Sam Farr: “I am an author of one of the proposals for campaign finance reform, and I am not going to dwell on my particular bill.…”

“I am an author of one of the proposals for campaign finance reform, and I am not going to dwell on my particular bill. But I am going to point out that we certainly need to address this problem. The American public heard the President right here in this room just a few months ago ask us in all sincerity to deliver to him by July 4, our Nation's birthday, a campaign finance reform bill. Tomorrow we will be recessing for our Easter recess, for our homework back in our districts, and we do not return here until April 8, I think it is. So April, May is a month, June a month. We have about two-and-a-half months left after we get back to meet the President's deadline. What have we seen? Absolutely nothing. There is no committee hearing scheduled, there is no work in progress on a bipartisan effort. I want to point out that this campaign finance reform has to be bipartisan. It has to have four principles that I think are essential in any bill. It has to be fair. This bill cannot be designed to help the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party. It cannot have the favor of one party over the other. Second, the bill has to reduce the influence of special interests. We have to bring down the amounts that political action committees can contribute. We also have to limit large single donors.”