Asa Hutchinson: “I want to recognize my friend, the gentleman from Montana [Mr. Hill], for his leadership on this very important issue.…”

“I want to recognize my friend, the gentleman from Montana [Mr. Hill], for his leadership on this very important issue. He has worked very diligently and hard on the campaign finance reform task force that has produced the bipartisan Campaign Integrity Act of 1997, and I want to congratulate him and thank him for his comments and associate myself with those comments on this key area of reform. I also want to compliment my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have joined together in a bipartisan fashion to formulate this very important step forward in an incremental fashion to accomplishing significant campaign finance reform legislation. I hope that as a result of all of our efforts we can do something good for the American people. As I sit here in Congress now and think about some of the objections that are raised and also some of the urgings to bring this legislation to the floor, I cannot help but think that as we fight this battle together, there are supporters and detractors of campaign finance reform legislation on both sides of the aisle. We have got good friends on the other side that support this, we have opponents on the other side; and the same thing on the Republican side of the aisle. We have to forget pointing fingers at each other and move toward working together to accomplish this. I think that we can do that. There are other people who say, well, let us just have campaign finance reform legislation, but let us do not ban soft money.”