Political Quotes

“I thank the Chair. Let me go to my first point, why this proposed legislation is an unfunded mandate. The proposed legislation is an unfunded mandate because it would make it illegal for these States to continue to collect State and local Internet access taxes. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that these losses would amount to $80 billion to $120 billion a year. That is not all. The language of the legislation enacted by the House of Representatives, and every version of that language we have seen thus far in this Chamber, broadens the ban on taxation on Internet access and increases the size of the Federal unfunded mandates, extending to some degree to other telecommunications services, which is why I suppose we have begun to see the halls filled with lobbyists from the telecommunications industry as they anticipate the possibility that this Congress might be exempting them from some or maybe all of the taxes that State and local governments put on telecommunications. Now, there are many estimates about how much this would cost State and local governments. I have a study prepared in November of 2001 by Ernst & Young for the telecommunications State and local tax coalition. This study by Ernst & Young says that telecommunications providers and consumers of telecommunications services paid a total of $18.1 billion in State and local taxes in 1999.”