Mark Pryor: “I thank my colleague from Rhode Island for his great leadership not just on this issue but many issues. But this is…”

“I thank my colleague from Rhode Island for his great leadership not just on this issue but many issues. But this is certainly a very important issue. I rise today to the lend my voice to support campaign finance reform and specifically the DISCLOSE Act. I want to come back to the phrase ``lend my voice'' in just a minute. The DISCLOSE Act--a lot of times, people back home hear about these bills that are 500 pages long or 2,000 pages long. This one is barely 20 pages long. It is really about 19 pages and 4 lines long. This is a short bill, very concise, very to the point. I am for it. I am for even broader campaign finance reform, and let me give you one example of why I support campaign finance reform. There has been too much money in Federal politics for a long time. This did not just start last year or even 5 years ago, this has been building over a long period of time. When I ran for attorney general in my State in 1998, I raised and spent somewhere around $800,000. That may not sound like a lot of money, and certainly in a Federal race it is not a lot of money, but that got the job done. I had a Republican opponent. We fought it out. She was a very worthy opponent. We had debates, and we sort of barnstormed around the State. It was wonderful. In 2002, 4 years later, I decided to run for the Senate. That year I had to raise somewhere in the neighborhood--I do not have the figures in front of me but a little bit over $4 million.…”