Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I want to reiterate that I voted for an appropriations bill last year that had language in it saying that this money was going to be rescinded, and the House kept their word and they rescinded it. We are reneging on something we voted to do last year. I just, frankly, cringe when I see us putting $400 million into a program like this. The Senator from Maryland a moment ago listed the people this is designed to help. Can you believe this? Listen: Lockheed, General Electric, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Martin Marietta, Northrup, and Pratt & Whitney. The kids who hang around the pool hall this summer, because we killed summer jobs, can fend for themselves, but we have to put $400 million in this year headed, listen to this, Mr. President, headed from somewhere between $2.5 billion and $3.2 billion for wind tunnels to assist seven of the biggest corporations in America. You know, Bob Reich hit a tender spot with me when he started talking about corporate welfare. How in the name of all that is good and holy can the U.S. Senate even consider going down this path toward a $3 billion expenditure because Airbus--because Airbus--is building a good airplane? I heard the same arguments in the early seventies, in the late seventies that I just heard from my good friend and colleague from Maryland when the Japanese were eating the American automobile industry's lunch. The American automobile industry said, ``Well, people are not going to like those little old minicars, they are going to quit buying them.'' They did not quit buying them, and shortly, the American automobile industry was on its haunches, losing money hand over fist. We did not give them $3 billion, and they are at this moment the most viable industry in America because they sucked it up, pulled up their pants and did whatever they knew they had to do: Build a better automobile. But now we are saying to these seven corporate giants who have at this moment not committed one penny--they say, ``We'll put up 20 percent of the money.'' You have not heard anybody say they have done it or offered to do it. So I am simply saying, you will never get a chance to save $400 million easier, and if we are going to go through this laborious process this year of cutting virtually everything in sight, for God's sake, let us cut this. I yield the floor, Mr. President.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, how much time is remaining on each side?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I yield the Senator from Nebraska 5 minutes.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I will just make one quick point, a very important point that I overlooked. And that is this rescission is in the House version of the defense supplemental we have before us today. So the House has already taken the $400 million out. And in order to avoid any conflicts, any conflicts in the conference with the House we should do the same thing here.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum with the time to be charged equally to both sides.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, to some of the people around here who profess to be deficit hawks, along with me, let me implore you: Do not vote for this because it is going to be built in somebody's State. Do not vote for it because you want to help the Boeing Corp. One other point, Mr. President. The private sector is expected to put up 20 percent of the money. Think about this. Mr. President, here is the $64 question. I will let you guess. How much do you think they have committed so far? Oh, I can tell by the look on your face you already know. Zip. Not one penny. So I plead with my colleagues to be able to go home and say, yes, we took out $400 million, headed for $3 billion, because we believe in the private enterprise system in this country. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, today, the House of Representatives is voting on a very important piece of legislation called rescissions. They are proposing to cut $17 billion out of this year's budget. A good portion of that will be used to pay for California disaster aid. The net reductions in the House rescission is over $11 billion. As a Democrat, I want to say there are things in that rescission bill with which I disagree. But I applaud the people in the House who are indeed finding some spending cuts that we can make without discommoding this Nation and an awful lot of people. I might say, by way of digression, that I agree with 70 percent of the people in this country who say that every dime of that ought to go on deficit reduction, not for tax cuts. Further digressing, I am not voting for any tax cuts. I am going to vote for everything that will reduce the deficit of this country and keep faith with the American people. You cannot do that by saying here is a new $200 billion tax cut, and now we are going to start balancing the budget. Not only does that not make sense, it is not even popular. The poor person working on an assembly line will get enough to buy a 13-inch pizza each Friday night out of the tax cuts. Based on the inflation figures coming out, there is a chance he is going to pay more interest on his house and car and on everything he buys on time if we inflate this economy with $200 billion in additional tax cuts. What in the name of all that is good and holy are we talking