In IE 7+, large text gets cut off, while other browsers render text as intended. This has something to do with the height tag, where the layer does get expanded to a specified height (a background will fill to the desired height), but the text gets cut off at the same position, regardless of which height is used.
SOLUTION: The problem actually lies in whatever element contains the text. I added 10px of padding to the bottom of the parent layer, which seems to have worked.