i'm saying now we'll do it, now we'll do it. i for the life of me cannot understand why we don't solve this in the right -- this. the right forum is the committee of jurisdiction. we can't do this on the senate floor without hearings, without consideration. senators who have been here a couple of years know that the good legislation we have passed around here is legislation in committee where the staffs go over different amendments, they work things out, the senators work things out and try to find compromises and solutions. not for the first time on the floor when senators make speeches. they don't think, you don't look for solutions on the floor of the senate, they just make speeches. and i'm suggesting a good place we don't just make speeches is in the committee of jurisdiction, the finance committee, then we can work out some of these problems. and that's the reason why i've been objecting and will continue to object, because this is a travesty the way this bill is being considered in the united states senate.

ms. collins: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from maine. ms. collins: madam president, i feel compelled to respond to the comments of my good friend and colleague from montana. and first let me say that i'm sorry to learn of his decision to leave the senate, to retire from the senate, because i have enjoyed working with him over the years. but i do want to make several points. senator mike enzi of wyoming, who came to the senate the same year that i did, in 1997, has been talking about this bill for at least a decade. at least a decade. he has introduced it many times before. there has been ample opportunity for there to be consideration by the committee and the committee

just chose not to consider his bill. this is not a new concept in any way. it has been talked about and debated at length over the past decade. moreover, i would note that the amendment that i have offered, along with my colleague from maine, does not in any way change the basic thrust of this legislation. in fact, both senator king and i are cosponsors of the underlying bill. if this bill were so problematic for retailers across the country, why would it have the support of so many retailers across the country? why would it have the support of

national organizations representing retailers across the country? this is not a complicated bill in concept. what it says is that if a retailer is selling into another state, it needs to collect the sales tax and remit it to that state. that's not a complicated concept. this issue has been litigated before the supreme court, another indication that it is not a new concept, that it has been carefully considered. so the idea that somehow this bill has sprung out of nowhere without proper consideration is

just not supported by its long history. in fact, when during the budget resolution we voted on this measure and it received such a strong vote -- i think it was something like 70, 75 votes -- i went over to mike enzi and congratulated him because he finally had gotten a preliminary on legislation that he had been working on for literally more than a decade. so, madam president, i don't think that this is a complicated concept. it is not creating a new tax. it is not imposing a new tax. it is not taxing the internet. all it is doing is making sure

that states that have sales taxes receive the revenue that they are owed. that is not a complicated concept. now, is it going to require retailers to make changes in their software, particularly large retailers who are selling all over the country? because keep in mind, this bill exempts small retailers. it exempts those with sales of under a million dollars. so they're not affected at all. but is it going to require some changes to be made in software and training by large retailers? yes, it is. and that is why we've offered this commonsense amendment to

improve but not change the underlying bill that just says rather than giving 90 days for businesses to comply with this bill, let's give them a year so they can fully get the software changes made and installed, their staff trained and ensure full, complete and accurate compliance. so that's all that the collins-king amendment does. it does not in any way change the thrust of this bill, the underlying provisions of this bill. it simply allows more time for compliance. thank you, madam president. mr. alexander: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. alexander: madam president, if -- if -- first let me join the senator from maine in expressing to the senator from montana my regret that he's

retiring. he has had a long and distinguished career here and i've -- i've enjoyed working with him and look forward to the rest of this year and -- and next year. he has a -- he has a history of independent thinking and working across party lines, which is valuable in this -- in the senate. on -- on the point that the senator from maine made -- and i see the senator from montana may want to say something so i'll be -- i'll be brief -- the bill that's proposed, the marketplace fairness act, the pending act, has a six-month implementation period. this would add six months to that, if i'm not mistaken, so there would be a total of a year for -- for implementation of the bill. a reasonable period of time, i think. and as far as the -- as far as the bill going to finance committee, it's -- it has been in the finance committee, madam

chairman. nothing would have pleased the sponsor of the bill more for the chairman and other members of the committee to bring the bill up, mark it up, send it to the floor. but they didn't do that. as senator collins has said, senator enzi has been introducing different bills for the last decade or so. but he introduced basically this very bill, about 11 or 12 pages, s. 1382, on november 9, 2011. november 9, 2011. it was referred to the finance committee. in april of 2012, there was a finance committee hearing on state and local tax issues including the marketplace fairness act. the senator from montana referred to that in his remarks the other day. so there was some hearing in the finance committee on this very bill in april of 2012. that's a year ago. and then the senate commerce committee in august held a full

hearing on this bill involving many senators, much testimony. i was there for that. and it's certainly arguable that the commerce committee is at least as involved in this issue as the finance committee, because while the parliamentarian has sent it to the finance committee, it has nothing to do with the federal tax code, zero. but in any event, that's where it's been. and then in this congress, the marketplace fairness act was introduced, this very 11-page bill, in the second month of this year, referred to the finance committee. 16 senators have asked for it to be -- asked for it to be heard and marked up. it's -- it's certainly the prerogative of the chairman to decide in a busy committee what he has time to do and not to do. but it has certainly seemed to everyone that the finance committee had become a dungeon for the bill and not a place where it was likely to ever, ever come out.

so i believe that's exactly why rule 14 is in the senate rules. it's to allow the majority leader to take a bill and bypass the he and bring it to the floor. and one that's had this much thought, this much consideration is -- is an excellent candidate for that. so the cure for that, it seems to me, is to take these amendments and -- and work them through. consider them on the floor, debate them, vote on them and nocontinue the process. send the bill to the house, let the house do what it will, have a conference if it is necessary. there are plenty of opportunities to deal with the bill. but the point is that the finance committee ought to have the bill -- the finance committee's had the bill. the finance committee wouldn't act on the bill. and so now we're past the point of sending it back to the finance committee. it's before us. it has votes of 74, 75 members of the senate. it has a majority of each side. we've been ready ever since monday to consider the amendments that have been offered to the bill by both proponents and opponents of the legislation.

and -- and i hope that the senators who oppose the bill will not just object to the amendments but will participate in -- in the process and allow us to move forward on the bill. thank you, madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. baucus: first, i deeply thank my two colleagues who previous spoke, senator collins from maine and senator alexander from tennessee, in their nice, warm compliments and i deeply appreciate that. it means a lot to me because they're both very fine senators. they're -- they're terrific, as a matter of fact. just a couple of points here just to clear the record. one, senator collins said that senator enzi's been working on this bill for about a decade. that's really not quite accura accurate. there was an earlier bill called the streamline act or something like that, i've forgotten what it was. it was an attempted compact

among states to address this issue. and they worked and worked and worked on it for close to a decade and then couldn't agree. i think 24 states i think agre agreed. the remaining states just did not agree. so that was the end of that. so this bill here i really is to ram through what other states would not agree to. and to try to find -- quote -- "the lowest common denominator." so that's basically a new bill. this bill has had, to my knowledge, no vetting at all by any committee of any significant way. this bill has been referred to the finance committee, and the senator from tennessee points out that the -- the finance committee has not reported out the bill. that is true. but, frankly, we know one good reason why it hasn't, it's because we've been meeting very frequently at a staff level -- my staff on the finance committee with staffs of those who are sponsors of the bill --

working out different potential and actual complexities and problems with the bill. there have been a lot of meetings. and i asked my staff, now, if someone were to, you know, be a fly on the wall, were those meetings in good faith? were they in good faith, trying to find answers to solutions here? the answer's yes. now, that's their belief, okay, but there have been a lot of meetings to try to work out some of these problems that clearly exist. and obviously one big problem is represented by the amendment that's just been not offered but consent was asked so it could be offered, that is for a nine-month delay. i cannot think of any reason for a nine-month delay except to recognize, hey, 90 days just isn't working. that's just an example of some of the problems, the imperfections of this bill that could have been addressed in committee. could have been addressed in committee. and there are many of them. could have been addressed in committee. but, no, no, no. this bill didn't go to committee.

and i stand here again and just tell the world, the senate finance committee will report out this bill in the next work period, if -- if it has an opportunity to do so, and work out all these different proble problems. rather than to try to willy-nilly ram this thing through the floor and -- and preventing changes from being corrected in a good, solid way. let me make a prediction. those who are ramming this bill on the floor without letting it go to committee are doing themselves a disservice because it makes it more likely this bill will not become law. if the proponents of this bill really want this legislation to become law, what they should have done is say, yeah, let's go to the finance committee. the chairman of the finance committee's agreed. he's agreed to take it up. he's agreed publicly to mark up -- not just a hearing. we've had a hearing already. we would have a markup on this bill in the next work period.

then the differences will be worked out, some of the problems solved. then the bill comes to the floor and it will not be opposed probably, at least not in the same way it's opposed now. i frankly am going to object to amendments because dient believe there is any way to -- do not believe there is any other way to do this bill on the floor and not go through the relevant committee. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota. ms. heitkamp: this is a challenge that the states have been confronted with since 1992, a challenge of trying to get

equity for main street businesses. what the supreme court told us is that congress is best equipped to make a determination on whether -- how we implement something that would level the playing field for main street businesses under our notion of what constitutes appropriate regulation and controls of interstate commerce. the challenge has been passed over 20 years ago to the united states congress. and the main street businesses have been waiting for 20 years for equity, for fairness, and for -- for a system that does not discriminate against them. only in washington, d.c. madam president, could 20 years, waiting 20 years for a solution today that we are debating be considered ramming something through congress. only in washington, d.c. can a 20-year delay for equity and for

justice and for fairness in our tax policy be considered too soon for a debate. this is an 11-page bill. this is a very simple bill, and i can attest having been here only a short period of time most senators have very capable staff and honestly, most senators have enormous capacity to read this 11-page bill, understand and appreciate what this bill says, and make a determination. in fact, this concept, just in concept, received an overwhelming vote from this body. this bill in consideration now in two votes has received an overwhelming show of support in this body. because they know that their main street businesses have waited too long. they know that they need to accomplish something in this body. we need to move forward. we need to do the easy things because we have so many hard

things to do here in the united states congress. we have a budget out of control, we have an energy policy that we need to prepare for the future. we have challenges with sequestration and making sure that we're making the right investments in our future. we have big things. i would suggest to you today that what we're looking at is albeit a small issue in this body, but a big issue for main street businesses. we heard from a woman just a couple days ago, a woman named theresa, and she runs a little pet food store. and she's trained all of her people on what is great pet nutrition and so when clients come in or when customers come in she can talk about the age of their pets, talk about what the nutritional problems are, and give them advice. and she said only to watch them walk out the door with that advice and order that product on the internet. now, if you say, well, she needs to -- it's competition, whatever, she's not afraid of

competition. but what her challenge is is that if they buy it in that store, the sales tax that her city and state will charge is 9.5%. so she's immediately at a 9.5% disadvantage. but yet they use her expertise. i would like someone here to explain to me how we can't be moved by a story like that, to correct the intechty. -- inequity. how by can't be sphis tated enough as legislators to read an 11-page bill and understand what it says. with all the staffing that we have. i am confident as we go forward that we are doing the right thing here. and any state who doesn't want to participate, any state who doesn't want to collect remote sales in this fashion, either streamlined or under the alternative process that's provided in the bill, they don't have to pursue this collection mechanism.

they can continue to do what they're doing. any retailer who has remote seller who has sales over a million dollars -- what this young woman said to us when she was talking about her pet store, she runs a little online business, we asked how could we feel, she said i could only hope for a million dollars of sales. i'd be proud to collect the sales tax if that was my business. she's a small businesswoman. if we can't bring equity now, when? we've been waiting 20 years. and we have an opportunity to show this country and show those main street businesses, show our friends and neighbors who support the little league, who support our school newspapers, who support our community, we have an opportunity today to say someone in this body cares. in fact, the majority of people in this body care. in fact, a supermajority of this body cares. and we're listening to you, and maybe in some really small way,

in some really small way we will have told them that washington is still a place where people will listen and respond and actually get something done. that's what we're trying to do today, madam president. and i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. enzi: thank you, madam president. i want to thank the senator from north dakota for her comments and her involvement in this, for over 20 years -- i feel like a newcomer at just 12 years. and i've been trying to get this passed. wyoming is recognized the need for it and desire for it, and we're one of the first people to join the streamlined sales tax

effort. and i think they were joined by a number of our surrounding states. the purpose of that, of course, was to make things simpler so this would be an easier -- easier problem for people to collect the tax. i want to congratulate the senators from maine for putting forward what i consider to be kind of a phase-in part, and, of course, there are a lot of people who wildcard would like to have it done a lot faster than that. but it allows one year for people to get their petroleum pram up and running. part of that time would be taken by the free software that has to come from the states. it will take them a while to get that together. although everybody's hearing from ebay a little bit and yeeb already ebay has one of those programs, it costs 15 bucks a month if you want to collect sales tax in the states.

it's not like it's something impossible out there. i know l.l. bean is going through a major computer switchover right now so they know how difficult that is and if it were compounded by having a sales tax one, it could create some difficulties. so in checking around we've got the suggestion there be a year allowed before they had to start collecting the taxes. and there another small provision in there, too. it says i think from october 31 through december 31 that there wouldn't be a conversion because that's the christmas season. in retail that's the big season. if you can't concentrate on your customers at that point in time, you're not going to make your money and it makes the whole year just in the couple of months there. and so there's an exclusion there that the program wouldn't go into effect during that period of time. so that's kind of a phase-in for everybody to get everything ready. i know it's a lot more than what states would really like to

have. they'd like to be able begin collecting the tax in 90 days if they were able to get their program in place in 90 days. but we think that's reasonable, they brought that to the floor, it was objecte to even to get to debate it so we don't get to vote on that. around here, a lot of times people say, well, it's a filibuster if you don't get to -- and if there's cloture, then everybody ought to vote against cloture until everybody gets their amendments. how can you do your amendments if one person can object, and have? and i think there would probably be three or four who would object, maybe six or eight that would object. it's hard to do the amendments, and that should definitely not be the reason for anybody to vote against final cloture on this bill and get it enacted. hopefully we can still get some amendments through in the process. anything that's germane after cloture can still be voted on.

so i know there are a lot of proposals out there and some of those proposals, of course, deal with something other than what would be germane to this bill. and it would be major changes in the tax structure in other ways. and we've tried to keep this to an 11-page bill, tried to keep it simple, kept it to one topic, it's something anybody can read, anybody can understand. in fact, i don't remember a bill that's had the language quite as clear as this one. i want to thank the senator from tennessee, senator alexander, for all of his concentration on that. he looked at the 80-plus page bill we had that had a lot more stuff in it, and said why don't we make this into a states' rights bill? and once we took that approach to it, it made all the language much simpler. we just needed some basic things for them to have to participate, and -- and so that's why it's an 11-page bill. you won't see an 11-page bill

come through here very often. i would guess some of the amendments being proposed that have nothing to do with the collection of sales tax are probably more extensive in pages than what this bill is. so we're hoping that people would stick to germane and relevant or at least relevant -- that's a little broader than germane -- and though we could do some amendments. but if there's going to be anasa meeting where i was assured tha, this is going objection every time, it doesn't matter what the amendment is. so i'm really disappointed in that. i do want to point out there is a small seller exemption in this thing. if you are a retailer and you do less than $1 million of sales on line during a year, you don't come under this bill. you don't do anything different than what you're doing right

now. but if you exceed a million dollars -- and i think for a lot of small businesses that would be a lot of money. i've heard some proposals that maybe we go to $10 million or $20 million. that's to protect some big reiterates that just don't want to do it. but the small retailers, a million dollars is a lot of sales. when it's just the ones that are done online. we're not talking about their total sales. what they do in their store, we're just talking about the ones that they put up their web site and they get orders and they ship those orders out. if that exceeds a million dollars, the next year they'd have to start collecting it. so not only would there be with the collins amendment a year built into the time before they had to start doing it, there would also be another year before they had hit the million dollars. if they don't hit the million dollars then they got another year and another year and another year until they do. and, of course, having been a small business man, i'm pulling for all of them to exceed a

million dollars. and most of them that i know would be so tickled that they hit a million dollars that they'd think that maybe this wouldn't be such a bad deal. and definitely -- this is definitely giving some emphasis to online sales. it's much easier now to get a web site, in fact, the small business administration has been going from state to state to state and providing people that will do free web sites for people that attend a seminar on how to do online sales. and i commend the small business administration for doing that. i think it's helped a number of businesses that have been able to expand beyond the few thousand dollars they're selling in their own store, and increase those sales. and we hope that everybody gets to exceed a million dollars. there's another part of that million dollars that's kind of interesting. if you're a nursery and we hear an example of a nursery last night and doing big sales,

