Christopher Shays: “Tonight this Chamber has the opportunity to vote for meaningful campaign finance reform. Tonight, Members of this House…”

“Tonight this Chamber has the opportunity to vote for meaningful campaign finance reform. Tonight, Members of this House will cast one of the most important votes of their careers in this House: To help restore integrity to our democratic system of government. That is what this debate is about tonight, to help restore some integrity to our democratic process. Mr. Speaker, the vote we will be casting tonight is on legislation that was introduced by Senator McCain and Senator Feingold in the Senate, and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) and myself in the House, along with a number of other sponsors. The McCain-Feingold bill in the Senate had a majority of Members who sought to support this legislation, but were not able to break the filibuster because they felt that the House would never deal with this issue, so why should the Senate take it up. But tonight, this House has the opportunity to pass the McCain-Feingold legislation, the Meehan- Shays legislation as it is referred to in the House. Mr. Speaker, this legislation bans soft money. It completely eliminates the soft money contributions, the unlimited sums from individuals, corporations, labor unions and other interest groups that go to the political parties.”