Floor Statements

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

There's been some misunderstanding about what my amendment does. I welcome the opportunity to clarify the intention of the amendment.

I realize that Members of the House have different views about the current U.S. relationship with the Egyptian Government and the Egyptian military. This amendment is not designed to affect the current military-to-military relationship with Egypt. It is not intended to prevent U.S. participation in the Multinational Forward Observer mission in the Sinai, in other words, the peacekeeping mission. It is not intended to curtail the activities of the Office of Military Cooperation. It is not intended to prevent U.S. military exercises with the Egyptian military. And it is certainly not intended to prevent U.S. marines from providing security at our diplomatic facilities in Egypt.

My amendment is quite simple. It's intended to prevent the U.S. military from engaging in offensive operations in Egypt and to prevent the Defense Department from providing assistance to Egyptian paramilitary or terrorist groups.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I appreciate the words from my good colleague from Arkansas, and I certainly appreciate the service that he's provided to our country and the service that others have provided there in the mission of keeping the peace.

If we count the two chairmen of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Egypt has been led by five different men in the past 2\1/2\ years. So five of them in 2\1/2\ years, only one of them democratically elected. I would say this is not a stable environment, and so my constituents have concerns that we don't escalate military activity in the region.

My good friend is correct about the intention of the amendment that I have offered. My amendment, again, is intended to prevent the U.S. military from engaging in offensive operations in Egypt and to prevent the Defense Department from providing assistance to the Egyptian paramilitary or terrorist groups. It's certainly not intended to prevent the peacekeeping missions or the current military missions there or, most of all, protecting our embassies. We want to make sure that we allow the service of our good marines over there in Egypt.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman from Arkansas.

To allay your concerns and the concerns of the gentlelady who spoke, the intentions are the intentions that have been mentioned here, and the verbiage that was allowed in the amendment process was very difficult to convey the intention. It would be our intention to work through the process going forward in conference or otherwise to ameliorate the language and to ameliorate your concerns.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to talk about some of the legal products that you can buy in the United States that are made with hemp.

You can buy paper, clothes, rope, food, hundreds of products. Even car panels are made out of hemp. But the great tragedy is that we cannot grow hemp in Kentucky. We can't grow industrial hemp anywhere in the United States, and so we have to import it. Where do we import it from? It comes from China. It comes from Canada. It comes from Europe.

There are many uses for hemp. There are 30 countries on this globe that can grow hemp. In fact, I believe every industrialized country in the world grows hemp. Farmers in Kentucky grew hemp during World War II. Hemp was grown in large quantities in my State of Kentucky. Canvas and rope made from hemp helped with the war effort.

So this is not about drugs. This is not about a drugs bill. This is about jobs. And for Kentucky farmers, we need the opportunity. We need the opportunity

to compete globally in a global market, and we shouldn't be denied this outlet for another productive crop in Kentucky.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to implore my fellow Congressmen to wake up. Can't we see what's happening?

In just the past month, we discovered that the NSA is snooping on millions of innocent Americans using the PATRIOT Act. Congress wrote the PATRIOT Act. The IRS is targeting conservative organizations using the Tax Code. Congress created the Tax Code. And the DHS has stockpiled 200 million hollow-point bullets. Congress just funded DHS last week. Do you want me to be surprised? I'm not surprised. I'm outraged. But what's happening here? In each case of executive overreach, Congress gave an inch and the executive branch took a mile.

When our civil liberties are stolen, Congress investigates and expresses righteous indignation, but all too often Congress then turns around and funds and enables this unconstitutional behavior. If we don't reverse this trend, we can kiss our civil liberties good-bye.

The Constitution embodies American principles that men and women fought and died to protect. We swore an oath to protect it. Madam Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to reflect on the damage that CISPA, the PATRIOT Act, and the NDAA have wrought on our civil liberties and implore my fellow Members to uphold the constitutional rights they swore to protect. Don't yield one inch.

I rise today in strong opposition to the recent Supreme Court decision in Maryland v. King. As Justice Scalia warned in his brilliant dissent, a consequence of this week's ruling is that your DNA can now ``be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, or for whatever reason.''

On the day I was sworn in, I pledged that I would be a staunch defender of individual liberties and of our Constitution, an unwavering advocate for freedom. This includes upholding the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution that protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures.

I strongly disagree with the five Justices in this case who held that DNA collection is just ``another metric of identification,'' like ``a name or a fingerprint.'' It is not. It's an intrusive invasion of privacy and property that should never be allowed before a person has even been tried, convicted, or served a warrant.

As my Senate colleague Ted Cruz warned, ``unchecked government power and intrusive personal databases . . . pose real risks to our liberty.''

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the topic of my Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in opposition to H.R. 684 and S. 743, the Marketplace Fairness Act, otherwise known as the Internet sales tax. Or as I call it, the interstate commerce sales tax.

