Political Quotes

“Madam President, I wish to briefly explain to people watching the back-and-forth that just occurred what is going on here, because it is easy to not understand everything that is happening. There are three things going on here: No. 1, what we are unfortunately seeing is the Senate holding one bill hostage in order to try to force through another unpopular bill. There are two bills concerning the Internet. The first is the Internet Tax Freedom Act. That has been in place for over a decade. It has had bipartisan support. It has been championed by the Senator from Oregon who has been an outspoken and passionate advocate of making sure that when you and I go and sign up for the Internet, we don't face taxes for getting Internet service, and it has worked very well. That law has always been an area of bipartisan agreement. But there is a second law that has been proposed in this body but not passed. The second law is the Internet sales tax, what its proponents call the Marketplace Fairness Act. The Internet sales tax is not focused on taxing someone just for signing up to the Internet. Rather, the people being punished by the Internet sales tax are all the small businesses trying to sell their wares online, and there are a number of Senators who very much want to impose taxes on those small businesses in 9,600 jurisdictions nationwide.…”