about? Tax cuts to generate economic activity? The inflation rate is up this morning to a level that is alarming to everybody, and Alan Greenspan raised interest rates in the last 14 months seven times to dampen economic activity. You have Greenspan on the one hand saying, ``I am raising interest rates to slow economic growth,'' and you have the Republicans in the House saying, ``We are going to give all this tax money to you to stimulate economic growth.'' You cannot have it both ways. You should not. We ought to put this money where everybody in America wants it--on the deficit. I am going to help the Republicans balance this budget by the year 2002, if they will let me. That is why I am standing here today. Last year, Mr. President, with no authorization from anybody, the HUD-VA Appropriations Committees in the House and Senate went to conference, and approved $400 million for wind tunnels that was included in the Senate bill. Mr. President, $400 million ain't beanbags. The Presiding Officer is smiling because he and I have gone after a lot of these boondoggles, from the super collider to the space station, and you name it. And the President, thank goodness, had the good sense to kill the advance neutron source. That is another $3 billion we were getting ready to spend. And now we have wind tunnels. conference with the House, which had nothing in its budget for wind tunnels, and approve this $400 million for wind tunnels to accommodate the aircraft industry even though it had not been authorized in either House, but here is what they said--and I want every one of my colleagues watching or listening to this in their offices and those on the floor, if they do not hear another word I say, I want them to hear this. Here is the text of the appropriations bill that came out of the conference committee: For construction of new national wind tunnel facilities, including final design modification of existing facilities, et cetera, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, $400 million is to remain available to NASA until March 31, 1997, provided-- Listen to this proviso. that the funds made available under this heading-- Namely this $400 million. shall be rescinded on July 15, 1995, unless the President, in his budget for 1996, requests the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for continuation of this wind tunnel initiative. This is what the conference report came back with. This will be rescinded unless the President asks for the money. Well, the President did not ask for the money in his fiscal year 1996 budget. Now what is the argument? ``Did we ever fool you.'' Is that the argument? ``Boy, did you bite into this one.'' You will never find anything easier to cut than this $400 million. Let me say to my Republican brethren who want to privatize everything: How can you go around talking about privatizing everything and then say to the aircraft industry, already is getting $60 million to study wind tunnels, how can you say to them, ``We know you would like to have these wind tunnels and we know you don't want to spend your money to do it, so we will spend old Uncle Sucker's money to build these wind tunnels for you.'' You will hear people talking about, ``Oh, this deals with aircraft safety. This deals with aerodynamics. If we don't do it, the European Airbus consortium is going to eat our lunch.'' That is kind of like the superconducting super collider. There is one in Geneva that was going to cost about $1 billion or maybe $2 billion, so we had to build one in Texas about five times as costly. Somebody is building wind tunnels over there, so we are getting ready to embark, Mr. President, not on a $400 million venture, but somewhere between $2.5 and $3.2 billion. And the project has not been authorized--$3 billion; $400 million of which the conference committee said will be rescinded unless the President asks for it. Now the President is not a piker about asking for money. He surely had some reason not to ask for it. And so, here we are cutting food stamps, cutting aid to children and homeless mothers--most of which is hardly applauded by the American people--cutting $1.7 billion to give the poorest children a job during the summer months. That is a cut that says, ``You kids hang around the pool hall this summer. We are cutting this program totally, because we have to start this wind tunnel.'' I do not know, technically, how valid the arguments are about the need for these wind tunnels. All I know is we have a pretty healthy aircraft industry in this country and they ought to be doing it. Do you want to privatize something? Privatize the wind tunnels. It is corporate welfare at its worst. Mr. President, I do not think we have a time agreement on this. Is there a time agreement, Mr. President?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BUMPERS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 333 (Purpose: To rescind funds made available for the construction of wind tunnels)

