Christopher Shays: “They cannot use soft money to pay off a hard-money debt. That is simply not true. This bill is different. Our bill is…”

“They cannot use soft money to pay off a hard-money debt. That is simply not true. This bill is different. Our bill is different than it was because a funny thing happened. The Senate got to look at our bill and they made some changes. They added the Levin amendment, which allows soft money, no more than $10,000 if a State allows it, not for Federal elections, and it cannot be used for any campaigns. That is what they do. So the Levin amendment makes our bill different. Then we have the Snow-Jeffords amendment in the Senate which says 60 days to an election. So that is why, in fact, the bill is different. The bill is different because the Senate changed it, and we want a bill similar to what the Senate has done.”