Victor Fazio: “clearly we do not all agree on how best to reform our present campaign system. Democrats wish to limit spending…”

“clearly we do not all agree on how best to reform our present campaign system. Democrats wish to limit spending, Republicans prefer a variety of other solutions, and there seem to be on both sides of the aisle, very honestly, a thousand variations of what to do. But surely, surely, all of us can agree on the need for full and complete disclosure of the money spent in the campaign system. Surely all of us can agree that the American people deserve to know where the money comes from and where it goes. As I indicated to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] a few minutes ago, we should give them nothing less. Now in the newspaper locally here today, the Washington Post, the first paragraph of a headline story on the front page, an unnamed corporate donor has put up $1.3 million to help the Republican Party broadcast coverage on its convention next month on the Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson's family channel, unnamed corporate donor. My friends across the aisle have said in the past that they support disclosure. Now is their chance to practice what they preach for we must approach this issue in a bipartisan way if we are going to get anywhere. Because the hidden money is a problem in our political system, in a few moments we will propose a motion to recommit which adopts a definition of independent expenditure which is virtually identical to that definition found in the Smith-Meehan bipartisan bill.”