Political Quotes

“I am here on the floor today just to say a few words to follow the distinguished chairman of the Commerce Committee in support of the Marketplace Fairness Act. I represent Rhode Island and I have to say my Governor, a former member of this body, Lincoln Chafee; the president of our State senate, Senator Teresa Paiva; our speaker of the house, Gordon Fox, and numerous other Rhode Island organizations have ardently urged us to pass this legislation. The reason for that is twofold. No. 1, they are losing immense amounts of tax revenue that is swirling down this loophole of noncollection. Actually, the number I think is $23 billion for 2012. Rhode Island is not the biggest State, so we don't have a huge chunk of it, but it is about $70 million for Rhode Island, which is pretty significant. So it is important to all of us, while the States are struggling, to make sure tax revenue that is due and just not being collected is put into the revenue equation. The second thing is that it really just plain is not fair to the local businesses that have shops on Main Street, that have shops in the local shopping malls, to have competition with electronic delivery companies, with companies that exist on the Internet and with Internet shopping, that are subsidized, in effect, by the government. Very often my colleagues come to the floor to say government should not pick winners and losers. Government should not pick winners and losers--how many times have we heard that?…”