A widow living on her deceased husband's Social Security benefits will lose those benefits if she remarries. While the current system certainly makes sense, it can lead to a perverse situation. There are elderly couples that would want to become legally married but don't because they can't afford the loss of Social Security income.

By pledging to remove this "marriage penalty", a politician can portray himself as being both pro-elderly and pro-marriage. There must be voters out there who would chose a candidate based on this issue alone. Whether or not this idea would be good policy, supporting it would be good politics. I'm surprised more politicians aren't campaigning on this issue.

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