chances are some of those sales are to other nurseries. if a product is sold to somebody else to be resold then, again, there isn't a sales tax on that. that wouldn't count in the million dollars. so -- but we did hear an example when we were doing the press conference that -- of a contractor, a contractor in the state, and the other contractor got all of his stuff on line and from out of state and on $150,000 contract was able to undercut him by 10%. and -- just $150,000 project, which is a category that small business men stetion spetionize in but he was beat out by an out-of-state person who didn't pay sales tax on the products they were bringing into the state and using in the construction. so we do have a small seller exemption. there is also simplification in

the bill and i'd be happy to go through that. we haven't had any suggestions from -- for more simplification at least from those that understand what the simplification is. and one of the reasons that's fairly simple now is because computers have come a long way. i don't know how many people here have purchased something online, but when you do, you put your address that you want this thing shipped to and when you go over to see what the bill is going to be, not only will there be the price of the product but there will be sales tax there. in a number of states people have volunteered to collect it. a number of people have volunteered to collect it, and we really appreciate that. but i can't believe senator collins' request to bring up an

amendment that would allow a phase-in, give everybody extra time; could be objected to. when we checked, we found out everything is going to be objected to, which will bring us to a cloture vote. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. alexander: i know the senator from louisiana is coming, and when he comes, i'll be through. i will say to the senator from wyoming who just said that apparently there is going to be an intention to object to any amendment. well, just to review, we started monday. we could have started amendments monday, but there was objection, bipartisan objection. on tuesday we said instead of going the full 30 hours of debate, let's give the time back and let's start the amendment. bipartisan objection. on wednesday we bring up the bipartisan proposal of senator blunt and senator pryor to extend the tax, extend the moratorium on the internet tax. there is a tax on the internet,

but right now there is a moratorium on it. you can't have it. that's the law. going to extend it for ten years; objection. then today senator collins, senator king say instead of implement this go in six months, let's do it in a year. objection. so if it continues this way -- and i would say to the senator from wyoming, this is the way i figure the procedure. no consent. always objection to any amendment from both a few republicans and a few democrats. then we'll have a vote on cloture tomorrow. that would be tomorrow afternoon, i guess -- tomorrow morning. tomorrow morning. and probably for the fourth time 74, 75 of us will vote for the marketplace fairness act. then we will stay here until saturday afternoon for the full 30 hours and we'll have a vote on the two amendments and final passage. that would be saturday afternoon and probably another 74, 75

votes for that, i would hope. that's what will happen if a few democrats and a few republicans continue to say no amendments. so i just want to make sure that no one on our side of the aisle stands up and says they are blocking amendments, because they are not. most democrats, most republicans want to offer and vote on amendments. a few democrats and a few republicans say no. i believe that's where we are procedurally if that persists. i completely respect the point of view of other senators. i never question a senator's vote. that's his or her prerogative, and it's their prerogative to keep us here till saturday afternoon if that's what they wish to do. but that's not really a very good way for the senate to work when we've got three-fourths of us, a majority on both sides of the aisle who are for something and we're ready to move it

through with it with amendments and debate. this is not really a good procedure, but it is procedure. this is the season for parades in tennessee. on weekends and fridays, i go home and i have a rule of thumb. walk in parades. i put on my red and black plaid shirt that i walk across tennessee in. i walked in the st. patrick's day in erin, in the mule day parade in colombia, 100,000 people there, lots of mules. i always try to walk at the front of the mule day parade for obvious reason. tomorrow i was looking forward to walk in the parade at the paris fish fry. but if we continue to object to every amendment in this bill, i won't get to walk in the parade at the paris fish fry tomorrow. but we'll pass the vote on saturday and i suspect with 74 or 75 votes.

i thank the president and i yield the floor. i notice the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: #

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from nebraska.

mrs. fischer: mr. president, i rise today in support of a resolution -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mrs. fischer: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to raise the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. fischer: thank you. mr. president, i rise today in support of a resolution designating september 26, 2013, as national pediatric brain cancer awareness day. childhood is a time for growing, growing bodies, growing minds and growing hearts. mr. president, it is a time for bike rides that end in skinned knees and sleepovers in back yard forts. it's a time for wondrous stories of neverland and family board games. it's a time to learn the difference between right and wrong and the difficult discipline of homework.

it's a time, mr. president, a very brief time given to us by god to live without fear of physical pain. or without burdens of responsibility. for too many children, though, mr. president, childhood is very different. too many children in this country are forced to grow up far too quickly. the stark realities of hunger and poverty mature them and some have no choice but to learn the hard lessons of courage from the cruel, unyielding teacher of sickness. despite this hasty transition from storybooks to the harsh realities of life, these children remain beacons of hope. they inspire us. they challenge us to overcome our own trials which seem trivial in comparison to the

heavy burdens that they shoulder. they prompt us all to believe in the power of miracles because they have no other choice. one such child, mr. president, is a friend of mine. he is a personal hero. his name is jack hoffman. mr. president, jack hoffman is a 7-year-old boy. he was born and raised in at kinson, nebraska -- atkinson, nebraska. jack's early years passed like many of the children of the same age that live in nebraska communities. he learned to fish and hunt. he went for long bike rides. he played sports. he started school.

he made friends with many of his classmates. and i'm willing to bet that little jack has also had a fight or two with his siblings. childhood for jack took a quick and unexpected turn on april 22, 2011. that was almost exactly two years ago. and jack suffered a life-threatening seizure. upon examining him, doctors had shocking news because jack had brain cancer. jack immediately underwent surgery to remove this cancerous mass on his brain, but the surgery did not bring about the results they had hoped for. as doctors desperately sought an answer, jack's young body continued to be riddled with seizures. within five months, he endured a second brain surgery which

removed 95% of the remaining tumor. but despite this success, an april, 2012, m.r.i. showed that jack's cancer had returned and doctors determined it was inoperable. so jack quickly began 60 weeks of chemotherapy, employing an outdated regimen used by doctors for over 25 years. unfortunately, diminished research funding for pediatric brain cancer has stunted medical advancements, and so treatment options remain limited. jack and his parents didn't despair. they remained hopeful and determined to discover god's will in their hardships. in a recent omaha world herald story, jack's father andy is quoted as saying i don't know why god chose jack to have this,

but i do know that we can make something good out of it, and that's promote the improvement of treatments for this disease. and so the hoffmans set out, they set out o a mison to raise awareness for pediatric brain cancer. this is a rare but devastateing disease that poses unique health and developmental problems for the 3,000 child patients who are diagnosed each year. jack and other children suffering from brain cancer endure seizures, difficulty in speaking and trouble with their balance. the list unfortunately goes on. they spend long periods of time away from their family, friends and classmates. they miss school. they miss football games, and they miss out on childhood. the hoffmans' fundraising efforts through the team jack campaign have yielded over $300,000, and it's all for

pediatric brain cancer research. although there are countless worthy charities across our country, my husband bruce and i feel a special connection with team jack, and we have worked very closely with the hoffman family to increase awareness of pediatric brain cancer. while jack and his family have been friends of mine for many years, he was first introduced to most americans when he became an overnight football star, complete with his own trading card, folks, and he did this at the huskers' spring football game on april 6, 2013. jack suited up with football pads and the number 22 jersey, and little jack ran 69 yards, he scored a touchdown in front of 60,000 screaming fans in our memorial stadium in lincoln,

nebraska. in a single dash across the gridiron, little jack hoffman touched the hearts of millions of americans, and that includes 7.6 million youtube viewers. and he increased awareness for pediatric brain cancer. it didn't take a touchdown, though, to make jack a hero. he smiles through the pain. his courage and his resilience represent the very best of human spirit, represents the very best of our nation. i admire the hoffmans for their unwavering commitment to transform this very, very personal trial into a force for good, and i'm deeply, deeply grateful for all that they have done to find a cure. today, the united states senate commends the hoffmans, team jack

and all those americans who work tirelessly to battle and bring attention to pediatric brain cancer. this resolution senator klobuchar and i are offering recognizes the unique struggles of pediatric brain cancer, for the patients and their families. it commends scientists, researchers and health care providers working to modernize and improve the diagnosis and treatment options, and importantly it designates september 26, 2013, as national pediatric brain cancer awareness day to encourage efforts towards the early diagnosis and treatment and ultimate cure for this disease. mr. president, i would ask

unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the consideration of resolution 116 submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 116, designating september 26, 2013, as national pediatric brain cancer awareness day. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mrs. fischer: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. fischer: thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor.

mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from nebraska. mrs. fischer: mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call: mr. coburn: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: i ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. coburn: i ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. coburn: i wanted to spend a minute -- we've had a lot of discussions over the pain that's being caused by the american traveling public and business on the f.a.a., and we heard the majority leader say we couldn't do the sequester because we still have the same amount of money and there's no way we could cut the $40 billion over the next six months out of our

budget. so i thought i'd just draw a little comparison for us so we can actually see what the federal budget is and then we make a comparison to the average family budget. here's the federal budget. this is last year's federal budget. we spent $3.7 trillion. we took in $2.46 trillion. we had a deficit of $1.32 trillion. we added to our total debt, so we've come to a total debt now of $17.57 trillion. and the sequester cuts are $85 billion. $85 sounds like a lot of money. now let's compare it to the average family household in america. the median household income in america last year was $53,000. by the way, in real dollars, that's less than what it was in 1989.

less than what it was in 1989. the total spending -- if we spent money in our household the way the federal government spends money, we would have spent $81,000. we woef only earned -- we would have only earned 5 3 but spent $81,000. and we would have had an annual credit card debt of $28,000 doing exactly what the federal government does, which would have made our total credit card debt $375,000. we're spending $81,000. and if we cut the amount of spending in the sequester as a percentage of the total federal budget as to the median family income in america, we would have cut $182. that kind of puts it in perspective.

how many families would continue to be able to operate this way? they wouldn't. no credit card company would continue to give them $28,000 worth of credit card debt. they certainly wouldn't let them run up $375,000 and then say, oh, by the way, what are you doing about getting your finances? i'm cutting $182 out of my budget this next year. so what we're seeing is a farce when we talk about we can't cut $44 billion or $88 billion out of the federal budget over a year's period. it's an absolute farce. and then when you talk about the f.a.a. -- when you talk about the f.a.a., in fact, they have less controllers now than they did in 2010. and if you look at the budget request in 2013, there's about a $300 million difference between the sequester level and where they were in -- actually it's the same as in 2010.

and so what the f.a.a. and the administration is telling us is there's no way that they can possibly do anything to associate less in convenience and less delayed flights. yesterday there were 6,800 flights delayed to make it hurt. i want to enter into the record something that came up on my whistle-blower web site. this is from an employee federal aviation administration, what they were told in a meeting by management. "i hope this is the appropriate channel to contact you through." i'm not going to say who works for the f.a.a. asked me to e-mail you. "waoeplt to let you know -- we want to let you know that the f.a.a. management has stated in meetings that they need to make the furloughs as hard as possible for the public so that they understand how serious it is.

due to this, there is management trying to make everyone take the same furlough day so that the f.a.a. shuts down completely on that day. union employees are supposed to be able to pick their furlough day but are being pushed by management to take the same day as everyone else. example, recently there was a meeting between" -- and i'm not going to say which group of employees. but at the f.a.a., "management and the union where the union reminded the manager of the f.a.a. that he cannot force them to take off the same day. a union employee may want off wednesday so another manager may try to make the union employee change his mind. when the union employee asked why the other said to prove a point. i don't know if this information is useful or not. if so, i will contact you with more if it is." the fact is that's really going on that the management at f.a.a.

is trying to make union employees all take the same day off, what is that about? is that about airline travel in america or is that trying to make the sequester hurt? is that about $182? $182 out of your budget, and we can't even do that. and we have the government's management manipulating a program so that it hurts the american public. how cynical. how un-american is that? i'd like to submit this -- unanimous consent to submit this e-mail for the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. coburn: here's another from an f.a.a. supervisor. "i'm an air traffic control supervisor.

i'm righting you because i don't want to lose my job but more importantly i don't want to see safety across the nation deteriorated at the risk of the lives of aeuf kwrarts. -- aviators. i would like to talk to you about what could have happened on the day 16 february 2013. please call me day or night." the fact is there is a bigger story behind that which i'll make a speak on tomorrow to actually detail what's going on. when we hear there's no risk to safety and here's a supervisor saying there is, what are we doing? this is a contrived farce to make the american people think we can't cut $182 out of a $81,000 budget, put in simple family budget terms. or would -- we can't cut $85 bin out of a $3.7 trillion budget.

when you look at it in those terms, everybody in america knows that it is possible to do that. everybody knows that all it takes is some common sense and the utilization of priorities that are in the best interest of the country, not the best interest of any political party or political philosophy to actually accomplish this. i must say i'm disappointed in the department of transportation. i'm disappointed in the f.a.a. that they would be so callous as to carry this forward. i also want to make some comments about the remarks of the majority leader two days ago about the tea party. i have to say i adamantly disagree. the tea party people i know from oklahoma and the midwest, they love our country.

they want an effective, efficient government. they want a government that follows the constitution. they want the rule of law to be supported all the time. he related and compared them to anarchists. nothing could be further from the truth. are there some crazy opinions on both sides of the extremes in both parties? you bet. but the vast majority of people in america understand over the last few years they have had to do more with less. at the same time the government is doing less with more. to indict a group of people who care just as much about this country but see a different way of solving the problems, say that we should live within our means, that we shouldn't borrow

against our children's future, that we should follow the constitution, that we should follow the enumerated powers, that we should honor the bill of rights, that we should honor the bill of rights, asking us to do the very things that our oath calls on us to do, to me, the fact that the majority leader would attack that group of people as a class and relate their motives to that of anarchy is, to me, a very shameful thing to even make the comparison. but it's also made out of ignorance. everybody in this country really wants the best in the long term. there's a difference in our view on how we get there, but there is no difference that we do have a constitution. and it is not un-american to

think that we ought to honor our oath to that constitution, that we ought to truly follow the bill of rights and not pass laws that abandon it, that we truly ought to embrace the enumerated power. the g.a.o. for the last three years has shown us where $250 billion a year in waste is, and yet the congress has done nothing on it. senator feinstein and i eliminated $6 billion a year in terms of the ethanol blender's credit. that's the only thing that's gone through in three years that even comes close to addressing what the g.a.o. has recommended. out of $250 billion. so you can understand why people might be cynical of washington, is because we don't have our nose pointed in the right direction. we continue to pass laws that

ignore the enumerated powers. and one of the results of that is, is $250 billion worth of duplicative programs which have no true metrics on them. if they were all working, that would be fine. but in fact, most aren't. and so i think it needs to be ko*urpbted that there's a lot of disparate views in our country, but the motivation behind it is really love of country. whether you're on the hard left or the hard right, it's just a different path. and to compare that group of people to anarchists is both insensitive, inaccurate and outrageous. what we need in our country today is leadership that pulls us together, not leadership that divides us further.

and what we're seeing is just the opposite of that. so i'd ask my fellow americans if you think that on a comparative basis that we couldn't cut $182 out of an $81,000 budget, is that too much, especially since the fact that this budget has grown 89% in the last ten years while your income has gone down 5%. which is the better way to go? should we raise your taxes and spend more of your money? or should we actually decrease and eliminate tremendous amounts of wasteful, ineffective government spending and not sacrifice the future of our children? i don't think the answer is complicated. i think most of america would agree with it, that we could get $182 out of $81,000. that's the comparative ratio of

$85 billion out of $3.7 trillion. and what we heard the majority leader say, that that's impossible to do. it's only impossible to do is because we don't want to do it. i've spent eight years outlining waste in the federal government. very few of my colleagues have helped eliminate that waste. and the reason is they're double-minded. in their hearts, they want the best for the country, but they also want to get reelected. and every one of those duplicative, wasteful programs have a constituency. and so parochialism trumps patriotism in the u.s. senate. that's the only explanation for why we haven't addressed what the g.a.o. has plainly said is duplication, waefpt and -- waste and actual stupidity.

when we have over 100 job training programs, 47 for the nondisabled, and all but three of them do exactly the same thing, and most of those don't have a -- as a matter of fact, none of them have a metric to say whether they're effective and we tpwroerpblt it, we're saying -- we won't reform it, we're saying we don't care. we can't cut $182. when we have 110 teacher training programs and none have a metric across nine different agencies, not in the department of education, and none of those have a metric and we spend about $4 billion a year on them and we don't know if they're effective and we won't confirm them into one even if it is a role for the federal government, or into two, and eliminate and get some consolidation, what we're saying is we can't cut $182 out of a $81,000 budget. you see, the problems aren't insolvable. what they are is no attempt is being made to solve them.