I'm concerned that this new tax on American consumers passed the Senate too quickly without enough debate and has the quiet support of several Members here in the House. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues opposed to the bill here in the House have taken a quiet wait-and-see attitude. They don't want to rock the boat, so to speak. Well, it's time to quit being quiet on this issue. The American public deserves a full and open debate on this bill before any legislative action is taken in this body.

This evening, my colleagues and I will begin that debate. I'm confident that when Members and their constituents grasp the full ramifications of this onerous piece of legislation, they will oppose it as well.

Many States in this country are in dire financial straits. They've lavished overly generous pension plans on their State employees and offered tax credits and financial incentives to their favorite businesses. They've promised more than they can deliver, while sometimes letting essential services go neglected. State governments bear the responsibility for their financial situations; yet they're looking to the Federal Government for a bailout. Make no mistake, this Internet tax is the bailout they're seeking. Without raising taxes, State governments can expect billions of dollars of Americans' hard- earned money to flow to their treasuries if this bill passes. And how would this happen? By passing a bill that proclaims to impose fairness.

Who else is for this bill? Large retailers. They've got lots of representatives up here talking to us. They're on the Internet and they're off the Internet, but they're for this bill. They're weary of competing with small and nimble businesses. And that's natural to want to have economic barriers to entry because it's an economic fact that in the absence of innovation in a market with no barriers to entry, profits go to zero in the long run.

But how do we create barriers to entry in the United States? How do we compete? Through innovation.

America is the country of innovation. You can invent something. You can make a new piece of music. You can be nicer to your employees than the other company is. Or you can come up with a new, more efficient way of manufacturing your products. But I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that sending representatives to Washington, D.C. to impose financial hardships on your competitors is not the American way.

Some have said that this bill is about States' rights, and I'm a strong proponent of States' rights; but this bill does nothing to protect States' rights. In fact, this bill changes the very fabric, the constitutional fabric of the United States of America by subjecting people and businesses in one State to the taxes and regulations of another State. This is unprecedented. For the first time in history, this bill would grant States jurisdictions beyond their physical borders. If this bill passes, we'll have a virtual United States of America where borders no longer mean anything.

Justice Marshall ruled that the power to tax is the power to destroy, and we were reminded last week by the IRS's admission that the power to tax is the power to harass.

I urge other Members of Congress to consider the dangerous implications of granting individual States authority over individuals in other States.

Before my colleagues get into the details of this new tax, I'd like to point out that no one, not a single person, has argued that this bill will help our

economy. Even proponents of this bill must concede that it increases taxes on American consumers and adds burdensome regulations to small businesses. That's where this debate will begin and end. This bill is bad for our economy.

I now yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Thank you to the gentleman from Florida. He makes an excellent point on the sales tax audit burden on small businesses.

I'd like to give you two examples of companies in my district. These are, literally, mom-and-pop shops. One of them, the wife is the CFO and the husband runs the company; and in the other one, the father owns the company and the son works there every day. They were both subjected to sales tax audits in one State.

Let me tell you how the sales tax audit begins and how it ends. So the way it began was with a phone call. And that, for many small businesses, is the worst phone call of their life, of their business life, because they know what they're going to have to endure.

So let me give you the example of this farm store that underwent a sales tax audit. He was required to prove that every sales tax-exempt sale that he made in the previous years was, in fact, exempt from sales tax under Kentucky State law.

The sales tax auditors will pursue you to the end of the Earth if they think there's another dime to be found, so they pursued him with much vigor. He spent weeks looking for records trying to prove that these were, in fact, sales tax-exempt, because if they were not, he owed the sales tax on all of those sales.

How does this kind of audit end?

It ends with a white flag. There's no way to prove, there's no way to find every shred of paper for every transaction that you've ever had in the past years, so you finally settle with the sales tax auditors.

Can you imagine that? You'd be open to sales tax audits, which I've just described, in 45 different States. Now, maybe it only happens once every 10 years in your State; maybe that's the average. But, on average, you'll get 4\1/2\ sales tax audits a year, which brings me to the next small business in my district, where the wife is the CFO.

This business was subjected to a sales tax audit and an IRS audit in the same year, in fact, this year. This business owner came to me and said, Can you pass a bill that would keep me from having to go through two audits in the

same year? I mean, it's just not fair. I've got a State tax audit and a Federal audit in the same year. This is killing my business. My wife can't work on anything but these audits.

Can you imagine if that business is now subjected to 45 audits in 45 different States? I just can't let this individual down. And what we're talking about, sales tax audits, it's up to the States to decide what's sales tax exempt and what's not, and every State has a different rule.

And the only way to enforce these rules and to know if you've complied--is it for a farm? is it for education? is it for resale?--is for the retailer to submit all of those sales records, information, if you will, on the individual that purchased them to the State where the individual lives.

This is ripe for corruption, just as we saw with the IRS recently. Now they know what music you've downloaded, what movies you've downloaded. Maybe you bought some gun magazines. They're going to know about all of this, and it's just ripe for corruption and for exploitation.

I'd like to yield to my good friend and colleague from the State of Montana (Mr. Daines).

