Heidi Heitkamp

Ms. HEITKAMP

Ms. HEITKAMP. First, I wish to thank all of my colleagues who came here today to see me offer my first speech on the floor of the Senate. It is a great group, a bipartisan group, and I believe our new class is exactly that--a group of great people who are very bipartisan and very willing to work to solve America's problems. I am proud to be part of this freshman class in the Senate. People here all think they know each other, and this is absolutely true, but sometimes it is a good reminder to tell people about from where you come. I wish to spend a little time talking about my home State because I think it speaks a great deal about how I believe, how I vote, and who I am. I grew up in a small town in North Dakota. Many may think that means 90,000 people. No, it is 90 people. My family was one-tenth the population of that small town. When I was born, my mother had four kids, and the oldest was 2 and there were no twins. By the time my parents were done having children, there were seven children in 9 years. My dad was a seasonal construction worker, and my mom was a school cook and a janitor. Think about those occupations. My mom never let anyone be bullied. The worst thing a person could do, in my mother's eyes, was to pick on someone who couldn't defend themselves. We knew that was what our role would be throughout our entire lives. This is a value my six siblings and I carry with us. From my dad we learned about community and building community. My dad built the smallest VFW chapter in the country. He returned from World War II and knew they needed a place to gather, to provide support for veterans and for each other, and that needed to be in his community. He built the ballpark, he built the fire hall, was chief of the volunteer fire department for years, head of the VFW, and was someone who believed in the community. He believed that when Mrs. Poster needed her sidewalk shoveled so she could go to church, it was our job. It wasn't someone else's job. We didn't look around to see who would come; we picked up the shovel and we went down there. What do you learn from the place where you grew up? In Mantador, ND, as in communities all across this country, people gather at coffee tables usually at 7 o'clock, maybe 10:30 in the morning or maybe a little bit in the afternoon, and they talk about the problems of America. They talk about the problems of their community. There are many ideologies at that table--Democrats and Republicans; as we say in Mantador, there are Lutherans and Catholics; there are Green Bay fans and Vikings fans, which may be the most divisive issue. They gather together and solve all the problems of America, if we would only listen here in Washington, DC. More importantly, even though they have horrible fights, they get together and solve problems in their community. They figure out how to put up the Christmas lights on Main Street. They figure out how to fix the roof on the church, how to pass a school bond so they can expand classrooms. All across America, people work together. That is the spirit, and that is what I learned growing up in a small town in North Dakota--that we can accomplish things if we keep our eyes on the goals, if we understand and appreciate that we all come from different places and need to work together. Sometimes we are not going to agree, but we need to move forward. We need to work together to move this country forward. I wish to take a moment, and hopefully I won't get too emotional, but I want to think about this. We live in a country, an amazing country where the daughter of a school cook and janitor and a seasonal construction worker can stand on the floor of the Senate and address this body. It is an amazing country, and we can never forget that value. But I never thought I would be here. What I mean by that is I never thought I would come to the Senate. Do you know why? North Dakota had Senator Conrad and Senator Dorgan--two giants who came to this body, spoke their minds, and represented their State. I knew they would always represent me. Then something happened: They became tired, frustrated, and moved on with their lives. They asked me to join this fight, the fight for North Dakota and the fight for our values. They asked me to step into their shoes. I am extraordinarily proud to be here, extraordinarily proud to represent agriculture. What do I mean by that? We have frustration in farm country. There are 16 million jobs in agriculture. It is the bright spot on our economy, and it is helping to reduce our trade deficit. It is everything in my State. We have small farmers, small family farmers who must spend $1 million before they can even take a crop out of the ground. That is an average farmer in my State. That is how much it costs to engage in farming. When we don't have a farm bill that provides certainty and security for them, we not only hurt them and hurt American agriculture, we risk our secure food supply. So I came here to speak for North Dakota farmers. I came here to speak for an energy policy. This is an amazing place. You hear everybody say we believe in ``all of the above.'' In North Dakota, we do ``all of the above.'' We not only are rich in natural gas, oil, and coal, but we also have geothermal, ethanol, and biofuels. We are one of the leading producers in the country of wind energy. We get it. But policies in this body and in this city that provide certainty to our energy producers need to be established. I am here to address the concerns we have. If we do not have policies that address issues of redundancy and reliability in energy, we will fall further and further behind. And these are new technologies and great innovations that are coming down the pike. We need to address those. We need to move forward. I came here to speak about reasonable fiscal solutions. We heard a debate--a good debate--about the effects of sequestration. We know we have challenges. On both sides of the aisle, there is a sense of purpose to change the trajectory of this debt. We are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend. We have a national debt that is almost equal to our gross domestic product. We have interest payments that are the third highest payment we make here at a time of record-low interest rates. This is unsustainable and it needs to be addressed, but it needs to be addressed responsibly. Like many of you, I have my own personal passions. They involve senior citizens--making sure we provide them with a secure future, but also a secure future for future senior citizens. Veterans, I care deeply about the condition of veterans benefits and what we are going to do to reward and truly thank the 1 percent in this country who step up to serve us. I have a great concern for people living in Indian Country, what we are going to do to make sure they enjoy a future in our State. If we take every problem of America and multiply it times 3, those are the problems in Indian Country that need to be addressed. I care about Head Start. I believe a Head Start investment is a smart investment. My colleagues might wonder, with all of these concerns and all of these issues, why I am standing today to talk about marketplace fairness. Well, we are going to hear a lot about a case called Quill v. North Dakota. What my colleagues may not know is the whole caption of that case is Quill v. North Dakota ex rel. MK Heidi Heitkamp. Over 20 years ago, I heard the despair of Main Street businesses. I had a woman come to me who ran a little wallpaper shop in her town. At the time--and I don't know if it is true today--she had to buy these wallpaper books from the companies, so there was an investment in presenting this product. People would come to her, they would open the book, and she would help them do a little interior design. She would work through the fabrics and all of this, and then they walked out and she never saw them again. She knew and I knew what they did was go home, look in their catalogues, take the lot number she had given them, and then order the wallpaper. Maybe--maybe--they ordered it more cheaply than just the sales tax, but she wanted to know from me, when I was tax commissioner, how I could justify the 5 percent disadvantage she was having. She wanted to know what I could do to level the playing field so she at least had a chance, she at least could compete. Well, I listened. And it wasn't just that woman who ran the wallpaper business, it was the furniture stores, and it was the Main Street office supply stores. So we initiated a lawsuit called Quill. For those who think this is going to unduly burden small business, I want them to think about this: In my State we sued Quill because they were the third highest retailer of office products in my State--the third highest. It was pretty remarkable. Yet they were enjoying this advantage of not having to collect sales tax. So we took the case to the Supreme Court. Some might say that didn't turn out very well for us. But let me cite some basic information about the court case because at the time there was a sense there was not due process jurisdiction if one didn't have physical contacts in their State. A lot of us in this body are lawyers, and we know that long-arm statute had at the time moved on. The question was what in fact would be the contact, and could we, in tax jurisdiction and in sales tax collection, get the court to agree that due process was not disturbed by an extension of regulation and responsibility to Internet sales and at that time catalogue sellers. The court agreed with that piece, but when they were challenged with the argument did North Dakota's imposition affect interstate commerce-- and they heard a lot of arguments we will hear today about a lot of jurisdictions, it is not very streamlined--they said: We aren't comfortable. But you know where this belongs. It belongs where the Constitution puts this discussion. It belongs in the Senate. It belongs in the House of Representatives. It belongs to Congress because Congress has the obligation of regulating interstate commerce. So here we are almost 20 years later--over 20 years later--since the court case was decided and still debating this issue. This issue has grown tremendously because of the explosion of Internet sales. Remote sellers are getting bigger and our Main Street businesses continue to suffer and continue to struggle. We will hear a lot today about how this bill discriminates. We will hear a lot about how it is not fair. We will hear how it affects small business. Every time we hear that argument, I want my colleagues, the Members of this body, to think just for a moment that you are that one woman with the wallpaper books or you are the small drugstore trying to sell candles to supplement the prescription drug business you have. You are that small business, and what you see is that you have the burden of collecting this sales tax and you are building your community. You take out a little ad in your school newspaper to help that school newspaper or an ad for the scoreboard down at the high school. When they come around and ask for a little money for the fire hall, you chip in. So you are building the community, and you are there, and you are employing people there and wondering why this government can authorize and approve discrimination against you, and why you have to fight so hard. We will hear a lot today about small businesses that operate on the margin; right? Retail has a small margin. Exactly. That is exactly the point. That small margin is just as small for that Main Street business, but they have a 5-percent disadvantage. So today and tomorrow we will hear a lot about this bill. I know feelings are running fairly high for people who oppose it. But when we hear discrimination and we hear it is not the role of this body to take this on, understand this: It is exactly the role of this body. It is exactly the obligation we have--to level the playing field, to make things fair, to respond to the needs of our community. And that is why we are fighting so hard. That is why we are working so hard on this bill. I think we are going to get it done, but let's just think for a moment. We have taken a couple of votes. They have been pretty good, lopsided votes for us. If we fail in moving this bill after it has such tremendous support, how do we do the tough stuff? How do we do the deficit reduction we need to do? How do we do the tough stuff that comes here? Let's do this. Let's level the playing field. Let's make this responsive to those Main Street businesses who every day struggle and are simply asking for justice. They are simply asking for equity. I yield the floor.