so we get -- we get a choice. america gets a choice. continue to operate as we are, and what we're actually going to do is put handcuffs on our children and shackle their legs and take away the opportunity of a life equal to ours, we're stealing that from them. and when we have the majority leader of the senate say it's impossible for us to cut $182 out of an $81,000 budget, what we're saying is our priorities are wrong. and i can go through the list. we have got 204 science, technology, engineering and math programs, 21 different agencies run those. half of them are at the defense department. none of them have a metric to see if they're working. they're well intended. why do we have 204 science,

technology -- nobody can answer that question. we just have them, because somebody saw a need that didn't look to see what we were already doing or make what we were already doing work. it's not rocket science. it's common sense, and there is not a thimble full of it in washington. there is not a thimble full of common sense in washington. otherwise, we would be addressing these problems. we wouldn't have a statement to say that there is no way we can cut $85 billion out of a $3.7 trillion budget. america doesn't believe that. and so what we hear is now we have sequester and a refusal by the administration to even accept flexibility if we were to grant it or any request for reprogramming to make it better for the american people. what we have is a political stunt by the f.a.a. that not only inconveniences travel, puts

people at risk, markedly affects business and changes people's lives. when you think about those people who aren't going to make the funeral of one of their loved ones because of this stuff or aren't going to be to a graduation because of this stunt or the airlines and the significant losses they're incurring every day because of this stunt, you've got to ask who in the world is leading this country and where did they get their motivation? it's an embarrassment. and the fact that the senate hadn't acted in the best interests of the country in the long term and what we have denied the fact is we can't cut $182 out of an $81,000 budget. we can't do that. it's too hard. when nobody in america believes that, nobody believes that. and so what we do is we call up

all the heart-wrenching things we can to say how terrible it is, but don't talk about the real facts that we're living way outside of our means, we're living on the backs of our children. every day, we're stealing their future and we refuse to admit to the very real concept that that is morally wrong, especially morally wrong when we, if we did our job properly, we would not be doing it. mr. president, i yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: i ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. coburn: i understand there are objections to any amendments being offered but i'm going to offer them anyway and let people object. and one of the ways the senate's running right now is we spent three days doing nothing, and so i'm going to talk about my amendments. if they get objected to, fine. but the fact is, the american people ought to know what we're doing rather than spending all ortime in quorum calls. so i'm going to be calling up several amendments and if they're objected to i'm going to

spend the time talking about those amendments. i have no intention of losing the flo a until i finish calling up all my amendments. and talking about each of them. i just gave a talk on the tremendous waste that is in this government, but there's a lot of other waste and ways to solve it. and most of these amendments have bipartisan sponsors or have had in the past, and they're about good government. and i understand there's going to be objections and that's fine, you can defend the objection that there's not going to be any amendments on the bill, but i'm going to offer them anyway. the first amendment i'd like to call up is amendment number 753, ask for its consideration. the presiding officer: is there any objection to setting aside the pending amendment? objection is heard. mr. coburn: then i will discuss

amendment 753. i appreciate the senator from illinois' objecting to that amendment. this is an amendment -- we have over $4 billion owed to the federal government by federal employees. in past due taxes. this is not -- i'm not talking about taxes that have been adjudicated or settled or that have been worked out. i'm talking about taxes that are owed today that haven't been paid. the federal government has the ability to garnish those wages, they won't. the way you get rid of trillion dollars deficits is a billion dollars at a time. on active federal employees there's $1.1 billion in tax arrears, $2.2 billion from retired that's undisputed. i'm not talking about disputed. undisputed that haven't been paid. what this amendment does, the agreement worked out, they're working it out, it's fine. when we're laying off people at

the f.a.a. and a portion of these people at the f.a.a., whether it be a communications or a secretary or whatever, and they owe the federal government thousands of dollars, and we're asking somebody else to take a furlough day rather than either terminating this individual or garnishing their wages, something's wrong with that picture. what this amendment is, it says we're going to do that. we're going to actually enforce the rule of law and we're going to apply it equally to federal employees like we apply it to everybody else in this country. and so what it will save over the next two to three years is about $3 billion. now, i can't bring this amendment up, i understand the dynamics that are ongoing, i have no personal animosity towards senator baucus or senator durbin for objecting to the amendment. i know what's happening here. but the fact is that we can't

bring up an amendment that saves us $3 billion. you know, the marketplace fairness act is going to pass this body. everybody knows that. so what we can't do is the regular work of the american people and we can't get a vote on an amendment that would actually save us $3 billion. i'd be happy to yield to my colleague from illinois. mr. durbin: the senator from oklahoma is my friend and we've worked together on many things. and i just want to state for the record because he knows it, i want to put it on the record, that we have cats waths called a blue slip problem. there are no federal taxes as part of the underlying bill, in fact, no taxes, new taxes. if we add a provision which you've suggested -- and you have six or eight amendments each of which would deal with the internal revenue code, many of them i think very meritorious, but they would be objected to and the bill would be rejected in the house because

revenue measures have to originate in the house of representatives. so it is a technical and procedural objection, does not reflect my feelings about the substance nor about the sponsor. mr. coburn: i understand that but i think this problem has no technical problem because it does not raise new revenues, it is simply a direction for performance of the federal government which is the marketplace fairness, we're directing what will happen to the states and the federal government's involvement in that. there may be a blue slip problem with some of the others, i don't think there is with this one. the point being, i just gave a speech, $182 out of $181,000, that we kay seau we can't cut, the equivalent family situation i just lined up and here's a way to get $3.2 billion back into the federal coffers that's owed and due and we're not going to allow it. you could allow the amendment and table the amendment. the fact is, don't want want to do that, either.

and in talking to my house colleagues, you know, it's going to be a while, if ever, if this bill actually sees the light of day. we ought to be voting on the things that will actually make a difference. i don't disagree it's unfair on the marketplace fairness act. i think the exclusion levels way too low for any business to be able to afford to comply with it but that's another story. the very fact is, we're not doing what we could do to collect the revenue that we have now. and this is an example of just saying -- start enforcing the law. start using the tools that are at hand at treasury and the different agencies. and yet we're not going to get a vote on that, and, you know, we ought to vote -- if you want a to table it, fine. but to not allow an amendment up, we're not postcloture, but we're not allowing an amendment which means i don't have the right to modify a bill or even

have a vote on modifying a bill. so i understand what's going on but i think that's a significant amendment and most americans don't know that federal employees that are actively working today owe that kind of money to the federal government yet nothing is being done about it and no consequence for not paying. if i guarantee if you're out there and you're not paying, you're feeling the full force of the i.r.s. i'd ask unanimous consent to bring up amendment number 751, set aside the pending amendment. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. durbin: reserving the right to object, i'd appreciate it, i'm going to object but i'd like the gentleman from oklahoma to please explain the amendment. mr. coburn: could i have it read and you object after having it read? mr. durbin: whatever way you want to explain it. i understand that can't be done. mr. coburn: let lett me explain the amendment and you can object

ahead of time or later. i understand. mr. durbin: i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. coburn: this is an amendment to require a report from the treasury department on the abuse of tax-exempt status by charitable organizations. what we've seen in studies is many professional athletes set up charitable organizations and then use them inappropriately to pay expenses of their life. all we're asking is let's take a good look at this from the i.r.s.. let's not allow this aspect of a very well intended tax law to be

utilized to skirt expenses and taxes. on march 31, 2013, the espn investigative unit "outside the lines" released findings of an in-depth look at 115 charitable organizations founded by prominent athletes. they gave extensive details of that investigation, and what they outlined was 74% of these nonprofits fell short of one or more of the acceptable guidelines for nonprofit operating standards, which means they're operating outside of the law or don't meet the requirements for charitable organization. and yet, nothing's been done about it. so here again asking for oversight, asking for us to do the right thing, asking us to get the money due the federal government, we're not going to get a vote on it.

we're not going to have the ability to vote on it. we're not going to direct the i.r.s. to actually do that and actually recapture some of the money that is actually do to the federal government. -- actually due to the federal government. all it is is a study. tell us how bad this problem is and what you're going to do about it. how are you going to fix it? no, we're not going to do that. we're going to continue to allow the process to go on so that some of the most wealthy people in our country continue to pay less taxes than what they owe because congress is dysfunctional. i'm not going into the individuals that were named in the espn story, but i think it created quite a stir in the media, yet we've seen no action in the house or senate in this

area. all we're asking with this amendment is the number of charitable organizations, the number that existed ten years ago, the number that had their tax exempt status revoked each year since 2007, the number and nature of allegations of problems made to the internal revenue service with respect to charitable organizations that were founded in this area of expertise for charitable organizations and what has the i.r.s. done about it over the last six years. a description of the challenges that the internal revenue service faces in trying to enforce and oversee such organizations. the number of criminal investigations of charitable organizations conducted by the i.r.s. since 2010. in other words, what are you doing about the problem? and then finally in the explanation of any problems the internal revenue service has had with the united states attorneys in prosecuting criminal violations of tax-exempt and

charitable organizations. mr. durbin: if the senator would yield for a question. through the chair, i would like to say to the senator i would vote for that in a second, and i'm not ruling out the possibility of agreeing to allow you to offer that as an amendment to this bill. please give us a chance to look and see -- mr. coburn: be happy to bring it back up. mr. durbin: -- raises a blue-slip issue, which is a procedural issue which means if the bill had raefpb measure in it -- a revenue measure in it initiated in the senate it would be subject to a blockage in the house, which we are trying to avoid. this is a measure senator enzi worked on for 12 years, i worked on for several years. we would like to get this measure up for vote and approval in the house. if the senator from oklahoma is offering a measure that will not jeopardize that, i'm at least going to entertain that idea. i'll talk to my staff about it. mr. coburn: i appreciate my colleague's comments and question. the next amendment i'd like to call up is amendment 767, which

requires all legislation to be reviewed before it's considered by the senate to determine whether or not it's duplicative or overlapping programs are created. i'd ask that that amendment be called up and the pending amendment be set aside. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. durbin: i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. coburn: here's one that doesn't hit anything as far as blue slip. all right? what we now have is three years' worth of reports by the general accountability office showing at least $250 billion in questionable programs that are markedly duplicative of one another in multiple areas -- and i have them now memorized and all the new ones too. it's layer after layer, agency after agency, program after program. and this is a bipartisan amendment. all this amendment says is before we create another program in the u.s. senate, that we have

a report from the congressional research service, does this duplicate a program that's already out there? you know, if you continue doing what we're doing, we're going to continue to get g.a.o. reports that we're creating new programs that duplicate what we're already doing. so it's not the fact that maybe our intent is good. it's the fact is we don't know what's out there right now, except g.a.o. does now, and how will we ever know unless we put a requirement on ourselves to quit creating new duplicative programs? what the commonsense man would say is if you have programs that are doing things and they're not working, don't create another one. fix the ones you got. yet, we refuse to do that. committee after committee refuses to do the oversight. there is a bill setting right now, waiting our determination, coming from the house, that

reformed 36 job training programs that the g.a.o. said were failing and were duplicative and didn't have metrics, converted those to 6. that's 36 out of the 47 because the committee that did this, the skills act, only had jurisdiction over those. they created six programs. they put metrics on it. we spend $19.8 billion on these 47 programs. we're going to chief wonderful savings. but the most important thing we're going to do with the skills act, we're actually going to give somebody a skill now with the money that we spend instead of wasting 87% of the money in the job training programs that we have. that's what the oversight says. when you look at it, that's what it says. for us to not continue adding to the problem, this is an amendment, doesn't have a blue-slip problem. so what's wrong with considering this amendment? i'd ask my colleagues, what's wrong with considering this

amendment? this is, again, common sense, it works, it will actually cause us to not do stupid things in the future. it will actually help us to be better stewards of the public's money. and yet, we're going to object to bringing it up. mr. durbin: if the senator would yield? mr. coburn: i'd be happy to yield to my colleague. mr. durbin: to restate, i think you have six or eight amendments, and we're going through those in a good-faith effort to find those that would complement what we're doing and not create a problem subsubstantially. my objection -- substantively. my objection at this moment should mean it not be taken as an objection beyond this moment. coburn i appreciate my -- mr. coburn: i appreciate my colleague. make my mark on what i'm going to reoffer in the future. i ask unanimous consent to call up amendment 766, and the

pending amendment be set aside. the presiding officer: is there objection to setting aside the pending amendment? mr. durbin: reserving the right to object. i don't know the substance of this amendment. coburn i'll let you -- mr. coburn: i'll let you object ahead of time. mr. durbin: i will object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. coburn: every four years the federal government spends $200 million so both political parties can have a party. we're $17.4 trillion in debt as we speak this moment. that's $50 million a year, i watt you get rid of a billion debt is 50 million at a time. the way you get rid of a trillion is a billion at a time. do we really have the capability right now to borrow $200 million every four years for parties for the democrat and republican convention and charge it to our

children? all this does is put a prohibition that we're not ever going to do that again. that's not wise expenditure of taxpayer money. it's probably not constitutional. it's never been challenged. it certainly doesn't fall within the enumerated powers of the constitution article 1, section 8. so it's another way of saving some money. i just repeat my point. the f.a.a. out there intentionally causing pain and harm to the american public today, and we have the senate intentionally not doing things that will solve those problems. intentionally not doing things that will solve those problems. we're not trying to find the waste. we're not offering bills to eliminate the waste. we're not offering bills to eliminate duplication. we're not trying to refine things to make them better. we're not trying to save medicare. we're not trying to save social security. the very things that are very important in terms of what's

getting ready to happen to us. we can't point to the administration and say they're cynical without pointing to ourselves as well. so here's $200 million every four years that we spend. why don't we quit spending it? if the political parties -- i've never been to a political convention in my life. but if they want to have a party, they ought to pay for it. and we shouldn't charge it to dick durbin's grandkids, mike enzi's grandkids or tom coburn's grandkids or anybody else's grandkids, which is what we're doing. we're not going to get a vote probably on this amendment either, which shows you again that our focus is not on the most important things for our country. our focus is on us. and we're not about -- we have not set about to solve the big problems for our country. this is a no-brainer. there's not many people other

than those people in the political hierarchy of each party that would be against this. and yet, i'm going to get a vote. what does that say to the american people? sure it's only $200 million. $200 million. 200 hundred thousand thousands. most of our constituents will have trouble making that money in their lifetime and we flip it off like it's nothing. it's been objected to. i have no animosity towards my

colleague. i understand what is going on. do we really want to solve problems for the american people or do we just want to play this game some more? it's disturbing. it's got to be disturbing to the average american. you know, the last five years the average oklahoma family has truly struggled to get by. and we've been one of the more fortunate states. but they made hard, very hard choices about their priorities. they have had kids go to an in-state school that didn't want to because they couldn't afford to go to an out-of-state school. they've driven a car two or three years longer than they wanted to and put money into an old automobile because they couldn't afford to go the other way. they've changed the way they enjoy themselves as a family

because of what we've done. they've made hard choices. th've gone through a priority in their life and said what's important based on the amount of money that we have. and that's not just in oklahoma. that's every state in this country has done that. everybody's done that but the federal government. the federal government's is the only that had -- once we take $182 out of an $81,000 family budget which i showed an example of earlier, what we're told is we can't do that. there is no way. it's impossible. we can't do it. then we have a demonstrated overt exacerbation of something that was not caused by the sequester, that could have been

averted to prove a point that we can't cut a penny from the federal budget. when $100 billion a year in medicare and medicaid fraud is ongoing in this country, and we're talking about trimming availability of medicare services to seniors, and we haven't solved that problem, you know, we're not believable anymore. we're not trustworthy anymore. so this is a very simple, straightforward amendment, $200 million. doesn't sound like much in washington. sounds like a ton in muskogee, oklahoma, i tell you. and my hope is -- and i will offer it again and have those object. but what will probably happen is i won't get a chance to offer again because it is not gear a minute to the bill and then we get postcloture, it will be ruled nongermane. so we won't have a chance for senator durbin or senator enzi to object in the future because the rules that we operate on,

since we're not going to obviously have any amendments until we get postcloture, we're not going to have any amendments until we get postcloture means none of the things that i've talked about so far are even going to be considered. so we could consider them. we could allow them to be voted on. we could demonstrate to the american people that we're actually interested in trying to solve some of the problems up here, but we've decided we won't do that. pretty frustrating to me as a senator, but it has to be terribly disappointing to the average american. you know, i've just outluned about $5 -- outlined about $5 billion worth of savings just with the four amendments i've talked about. we're not going to get to vote on them. $5 billion -- $5 billion.

