John Doolittle: “I would like to praise the House leadership unabashedly for making the decision they did and allowing this to go before…”

“I would like to praise the House leadership unabashedly for making the decision they did and allowing this to go before the House on a suspension calendar. I wholeheartedly endorse that decision. All of this folderol about the McCain-Feingold bill, it is a disastrous concept. It would hurt America. It would destroy our constitutional right to free speech. I hear such moral indignation from the other side, but when we see the myriad of campaign abuses written about, engaged in by one branch of government in particular, everything is so muted. I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that we have not properly diagnosed what the problem is in our campaign system. It is severely flawed, and we need to correct it, but rushing out here with a bill that everybody is afraid not to support, although I am happy not to support it, and many others, more than some might think, would be happy not to support it, I think we would be premature in bringing it up in that fashion. This needs to be thoroughly discussed. The procedure of the leadership, as adopted by the supermajority, is entirely appropriate because the subject of this bill would hurt our constitutional rights.”