Mr. BUMPERS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I do not want to delay this, because we have agreed to it. But I want to say this is not the sort of amendment that I would normally offer. I very much want the United States and Russia to develop a new cooperative attitude toward each other. I have voted for some funding for Russia, which is not very politically popular in this country. But I want Russian democracy to succeed. But I also want the Russians to show some appreciation for the assistance we have been giving them. The cooperative space effort which was the subject of my original amendment. I remain very much opposed to it, and I will try to kill it later on this year. But I support giving Russia aid to build housing for their military so they can dismantle their military forces faster, and giving them money so they can dismantle their bombers, nuclear warheads, and launchers. That is all very much in our interest. It is not just to accommodate them; it is in our interest. But then there is this gigantic space cooperation program; which is a jobs program in America, but which does not do anything else for us. But I want to say that when the Russians cavalierly say we are going to sell nuclear reactors to the biggest renegade nation on this planet, namely, Iran, I belong to the ``Wait-Just-a-Minute Club.'' There is not any question about the fact that more terrorism comes out of Iran than any other country on Earth. So I take very strong exception to the Russians irresponsibly cutting a deal to sell nuclear reactors to Iran, which has more oil than they could possibly put in all the generators they could build through the millennium. Iran can only want nuclear reactors for one thing. That is for a nuclear weapons program. Mr. President, this amendment is not terribly tough. My first amendment said we will stop all space cooperation for the Russians until the President certifies that the Russians have assured him they will not sell these reactors to Iran. That caused about 10 heart attacks around here in people who are interested in the space station. And, quite frankly, I like to cooperate with the President, who is very much opposed to my amendment. Finally, I yielded to this particular amendment, which is not totally toothless, because the Russians want our nuclear technology. They want it very badly. And the head of MINATOM, I think, will get the message. Perhaps the Russians will finally call off this deal to sell reactors to Iran. So now we are saying in this amendment to the Russians and to the President: Mr. President, you need to put all the pressure you can on President Yeltsin and the MINATOM agency, which is very independent, and you need to get a commitment from them. If this is not strong enough medicine, I promise you stronger medicine will follow because here we are spending about $1.5 billion a year trying to help the Russians. And that aid is not popular around this country. I know what is popular in this country as well as anybody does. I am saying that if we do not get some results out of this amendment, stronger medicine will follow. There is only one thing more irresponsible than the Russians selling nuclear reactors to Iran, and that is for us to sit by and do nothing. I thank Senators Feinstein, Bond, Mikulski, Hutchison, and others who worked with me in crafting this amendment, which is quite different from the one I originally offered. I am prepared to now vote on the amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. The Senator from Missouri, I think, now wants to offer his amendment, which I have agreed to, as a second-degree amendment. Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 330 and ask for its immediate consideration. Mr. President, I think a substitute amendment to my amendment has been agreed to by both sides. Briefly, it says that a pending agreement between the United States and Russia that would allow Russia to buy American nuclear reactors and technology, known as a ``Section 123 Agreement,'' be canceled unless the President certifies to Congress that the Russian nuclear agency will not sell nuclear reactors to Iran.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I am sorry, Mr. President; I did not understand the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS. It is my understanding, Mr. President, that virtually all of these amendments except the wind tunnel amendment have been agreed to. Is that correct?

Mr. BUMPERS. Yes, I am prepared to do that. Let me remind the Senator that Senator Mikulski obviously wants to be in the Chamber when that is debated, and I would suggest that we try to contact her to see if she is available. She may be attending a committee hearing or something else and cannot make it right now. But I am prepared to go forward with that amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. I am happy to yield.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I am prepared to go forward with that amendment. We have worked out a second-degree amendment that was going to be offered either by the Senator from California [Mrs. Feinstein] or the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Bond]. But neither of them is present right now, so I would like to just temporarily lay that amendment aside and, if there is something else we could get to, I would be willing to do it. Let me ask unanimous consent that the amendment be temporarily laid aside and allow the floor managers to go forward with any other amendments that are pending. And in that request, Mr. President, I am going to state specifically that I am not necessarily asking that this be the pending business after the next amendment is adopted. I will be around here, and I will call the amendment up at some point.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, is there an amendment pending?