that's almost oklahoma's entire state budget for a year. easy, simple stuff to do. but, mark my word, we'll never vote on a one of these associated with this bill. and since we don't have real amendment opportunities anymore in the senate, they'll only come forward when the majority leader decides he wants to vote on them. and he's been very recalcitrant offering to vote on hardly anything that will actually make a difference in our future in terms of finances. i'm going to talk about the other amendments that i want to bring up. i will not make the senator from illinois object to them. i will a just talk about them. amendment number 29, which i will not call up, is of an an

amendment on something that i this i is terribly unfair. if it amendment were passed, it would only save us d 90 million a yeermt but do you realize that the professional golfers' association is a tax-free organization? they raise billions of dollars every year, but the money that goes into the p.g.a. is tax-free. that actually goes into the organization. they're a 501-c-6 tax-exempt organizations, and they not only include the p.g.a. tour, it includes the national football league, it includes the national hockey league, and it includes the lpga. now, why are -- can anybody tell

me why they're tax-exempt? other than under a loophole that we've created so if they were not tax-exempt and they paid their taxes like other organizations that are in the business of making money, the i.r.s. would collect about $95 million more a year. from just these four organizations. professional baseball saw the light and gave this up, said it wasn't right. did it a number of years ago. said, it's not right. and yet we continue to allow the we will-healeheeled in our couno take advantage of the tax code as we raise tastles on everybody else. -- as we raise taxes on everybody else. i think it is something that ought to be fixed. a lot of my colleagues on this side don't like this, but i think it's inherently unfair

that the very profitable organizationprof sportsorni in y don't pay income. and i'm not saying that they don't do some positive things. the president said about paying your fair share. here's one that's not fair. let's make it fair. let's collect that -- it's not going to make mi difference in what they do. let me just add a few, the professional tennis, professional rodeos and cowboys association, the national hotrod association, as well as the ones i mentioned earlier also get this benefit.

people say, well, this is going to impact their teaching certification or their charitable activities. they already have a 501-c-3. all of these organizations have a 501-c-3. this is to take the extra $90 million back tots american people. you are giving it back to our kids because it is $90 million that we're not going to borrow against their future. finafinal amendment that i will mention is a limitation -- and this one does have a blue slip. i will admit that to senator durbin. it is on subsidies for millionaires or gambling losses. you know, if you report $1

million adjusted gross income a year in this country, you have an unlimited amount of gambling losses that you can offset against that. i'm not a big fan of gambling. if a it was a great business, we'd all be gambling and be better off. we're not . most of us are losers when we try to gamble. but the fact is the high rollers in this country get to deduct their gambling losses. and it's a large amount of money. we also don't have any cutoff in terms of taking advantage of a lot of other expenses, which is for a speech for another day. but here's one that's not necessarily great for society and yet we incentivize because we give an u unlimited deductibility for the very wealthy. it ought to be something that we

change. dur dlur the senator yield for a question? mr. coburn: i would be happy to. mr. durbin: i am not much of a gambler myself. i buy a lottery ticket once in a while, realizing i will naiver win. but refresh my memory, and you probably know this, do i recall, though, that the only deduction for gambling losses is against gains in gambling, not against ordinary income? mr. coburn: a right. mr. durbin: thank you. mr. coburn: new nevertheless we give an advantage to those with an adjusted gross income of $1 million aor more a year. so what we've done is we've given an advantage to the well-heeled and well-connected, an advantage that the average american citizen doesn't have. i can't recall, i had read this morning an exact a revenue, but the point is, it is the principle. so will we over the next few

months, regardless of this bill, its outcome or not, will the congress start addressing the real problems facing our country? you know, we just passed $740 billion worth of increased income taxes and payroll taxes at the end of the year. will we start doing on the other side? will we cut $85 billion over the next 12 months, supposedly, and we'll see if that actually happens or not. as we've grown the government 89% over the last ten years while the american family income has declined 5% over the same time. i made the statement earlier, and you can go check it on any web site you want, on inflation-adjusted dollars, the average americans where they were in 19 in thi 89 in this co.

if you look at the size of government, it's almost four times that size. doesn't seem to me that we're accomplishing a whole lot as far as elevating the prosperity of americans. but we certainly have h elevated the prosperity of the federal government. and we certainly have undermined the prosperity of our children. i'm worried about our country. i'm worried about the loss of confidence in this body. i'm worried about our abandonment of common sense. i'm worried about the fact that we ignore the enumerated power and that we wonder why we get g.a.o. reports that talk about all the duplication and things that aren't effective. there's a great role for government in a lot of areas in this country. but many areas we're not effective and we're certainly not efficient in of the and the reason our founders put the enumerated power is was so that the decisions that could be made in so many of these things would be made at the local level, so

they would be done effectively and efficiently. and so when you have the g.a.o. combining with this year's report of $98 billion worth of duplicative waste, $250 billion over the last three years of duplicative waste, and we don't do anything about it, what you're saying is, it's not important. the future isn't important? having the confidence of the american people isn't important? our kids' future isn't important is this and don't worry, we'll be able to pay all the debt back. i'll close with this: there's lot of biblical principles about paying interest and going into debt. last year we paid about $223 billion in interest costs. if you took our historical pattern over the last 30 years of what our interest -- we're actual playing the same interest we were 25 years ago on

one-fourth of the debt. if you took our historical interest rate, which is about 5.88%, and applied it to where we are today, what you would see is our interest costs would be $880 a year. -- $880 billion a year. that's going to happen to us pretty. nobody knows for shoe. but interest rates aren't going to stay at 0% for the federal government. we're not going to have the federal government continue to print money. if we do, the value of our dollar is going to decrease. but the point i would make is an interest payment doesn't help the poorest person in this country, doesn't help the single mom, doesn't help the kid in head start, doesn't help our schools, doesn't help our military, doesn't help our foreign service, it doesn't help anybody but the person that has our debt. don't we have on obstacles to

not let that -- don't we have an obligation to not let that happen? don't we have an obstacles to -h ever an obligation to start addressing the very real problems in front of us? last year the chinese dumped a quarter of a trillion dollars of our debt. we ought to ask ourselves why. because their perception is, as their currency appreciates, is that our currency eventually is going to depreciate. and as my friends in oklahoma say, one of the reasons we're doing so well right now is we're the best looking horse in the glue factory. we look good because everybody helse is looking so bad. and we're lulled into position to thinking that we in fact can get away with continuing to do what we've done for years in washington when in fact we can't.

i appreciate the time on the floor and my colleagues' consideration of my amendments. i understand what's happening. i'm not happy about what's happening in the senate. i think we ought to be working about solving real problems, the biggest problems in front of our country, saving medicare is important. social security disability in 13 months is going to be out of money. those people who are truly disabled are going to see a cut in their benefits. we're not going to be able to address that. the time for us to be acting is now. i yield the floor. mr. enzi: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. enzi: i appreciate the comments from the senator of oklahoma and have enjoyed working with him all the time that he's been here. he brings up a lot of really important things, part of which is the financial shape that our country is in. the situation that we're in right now. and i noticed his comment that

we're the best-looking horse at the glue factory and so people are pouring money into the united states. i went to one of the bond issue auctions that we have. and some people from other countries were willing to take a negative interest rate in order to buy our bonds, which means they think that we're the best hope that there is out there. but that can change pretty quickly, and 5.88% is the average which would tank us to $880 billion a year, which is a lot more than we spend on defense, so we need to be looking at some of those issues. but it is difficult to get a bill up around here. it's difficult to get a vote on an amendment around here. i know because i have been working on the bill that's on the floor for 12 years, hoping to get an opportunity on the floor. and so i would love to give senators all of the amendments they want. i was just hoping that their

amendments might be relevant, not germane necessarily, just relevant to what we're doing, that it would be something about the sales tax collection. and those ought to -- those ought to come up. but when there are bills that people are frustrated because they haven't been able to bring up before or some that have even been brought up before and voted down, i would -- i would hope that they would kind of constrain themselves on trying to make those an amendment to this bill. yes, there ought to be an easier way to get things going around here, and i think that would be in kind of a bipartisan way. this is a bipartisan bill. it's even bicameral. we have republicans and democrats on the house end of this, working with us, conferring with us so that hopefully something can be done, and here of course it's republicans and democrats, more than half of each, that are supporting this bill. like i say, i worked 12 years to get it to this point, and it

usually gets blocked at the committee level. this time it didn't -- it didn't go to committee. i prefer that bills go to committee, but if you can't get them to committee and you get an opportunity to bring one up, you do. now, one of the difficulties that we have here is that there are a lot of things that have to be done in the senate. there are a lot of things that people want to have done in the senate, and there are a lot of things that have tremendous appeal throughout the united states or at least among certain people, so it's my understanding that the next thing we're going to go to is water, and if you want to talk about a really sensitive issue in the west, you talk about water. my state gets an average of 16 inches -- yes, that's right, just 16 inches of rainfall a year. there are states that get 16 inches in a month. so we are considered high desert. we are really conscious of our water. so we'll be interested in the water bill. and following that i think is

the immigration bill which has gotten a lot of publicity and had a lot of people working on it and there are a lot of opinions that i think are actually being worked into some kind of a bill. and again, if we had a process that people could bring their bills up step by step, we could probably go through a lot more because one of the complaints around here is the bills often wind up to be a couple thousand pages long. it's hard to digest that and it's hard to bring the american people along on it, but the bill we're talking about here is an 11-page one. i think it's probably one of the most readable bills that people have ever had to work on. an 11-page bill shouldn't -- shouldn't probably take they long around here but it takes just as long as any other bill. and so i'm hoping this one chance that we have to shore up some of the state, county and town revenues, particularly since they are not going to be able to come to the federal government for money, and in fact the federal government is

taking money away from them right now and is talking about even more ways of taking money away from the states, the towns, the counties, municipalities. and what we did recently in that sequester bill is we took 5.3% of the federal government's payment in lieu of taxes. they know that they own properties in the states that if they were in private hands would result in property tax, but then the federal government's hands and the states can't tax the federal government, but the federal government said we know that that's wrong so we will pay a tax. now, the federal government decided what that tax would be and they don't raise it, so it has no relationship to the actual value of the property and what that property would raise if it were in private hands, which is why there are some appeals around here to sell off federal property. but this year the federal government said well, yeah, we owe that and we haven't been increasing it, so it's way below what the property tax ought to be, but we're going to cut you

out of another 5.3%. i know the people across america didn't have the choice of taking and saving 5.3% of the money before they send it in to the federal government, but the federal government's saying the taxes that we owe, we're going to take 5.3% out. so there are a lot of things there that are going to impinge on states and counties and municipalities. now, i used to be a mayor so i know what the money is used for and i know that a substantial part of that comes from sales taxes in the states that have sales taxes, which is all but four, and in those states, property tax is usually pretty low, but if they continue to lose revenue on the remote sales that take their renee way, they're going to have to probably raise some of those taxes. i know there would be a -- there is a desire to force them to reduce some tax in exchange for whatever tax they got from this, but they have been losing tax and they are going to be losing

tax. this is a states' rights bill. that's how we got it shortened down so much. the states actually have to take some action in order to be able to do this. so i hope we don't try and dictate to the states what they do with whatever money they raise from this, but again that's a possibility on an amendment. i'm really sorry that the senator from oklahoma isn't on the finance committee anymore because there is the possibility as we're doing tax reform right now to talk about a number of these things that he brought up. the gamblers who get to deduct their losses, and the 501-c-6 corporations that are tax free. we need to be talking about whether some of those things should be tax free, what their purpose is, where their money goes to, how much of it is in the private sector, what it's used for. of course, i have been on the finance committee and i have been going through these discussions on reforming the

taxes, and every time we get into it, we think of a lot more things that we could be spending money on. so sometimes we talk about raising the tax instead of making it fairer and simpler. the two things can actually be separate -- the policy of how you spend the money is supposed to be appropriations and authorization from the committees. the committees say what they think the money ought to be spent on and then the appropriators are supposed to stay within those limits. but that isn't the way that it exactly -- exactly happens. so if we're going to have fairer and simpler taxes, they are going to have to be fairer and simpler. and i know that senator wyden has a principle that has a one pager. that would be nice. there would be just one page to fill out for your taxes. of course, that means getting rid of a lot of the things that we have come to take as standard

policy on our -- on our taxes. and again, a lot of those could be handled another way and it would be more forthright and more honest on what we're -- what exactly we're doing, and probably fairer to the recipients of some of the tax expenditures that we get. but i appreciate the amendments that were brought up there. i hope others will come and at least explain their amendments, but i hope they will try to stick to amendments that actually affect the sales tax provisions. if we provide to put on some other kind of taxes or take off some other kind of taxes, we're actually getting into the ways and means in the house who have the right to start all of those kinds of issues. and they call that a blue slip. that means they object to it and it's done for. so if we wind up with one of those on here, what it actually does is kind of kill the bill. i'm hoping after all the years of work on this that we don't kill the bill.

and particularly since we found a way to simplify it and make it states' rights so states have to take some action and so that the states understand the action that they're taking, and so i'm hoping we can do that. but i appreciate those explanations, and perhaps there are some of those that somebody won't object to. i -- i don't object. so at this point, i would yield the floor. and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. durbin: i ask consent that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: my friend and colleague from utah, senator hatch, is going to give a speech in a moment and i would like to say before he speaks that after he has spoken, i am going to ask for unanimous consent, which renews an earlier request, but expands

it. and the request is going to be that we call up three amendments, two of which have been objected to already and the third one is senator hatch's amendment. and for my colleagues who are following this debate in their office, the three amendments we are talking about are amendments 740, offered by senators pryor and blunt, a bipartisan amendment that relates to the internet free trade agreement act, ten-year extension which was objected to yesterday, and then i will ask for consent that we go from that after an agreed to time for debate to amendment 771 offered by senators collins and king and another bipartisan amendment that relates to the effective date of the underlying legislation, and then to senator hatch i would say that we are going to include in this unanimous consent request his amendment 754 which i believe

he's going to speak to now on the floor, which relates to the substance of the underlying bill, s. 743. i'm giving -- i'm not asking for the consent at this moment but giving notice to my colleagues that this is a request that will be made after senator hatch has spoken. i yield the floor. mr. hatch: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. hatch: on monday before the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the marketplace fairness act i came to the floor to discuss the need to reinstate the committee process here in the senate. i've come to the floor many times over the past few months to talk about the importance of, you know, restoring regular order. i know a number of my colleagues share the same concerns. yet here we are today debating another piece of legislation that hasn't gone through the full committee, it has not gone through the full committee process, and once again it appears we'll be getting less than optimal results.

i think the legislation before us today is a prime example of why regular order is so essential. the marketplace fairness act is a complicated piece of legislation that deserves a more thorough examination. i think the bill is well intentioned, and i'm not fundamentally opposed to it. but make no mistake, there are problems with this legislation as it is currently drafted. problems that likely could have been avoided if the finance committee had been given an opportunity to fully consider the bill. i also understand the feelings of those who feel otherwise. but the committee chairman offered to have a hearing and a set date, markup at a set date and go to the floor. and i thought that was a pretty good offer. i'm not here today to talk about the process failures we've had with regard to this legislation. i think i've made that point and

others have as well. instead i'm going to take a few minutes to talk about just a few of the specific problems i see with this legislation and and how i propose to fix them. i filed an amendment that would address some of my concerns. i believe my amendment would make this bill more workable for businesses and consumers around the country. for example, my amendment would implement a five-year sin seth on the taxing authority provided under this legislation. like i said, this is a complicated bill and we're not precisely sure what the impact is going to be. whenever congress deals with legislation this complex, unintended consequences are really to be expected. i believe that we need tony sure that congress has an opportunity to revisit these issues once we've had a chance to see how this bill is implemented. the five-year sunset would provide that opportunity but that's not enough. if we're really serious about

preventing unintended consequences, we need to change some of the specific provisions of the bill. one particularly troublesome aspect of this bill is the preemption provision. in order to downplay the need for regular order on this legislation, proponents of the marketplace fairness act have repeatedly complaimed that the bill has been around in some form or other for over ten years and in a sense, that's true. however, none of the previous versions of the bill including the version just introduced 18 months ago have included a preemption provision. specifically, this provision states that this legislation -- quote -- "shall not be construed to preempt or limit any power exercised by a state or local jurisdiction under the law of such state or local jurisdiction or any under any other federal law"-- unquote. at first glance this sounds innocuous but why was it only added to this latest version of

the bill. the presiding officer:? why was it not included in the previous drafts? my concern is this seeks to address an issue that the authors of the streamlined sales and use tax agreement have been wrestling with for years. which is that states are reluctant to surrender any taxing authority at all. mr. chairman, i always have been a proponent of states' rights. i fought hard to preserve the right of states to regulate issues within their own spheres in a number of contexts but we need to recognize that within this -- with this provision in place, we would be backing up state laws with federal enforcement. and by passing this legislation as it currently stands, we would be essentially signing off on laws that haven't been been -- even been written yet. i think it's only reason to consider whether we should after passing this bill expect more aggressive state sales tax laws to be enacted with the promise

of federal authority to enfoarsz them. -- enforce them. my amendment would help us avoid the potential problems with this preemption provision by simply striking it from the bill. as i stated, this is a new provision that deserves more careful examination before being enacted into law. if the finance committee had been given an opportunity to examine this provision more thoroughly, it's possible that these concerns could have been addressed, but that's not the world we're living in. under the current circumstances, this provision should be removed from the bill. i should point out that i'm not the only person expressing concerns about the potential impact of enforcing new state sales tax laws with federal authority. that's an important issue. earlier this week, the securities industry and financial markets association released a statement saying -- quote -- "we believe the impact of this legislation on trade and services has not been adequately explored by congress."

