Ayotte: Nothing Fair About Main Street Fairness Act

When U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte came into town on Thursday morning, she made a stop on her tour to update the Merrimack Rotary Club on what's been happening in Washington.

Ayotte said she was glad to be home on a short holiday break for Easter, especially following an extra long budget voting session that went until around 5 a.m., where the Senate, after almost four years without doing so marked up a budget.

“I think it's very representative of many of the fiscal problems that we have in that if you don't budget, then how are you going to prioritize,” Ayotte said of what was missing in the last four years of not presenting a budget from the Senate.

Ayotte said while see is happy to finally see a budget come from the Senate, she could not vote in favor of it because it had almost a trillion dollars of new taxes and never balanced as far as she she could see.

The House budget on the other hand balanced after 10 years and the two spending plans represent very different fiscal visions for country, Ayotte said.

She said she hopes to come out of budget process, even with two different visions, with a larger overall fiscal plan to help support aid programs that need further assistance before they go bankrupt, like Medicare and Medicaid.

Ayotte said addressing the country's $17 trillion debt is necessary for our sake as well as the sake of sake of the future for our children.

"I'm the mother of a 5-year-old and an 8-year-old. That's my great motivation every day," Ayotte said of working the country out of debt.

In addition to her commentary on the budget, Ayotte also spoke to things that she's been fighting for or against in Washington including topics of sequestration, the medical device act and the Main Street Fairness Act to which Ayotte said “there is nothing fair about it.”

In the video above as Ayotte explains the Main Street Fairness Act – she likes to call the Online Tax Collection Act – which essentially requires online business to collect state taxes from the state where the online buyer lives. Under this act, Ayotte said in a state like New Hampshire, which chooses not to tax its shoppers, online business owners would become tax collectors for other states, going directly against the notion of the New Hampshire Advantage. She said the act would be a “bureaucratic nightmare" for businesses here.

As a senator from one of five states with no sales tax, Ayotte said she's been fighting diligently against this proposal, and both she and U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen voted against it.

Ayotte also spoke about her opposition to the medical device act, before opening the floor to questions from the audience.

Regarding the medical device act, Ayotte said this is another tax that would hurt New Hampshire in that companies that sell medical devices would be subject to a 2.3 percent tax on their annual revenue. During a recent count, there were at least 50 such companies in New Hampshire, including Atrium Medical in Hudson, which is in the process of preparing for a move to Merrimack.

Watch more from Ayotte's appearance above.