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I come today to introduce a bill dealing with the mail-order catalog business. This issue has become almost an obsession with me over the past 2 years, and one of the reasons for that obsession is that, before I became Governor of Arkansas, I was a hardware, furniture, and appliance dealer, practicing law in a small town, raising cattle, doing anything to put bread on the table. And the biggest competitor I had was the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Sears, Roebuck was tough competition for me because they were big, had a much bigger variety of goods, and were reasonably cheap by comparative standards. But while Sears, Roebuck was tough competition, it was also fair competition. They bore the same burdens of doing business that I did. One of those burdens was collecting sales taxes. Because Sears, Roebuck had stores in every State in the Nation, they had to collect sales taxes on everything they sold through their catalog operation, just like I had to collect sales taxes on everything I sold in my hardware store. The reason Sears, Roebuck had to collect those taxes was that, under the law, if you have a physical presence in any State, you must collect sales tax on goods shipped into that State, even if the goods are sold through a catalog. Over the past few years, however, an entirely new situation has been developing in the competition between Main Street retailers and catalog operations. And that situation is not one of fair competition. What has been developing is that the catalog operations often limit their physical operations to one State, or a few States, and refuse to collect the taxes that are due on goods shipped into other States. This is increasingly significant because catalog sales are $100 billion a year. Fingerhut, one of the biggest mail-order houses in America, has annual sales in excess of $1 billion a year. They sent out 476 million catalogs in 1993 alone. Mr. President, bear in mind that Fingerhut is only one of several very large mail order operations. Lands' End, L.L. In all, there are around 7,500 mail-order houses in this country, and they are growing like mad. I daresay that on an average day, I get somewhere between 4 and 10 catalogs in my mail chute every night. If you live in my home State of Arkansas and order something from L.L. Bean or Lands' End, the company collects no sales tax. That does not mean there is no sales tax in my State, because there is. But do you know who has the responsibility for remitting the tax to the State revenue department, Mr. President? The consumer. If you buy a $10,000 fur coat from a mail-order house, you are personally responsible for remitting the $500 tax on that purchase to the State revenue department. And it is not just mail-order houses that play this game. Sometimes, if you buy it in New York City, they will say, ``You have a southern accent; are you not from New York?'' ``No, I am not; I am from Arkansas.'' ``Would you like for us to mail this to your home and save you $500?'' Of course, the consumer is going to say, ``Yes, I would like that.'' The company will then mail it to your home and not charge you one red cent of sales tax. But what the unsuspecting consumer does not know is that he or she does owe tax on that purchase, and that he or she is personally responsible for paying it to the State. My State imposes its sales tax on all goods, regardless of whether they are purchased in State or out of State. The 44 other States which have sales taxes also apply those taxes to both in-State and out-of- State purchases. Technically, the tax on out-of-State goods is called a use tax, while the tax on in-State goods is called a sales tax. But for all intents and purposes, the use tax is identical to the sales tax. But because out-of-State companies usually refuse to collect the applicable use tax, the consumer does not even know there is a tax when purchasing merchandise via mail order. The Presiding Officer is from the great State of Idaho. Idaho has a sales tax, and Idaho applies that sales tax to goods shipped into the State, just like it does to goods sold by Idaho department stores. So if Idaho's sales tax is 4 or 5 percent, the person who buys a $10,000 fur coat via mail order would be liable for $400 or $500 in sales taxes. Some people say, ``There is already a tax on mail-order sales. It is the use tax. What are you trying to do?'' What I am trying to do is make sure that mail-order companies do not blind-side their customers. Consumers buy from mail-order companies thinking their sales are tax free, and then they learn otherwise after the fact. Last year in Florida, 19,000 people got notices in the mail that goods they bought from direct marketers were not tax free, as the company had lead them to believe. The furniture they bought in North Carolina or the merchandise they bought from Lands' End or L.L. Bean, they owed a tax on it. Admittedly, not every mail-order customer gets caught. Sometimes the State finds out about the purchase, and sometimes they do not. But when they do, the consumer has to pay. This is not a new tax. Of course, it is not. Think about it for a second. Why would any State have a tax structure that required Main Street merchants to collect sales tax and allowed out-of-State