Rick Allen: “I feel like I am in wonderland. This is supposedly a debate on campaign reform but the vote is rigged, the process is…”

“I feel like I am in wonderland. This is supposedly a debate on campaign reform but the vote is rigged, the process is rigged. And one way my colleagues can tell that is the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson) and I, who spent 6 months working with freshmen on both sides of the aisle to develop a bipartisan approach to this problem, are now on opposite sides. This bill that is coming to the House today is not a bipartisan bill. The fact is that there are ways to deal with this issue. We can deal with it the way the freshmen did in a bipartisan way over a period of months. We can deal with it the way the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) have dealt with this bill, in a bipartisan way over a period of years. This is a sham. It is a fraud. We started our freshman process by agreeing that we have to take the poison pills off the table and this bill has a poison pill. It has the biggest of all. That is a worker gag rule, a rule that is aimed unfairly at the men and women in this country who contribute a few bucks a month. It promotes big money in politics. It continues big money in politics. It is aimed directly at working Americans.”