Political Quotes

“I wish to congratulate Senator Enzi and Senator Durbin and say how pleased I am to join as a cosponsor of their legislation. Here is what I want to congratulate them for. Senator Enzi said he came to this as a former mayor, as a former shoe shop owner, and as a former legislator. I come as a former Governor. In our constitutional framework, I have always thought it was our business in Tennessee to decide what services we wanted to provide and what taxes we wanted to levy to pay for them. For example, we have a high sales tax, but we have no income tax. That is different from most States. We have a low overall tax burden. For me, this is, as Senator Durbin and I have discussed, a matter of States rights. I think the most important thing I could say today is that they have solved the problem with this legislation. This problem has been there for a long time. It has had the opposition of conservatives worried about taxes. It has had the opposition of Amazon and other online sellers. Twenty years ago, when technology for businesses to compute and collect taxes was not nearly as innovative as it is today, the Supreme Court said that without congressional approval, states could not require out-of-state businesses to collect sales taxes because this created too much of a burden on interstate commerce. Senator Enzi and Senator Durbin, with this legislation, in my opinion, have solved the problem, and this is going to happen.…”