Political Quotes

“I rise, not to discuss this subject, but to discuss another. I had a placeholder at 5:30 to introduce four amendments to this bill. But knowing that the proponents of the bill would very much like to have it passed without amendment, I simply would like to make a statement about these amendments and then hope to work on a bipartisan basis to achieve some consensus and propose them later. Mr. President, the amendments I was going to propose were in an area of congressional reform, which is as important as any area in this bill. It is campaign spending reform. I think campaign spending reform actually is more important, because it has so solidly conditioned the atmosphere of the public with respect to campaigns. I was going to propose four amendments, the first, on spending limits. As I understood it, there was substantial objection to the public finance aspect of spending limits. The amendment I would propose would contain the spending limits of the prior Senate bill. In other words, the limit per State would be based on voting-age population. It would range from a high of $8.1 million in a large State such as California and a low of $1.5 million in the smallest State.”