Political Quotes

“first I want to say what an honor it has been for me to participate in any amount of leadership on this issue here on the floor of the Senate with such incredible leaders as Senator Alexander, Senator Enzi, and Senator Durbin, who have long recognized the injustice that is being done to Main Street businesses and the problems we have in terms of States rights and making sure we maintain a system that recognizes the value of States rights and the value of a State prerogative so they can make their own taxing decisions without interference from the U.S. Senate or anyone in the Federal Government. As Senator Alexander has explained, when I first came to this body, Senator Durbin suggested to his staff that they try to find out where I would be on this issue because my predecessor, Senator Dorgan, had been very active with this coalition of leaders on addressing this problem, and his staff suggested that he might want to read the caption on the Quill case since there was the name ``Heidi Heitkamp'' in that caption. The reality is that back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we saw this phenomenon of increased catalog sales. I am not talking about companies such as Sears that had a physical presence in the community and could thereby collect sales taxes but more and more boutique types of catalogs. There was more and more competition coming from catalogs. I had more and more Main Street businesses coming to me as the tax commissioner asking: How is this fair?…”