the bill could lead to unexpected costs being passed on to consumers of financial services including sales taxes on services or state level stock transactions"-- unquote. on monday i quoted from a letter delivered to senators from the american society of pension actuaries that argued -- quote -- "the legislation would allow states to impose a financial transaction tax that would apply to american workers' 401(k) contributions and other transactions within workers' accounts"-- unquote. these aren't concerns that can just be cast aside. these are experts in the financial services industry thaig there's a -- saying there's a set of problems with the way this bill is drafted. i'm not saying the marketplace fairness act will automatically create these new taxes on financial services but unless we're sure the legislation would

prohibit such taxes, we may be handing a blank check of federal power to states that are becoming increasingly aggressive with regard to tax enforcement. that's why my amendment requires the government accountability office to study whether and under what circumstances the authority granted under this legislation might allow states to impose taxes on financial transactions or retirement contributions. my amendment provides a simple, straightforward way to address a potentially serious problem with the marketplace fairness act. my amendment would also require the g.a.o. to conduct a study on the costs incurred by remote sellers in complying with the new sales tax requirements that would be imposed by states under this bill. there are serious questions regarding the economic impact of this legislation. we're talking about a bill that

would impose new costs on businesses throughout throughout the country, costs that will most certainly impact the ability of these companies to grow and expand. i don't need to tell you, madam president, that these are perilous economic times. what impact will the marketplace fairness act have on job creation? we simply don't know. this study would help provide us with some answers but we need to do more to ensure this legislation will not harm small businesses throughout the country. toot concern i -- another concern i have with this bill is it could potentially create a situation in which small remote sellers are routinely audited by multiple states at the same time. now, this would be a severe impediment to small business growth and job creation. i think we need to ensure this legislation does not impose administrative burdens that crush small, remote sellers under an avalanche of paperwork.

to help address this concern, my amendment would institute a three-year statute of limitations on state audits of remote sellers. this would provide a uniform rule for state sales tax audits, one that mirrors the current federal statute of limitations in situations where fraud is not alleged. now, one of the major driving forces behind this legislation is the fact that over the years, the number of tangible goods purchased over the internet has increased exponentially. proponents of the marketplace fairness act believe that it is necessary to level the playing field between internet and brick-and-mortar businesses. while this is a fair point, it does not address the issue surrounding the sale -- excuse me -- of digital goods. digital goods are often consumed in places that are not at the location of either the buyer or the seller.

that being the case, applying state sales taxes to the purchases of digital goods presents a number of problems that are simply not contemplated or resolved under this bill. some of my colleagues in the senate have extent time working on legislation in this area. in addition, the streamlined sales and use tax agreement has also considered this issue. however, the legislation before us is completely silent on this and other matters. these issues demand more consideration than will be possible under this bill and that's why my amendment includes a carveout for digital goods. exempting digital goods from the sales taxes authorized by this legislation will give congress an opportunity to examine this matter more fully and provide a solution that makes sense. another problem with this legislation is that it doesn't take into account the costs

businesses will face as they transition into this new sales tax system. there's just no way around it. this bill represents a change to long-standing policy that will require many companies to incur additional costs. for example, if the bill stands as written, businesses that sell into multiple states will likely have to incorporate multiple software packages into their operations or create their own programming. anybody who thinks about it can see that that's a big set of problems. furthermore, an retailer will still be required to pay internet fees regardless of transactions regardless of whether the amounts transacted represent the tax or price of the amendment purchased. my amendment will provide for compensation for remote sellers that will be required to

withhold and remit sales taxes as a result of this legislation. a simple fair system of vendor compensation will help businesses overcome the difficulties of transitioning into the new sales tax regime. the amendment would phase out vendor compensation over a five-year period. it would begin a 10% of amounts collected for two years. 8% of amounts collected for an additional two years after that. and then 6% of amounts collected for one year. i think this is a reasonable provision. and i think it would solve a lot of the problems that folks are raising on this bill. this is a simple approach. it would go a long way toward ensuring that businesses, particularly small businesses, are not unduly harmed by this legislation. now, madam president, if you haven't noticed, the common theme running through all the provision -gs of my amendment -- provisions of my amendment is

the desire to protect small businesses. i think we all want to ensure that small businesses are allowed to grow, expand and create jobs. while i don't think the proponents of this bill want to intentionally harm small businesses, i do not think they've done enough to protect them from the burdens that this 11-page piece of legislation would impose. let me just give you one more example. businesses making less than $1 million a year in remote sales would be exempt from the sales taxes authorized under this legislation. that may sound like a fair concession, but it warrants further examination. first of all, previous versions of the bill set the exemption at $5 million a year. why has that number been reduced over time? is it just an arbitrary number that sounds good or is there a specific target in mind? these are the questions i have when i look at that number. my concern with placing the exemption at $1 million is that

it could subject smaller regional companies and individual sellers to sales tax burdens in states where they only do a small amount of business. in our already fragile economy the last thing we want to do is discourage businesses from growing, expanding and creating new jobs. my amendment would set the exemption at $10 million in remote sales a year. it would also index the level of the exemption to inflation to ensure that it doesn't shrink as the years go by. i recognize that coming up with an exact definition of a small business is no easy task. any single number we use will necessarily be a rough figure because it has to encompass different industries and different business models. but setting the exemption at $10 million would protect small businesses in a number of different sectors and ensure we

are not encouraging expansion and srefpl -- development in those type of companies or cases. as you can see, madam president, i have a number of concerns with the marketplace fairness act as it is currently drafted. these are just some of the concerns that i have. i have more, but i thought i'd at least make these concerns noticeable by talking about them on the floor. my amendment would go a long way towards resolving these concerns. i respect my colleagues who have worked on this legislation over the years, and i want to work with them to improve the bill. i respect the distinguished senator from tennessee, the distinguished senator from wyoming, the distinguished senator from illinois. they are sincere and they're dedicated. they believe they're right. and i would like to work with them to improve this bill. and everybody knows if we pass this bill in its current form, the house isn't going to take it. so we may be just doing a

feckless act here rather than working as legislatures should do to improve the bill, make it acceptable, hopefully make it so that both houses will take it and the president will sign it. as you can see, there are simply too many problems and too many unanswered questions surrounding this legislation for me to support it as it is. as if i stated -- or as i've stated, i believe these problems could easily be resolved by a simple return to regular order. indeed, if the finance committee had been given an opportunity to fully examine this legislation, many of these problems would undoubtedly have been solved already. now there are people who don't want this bill. i understand that. the chairman of the committee itself doesn't want this bill, but he was willing knowing he would lose, to go ahead with the committee markup -- a committee hearing, a committee markup and

a committee battle on the floor. as i said, that's not the world we're living in. once again, madam president, i want to work with my colleagues to improve this bill. i hope they'll listen to my concerns and consider the changes that my amendment really would make. if no changes are made to this legislation, if it's forced through the senate without any real improvements, i'm going to have to vote "no." and that's not where i want to be, but that's what i'd have to do. we've already missed some real opportunities to examine and improve this legislation, and i hope we can change course and take a good look at all these implications surrounding this particular bill. madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside and that it be in order to call up the following amendments en bloc.

let me read the list. collins 744 or collins 771. number 2, ayotte 759 as amended. number 3, coats 765. number 4, thune 765 with g.a.o. study. thune 778 with the g.a.o. study. number 5, coburn 753. number 6 coburn 767. number 7, thune 743. number 8 lee, 768. number nine, ayotte 763. number 10, hatch 754. number 11 portman 772. number 12, cruz 794. number 13, coats 797. number 14, 792. number 15, paul 755. number 16, cruz 799.

and number 17, senator ayotte 776. i further -- if i could finish my unanimous consent? i further ask consent that each amendment be limited to no more than one hour for debate equally divided in the usual form. i further ask consent that following use or yielding back of time on each of the amendments the senate proceed to a vote in relation to each amendment with no intervening action or debate. mr. durbin: madam president? the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. durbin: reserving the right to object. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: this is the first time i've seen this list. it has 17 republican amendments on it. an hour a piece with a vote would probably take us around the clock or close to it. i would like to review this list with the senator from utah and

others interested. i said earlier that i was going to make a unanimous consent request. i won't make it at this very moment, but i'll be making a unanimous consent request within minutes which will include at least two of the amendments that are on his list, and it will be a starting point, hoeup, for amendments -- i hope, for amendments. mr. hatch: i'll be happy to wait until he decides whether or not -- mr. durbin: i will object to the request at this moment. the presiding officer: objection is heard. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. cowan: madam president, i would like to take a moment and speak on another subject and ask my remarks on senate resolution 115 be placed in the record at

the appropriate remarks separate from the pending legislation. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. cowan: i was honored to once again join the senior senator from the commonwealth of massachusetts in his resolution to honor those who were injured -- who lost their lives last week as a result of the attack on the boston marathon and during the manhunt to apprehend the suspects. in this resolution the senate commends the heroism, courage and sacrifices of sean collier, an officer in the massachusetts institute of technology police force, and richard donohue jr., an officer in the massachusetts bay transportation authority police force. officer collier was a 26-year-old native of wilmington, massachusetts, was on the force for just over a year in his dream job: a police officer. before joining the ranks at m.i.t., officer collier served as civilian employee with the summerville police department, and likely because of his outstanding service at m.i.t. he was going to be invited to return to summerville in june of this year, this time as an

officer. on thursday evening last, officer collier was murdered in the line of duty allegedly by the men suspected in the boston marathon bombings of last week. m.i.t. police chief said the following about officer collier: sean was one of these guys who really looked at police work as a calling he was born to be a police officer. officer collier was compassionate and stood out for his ability to connect personally with the students and community that he served. we will never forget his devotion to protecting the community of m.i.t. and serving as a police officer. he will be sincerely missed. i honor the exemplary service of officer collier and i extend my deepest sympathies to his family. madam president, last week mbta police officer richard donohue jr. was working to protect the public at the boston marathon and early fry morning he raced -- friday morning he raced

to assist police as they pursued the suspects in watertown, massachusetts. what officer donohue may not have known that that officer down at m.i.t. was his friend and community classmate sean collier. in an ensuing gun battle showing remarkable courage, officer donohue endured a barrage of gunfire and he himself was seriously wounded. officer donohue is recovering from his wounds and remains in critical but stable condition. i would like to thank officer donohue for his service and i wish him a speedy recovery. and as he heals, our thoughts are with the entire donohue family, especially his wife kim, and their young son who are a constant presence at his hospital bedside. madam president, i rise both early and late in my senate career in strong support of the marketplace fairness act. legislation that

massachusetts-based merchants and massachusetts municipalities tell me is long overdue. first let me congratulate senators durbin, enzi, alexander and heitkamp for their tireless efforts over many years on this issue. i strongly encourage my colleagues to vote for this measure and to continue working with the house so we can finally see it enacted into law. as i see it in a sense, this legislation finishes a job that was started in the house by former congressman now senator wyden and former congressman christopher cox when they introduced the internet tax freedom act. that law which congress first enacted in 1998 essentially declared that the internet and electronic commerce should not bear a higher tax burden than traditional commerce. standing here in 2013, knowing how commerce has evolved, how consumer behavior and expectations have evolved and how technology itself has evolved, i'm happy to report congress largely has been successful.

state tax laws do not discriminate against electronic commerce. these transactions do not need any special protection from state tax collectors. quite the contrary, now so much commerce routinely is conducted online the pendulum has swung in the other direction. it is time to ensure that our state tax laws be uniformly applied no matter how a transaction is consummated. for more than 300 years, new england main streets have been anchored by local merchants who not only offer consumers important goods and services, but are key employers for our communities. those main street establishments have always been and will always remain an important part of the fabric of our communities. today in massachusetts, the retail sector employs 550,000 people in 60,000 locations across our 351 cities and towns. they represent 17% of all the jobs in the commonwealth, an

important percentage yet one which has declined from a decade ago. consumers today are fortunate to have unlimited choices, extremely competitive prices from retailers and great service in order to retain customers. that is good for both the consumer and the economy. but it also means retailers necessarily must have very tight margins in order to stay competitive on price, and those tight margins mean many small businesses thrive or die on a daily basis based upon consumer trends and purchasing decisionmaking. those of us in government should foster consumer choice and competition, but equally important, we must also take care to prevent unfair market incentives which drive consumers to spend or not spend at certain establishments based upon government policy and decisions. i find it interesting that many news reports about the bill we're debating now seem to leave

the headline -- "tax-free shopping on the internet is about to come to a halt." but let us be clear about one thing. there was never such a thing as tax-free shopping over the internet. that's true in states like mine that have a sales and use tax and so many other states. under the commonwealth sales and use tax law and the laws that exist in 44 other states in this nation, if you owe a tax when you walk into a store to buy an item, then you owe a tax when you go online to buy it and have it shipped to your house. you heard me correctly. if you live in massachusetts or the other 44 states today that collect sales tax, you owe taxes today on those internet purchases already. for 45 years, massachusetts merchants have competed against sellers in our neighbor state, new hampshire, which has no sales tax, so massachusetts consumers choose to hop in their

cars, drive up route 93 to make purchases. i understand the frustration of massachusetts merchants, particularly since the tax is still actually due to the commonwealth in the form of a consumer-remitted use tax. but for the past decade, the growth in competition based upon sales tax collection avoidance hasn't been from the north -- excuse me. hasn't been from the north of the massachusetts border but rather from the desktops and laptop computers and today from smartphones and tablets. consumers who are reeled in by the tax avoidance marketing messages of certain sellers don't have to drive to new hampshire. avoiding the state sales tax takes only a few keystrokes on their phones. billions of sales which otherwise would go to massachusetts employers are annually sent elsewhere. those losses are real for our main street, for our retailers, for our retail employers and all our cities and towns, and the

losses are growing every year. the annual sales tax loss in massachusetts is currently estimated to be $335 million. that number grows to $400 million when you include lost income and property taxes from declining employment and darkened storefronts. if we don't act, if we don't pass this bill, that number will grow to over $1 billion by the year 2020. allow me to repeat that. that's $1 billion in losses to my state. a sale is a sale is a sale. with today's technology, it shouldn't matter how it's transacted or where it's transacted. government must be blind and be a nonfactor in our competitive consumer marketplace and in our application of taxation to that market. we understand this fact in massachusetts. and increasingly many online sellers recognize this reality, too.

last year, i worked with governor duval patrick to negotiate with amazon.com to begin collecting and remitting the massachusetts sales tax. amazon did the right thing for massachusetts employers, workers, our schools and services and for our cities and towns. amazon recognized that they use our infrastructure, the airports, the highways, the streets to deliver goods to consumers. furthermore, they understood that their customers who purchase from them use those very same services in massachusetts and enjoy our mieb rant downtowns. -- our vibrant downtowns. amazon and many of the other businesses that support this legislation have stores in multiple states. they have made their online presence and their brick-and-mortar presence seamless to consumers. they already collect applicable sales tax and follow all the other rules in the states where they do business. if other businesses want to compete for their customers in the great commonwealth of

massachusetts, they also should play by all of our rules, including the obligation to collect and remit our sales tax. it used to be the case if you wanted to reach a broader marketplace, you opened up a location there, you complied with all the state laws that applied in those jurisdictions because it was worth it to expand your reach and build a broader customer base. why isn't it the same thing now? why have we been so unwilling to apply the same rules to online businesses that we do to businesses in our states? this is not an unreasonable proposal. every time a business opens up a physical space in my state, they set down roots there, they create jobs there, they support our communities and they contribute to the cost of local services. that means they collect and remit sales taxes on the purchases made by the customers who enter their front door. every open business in the commonwealth and every consumer in the commonwealth understand

this relationship. why should we allow an online business transaction better treatment than we provide to our own folks? outsiders should not be treated better than insiders. everybody should be treated equitably. that is all this bill will do. it will allow a state government to require the same sales tax collection obligations of businesses that sell the state residents online that it does of businesses that sell to state residents on main street. nothing different, nothing more burdensome. there has been a lot of misunderstanding about just what this bill does, so let me try to clear it up. this bill will not create a new tax obligation for anyone that doesn't already have one. if you live in a state that already imposes sales and use taxes, online merchants will add the sales tax to your purchase in the same way that the neighborhood retailer does. if you live in a state without a sales tax, nothing changes for you, nothing. you don't pay a tax at the store

on main street, you still pay one on the web. it's that simple. this bill will not crush small businesses. when i served in state government, small business owners and their associations repeatedly called on us to beg congress to level the playing field. those same small businesses -- those same small business owners are the people who sent us here to represent their interests. and when our bosses, the people, tell us they want us to act, they should not have to beg. we should act on the will of the people. so let me be clear about how the bill will work. businesses that have less than $1 million in remote sales will be exempt from compliance. states that want businesses to collect and remit the sales tax already do will be required to provide those businesses with the software to do it, free of charge. the state will set up a simplified process so that the businesses only have one point of contact with the state on collections and audits.

