if we pass this bill and they're allowed to act that it will eliminate for the foreseeable future the possibility that Tennessee will ever have to have a state income tax

NRF supports Congress granting states remote collection authority with simplifications that ensure retailers are not unduly burdened.

I too--along with governors like Governor Daniels and others--urge the Federal Government and the Congress in particular to get behind Senator Lamar Alexander's legislation to allow states to be able to make theses choices for themselves…

Why should tax be collected on a book or camera purchased from a local business and not on an identical item purchased from a mail order or Internet business?

It's not a new tax. In fact, as Governor Jeb Bush, former Governor Jeb Bush, said, he thinks many of the states will use the extra revenue collected, when you collect from everybody who owes it, to lower rates.

This is an opportunity for us to learn, so I'll be doing a lot of listening today.

Can you discuss that discrepancy? Also, isn't it true that as long as we have nuclear weapons, even a lower number, that we'll still need a new plutonium facility in the future?

That's a very important point, General Cartwright, and one which I hadn't even considered, about the two shifts in terms of the need for the CMRR.

So you're basically saying that, whatever the current level of production is, whether it's 20 or 30 or you think it might be even higher than that, that if the floor space issue is solved that you can double that production within the same…

Lower numbers of weapons should be a consequence of strategic analysis--not an abstract preconceived determination.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

So you're saying it's as simple as going to two shifts?

Well, that's interesting. I mean, I didn't ask you about shifts, so I'll do that next.

I want to thank Senator Harkin for this hearing, and even the constructive way that it has been conducted.

I think one reason for the increase in scholarships like the HOPE Scholarship...is the hope that having gone to the University of Tennessee, they will stay in Tennessee.

Unless we unleash the States from Federal Medicaid requirements that our public research universities...will continue to be underfunded.

I mean, 30 years ago, State budgets were 8 percent Medicaid; today, they are 25 percent.

The Manhattan Project is one of the most significant events in American history, and according to some historians it is the single most significant event of the 20th Century.

We are also grateful for Senators Lamar Alexander, Maria Cantwell, Tom Udall, and Patty Murray's leadership in co-sponsoring this legislation.

I could do a lot more if we had more Republican Senators, just to be very blunt about it.

During the last three years, the Obama administration has produced an avalanche of regulations that have thrown a big wet blanket over the American economy.

I think if we took the consumer protections that were really important for a car or a mortgage and put them on one page, that we would protect the consumers a lot better.

The healthcare law is taxes and mandates... the cost of complying with the healthcare law would more than equal the entire profit his company would make in that year.

I have never seen anything in my public life, in and out of government over the last 40 years, as the dispute that has occurred among very well qualified members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

I have been very impressed with President Obama's nominees to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.