Political Quotes

“First, Mr. President, I say to the Senator from North Dakota I very much support what the Senator is trying to do in terms of procedure. It is time to vote. As the Senator has said, whether 15 minutes or half an hour, people ought to get on to the task of voting. After 8 years of discussing this eye-glazing subject of Internet taxes, we always cringe at the prospect of wading once more into this incredibly arcane area, so I will take a few minutes to talk about the definitions question with respect to Internet access. This is clearly the big hangup. The Senator from North Dakota is here. He has been exceptionally cooperative, even though we have had different views on the subject over the last 8 years. I will take a couple of minutes to describe what the central concerns are with respect to working out the definition of the Internet access. The concern on my part is, as the Alexander language is written today, in effect it will hide taxes on Internet access, No. 1; and, No. 2, it opens the door to multiple State and city taxes on the individual component parts the American people think of as Internet access. No Senator wants to do this. There is no Member of the Senate who gets up in the morning and says, I want to have thousands of new Internet taxes. However, the way the definition of the Alexander language is written today, it will, in fact, open up the opportunity to tax wireless Blackberry services, spam-filtering systems, Web hosting, and the like.…”