Ms. HEITKAMP

Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, I would like to make a couple of points on foreign corporations. We already collect sales tax and impose use tax on foreign corporations all the time. In fact, North Dakota does require probating so long as they have a physical presence in North Dakota. On the issue of New Hampshire and Montana, I will bet I could find small businesses that are in New Hampshire and in Montana that already collect sales and use taxes for other States. The only thing that this does is change the rules regarding what is required on nexus. What is the single thing that happens that requires a collection responsibility? For years, not just in the Quill case, but National Bellas Hess said there has to be a physical presence. The world has changed since we have physical presence. We now say economic presence is adequate for equal protection to be satisfied. What we are asking for is that we look at economic presence the same way we do across the boundaries and create fairness for mainstream businesses. What do I mean by that? I mean Main Street businesses that every day compete against Internet sellers unfairly, Main Street business that are struggling, Main street businesses that put ads in fliers for local schools and contribute to their community but yet cannot survive because they cannot afford a 7-percent or 8-percent or 9-percent disadvantage in the marketplace. It is not fair. It is not fair to Main Street. We need to recognize the reality. We have heard about the global economy. My colleague is right, the economy has changed. How we do business doesn't depend on physical presence anymore, it is economic presence, and $1 million is a lot of economic presence in the marketplace. So I yield the remainder of my time back to the Senator from Illinois.