companies to ship the same merchandise into the State and collect nothing? No State would ever do that, and no State does it. Oh, how everybody's heart bleeds around here for the poor, small town, Main Street businessman. But when it comes to catalog operations, we give them a huge advantage, 5 to 8 percent or more, and nobody wants to stand up for the Main Street businessman. Recently the argument was made by one of the Senators from Maine that Maine does not have the problem I am describing because they have something that says on the State income tax return in Maine, ``List all your catalog purchases from last year.'' Now, who knows what all they bought from catalogs last year? There are a lot of people who order something every other day from a mail- order house, and of course they do not take the time to keep a record of every purchase. People just do not keep up with it. Do you know what Maine collected last year on that? You guessed it. Not much. Only around $1 million of the total $13 million they should have collected on out-of-State mail order purchases. But Maine is fat and happy because L.L. Bean is located there and L.L. Bean does around $1 billion a year in sales and they pay sales tax on every dime of merchandise sold to customers living in the State of Maine. It is those other 49 States that do not get anything. The direct marketing industry says, ``Oh, this is such a burden, Senator. You have got a city tax, you have got a county tax, you have got a State tax. Do you expect me to keep up with all of that?'' No, I do not. And this legislation would allow mail-order companies the option of collecting a single blended rate for each State where they do business. Then the mail-order companies would simply send a quarterly payment to the State revenue department and let them distribute it to the local jurisdictions that have a sales tax. Do you want to hear a true anecdote? One of the finest Republican Senators to come to the U.S. Senate since I have been here is Senator Bob Bennett from the great State of Utah. Senator Bennett founded a mail-order company years ago. In a Small Business Committee hearing last year on this legislation, he said, ``The people in the company with me sat around the table with me and we debated this issue. Shall we or shall we not collect sales tax on our sales made to other States?'' He said the decision was almost unanimous, ``Yes, let's be good citizens and let's collect a sales tax.'' Anybody who wants to make the argument about what a terrible burden this is on these mail-order houses, talk to Bob Bennett. He says, ``We punch a computer button at the end of the month, and that is it. It is no problem whatever to collect this sales tax. We do it and we do millions in business a year.'' So much for the burden. Another argument they make is, ``But, Senator, we do not require fire protection, law enforcement, all those things that your sales taxes go for.'' That is true. But I will tell you what burden you do impose on other States. You contribute almost 4 million tons of waste to the landfills of this country annually. Talk to any mayor: ``Mayor, what is the biggest problem you have?'' ``Trying to find enough landfill to take care of our garbage.'' And here is a contributor of around 4 million tons a year that mayors have to find some method of disposing of. And the mail-order houses do not contribute one penny, except companies like Bob Bennett's. ``Well, we don't want to have to do this every month.'' Fine. My bill says you only have to remit every 3 months. Now, if that ``ain't'' a deal. I wish I had had that kind of opportunity when I was in business. If I did not pay my sales tax by the 20th of each succeeding month, I did not get a 2-percent discount. Mr. President, I have gone even further than that. In order to take care of some of these smaller mail-order houses, we have exempted in this bill, in the interest of being for small, fledgling businesses-- and, I must say, $3 million a year is not exactly my idea of small--we say, ``If you do less than $3 million a year of business, you do not have to mess with this bill.'' Of the 7,500 catalog companies in the United States, not very many of them do more than $3 million of business a year. Only 825 of the 7,500 mail-order houses in this country that would be covered by this bill. Mr. President, there is another element of unfairness besides the competitive advantage that these mail-order houses get. Some of them do advertising that is very offensive to me and I think it would be to any Senator. Here are a couple of charts. I do not know the name of this company. But here is what their ad says. ``Nobody beats our deal.'' ``No sales tax added outside of North Carolina.'' Now, technically, that is correct. They do not add any sales tax. The poor consumer who buys that yacht, or whatever, is subject to a tax, but he is misled by this ad into believing that he will never have to pay any sales tax. Here it is, ``No sales tax added.'' Now, it is true they do not add it, but if a State you live in happens to catch you buying that, they can assess a sales tax against you. moment, Mr. President, from people from all over the country who have gotten the sad news that they thought they were buying $10,000 worth of furniture tax free. And the clerk that sold them assured them, ``We will ship this from North Carolina to Florida, and you will not have to pay sales tax on it.'' But think about this. Wallcovering, Inc.