John Doolittle: “I just love the circuitous reasoning here. The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) just said they have no impact…”

“I just love the circuitous reasoning here. The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) just said they have no impact whatsoever on these voter guides, and then he went on to talk about sham issue ads and how those are bad and, of course, we have got to ban sham issue ads. Well, the point is are they sham issue ads or is this the constitutional right of people to speak? Under Buckley versus Valeo and all the cases that have followed, this is people having their constitutional right to speak. They are not subject to regulation by the FEC. And yet this bill makes them subject to regulation arguably by causing them to hedge and trim and fashion their language in such a way that the federal czar cannot intervene and sanction them for things that they said. All I am saying is let us have a bright-line test so that nobody is in doubt as to what the standard is. If they say vote for or vote against or if in some way they convey that clearly to vote for or vote against, that is prohibited and subject to regulation under the present law. We do not want the situation, though, where the author of the voter guide is subjectively determined, after the fact, to have crossed that line. We just think, why put people who are American citizens exercising their constitutional rights, why put them in jeopardy? For that reason, I object to the present language.”