Christopher Shays: “I just appreciate what he and his fellow freshmen have done. They have had an important role in helping us. They could…”

“I just appreciate what he and his fellow freshmen have done. They have had an important role in helping us. They could have an even more important role instead of giving the Senate an excuse to vote against campaign finance reform if their amendment fails, their substitute, that they then vote for our bill to enable it to have more support in the House and more impact in the Senate. The bottom line is that we have two loopholes in our campaign law. One is soft money, the unlimited sums contributed by individuals, corporations, labor unions, and other interest groups. The gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson) and his colleagues deal with part of that. They ban soft money on the federal level. But they do not ban soft money on the State level for federal elections, and that will still allow corporations and labor unions to provide unlimited sums through corporate treasury money and union dues money. We shut that off. The other thing they do not deal with are the sham issue ads. We do not outlaw them. We just simply call them what they are, campaign ads.”