter.
On the other hand ... well, look at how those moneys would be obtained for the Treasury. Through the "marriage penalty" -- which pretty much everyone feels is thoroughly unfair to straight people in and of itself -- and because people who don't have much in the way of income in the first place would become ineligible for some benefits, and thus would have even less income. So getting married would allow the federal government to be cruel and vicious to us in exactly the same way that they're cruel and vicious to straight people. Which, yes, would be entirely equitable and fair, but really, who needs the type of fairness that robs you of money and medical care?
The question is, would it maybe be the best of all possible worlds would be for the states to decide that they're going to recognize same-sex marriages, but for the federal government to maintain its illogical intransigence on the matter?
A puzzlement.
Posted by iain at June 26, 2004 12:20 AM
