Christopher Shays: “the Meehan-Shays bill provides for a soft money ban. It recognizes that sham issue ads. It are truly campaign ads and…”

“the Meehan-Shays bill provides for a soft money ban. It recognizes that sham issue ads. It are truly campaign ads and treats them as campaign ads. It codifies Beck and improves FEC disclosure and enforcement. The legislation provides that we put a ban on unsolicited franked mass mailings 6 months to the election, that is May on, and makes it clear that foreign money and fund-raising on government property are illegal. It presently is not illegal to raise soft money from foreigners or on federal property. Believe it or not, it is not illegal. We make sure that people know it is. I would just reiterate that we are prepared to vote right now on the commission bill. We have debated it long and hard, and pointed out when we debated the White proposal as a standing substitute, that we agreed with many of the merits, as long as we took a stand now to deal with soft money, deal with the sham issue ads, codify Beck and so on. So we are prepared to support the Dingell-Maloney amendment to the reform bill, the Meehan-Shays bill, and I hope we can move forward on this because I know we have lots more amendments to deal with that Members would like to introduce.”