Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act - Motion to Proceed - Continued

INTERNET TAX NONDISCRIMINATION ACT-MOTION TO PROCEED-CONTINUED

Mr. WYDEN. What concerns me is that both the 1998 definition and the proposal of the Senator from Tennessee essentially discriminates against the future because the future is about broadband, particularly for rural areas, for job creation, and highly skilled jobs. If you use the 1998 definition, or essentially the Senator's proposal for just Internet access-I emphasis that is all we are talking about, Internet access-what you will have is a situation where folks could get Internet access through cable and those folks end up essentially getting a free ride. But if you get the Internet access and future DSL, you are going to get taxed.

That is why Senator McCain and I and others would like to essentially continue the 7-year path we have had which is to promote technological neutrality-not to advantage one technology against another.

On the question of Internet access, which is what the President talked about yesterday where he said he doesn't want to see Internet access get taxed, that is what is in the McCain proposal. That is what I was trying to do. Unfortunately, that is not in the Senator's proposal or in the 1998 definition.
What will happen is this country will have the technology policy that discriminates against the future and discriminates against the field in which it is going to create highly skilled jobs.
By the way, cable isn't going to be serving those rural areas. It is going to be broadband and DSL which serves them.
I very much appreciate the Senator from Arizona yielding me this time. We have clarified an important concept. Both in the 1998 definition that the Senator from Tennessee said he would be for or his compromise, in my view, would have the Senate taking a position with respect to the future of the Internet and with respect to the future of technology that would not be in the public interest.

I thank my colleague from Arizona for yielding me the time.

I wrap up by way of saying I am going to continue to work with the Senator from Tennessee who has been very thoughtful and generous with his time. We can find a common ground.

I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
BREAK IN TEXT

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, again, I want to make it clear to the Senator from Tennessee, I am anxious to work with him. But what we have seen, essentially, in this iteration of the debate, is a dusting off of the same arguments we have heard on the floor of the Senate in the past, that somehow this is going to result in extraordinary losses of revenue.
For example, in 1997, we were told by a number of the organizations at the State and local level that this was going to produce massive losses of revenue. In fact, the exact quote is: Our efforts, the efforts of Senator McCain and I, and others, in 1997, would lead to a collapse of the State and local revenue system. The very next year, the year after we passed our first moratorium on multiple and discriminatory Internet taxes, we saw revenue go up $7 billion. So we have had essentially all of these dire projections, these calamitous projections year after year-and I put them all in the RECORD-and they have not come to pass.

The reason they have not come to pass is that nobody is talking about the Internet getting a free ride. All we have said, from the very beginning, is that under this legislation you have to treat the online world like you treat the offline world.

When I came to the floor of the Senate with the distinguished chairman of the Commerce Committee on this more than 7 years ago-and folks probably found this subject even more difficult then than they do now; I know that is hard to believe-we said: Look, if you buy the newspaper-essentially "snail mail"-you are not paying any taxes, but if you buy the newspaper in the interactive edition, you pay a tax.

That was discriminatory. All we have tried to do over the last 7 years is essentially keep that principle in place and allow it to evolve with the technology. So for 7 years this has been about technology neutrality and dealing with these questions of State and local finance. The States have not lost money as a result of our making sure that you are not going to see multiple and discriminatory taxes on Internet access.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.