[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 56 (Tuesday, April 23, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2859-S2861]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       FACING CHALLENGES TOGETHER

  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

[[Page S2860]]

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.

[[Page S2861]]

  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.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I am going to proceed on my leader 
time.

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