Dale Bumpers: “I just want to comment for a minute or two, because I know the other Senator from Maine wishes to be heard. No. 1, if I…”

“I just want to comment for a minute or two, because I know the other Senator from Maine wishes to be heard. No. 1, if I were a Senator from Maine I would be making the same speech I just heard. The second biggest catalog sales house in the United States is L.L. Bean from the great State of Maine. But there is another very cogent point I neglected to make in my opening comments, and that is the State of Maine collects the sales taxes for every dime's worth of goods that L.L. Bean sells in the State of Maine. They do not collect 1 penny for the other 49 States. They are probably in the half billion dollar range now, maybe much more than that. They are the second biggest. I believe Lands' End in Wisconsin is the biggest in the country. So, No. 1, everybody should understand that under current law, law established in various Supreme Court decisions, any mail order house that maintains a retail outlet in another State has to collect the sales tax for that State.”