no business, no business will have to navigate the thousands of taxing jurisdictions opponents of this bill are so fond of asserting. if a business really does not want to comply, it's easy. they can forgo the customers in that state. if they do, i assure you those consumers, a very resourceful group, will quickly fill that void with another business that is willing to follow a state's business rules. this bill will not impose a tax on financial transactions. i admit when i heard this assertion, it worried me and many of my constituents, so i went back and i read the bill again. this charge is fiction. the bill is crystal clear, and i quote -- "nothing in this act shall be construed as encouraging a state to impose sales and use taxes on any goods or services not subject to taxation prior to the date of the enactment of this act." end quote. i come from state government, as

do several of my colleagues in this body. trust me, budgeting at the state level is a little different than the process that plays out here in congress. in massachusetts, weelon the combination of income tax sales -- income taxes and sales taxes to cover the cost of the services our citizens tell us they want and need and provide the appropriate measure of investments in education, infrastructure and innovation we know is necessary for a growing, prosperous state economy. sales tax revenues represent almost one quarter of our total tax collections. sales taxes are a difficult revenue source, i understand, because they are so dependent upon broader economic conditions. as we saw during the recent recession, when people are out of work or feel their jobs are threatened, they pull back on spending. in fact, many small businesses in my state and in others, i'm sure, were told by banks that lines of credit needed to be tightened because consumers were pulling back. it was an unfortunate domino effect that our main street

businesses still struggle to overcome. yet, as they were trying to hang on, they also watched the customers walk into their stores, browse the merchandise, take out a cell phone and walk out. opting to buy a product from an online retailer who could ignore the state sales tax collection. and guess what? now there is an app for it. our states have limited sources of revenue and significant obligations and investments to fund, and we know the reality of the situation, that no matter how much our consumers prefer to shop online rather than on the street, they do not and cannot call a virtual ambulance or an online fire truck. we need to do all we can to keep our businesses in business. we need to ensure them a level playing field on which to compete. and we need to protect the integrity of our tax laws that ensure we can provide essential services to our residents. i have listened carefully to the objections to this bill that have been raised by others here on the floor and the

correspondence sent to my office and the many tweets on my twitter feed. while i am sympathetic to some of the assertions made against this bill, respectfully, i am not persuaded by them. there are just too many consumers, small businesses and struggling communities in the commonwealth of massachusetts who are shouldering an ever-growing burden because congress has yet to join forces with the states to help us officially enforce our tax laws in a 21st century marketplace. i urge my colleagues to support this bill. thank you. madam president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: madam president, let me first thank my colleague from massachusetts for that excellent statement in support of the legislation pending on the floor. let me remind my colleagues that i am planning to make a unanimous consent request on several amendments. i have asked senator ayotte from new hampshire to come forward with amendments to be included on this list, and i'm hoping she will do that momentarily because after senator paul, who is

seeking recognition from kentucky concludes his statement, i would like to make this unanimous consent request, but could i ask the senator from kentucky if he would be kind enough to tell me how long he will be speaking on the floor? mr. paul: between three and five minutes. mr. durbin: without objection, i yield the floor. mr. paul: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that justin hamilton -- that justin hamilton, an intern in my office, and steven phan of the sergeant at arms office be allowed the privileges of the floor forted's session of the senate and that steven phan be allowed to stand next to me and interpret my remarks in american sign language. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. paul: my nephew mark has neurofibromatosis, nf2, but that's not who he is. he's an indom enable spirit, a courageous young man, a man who knows and faces each day certain

that he is one with his god. he is like many young people on earth. he is in search of the truth. he reads, he thinks, but he no longer hears. neurofibromatosis 2 is characterized by recurrent neurologic tumors. its signature tumor affects the auditory nerves and destroys the hearing. its relentless course eventually takes all the hearing. i've never heard mark complain. while my signing is only rudimentary, most of his immediate family are proficient and at christmas dinner for 40 family members, nearly everyone is trying to learn some signing. the grandkids sing happy birthday, jesus, i'm so glad you came. the whole family is learning to communicate with their hands. i mostly like to learn the insults so i can taunt mark on the golf course. i can't use most of the signs

that he taught me on the senate floor. i don't know this for certain, but i think the seven words that george carlin said you can't say on tv, i think you can't sign on tv either. i love the way the names for people in sign language are created only by the deaf. mark's mother lori is l to the ear because she is on the phone all the time. my wife kelly is k sweet. my middle son duncan is d in a hoop. because he likes basketball. neurofibromatosis is a rare disease. some call it an orphan disease. orphan diseases face certain obstacles that other diseases do not. money is typically allocated to research based on how prevalent a disease is. for rare diseases, the resources are likewise rare. in order for investors in a cure for neurofibromatosis 2,

regulatory obstacles need to be cleared. we need to allow foreign drug studies to be accepted in the united states and not repeated. we need to have speedy approval of drugs that are already being used by the general population in other countries. my chief of staff's sister karen has pulmonary fibrosis, another orphan disease. she is 40 years old with a young daughter. she is likely only to live today through a fluke in the system. she takes a medication that is part of an experimental trial in the u.s. but has been on the general market in japan for years. if she didn't live near a research center and if her family couldn't afford to pay $1,500 a month out of pocket, she wouldn't receive this drug even though it's legal in japan. the drug should have been cleared already, but we're not doing a good enough job of trying to get drugs cleared. it went through trials here. it's already been approved in europe and japan.

200,000 americans, though, with a rare, deadly terminal disease are being denied this drug. we all want safety in the drugs and the cures for disease. we all acknowledge that this is a balancing act. we should all acknowledge that the regulatory obstacles and burdens new drugs face in our country are oppressive and counterproductive. my hope is by putting a face, my nephew mark with neurofibromatosis, my staff member's sister karen with pulmonary fibrosis, that these two orphan diseases will be made more personal. these are people that are close to our families, and we hope others will come to realize that we must do something to get rid of government obstacles to cure for rare diseases. thank you, madam president. i yield back my time. mr. durbin: madam president, i reached out during the statement made by the senator kentucky to try to find the senator from new hampshire, and i know that she

has a busy schedule, so i couldn't find her to ask her for the amendments to include on this list, but i'm going ahead and making the unanimous consent request, and i want to give her my word that when she comes to the floor, i'll be happy to amend it to include two of her amendments, which i made that offer to her earlier and i want to make it again. i'm ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and it be in order for the following amendment to be called up: amendments i should say. collins-king amendment, 771, pryor-blunt amendment 40, and hatch amendment 754. further, that no second-degree amendments be in order to any of these amendments prior to votes in relation to the amendments, and i'm just going to -- unless someone makes another suggestion -- suggest that we have 20 minutes of debate equally divided between the proponents and opponents of each amendment oamendment.the presiding offices there aen objection?

mr. wyden: reserving the right to object? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: madam president, over the last few days, i have spent a good chunk of my waking hours trying to find some common ground, some opportunity to bring both sides together. i have repeatedly put on paper -- specifics on paper that the proponents of this legislation and, by and large, i think there's a little bit of a kind of senate code when you talk around here. ththe response has been they've got 75 votes. that's kind of it. but i've been trying to deal with the issues that have been raised and, for example, my colleague from illinois sincerely believes that unless oregon's small businesses are not allowed -- unless oregon's

small businesses don't have to coerce people around the country on this issue, that oregon is going to become a small business haven. he says, oregon has got to be coerced here or this is going to be a small business haven. and i would just say to my colleagues, that's just not the reality of what we see in the pacific northwest every day. washington state has a sales tax. oregon does not have a sales tax so if my colleague from illinois was right, we would be seeing moving vans come all the time across the borders from washington state to oregon because somehow oregon was going to be an internet tax haven. we all know states' rights means

states take different approaches with respect to this issue. and so, to me, what we ought to be looking at are approaches that bring people together. so i offered senator durbin a chance to test out this question of whether oregon would be an internet tax haven and try is out for a -- try it out for a period of time. that was unacceptable. so now this amendment includes the pryor-blunt legislation, which, for example, says that we ought to reauthorize the internet tax freedom law. i wrote that legislation, colleagues. it says in section 2, "you can't have discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce." so what the internet tax freedom proposal that senator durbin seeks to include in his base bill does is basically, he's

trying to add some sugar into a very bitter cup of coffee. he's taking our legislation, which has been a real boost for the economy, and trying to put it into this very bitter cup of coffee that is his legislation. and i just don't think that makes a lot of sense. this bill is going to make it possible -- the base bill for discriminatory treatment of electronic commerce, because online retailers and communities across the country are going to be subject to burdens that brick-and-mortar retailers would not be subject to. so i know my colleague from montana wishes to speak on this as well, but i just would close by way of saying that i will have to object, mr. president, because this particular

amendment, including the bill i wrote, in effect is like adding sugar to a bitter cup of off with fee, and the base bill offered by the proponents undermines the internet tax freedom legislation by allowing the very discrimination on electronic commerce that the tax freedom bill was all about. this effort needs more trim to try to bring about some common ground. you'll closi'll close with this. our electronic policy over the last few years has been built on three principles. one, we would take voluntary steps. we wouldn't use coercion. this bill uses coercion. and in fact it was the voluntary steps starting with some of the first laws that encourage investment in social media that were so important. this bill moves away from any semblance of voluntariness. second, i've outlined the

discriminatory aspect of the legislation where you're going to have brick-and-mortar retailers not have to do certain things that online people do. and finally, what is just breathtaking, this gives foreign retailers a leg up on a montana business, on an oregon business, frankly gives them a leg up on every business in the united states because the foreign retailer will not be subject to what a business in our country is subjected to. so i know my colleague from montana wants to speak on this issue as well, so i'm going to maintain my reservation so my colleague can speak. but i will have to object because this -- the presiding officer: the senator can object or not object. mr. wyden: i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. baucus: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. baucus: i am happy the

senator from oregon objected. i am owe not going to get into how many times the senator from illinois or anybody else wrote the finance committee to work on this bill. that's fangly irrelevant. and -- that's frankly irrelevant. and i don't think it's worth getting into. the whole point here is whether this is sound legislation. and the whole point in my judgment is that we should try to find a process where we do make this sound legislation. i think i'm known around here as not somebody to unnecessarily hold up legislation. i've been here -- it will be close to 36 years. that's not my style. that's not who i am. it is not in my d.n.a. i am someone who wants to work things out fairly. work both sides fairly, but not stand up and filibuster, not to

delay for the sake of delay, to try to get leverage. that's not what i do, because i think by and large i.t. not very productive. and i have sea said many times -- i'll say it again -- we can improve upon this bill if we, as i've said many times, go to the finance committee and work on the bill the next work period and report the bill out. i've made that chiment to the finance committee. the finance committee will havef knobs this bill. there are a lot of them here. one of them that comes to my mind, and i haven't had time to analyze it, phobe has had time to analyze it. because there's no forum for t sure, senator enzi has worked on this for many years, but that was another provision. that's other legislation which states rejected. they couldn't reach an

agreement. so senator enzi found another solution, which was the bill that he's introduced. and that's not ever been to my knowledge thoroughly examined in any committee. one of the problems i have is audits. out-of-state audits. nothing in this bill protects states from an out-of-state audit which is repressive, it is -- in duration this bill says there will be a single audit. how many years is a single aud audit? how much pressure will an out-of-state taxing authority push on another state's seller, a single seller? there are a bunch of sellers. what is a single audit? a single audit for all the sellers in uta state? or a single audit for a single seller? it doesn't say. what is an enforcement provision? what if somebody -- a ttaching

authority in one state wants to go to another state, feeling that that state is not living up to the purpose -- to the provisions of this bill. what protections do that state have for an out-of-state taxing authority, an out-of-state audit? there's none here. but there could be. there could be protection protef we go to committee and, find a way to deal with this. that's just some of the problems in this bill. and there are many others that have not been thought through. many others. i have the deepest he were for respect for senators to stand up on the floor and poit out that their states are losing some revenue. i understand that argument. but most of those states go the next step. but those senators don't go the next step. they haven't read the bill. i've read the bill. i've read it all of the it's right here. it's 11 pages of i point out with respect to audits, with respect to enforcement, there's no protection whatsoever.

there's some nice, wishful words in this bill, but when you stop and any it, if you are a small business person, you start to ask a lot of questions. what does an out-of-state taxing authority do to me? an out-of-state taxing authority. we're not tbawg a federal taxing authority. we're talking about out-of-state -- state taxing authority as it affects me as a seller in my home state. whether or not you're a sales tax state, that's irrelevant. it is irrelevant. the state of massachusetts, a remote seller in the state of massachusetts. let's say, for example, that some other state feels that that remote seller in mass isn't properly adhering to the provisions of this bill. let's say it's the california taxing authority that goes to the remote seller in the state of massachusetts. audits that remote seller and brings enforcement action against that remote seller. remote seller in the state of massachusetts.

i don't know. or if you're a nonsales tax state like the state of or okay i think state of montana. there are a lot of questions here and i just frankly believe, very strongly that it makes much more sense for this legislation to go to the appropriate committee, especially when the committee has made a promise to report that bill out in the next work period. so we can work on it. i grant you, it will be a short period of time to work on it, next work period. but that's -- it's a compromise between those that want to bring this bill up now, ram it through, ram it through, no significant committee consideration, on one hand, on the other hand, have several weeks to work it out and report to the floor. for that reason, i join my friend from oregon and object to these amendments. you just can't write the bill on the the floor of the senate. you have to go to committees where we can work things out. i yield the floor. mr. durbin: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois.

mr. durbin: madam chairwoman, i respect my colleagues from oregon and montana but i respectfully disagree with the way they described the situation. we are talking about asking internet retailers around america when they make a sale to collect the sales tax on that amendment is that is it. my colleague, senator heitkamp from north dakota, was a tax commissioner in her state, and took a case to the supreme court 20 years ago about the collection of sales tax for remote sales, catalogue sales, mail order operations. took the case to the supreme court across the street and 20 years ago they said congress, you have to fix this problem. now, she had hoped she had found the solution but they said no, you can't fix it state by state. congress has to fix this problem. here we are 20 years later. senator enzi of wyoming has been working on this issue for 12 years, i've joined him for the

last three or four partnering up with him in this effort. this is not a new issue. not new to me, not new to senator heitkamp or anyone on the floor. and as far as this version of the bill, this version of the bill was introduced, if i'm not mistaken in february, is that correct? this version of the bill, 11 pages, 11 pages, by federal standards, this is not a big, complex piece of legislation. we asked for hearings before the finance committee and we didn't get our wish. we brought it directly to the floor. i wish that it would have been heard before the finance committee. perhaps they would have made some adjustments or changes that might have been beneficial. but it reached the point where we said we've got to get this done. after all these years, we have to get this done and why do we have to get it done? first, understand that if you happen to be a person who has made a sacrifice and opened a small business in your

hometown, think in terms of your sporting goods store to start with, you've invested your capital exal, you and your spouse or -- are there every single day, you're part of the community, you sponsor that little league team that came around asking money for the united way, and our sporting goods store always gives to you, we're art of this community. then the customers come in and say i want to try on that pair of running shoes there. maybe try the next larger size. well, you got a different color? and once they find the right running shoe they say can i write down a few numbers here? and you know what happens next. they walk outside the door, go home, get on the internet, and buy that product without paying sales tax on it. so that sporting good store on the corner at the mall is a showroom for goods they're not selling. we're trying to change that. we're trying to make sure that if you sell goods in a state, you collect the sales tax of

that state. we don't create any new taxes, the tax that we're collecting is already owed by the consumer. and we certainly don't create any new federal taxes whatsoever. it's just a matter of collection. so i shall we tied up in knots here? the two states represented by the last two senators to speak, oregon and montana, have no sales tax. there are three other states that have no state sales tax -- alaska, delaware, and new hampshire. so you would think from their arguments the coercion that they're talking about that we are trying to impose a sales tax on oregonians. or montanans. not true. if this bill passes, oregonians will not be required to pay a penny in sales tax whether they buy over the counter or over the internet. the only people who will be affected by this are internet retailers in that state who choose to sell their products in

states that have a sales tax. well, we put an exemption in this bill and said if your internet retailer has less than a million dollars in sales the previous year, you're exempt. you don't have to collect sales tax. let's look at the specific states that are objecting to this bill. in oregon, of the roughly 1,000 internet retailers who will be affected by this bill across the united states, in oregon there are 11. 11 in the state of oregon. five already collect sales tax. let me read their names because you'll know them right off the bat. adidas of oregon already collects sales taxes on their sales. columbia sportswear. nike, already collecting sales tax. hairy and david -- i've gotten that as a gift once and in a while -- they already collect sales tax.