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my colleagues that Mr. Daines represents the great State of Montana, which operates with a lean government and has, so far, got by without a sales tax. That's the great thing about these United States of America. We have 50 States competing with different models for how to run their governments. This tax, as I call it, the interstate commerce tax, is more about harmonizing tax laws across the United States and taking away the competition between States.

Now, my fair State of Kentucky has a sales tax of 6 percent. But I don't think it's fair that we impose a sales tax on the State of Montana when

they've worked very hard not to have one. Their businesses aren't subjected ever to a sales tax audit if they don't have to collect a sales tax. So I think he's too modest in not reminding us that he's coming from the State of Montana that has no sales tax.

This Marketplace Fairness Act could be called the ``Offshore Online Retailers Act,'' because, while as Congressmen and Senators we can force the States to collect these taxes, we can't go into other countries and force them to collect taxes. So what will happen is a lot of our online retailers will move across the border where they enjoy the advantage of collecting those sales taxes, and there's no way to reach them and impose that tax upon them.

Now, some say this is not a new tax, don't call it a new tax, while others say that it's not a tax increase, don't call this a tax increase. Well, I say if it quacks like a duck and it walks like a duck, it's a duck. I'm new to Congress, but if at the end of a transaction, I have less money in my wallet and the government has the money in their coffers, I call it a tax.

Now, some will say, look, consumers already owe this tax. At the end of the year on April 15, they are supposed to pay the sales tax that wasn't collected in other States. But do you know what? That's just not true. They don't owe a sales tax because States long ago conceded that they don't have any authority to tax an event which occurs outside of their physical borders. They just can't do it without a physical presence. But States resented that they couldn't tax in other States, so they created something called a use tax. I say the use tax is actually a contrived tax. They know they can't tax an event outside of their borders, so they try to tax an event inside of their borders, which is the use of a product. But it's contrived in the sense that it's only owed if you didn't pay a tax on it somewhere else already.

So what kind of a tax is that? I'll tell you what it is: it's an uncollectible tax. And the States haven't exerted much effort in collecting that tax. We are not here to become tax collectors for the States. I just want to remind the States that.

Also, I want to talk a little bit more about my district. A large portion of my district is rural. We don't have stores to buy everything that we would like to be able to purchase. A lot of folks go online. A lot of folks are disabled and can't get to the store to go online. This is a regressive tax. This will punish those individuals who have the least mobility because they're online shopping. It also diminishes opportunities for businesses in rural areas by taxing those businesses that weren't taxed before that don't have a ready marketplace immediately in their vicinity.

Look, we've heard from Big Business, we've heard from lobbyists, and we've heard from State governments. But there's somebody absent from this debate so far, and it's our constituents. I think we need to hear from them. And with that, and to address that issue, I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Well, those comments bring up a very good point, and so do your comments. If this is a finger on the scale for higher taxes, States get to arbitrate and decide what gets taxed in their State. So right now we have exemptions for farm products and whatnot, but some States tax professional services in the transaction. And, of course, this bill opens up financial service transactions in one State to consumers in another State. But where does this end?

Senator Baucus stated in the other Chamber that not just the financial world would be open to taxes on their services, but also possibly attorneys, architects, engineers and accountants. One can only imagine, by not asking the States to do anything to simplify their system in return for the benefit of having out-of-state businesses collect taxes for them, we're giving carte blanche to the States to impose even more taxes on business.

Again, I think I'd like to hear a few more comments from our constituents.

I thank the gentleman from Florida for sharing that with us. I think all too often we don't listen as much to our constituents as we should; and on this issue, it's very important because those are in fact the people who are going to bear the burden of this new tax. And I will call it a new tax. It's unprecedented in our Constitution and in the history of this country.

I want to end this discussion tonight the way it began and the way I said it would end. No single individual who's a proponent of this tax has told me that it's going to help the economy. In fact, when I point out that it will increase taxes on consumers, when it will increase the burden on small businesses, and when it will apply pressure to offshore or online retailers, they all ultimately concede those points. This is not good for our country.

The resistance to this bill comes from our constituents, and it's also bipartisan as well. So hopefully by bringing light to this today, we will begin the conversation, begin the debate that all too often doesn't happen out in the open and shed some light on this issue.

I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the house do now adjourn.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

First, I'd like to recognize the great service of Congressman

Geoff Davis for the State of Kentucky. He served us well, and those are some very big shoes to fill.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Chairman Rogers, for the introduction.

Tonight I have in the gallery my family. My grandmother is here, my mother is here, and my four children, but most of all my wife, Rhonda, is here. I need to thank them for their loving support through all of this.

I'm honored to represent the great people of Kentucky's Fourth Congressional District. I'll be a staunch defender of the Constitution, an unwavering advocate for personal liberties, economic freedom, and fiscal responsibility. I look forward to working with all of the Members of this House of Congress to advance these great American principles, thereby ensuring a prosperous future for our country.

Thank you. May God bless America.