Kim Reynolds: “Mr. Chairman, throughout this day I have listened to many of my colleagues rail on the evils of soft money. That is why…”

“Mr. Chairman, throughout this day I have listened to many of my colleagues rail on the evils of soft money. That is why it is time to ensure the rhetoric matches the reality. And I am doing just that by introducing an amendment that reverses a slick attempt to manipulate existing law and which will end soft money now rather than election day. By enacting this amendment, soft money will be banned tomorrow, Valentine's Day; and that is fitting because it would put an end to sweetheart deals being advanced by many of the supporters of Shays-Meehan. I can certainly see why my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not want to end soft money now. They want a grace period that will allow them to spend tens of millions of dollars in soft money this year. Just take a look at last year, where nearly 54 percent of all contributions to Democrat committees were soft money contributions, compared to only 35 percent for Republican committees; and I can see why they may not want to close the loophole that would allow them to use a $40 million soft money building fund as collateral for hard-money dollars they could use in this year's campaigns. If we do not approve this amendment, not only will it fail to do what Shays-Meehan originally intended to accomplish, we would allow a perversion of current law restricting the use of soft money.”