five of the 11 internet retailers in oregon already collect sales tax. this is new burden on them. what we're talking then is about six internet retailers in oregon who i assume don't want to collect sales tax. in montana, there are two internet retailers with web sales above the exemption in this bill. actually there are four in the list of internet retailers but one already collects sales tax and the other one is below the exemption level, so they're not covered by this bill. so when i hear this objection about stopping this bill and the impact it's going to have on these states, we are talking about five businesses in oregon, one or two businesses in montana. that's what it's about. but it's about much more. because these sales tax revenues are important to states and localities and local units of

government. this is the money they use to avoid raising your property taxes and income taxes. this is the money they use to provide basic services for the people that live in the communities around these local stores. and it's a question of leveling the playing field for the businesses as well. mr. president, what happened today happened yesterday and this morning, we attempted to bring to the floor amendments to this bill, and i would say that three of the five amendments that we were bringing to the floor were offered by senators who oppose the bill. we know it. they don't want to see this bill pass. they want to try to change the bill, perhaps even jeopardize the bill and we're prepared to debate their amendments. now, how much fairer can you be? we have opened this bill up to amendments, opened it to amendments that are critical of the bill, and the senators object to our even debating them. to the folks on c-span, i'm

sorry, call for a refund because the senate is not going to be the senate today. we're not going to debate, we're not going to vote, we're in the midst of a filibuster. a filibuster. where we're trying to bring amendments to the floor for an actual debate and a vote on a bill, we're being stopped in doing that. is that why we ran for this office? so we can find ways to stop debate? stop amendments? i think not. i think we were sent here to do a job. if someone has a good idea on this bill, i'm ready to consider it. the internet freedom amendment that we talked about here, this is a bipartisan amendment. senator pryor, democrat of arkansas, senator blunt, republican of missouri, came together and said we want to extend for ten years the prohibition against taxing people for using the internet. i'm for that. i'm for that amendment. i want to consider it and i want to vote for it.

the senator from oregon said, oh, that's a spoonful of sugar in a bitter cup of coffee. well, for goodness' sakes. what we're trying to do is improve this legislation and if he has a good idea, offer it as an amendment. we have opened this on both sides of the aisle, senator enzi on the republican side, i've opened it on the democratic side, bring your amendments to the floor. we're ready to debate them. but for the last two days consistently, those from no sales tax states have stopped every effort to bring an amendment to a vote. i think that's unfortunate. eventually this matter will be brought to a vote. we've had three different votes already. 75 votes in favor of it, 74 votes in favor of it, 75 votes. clearly, a bipartisan majority of the senate wants to finally meet the challenge the supreme court gave us 20 years ago, 20 years ago. we want to get this done. put a lot of effort into it. no one more than senator enzi of wyoming and yaptd to thank

senator alexander of tennessee and senator heitkamp of north dakota. so i'm going to yield the floor at this point and say to my colleagues i don't know what it takes for the senate to be the senate but this notion of sitting here staring at one another hoping we never get to a vote is a disappointment not only to those of us on the floor but i think to those who have a lot more hope for the senate. a senator: plment a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. enzi: i just want to make a couple of comments on what has transpirate sheer -- transpired here this afternoon and the last several days. one of the toughest things to do is to pass a bill. one of the easiest things to do is to kill a bill. and you can do that simply by creating some confusion and around here you can do it by implying some rules and suggesting that part of the process could be backtracked and done differently and done over.

and it's pretty hard to get a bill to the floor. it doesn't happen very much. it could happen easier, it could happen more often. but when you get one here there's still a lot of ways to kill a bill. and that's kind of what we're seeing. because there are some people who say gee if we don't get our amendment, we're going to kill the bill. we're going to vote against cloture. which is the only way to move on in the senate because we like debate, we like pretty much unlimited debate, and debate can be really constructive. their things that need to be done on bills, and i've heard several good ideas, they've been objected to, so we're not going to get to actually vote on those. but there's one thing as an account apartment that i want to bring up which is this thing about audits. because that can loom pretty strong for a business. i mean, audit is something we know from the i.r.s. and it's very scary. but the audits that they're talking about aren't going to happen to nearly the extent they think they're going to happen.

somebody will have to be avoiding the sales tax entirely and have a strong suspicion they exceed a million dollars online in a year before they'll ever audit because it costs money to audit. especially if you went just over the border into another state to audit. and then there are some difficulties with being able to collect what's discovered in the audit. but it's only done when something seems really wrong. one of my clients, i worked with for ten years, had big sales in the oilfield. lots of sales this the oilfield. and we got audited on sales tax once in ten years. and i'm pleased to say that they didn't find anything, took them two weeks to do the audit. and that was a really big business on some really technical stuff, and, of course, they looked at it because a lot of it are really

big sales. and there are some confusing things in the sales, too. but you have to have an audit in there for a little bit of honesty, and so that's why that's in there. but it's not going to be something that the states are going to jump on because, again, it has some costs. and if you're a company -- if you're a government that wants to do audits, i remember when i was in the wyoming legislature they used to talk about how much return they got out of their audit. they'd get $20 or $30 to the dollar of cost. and consequently they used that as an argument for why they needed more auditors because they'd find a lot more money. well, the intent of an audit is not to find a dollar for every dollar that's expended. it's to find $20 or $30, somebody violating the law in a big way so that you can afford the cost of the audit. and that, of course, keeps all of the people a little bit more honest. so audit has to be in here, but

audits being blown out of proportion so we can probably try to kill the bill. and i hope that's not the intention, they talked about needing to go to committee, i've gotten a couple of hearings on this in 12 years, but i've never been able to get a markup in committee. and so this has gotten -- this process has gotten this bill to the floor and i'm hoping that everybody will lynch to their reiterates and help -- retailers and get it finished up. i can tell you being in charge of this bill and being one of the drafters of this bill it's not a popularity contest you're winning. it's just the right thing to do and the thing the states need if they're going to have the revenue thee they need to provide all the services in the municipalities, whether it's police or fire protection or cleaning the streets or whatever -- whatever things are done there. plus all of the charitable things people in the communities

do, too. because that's the sense of community they have so they contribute to those things. all of that is going to dry up if we don't -- because if you ask your municipality, how much money they get out of sales tax, i think the minimum that one of them will say is 30%. probably the maximum of 70% but that's a lot of the budget and that's declining as the internet grows and the sales tax -- the sales happen without the tax. so i hope that people will help pass this bill and get this into effect. i think that it's only an 11-page bill. that's a miracle around here. so it is possible for people to read the bill. and i appreciate the senator from massachusetts and the comments that he made. he's new to the senate but he obviously read the bill. and i'm very impressed with the comments that he made. so i hope people will help pass this bill. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota.

ms. heitkamp: i'll be very brief. i just want to respond to a couple claims that have been made especially related to foreign corporations because i think there's this sense that foreign corporations have absolutely no state tax obligations, no matter what they do in your state, no matter what their presence is. so i want to clarify a couple of points. as people argue that for taxes that make remote sales will have an advantage over domestic companies, we need to understand that that's not true. the marketplace fairness act treats foreign corporations the same as it treats domestic corporations. by that i mean corporations that are incorporated in the 50 states in our country. all online retailers that make over $1 million in remote sales regardless of where the retailer is located must collect and remit sales tax to states that require it. states currently have and do exert jurisdiction over foreign companies. in fact, states collect different types of tax from

foreign companies even when those companies are exempt from federal taxation. locating facilities -- there has been a big argument here that it means that people will now move their operations to canada and operate out of a foreign country. that has its own brand of problems for any corporation that would consider that. i want to just outline some of those. locating facilities outside of the 46 states while still selling to the united states consumers would actually increase some cost for retailers and complicate the sales process. locating further away from customers would increase shipping costs. many online retailers are locating distribution and other facilities closer to their consumers so they can be more responsive. in fact, we're seeing one-day shipping or same-day shipping today. international sales may be subject to duties. foreign currency exchanges may be needed to conduct a sale. so it's a whole brave new world. it's a very complicated world. the other thing is there's a big

discussion about how do you enforce it. well, states can currently request information from customs and border protection about international shipments into their states so they know what products are coming in and where they come from. i just want to take a moment to kind of explain, as you've heard in this discussion on the floor that i in fact was the tax commissioner of the state of north dakota that initiated the action in quill. but that's not the extent of my experience. i also spent a great deal, in fact, six years of my life as tax commissioner in collecting sales in use taxes. we frequently have people move across the border into canada, go shopping, spend a weekend in canada, come through. their customs reports are filed. we typically would send a sales tax auditor up to review those customs reports and send use tax collections statements out as a result of that. so that kind of compliance is already happening. states also enforcement options

available to them to ensure foreign corporation compliance is completed including liens and other kinds of discussions. i want to just offer up a c.r.s. report that -- on this issue, finally some noted u.s.-based retailers may respond is to expanded sales tax collection authority by shifting operations outside the united states to avoid collection burden. the cost of moving operations and increase shipping costs, however, would seem greater than any benefit infurred by avoiding the collection burden. again as you have heard over and over again, we've heard over and over about how expensive this is, yet, we have vendors out there, in fact, ebay, charging no more than $15 a month to provide this service to businesses that they have. at least you hear that's all fine and good, senator heitkamp. i don't believe you that it actually happens. i requested some information from our current tax

commissioner, current tax department in north dakota because i know a little bit about sales and use tax, and i know that we actually have foreign corporations, canadian corporations who are in fact licensed or permitted as retailers. in fact, the state tax department records show that in 2011 calendar number year, we collected $1.6 million from canadian companies who are registered who actually remitted the tax. i just tell you our sales tax in north dakota is 5%, so you understand the level of business that they're doing. that grew quite -- you know, there was a big leap in 2012 as we saw almost $3.8 million. that is, i'm sure, due to canadian companies supplying north dakota corporations and north dakota businesses in the oil field. and so we already do this, and

very, very many canadian companies already know what these requirements are. and just like a north dakota domiciled company that does business, that takes advantage of the canadian marketplace will be subject to manitoba taxes or suspect to saskatchewan taxes, we know what our obligations are. so it's very important that we not mix concepts here because i think the senate is a place where they really do understand -- the senate is a place where they really do understand foreign tax treaties. but as provinces of canada and states of north dakota, states like north dakota are subnationals, that's their classification within trade law, they are not bound by very, very many of these treaties. they are not obligated under these foreign tax agreements that you hear over and over again. and it's not make-believe. the reality is in states like north dakota, we collect taxes from canadian companies. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the majority leader.

mr. reid: i would ask consent that as soon as i finish my brief remarks that the senator from montana be recognized to respond to the senator from north dakota's remarks. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: mr. president, this is not a partisan bill. there are times i'm on the floor advocating partisan advantage, but that isn't what we have here. we have managers of this bill have worked really hard on it for a long time, and this is where we are now. we're to a point where there have been a number of amendments offered, but there's been objections made. and so, no amendments are allowed to be debated and voted on. that's where we find ourselves procedurally, which leaves me as manager of the senate with no alternative but to look to the next alternative to try to move things along. and that's going to be after midnight tonight.

12:30, 1:00 this morning we will have a vote on cloture on the bill. i say to my friends who oppose this -- and i know they believe in it fervently, their opposition -- it's a big waste of time, mr. president. we've had overwhelming votes twice. whether we vote after midnight tonight or 6:00 this evening, it would still be the same result. so i would hope that those who oppose this would take a look at this and maybe arrive at a point where we can have a vote earlier. but everyone should understand, if not, we're going to have to come here some time after midnight tonight and move forward on this legislation, and then after that, of course, it's only a majority vote to complete this legislation. so the managers are still open, ready to offer, allow amendments to be offered. it's getting late in the day. the 30 hours is grinding to a halt here. so i would hope that we can get

something done and move on. the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. baucus: mr. president, i'd like, if i could, ask the senator from north dakota a question. i guess i'll ask through the chair. i might ask, mr. president, i wonder if the senator from north dakota would tell me where in this bill -- and i've read it but i'd like to see where it is -- that a state would have the authority to audit and bring enforcement action against a remote seller in any other country. in china, for example. where in this bill does the state of north dakota have the taxing authority to go to china, a remote seller in china selling goods in north dakota? where in the bill does it say

that? i said where in the bill. i'd like to know where in the bill. what's the language in the bill which allows any statement to bring enforcement action against a remote seller in any other country? mr. heitkamp: mr. president, the senator from montana, what the bill exerts jurisdiction over is remote sellers. it does not differentiate whether they are foreign nationals or are domestic corporations. in state law, we have the ability to enforce state laws against anyone who is obligated under the jurisdiction of the state to comply. and so i would tell you that the jurisdiction in here is not over states. it's not over oregon. it's not over new hampshire. it is over a remote seller. and it does not differentiate anywhere in this bill in terms of a remote seller. and i will tell you as the former tax commissioner of the state of north dakota, i have enforced state tax laws against

foreign corporations just as foreign corporations have enforced state tax laws or their provincial laws against north dakota domiciled companies. it happens every day in america. mr. baucus: mr. president, i'll ask another question. this is very similar to sort of the context of this bill. that is i've asked the senator from north dakota many times to provide me authority for that proposition. i'm wondering if the senator from north dakota can now provide me the authority for that proposition rather than just asserting it. what's the authority? is there a case? is there a federal law? is there a supreme court case on that authority? i'd just like to know. mr. heitkamp: mr. president, and my friend from montana, we will give you the citations and the supreme court cases that talk about the exertion of jurisdiction over foreign corporations by state taxing authorities. and so i just want to offer up

this document that outlines that we are not parties to foreign treaties -- i tell you nelson vs. sears & roebuck, which is a 1941 supreme court case. felt and tarrant manufacturing versus gallagher, again a united states supreme court case, 1939. it is well established and long-standing precedent in this country that if you are doing business as a foreign company in a state or in our jurisdictions, we have jurisdiction and can apply our state law and our state taxing authority over someone, a foreign company that has jurisdiction and nexus in our -- mr. baucus: she just said the magic word, mr. president. she's talking about states where there's nexus. i asked the proposition where there's no nexus.

that's the whole point of a lot of this discussion here. the point of quill, is a state where there's no nexus, then the state tax -- sales tax cannot be enforced. but where there is nexus, it can. i can understand. i'll bet you those cases that she cited has to do where a state is doing business in another state. that's nexus. we're not talking about that here. we're talking about remote sellers, where there's no nexus, where there's not doing business in a state. let's say china. a remote seller in china selling in north dakota, i'll bet you dollars to doughnuts those cases have nothing to do with remote sellers generally. and i'll make a second point that i think north dakota is going to have a hard time enforcing -- or excuse me, preventing, or enforcing some province in china, enforcing the provisions of this bill. human province -- hunan province, is north dakota going

to the hunan province and say mr. premier, we've got to enforce here? i doubt it. if not china, any other country. she's confusing nexus from remote sellers. that's not the point here. the point is remote sellers. this is just one of the problems of this bill, when you start looking at it, start thinking about it, what's in it really. and it's why this bill should have gone to committee in the first place so we could correct it. one other point here -- and i don't think this is understood by very many senators -- this isn't just a nonsales tax issue by any stretch of the imagination. for example, let's say two states, both sales tax states, a remote sell tpher one state -- seller in one state, let's say massachusetts selling to a state like california. both have sales taxes. under this legislation, california state taxing authority could audit that online seller in massachusetts if it wants to, bring an action

against that online seller in massachusetts. so this applies, mr. president, to all states, to remote sellers in all states. not just nonsales tax states. all states. this bill allows all states to bring enforcement actions and audit actions against remote sellers in any state. this bill does that. that's what it provides. so this is not just a nonsales tax state question. this is a question that affects all small businesses, all remote sellers, all around the country in addition to the point i mentioned earlier, i can't for the life of me think that any state can bring an enforcement action in many countries around the world where the state, where the remote seller does not have nexus, does not have nexus in the state in question. this is another reason why this bill is fraught with problems and why it should have gone to

committee in the first place. i yield the floor. mr. heitkamp: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota. mr. heitkamp: i just want to clarify one point about nexus versus commerce clause. and i think that it has been misstated here about state tax jurisdiction. there there was case in the 1950's that said remote sellers do not have nexus nor can you apply the collection burden because of commerce clause. quill, when it was decided, with a was decided is that, yes, north dakota had nexus over quill. we just could not apply the sales tax because it was in violation of the commerce clause. the nexus standards have changed from physical presence to economic activity, and that's why we're here. we cannot, in my opinion, as a body and as a lawyer who has studied this area, we cannot change the nexus standards by any statute in this body.

