James Davis: “I have never been so ashamed as I am tonight of the tactic that is being deployed to deprive both Democrats and…”

“I have never been so ashamed as I am tonight of the tactic that is being deployed to deprive both Democrats and Republicans from having a serious debate in taking up campaign finance reform. Relegating this issue to a series of very limited debates is depriving both Republicans and Democrats the opportunity to take up and pass the McCain-Feingold bill which closes one of the gaping loopholes in our system today, soft money, and forces outside third party groups to put their names on their ads. Those who have taken control of this process tonight are standing up for the obscene amount of moneys that are flooding into our campaigns today, that really a stop ought to be brought to. Let me give my colleagues an example about the freshman campaign finance reform bill we brought up. These outside third party groups objected to our bill, similarly the McCain-Feingold bill. They said, ``If you force us to put our names on these ads, we won't run these ads.'' Well, that is exactly what the bill was all about, and by adopting this masquerade tonight when we are supposed to be debating campaign finance reform but we are really not, we are depriving the American public of the chance to make sure those ads have their names on them and to ban soft money. The American people are watching, they care deeply about this issue. We need take up and debate campaign finance reform.”