Christopher Shays: “I want to address the Chamber on campaign finance reform and to just base some brief remarks about that. First, I wish…”

“I want to address the Chamber on campaign finance reform and to just base some brief remarks about that. First, I wish to express tremendous gratitude to the 104th Congress for the work it did on a bipartisan basis to pass Congressional accountability. Getting Congress under all the laws that we impose on the rest of the Nation was the first bill that the 104th Congress, the Congress of the last term, presented to President Clinton to sign, and it puts Congress under all the laws it exempted itself from, the civil rights laws, OSHA, fair pay provisions, a 40 hour workweek and so on. Now, some Members of Congress may not like all those laws, but the fact is that we imposed those laws on the rest of the Nation, and we need to make sure we abide by them ourselves. We will write better laws if we have to live by the laws that we impose on the rest of the Nation. That was the first bill we passed, and I think it is a major reform. Another reform was the gift ban.”