an so everily state have to defend their own application of nexus. what we are talking about is not nexus. it is commerce clause jurisdiction. the ability to apply it and not violate the interstate commerce clause. and so i think that we need to be very careful about our termination. i yield the floor. mr. alexander: mr. president, i hai'd like to engage the senar from north dakota, if i may, for consent to enfaith in a colloquy for a few minutes on the subject, so that we may speak through the chair to each other. does the senator -- you the presiding officer: does the senator from north dakota agree? without objection. mr. alexander: thank you. the senator from montana has raised a good question about audits. and the bill, the marketplace fairness act that we're -- well, let me say to the senator from north dakota, what i'm -- what i want to paint a picture of here -- and i would like to ask the senator from north dakota to

help me because she -- she may be one of the newer members of this body, but she knows more about this subject than most of us put together because of her experience. with all respect to all the senators here already in the senate. and i'd like to paint a picture of what would happen if we don't act. i mean, we hear -- let's think of what we're -- we're talking about audits, we're talking about businesses. let's think about what we're talking about her here. i want to look up at washington from some state capital and the request that the states are making of success that if i am a goafn of tennessee or a legislature, i want to be able to make the decision myself as a sovereign state about whether people who sell in our state are treated in the same way. and you may be a catalog seller, an internet seller, a brick-and-mortar seller, but if you're going to sell in our

state, and we decided we're going to have a sales tax instead of an income tax, if we make -- if we require the local business to collect the tax, we're going to require everybody who sells there to collect the tax. if you want to sell in our state, that's what you need to do. if you want to drive in our state, you follow our speed limb. if you want to -- you follow our criminal laws, you follow our -- if you live in our state, you pay our income tax if you sell in our state, you sell in our state, wherever you are in the world, we want you to collect the tax incentive to us. that's what we're talking about treat everybody the same in that way. and the obvious thing comes up, well, what about all this different jurisdictions? we hear a lot about 9,600 jurisdictions, taxing jurisdictions, and live in merrell, tennessee, so the city might have a sales tax and the state might have a sales tax. they might be different than what the next -- what the next

city is. so my question to the senator from north dakota is that -- my question 10 the senato to the sm north dakota is, what this law does is it streamlines these 9,600 jurisdictions. it simplifies the whole process to make it easier for out-of-state sellers. it takes advantage of the technology of the internet so that there can be a single tax for each state and a single audit for each state and states often work together with audits and there can only be one audit per year. in other words, it reduces this burden. of course, if you're -- if you're in kansas and you're selling in tennessee you may be subject to an audit. and you file a report every year electrielectronically.

what if we didn't pass this law? and let's say i'm an enterprising goafn of tennessee, which i once was. the united states senate can't get anything done. they can't even get anything done when they've got 75 people on the side of the aisle who've already voted three times for the year. so i'm going back to the supreme court 20 years ago after senator heitkamp wins tax collector for north dakota. 20 years ago we didn't know anything about the internet and this case came to the supreme court and the court said, it's too much of a burden on interstate commerce for you to require out-of-state sellers with no physical presence in the state to do the same thing you already require your in-state sellers to do on taxes that are already owed, taxes that are already owed. i'm going to go back to court and say, things have changed, times are different. i can take my computer out and put in my zip code and williams-sonoma can figure out the tax i owe when i buy my ice cream freezer online and collect

it and submit it to the state of tennessee. it is my right as a sovereign state to make everybody who wants to sell online or by cat looking into the state of tennessee, i'm going after them. i'm going after them if they don't collect the tax. and then my friends in mississippi see me do that and they do it, too. and then kentucky does it. and then the next state does it and then all 9 -- and then all 9,600 taxing jurisdictions go after this one remote seller. why didn't you guys do your job a few years ago? why didn't you simplify this system, why didn't you create something easy, limited our liability, which made the states provide us with the software which makes this work, which limits the aids to one a year, which limits the tax to one per year per state and make it so that even a smaller seller, even though 99% of the internet

sellers are exempt from this act, a smaller seller wouldn't have to worry about it. so i ask the senator from north dakota if she would reflect, given her 20 or 30 years of experience in this whole issue -- and am i exaggerating here? what would it be like if the state of tennessee got tired of the united states senate not being able to act after all this time and went back to the supreme court and won the case and tennessee and north dakota and all the other states started enforcing their laws against remote sellers? ms. heitcamp: in response to my friend from tennessee, the first thing i'm going to tell you is the tools that you have today were not available 20 years ago. the simplifying, the immediacy of buying a $15 opportunity from ebay so you can collect sales tax in all jurisdictions on products that are unique to each state, that was not even a thought when we lit debated quill, yet we came pretty close

to convincing the court that this should be allowed under the interstate commerce clause. and i think at the end of the day, the court decided that case because they were earn canned mainly about retroactivity. but now if you compare the experience of 20 years ago to what we know in terms of data availability and the ease of administration today, which is being further streamlined by requiring a streamlined tax, one single tax base. what do i mean by that? the city of fargo imposes a sales tax. let's assume we allowed them to tax different products than what the state taxes. this requires one tax per product. you don't get to have different tax bases. so we've streamlined that piece that concerned the court at the time. and if you think about it, it's -- sales -- local sales taxes were in the unique and were prevalent even at the time we

litigated quill. and this argument was overwhelming for the complete they looked at the burden on ininterstate commerce coupled with the potential of retroactive application, which would have meant huge aids where there was no opportunity to collect and said, you 240e what? we think this is better left to quonk. we should -- we share an obligation with congress on interstate commerce. we think congress can do the right thing. the world has changed since then. what we know that internet sellers know about us today is remarkable and can you imagine litigation, my friend from tennessee, that where we show that you simply order, in my case one plus-size blouse and you get all kinds of plus-sized ads on the side. some people might think that's kind of insulting but i think it is an interesting evaluation of how much these retail sellers know about us individually. and if they can know that, they can collect the sales tax. we are not talking about -- the

other piece that's new in ts statute that i think either further compels us is we are not talking about the small moms and pops. the other reason why i'm supporting this legislation is i have small bee keepers who make wax candles and may be they put those wax candles onto the internet, maybe make $20,000, $30,000 a year selling wax candles. i don't want them after further litigation to have a burden of sales tax collection. they are small moms and pops, and we're talking about $1 million here, so in many ways, this legislation is pro-small business. it is pro-streamlined tax. and if we let this go back to the court with a better argument that we are not burdening interstate cheers with an argument that you can do it with $15 a month, the court is going to be persuaded that there is no impediment to interstate commerce, and that's the risk we run by not acting and not acting soon.

mr. alexander: mr. president, i thank the senator for her knowledge and her contribution to the debate. and of course what she emphasi emphasized is that if we do act, we simplify things for the small business person. for one thing, we exempt anyone who -- who -- whose revenues are less than $1 million a year. now, that, by some economist studies, is 99% of all internet sellers. if we don't act and a court wins a case in the supreme court today that's different than 20 years ago, there's no $1 million exemption. there's no $1 million exemption. and there's exposure to the 9,600 tax jurisdictions if they win that case. so the thing to think about here is if we do our job and the supreme court said 20 years ago we're the ones to do it, if we do our job and 74, 75 of us --

three times i've indicated think we should through thew 12-page bill -- we'll provide an exemption for virtually all internet sellers. we'll create criewl rules that y it and we'll give states the opportunity to do what states should have the opportunity to to. my heavens, i've heard some people say they didn't trust washington to make these decisions for the states. nobody in -- that washington didn't trust the states to make these decisions about tax matters. well, nobody in tennessee trusts washington to make decisions about tax matters. what this bill does is it's your business. you decide t if what you want do is collect tax from some of the people who owe it, not all, states have the right to be rierkts states have the right to be wrong. that's what the 10th amendment is about. and in some states they'll use the money to pay teachers more for teaching well. in the state of ohio they've

already decided that if this passes, they're going to lower the income tax. the governor of iowa says he's got his eye on a tax that he's like to lower. if we can collect taxes from everybody who already owes them and that's the important point major we're not talking about new taxes. we're talking about taxes that people aren't paying, that they owe. so why should i have to pay my tax and if the senator from delaware is in the same, similar situation, why should he not have to pay? so in each state, the same people ought to have to pay it. art laffer, the distinguished economist, who wrote a good column in "the wall street journal" endorsing this idea of marketplace fairness says the best tax is one that affects the largest number of people at the lowest possible raivment if 20% of the people who buy things are not paying a tax they owe, they

ought to be paying. they ought to be paying it. and if they all pay it, we can lower the rate for everybody. that's what -- we're not deciding that here. we're saying the state could have the right to decide it. the important point of the senator from north dakota is that if we act, we're protecting the small seller by creating the million dollar exemption, we're protecting the small seller or any remote seller by saying you have a limited liability, a limited number of audits, a limited number of states to deal with. and if we don't act and the state wins a supreme court cakes katie bar the door of the and sellers -- out-of-state sellers all over the world will be coming to the united states congress and saying, why didn't you do your job? so there's good reason why we have a majority of democrats who have voted three times in -- to express their support for this bill. the majority of republicans who have done the same and why leading observers across the country from the chairman of the american conservative union and others who don't like to see

states picking and choosing between winners and losers ... there is a good reason that all those people support this. and there is a good reason it is an 11-page bill. because it is a simple idea. we have sovereign states, states make their own tax laws, and unless -- and unless states by their tax laws create an unconstitutional burden on an out-of-state seller, it's no business of ours. we should create the environment, the court say, to give them the freedom to make those decisions for themselves. some may do it one way, some may do it another, but states have the right to be right, states have the right to be wrong, and we have the responsibility to recognize the constitutional framework of our country which -- which was created by sovereign states. thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: the clerk

will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: i ask the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: i would ask to be able to speak in morning business for up to 15 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: mr. president, we have an attempt to move and rush through the senate an immigration bill before the american people can adjust or absorb what's in it. i think this is a very bad policy. the bill was introduced at 2:00 a.m. eight days ago. it was set for markup in the committee today, and our diligent staff has been trying to read it and absorb it and is having a great deal of

difficulty sifting through this complicated 850-page bill. it's now, because senator grassley, the ranking republican on the committee, has put the bill over, asked the bill be put over one week, next week is a recess, so it will now come up in two weeks to be presented and passed out of committee. and we had monday a hearing that was -- i won't say it was a circus but it was impossible to absorb all the information. 23 witnesses testified, one right after the other. five or so minutes each. each of the senators that were here on monday, not a lot, had five minutes of questioning, and not much was resolved. they didn't know what was in the bill either. they just were testifying about policy, basically. nobody could explain exactly how the bill is going to work. and so people say well, you should be able to handle a bill

like that. you should be able to read an 800-page bill. and so i would -- i just wanted to show why this is a pretty complicated process and why a piece of legislation like this has to be carefully read, and it's not easy to do so. so this is page 65 of the bill, and it deals with an issue i talked about yesterday. secretary napolitano had issued prosecutorial directive and guidances to their i.c.e. officers, so upsetting the i.c.e. officers that they sued her and their director, mr. martin, in federal court, saying she is directing them not to follow plain u.s. law. and i brought it up in the hearing and chairman leahy said well, a lot of people file

lawsuits, very few win. well, yesterday or day before yesterday, the federal judge basically ruled in favor of the officers and said a secretary of h.h.s. has no authority to issue guidelines that counteract plain mandatory federal law. so basically the secretary was saying do not remove certain people from the country that current law says must be removed. she is refuseing to do what the law of the united states says, and this is one of the reasons we have such a problem reforming and fixing immigration law is because the american people have little or no confidence in the willingness of our officials to even follow present law much less new law. so apparently they plan to fix this in the bill so the secretary has even more power.

the legislation, we have already found maybe 200 references to waivers and discretion of the secretary in how the bill would be carried out. but look at page 65. subparagraph b here, capital b, waiver. subparagraph, little i. in general, the secretary may waive the application of sub partial a, little i, 3, or any provision of section 212-a that is not listed in clause 2-i on behalf of an alien for humanitarian purposes to ensure family unity, or if such vaifer is otherwise in the public interest, any discretionary authority to waive grounds of inadmissibility under section 212-a conferred under any other provision of this act shall apply equally to aliens seeking

registered provisional status under this section. subparagraph 2-i, exceptions, exceptions to that. the discretionary authority under clause one i may not be used to waive, one, subparagraph b, c, d, little i, e, g, h or i of section 212-a-2. then subparagraph roman numeral two, section 212-a-3, paragraph roman numeral subsection 3, subparagraph a, c, d or e of section 212-a-10. so if i'm a united states senator and i'm trying to protect the interests of the people of the united states to understand what a piece of legislation means, i've got to go back and read every one of those subparagraphic exceptions.

this is gobbledygook. my staff tells me every time you go back and read it, you see more -- more difficulties. i haven't even had a chance to look at this. and it's all through this piece of legislation. oh, but don't worry about it, we have set up a vision, we have got a vision of this great immigration bill that's going to be comprehensive, fix all our problems, trust us, don't worry about it. you'll find out what's in it later. right? just like health care, i guess. and this is not a way to do business. the immigration policy of the united states perhaps is as important as the health care policy of the united states. and i'm not going to consent to this. we're going to find out what's in it. it goes on, more and more and more of this kind of gobbledygook.

subsection roman numeral four, with respect to misrepresentations relating to the application for registered provisional immigrant status, section 212-a-6-c-i. and then it goes on. well, so don't -- it's not right to say that people who are concerned about the legislation are obstructing. we're trying to find out what the bill is. the headline yesterday in the "christian science monitor" said how many people will be made legal under this bill? and it quoted one of the supporters of the bill as saying we don't know. so i ask at the -- asked at the judiciary committee this morning to -- one of the sponsors was there, senator schumer. i said well, how many people -- do you want to tell us how many people are going to be legalized under the bill? we don't know.

so we don't know that. we don't know answers to other questions like how much will the bill cost. the treasury of the united states, what kind of expenses will be incurred? what is the total number of people that will be admitted. well, what we have already discovered has revealed that the legislation fails to live up to virtually all the promises that have been made about it so far. i hate to say that, but that's true. for instance -- and let me list a few. these are problems you have been told are taken care of or will be effectuated by the legislation if we just vote for this good bill, just vote for it. it's 850 pages. just vote for it. here are some of the things. we were told the bill would be enforcement first but the plan confers immediate legalization

in exchange for promises in the future of enforcement, many of which will likely never occur. i mean, we have got plain law now that requires removal in lots of cases that the secretary is failing to follow. in fact, a major loophole that jeopardizes the entire border security section commands that the secretary of h.h.s. grant currently illegal immigrants permanent legal status and therefore a path to -- guaranteed path to eventual citizenship after ten years if just one of the so-called triggers that is supposed to ensure that enforcement occurs is tied up by our court lawsuit. so all one has to do is to keep that tied up in the -- people are not going to be deported if the enforcement doesn't occur. we were told the secretary would

be required to build a fence at the border. we passed a law in 2007 to require 700 miles of double-strength fencing at the border. not the whole border but 700 miles. how many have been built since then? 30. congress passed a law that said we will do this enforcement in the future, but it hasn't occurred. we were told the bill would reduce the deficit. we have been told it would reduce the deficit and strengthen social security and medicare. but it will be -- the effect will be to legalize large numbers of low-skill immigrants, over half of those illegally here today don't have a high school diploma, and will add trillions to the unfunded liabilities of medicare, social security and the president's new obamacare health care bill.

we're talking about trillions of dollars when social security and medicare need to be strengthened, not weakened, and the numbers are not going to be disputed on this. it is not going to strengthen social security and medicare, as many advocates say. it's going to weaken them, and it's going to also weaken the financial stability of the obamacare legislation. we're told that illegal immigrants would not have access to public benefits but the bill ensures that millions of illegal immigrants will be immediately he eligible for state and local public assistance. if people need something, need health care, they are going to get it somewhere. and some can get former benefits in as short as five years and will be eligible for all federal welfare programs at the time of the grant of citizenship. we were told there was a ten-year path to dream cards of permanent legal residents, and a

13-year path before you could become a citizen, but two million to three million of those who are in the country legally are expected to assert that they came into the country as younger people and therefore would be eligible for citizenship in five years. and would -- under this remarkably broad dream act provision, that removes any age cap on the persons who can assert they came as a youth, and even those who have been removed from the country can come back and claim the benefit of this. illegal agricultural workers will also get green cards in five years. legal permanent residence if you're working ill illegally -- illegally at an ag place, a farm, you can apparently get permanent legal status in just five years andna