James Davis: “But the freshman class of 1996, Democrats and Republicans, worked together on a bipartisan basis with the Shays-Meehan…”

“But the freshman class of 1996, Democrats and Republicans, worked together on a bipartisan basis with the Shays-Meehan bill to force the issue. We ultimately succeeded in bringing an open debate on this issue to the Floor of the House. We thought we had demonstrated the importance to the American people of taking up campaign finance reform, but once again the Republican leadership does not fully appreciate the magnitude of this issue. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the Shays-Meehan bill. We must ban soft money and find a way to regulate sham issue ads. Soft money contributions are exploding. The amount of money contributed to both political parties has grown at an enormous and unacceptable rate. In 1992 soft money accounted for $86 million. By 1996 it had increased to $260 million. In 1998, a nonpresidential election year, it increased to $193 million, twice the increase the previous year. We need to address this cancer. We need to sign the discharge petition, and have meaningful and timely debate on campaign finance reform.”