Lisa Murkowski: “the debate that we begin today on campaign finance reform must be prefaced with one question: To what extent, if any…”

“the debate that we begin today on campaign finance reform must be prefaced with one question: To what extent, if any, should the Federal Government regulate political speech in our country? The President has endorsed Senator McCain and Senator Feingold's campaign finance reform legislation. However, I cannot. Campaign finance reform debate is not just about politicians and their campaigns. At the core of this issue is the First Amendment. The government must tread lightly in attempts to place limitations on speech. The government can no more dictate how many words a newspaper can print than it can limit a political candidate's ability to communicate with his or her constituents The McCain-Feingold legislation bristles with over a dozen different restrictions on speech--provisions that, I believe, flagrantly violate the First Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court. I cannot overemphasize this point. George F. Will, in a Washington Post editorial stated of the McCain Feingold bill: Nothing in American history--not the left's recent campus speech codes,' not the right's depredations during the 1950s McCarthysim or the 1920s `red scare,' not the Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790s--matches the menace to the First Amendment posed by campaign `reforms' advancing under the protective coloration of political hygiene.'”