Dale Bumpers: “the question was how much business is the catalog industry doing in this country? The answer is almost $100 billion a…”

“the question was how much business is the catalog industry doing in this country? The answer is almost $100 billion a year and growing at a rate of 6 percent a year. To judge by the number of catalogs coming into my house, they are growing much faster than that. So you might ask, No. 1, why should these people bother with collecting a tax on behalf of the States where they sell merchandise? I used to be a small town merchant. I had a hardware, furniture, and appliance store. I even had a cemetery and practiced law as well. I did anything to try to feed my wife and three children. My biggest competitor was not the guy down the street. It was the Sears & Roebuck catalog. They do not do much catalog business anymore; I think maybe Sears does no catalog business now. But I can tell you that offices of every Senator in the U.S. Senate has received communique after communique in the last 3 days saying, please support Senator Bumpers' amendment. They are from small town, main street retailers all across America because it is not just Wal-Mart and K-Mart that are putting them out of business; it is the catalog business which enjoys a competitive advantage because they do not have to collect that 5 to 8 percent sales tax. What would this mean to your State? In my State of Arkansas, it would mean $19.6 million a year. In Illinois, $233 million a year; Pennsylvania, $145 million; New York, $359 million; and California, $482 million.…”