--I blocked out the address of this company--here is their advertising: ``Discount wallcovering, the phone way.'' Now, all these mail order houses have their 1-800 number listed on every page of their catalog. ``The phone way, save 33 to 66 percent.'' And what do you think? No sales tax outside of Pennsylvania. That is not the worst of it. A lot of them have advertised ``No sales tax.'' They do not say, ``No sales tax added,'' as they do here. They just say ``No sales tax.'' A person getting ready to order wall covering, I promise, would assume that there is no sales tax. But that is not the worst of this firm. Listen to this: ``Stop in your neighborhood, write down the pattern number, and then call us.'' Use that poor stiff down on Main Street. Go into his store and shop. Get the model number, get the cover number, whatever, and then call our 800 number and save the sales tax. I have never introduced a piece of legislation in this body, Mr. President, that I thought was more meritorious than this. When I offered this amendment on the unfunded mandates bill these mail order houses started sending telegrams to every single person they had ever sold 10 cents worth to and said ``Write your Senator. Tell them you don't want any more taxes. Tell them Senator Bumpers' proposal will cost them an arm and a leg.'' And a lot of people bought into that business about it being a new tax, and scared to death they will get a 30-second spot running against them the next time they run, being a taxer and a spender. Ask the little shopkeeper in your hometown on Main Street what he thinks about it. Ask your Governor or your mayor how he or she feels about it. We had a music dealer in North Little Rock testify. This music dealer said, ``People come into our shop all the time, get model numbers off our musical instruments so they can order from a mail order house. They get it from a mail order house, it does not work, and then they bring it in here for repair, and they think we ought to repair it free because we sell that same product.'' Now, Mr. President, if the Presiding Officer will pardon this odious comparison, it is just like mining law reform. It may not happen this year, may not even happen next year, but this is going to happen. Do Senators know who collects taxes in every single State? The Boy Scouts. When ordering Scout uniforms out of their catalog, order it from Florida, they collect the tax and send it to the State of Florida. If the Boy Scouts can do it, surely the Lands' End and L.L. Bean and all the others can do it. I am not going to bore Members with a bunch of catalogs. I keep a couple hundred in the office just for amusement. I am not going to bore Members with them, but that argument about how complex it is, it would take a Philadelphia lawyer to decipher the instructions on some of these mail order houses. Some of them do business in 25 States. If you live in this State, this State and this State, add 5 percent for sales tax; if you live in this State, add 4 percent sales tax, plus sales tax on the shipping charges; if you live in this State, allow 3 days for delivery; if you live in this State allow 2 days for delivery. And they talk about this being complicated. Mr. President, the reason I say this is an idea whose time has come, and it will pass ultimately, is because this business is growing a lot faster than the retail business in your hometown. So I always want to say to these people who say this is too burdensome, it is a new tax. All of those arguments we will hear when we debate this, they are the most specious arguments I have ever heard. I want to say to those people, what if everybody in the country decides to start ordering from mail order houses? Who will educate our children? Who will provide for fire protection and law enforcement and the landfills? If they continue to grow as fast as they are growing right now, compared to Main Street merchants, that is where we are headed. The Senator from Maine--do not misunderstand me--I am not quarreling with the Senator from Maine. They have L.L. Bean in their State doing almost $1 million a year. I understand we all protect our own local interests, but you want to say to a lot of those people, ``You are getting your sales tax from the biggest mail order house in the country, but nobody else is.'' Is it fair for people to get this sudden notice when they thought they bought merchandise with no sales tax? Is it fair for them to suddenly get a notice from the State Revenue Department because their next door neighbor squealed on them for buying that oriental rug out of New York? It is patently unfair to the purchaser to suddenly find out that he owes a big tax bill that he was told by the mail order house that he would not have to pay. So far as the burden is concerned, I want Senators to listen to this. These are not my words. These are Fingerhut's words, last quarter of 1993, Fingerhut in their annual report to their stockholders: To the extent that any States are successful in requiring use tax collection the cost of the company's business, doing business, could be increased although it does not believe any increase would be