Rick Allen: “those of us who are freshmen experienced the 1996 elections in a different way. There was soft money involved in those…”

“those of us who are freshmen experienced the 1996 elections in a different way. There was soft money involved in those elections on a scale never before seen. Issue advocacy groups were participating in the election on a scale that has never happened before. Beginning in February, our Freshmen Task Force sat down and tried to figure out how we could pass real campaign finance reform in this session. We proposed a soft money ban. That bill is now H.R. 2183, the Campaign Integrity Act of 1997. It bans soft money, it provides new restrictions or new requirements for disclosure on issue advocacy, and it tightens up candidate disclosure. It is a good bill. It needs to come to the floor of this Congress for a vote. Mr. Speaker, I urge the Republican leadership and the other side not simply to keep investigating without legislating; bring this bill to the floor, and let us give the Members of this Congress a chance to do something besides investigate. Let us change the way we finance campaigns. Let us vote on the bill.”