The U.S. House has voted to permanently end the so-called marriage tax penalty, but democrat Senator Tom Harkin says it faces an uncertain future in the Senate where republicans hold a razor-thin edge and moderate republicans have refused to go as far as House republicans in cutting taxes due to fears over a rising federal deficit. Harkin says there is no free lunch, and he says “the House punted on that one.” Some couples face a tax increase next year unless Congress acts to make permanent three changes in tax law that reduced the so-called marriage penalty. The House voted yesterday to make those changes permanent — a 105-billion dollar tax cut over the next decade for married couples. Harkin says if the deficit isn’t reduced, by 2009 every U.S. citizen will be paying one-thousand dollars a year to pay the interest on the national debt. Unless the Senate makes the changes approved by the House, the so-called “marriage penalty” will be in force next year. Working couples often get pushed into a higher tax bracket when their salaries are combined to calculate how much income tax they owe the government. On another topic, Harkin is joining the chorus of national democrats rushing to defend presidential candidate John Kerry from republican charges that he’s unfit to be president because of his opposition to the war in Vietnam. And Senator Tom Harkin says republicans who accuse Kerry of making an early exit from combat in Vietnam after a series of non-life-threatening wounds are trying to deflect attention from the “nonexistent” war records of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Harkin says Bush doesn’t want people to focus on whether he was “AWOL” in the National Guard or the handful of deferments Cheney received in the ’60s so he didn’t have to enter the military. Harkin says Bush and Cheney can’t escape the scrutiny since the Bush campaign opened up the attack on Kerry’s service record. Harkin also served during the Vietnam era, flying planes, but not in combat. Republican Senator John McCain, a P-O-W in Vietnam, yesterday called on both sides to quit the sniping. McCain said 30 years after the Vietnam war, it’s time for a “cease fire.”