material. Lands' End, probably the first quarterly report of 1994, Although collecting use taxes would likely influence the buying decisions of some customers, the company believes there would be no material adverse affects on financial results. They are two of the biggest ones in the United States saying, ``We do not think the imposition of the collection of these sales taxes will affect our profits.'' Finally, why are we doing this now? Because until 1992, we could not. In 1967 the Supreme Court said in the famous case of Bellas Hess, a big mail order catalog house, the Supreme Court said the States may not impose a tax on mail order catalog houses because it would constitute an undue burden on commerce, interstate commerce, as prohibited by the Constitution, and would also be a violation of the due process clause of the 14th amendment. That was in 1967. Nobody can do anything because the Supreme Court said they could not. In 1992 in the case of Quill versus North Dakota, the Supreme Court reversed half of that and said, ``We no longer believe that the imposition of a tax by the States on mail order houses is a violation of due process.'' Since the determination as to what burdens interstate commerce can be determined by Congress, it is now up to Congress to pass a law, if they choose, that allows the States to impose this tax on this roughly 825 mail order houses. So in 1992, the Supreme Court said, ``Congress, it's up to you. If you want to help the States and the States want to impose this sales tax collection burden on the mail order houses, like they do on that poor Main Street merchant, Congress is going to have to pass a law enabling them to do it.'' So it has only been since that 1992 Supreme Court decision that we have had the authority to allow the States to do this. Mr. President, if we cannot pass this, I hope I do not hear anymore whining, groaning, moaning, and gnashing of teeth about unfunded mandates on the States when you refuse to help the States collect a legitimate tax to deal with unfunded mandates and a whole host of other problems. And if this bill does not pass, I hope I do not hear any moaning about the poor small business people in this country, how we ought to do something for the small business people. Everybody is always willing to do something for small business people as long as it does not affect big business people. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from Ray Jones, owner of Long Beach Yacht Sales, Long Beach, CA; a letter from Mamie R. Willis, Portland, TN, the sad recipient of a pretty good sized order only to find out that she owed the sales tax; White Furniture Co. in my own home State from Debbie White, who talks about how competitively unfair it is for her to have to charge sales tax on furniture sold all over town and people ordering furniture from mail order from an ordinary citizen, John Dix, who bought a house full of furniture in North Carolina, almost $10,000 worth, and suddenly was slapped with a tax bill of $700 that he and his wife never dreamed even existed. If you want to stop all of that, fine.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, let me, first of all, thank my very distinguished colleague from Florida, a former Governor, as was I, who fully understands the problem the States are going to have with unfunded mandates, but also for his very perceptive comments about the legislation. Now, Mr. President, let me make just a couple of observations. I see the Senator from Michigan awaits recognition, so I will not be long. But the Senator from Florida has just told you about some of the budget constraints on them because of the Medicaid Program, but there are a whole host of others. This bill has the potential for $169 million a year for the State of Florida. That is not beanbag either. And I promise you the Governor of Florida favors this legislation. I promise you the Governor of virtually every State in this Nation favors this legislation. As I said, every mayor, every county executive favors it. But the point that must not be lost sight of is we are not imposing anything. We are simply saying to the States, if you choose to do this, it is your prerogative. If you do not, that is also your prerogative. But we are also saying that if you do not have a sales tax in your State, you cannot charge it. There are five States in this country that have no sales tax. This bill would not apply to them. They would not be able to charge this because they do not have a tax that they tax their own citizens with, and therefore they could not tax citizens of other States. How many times have you heard in this body that the reason for the big revolution on November 8 was people are tired of being told what to do. They want somebody to listen to them. They want to have some discretion over their own lives and what they want to do. Now, here is a classic case of doing precisely that. We are saying to the States we are going to enable you to help yourself if you choose. But that is your discretion, not ours. So how can anybody quarrel with that? If you vote for this and you do not personally approve of it, go tell your Governor I voted for it to give you the discretion. But if you do not want to do it, that is OK with me. Mr. ABRAHAM addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.