Rand Paul: “campaign finance reform has been a major topic for months on the House floor and, I understand, will continue to be a…”

“campaign finance reform has been a major topic for months on the House floor and, I understand, will continue to be a major debate. The last time the Congress has passed any major reforms dealing with campaigning was in the 1970s, and every problem that we had back then we have today, only it is much worse. Today, in order to comply with the law, we fill out tens of thousands of pages of forms, there is total misunderstanding of what the rules and regulations are, there are numerous fines being levied against many Members and many candidates, there are many inaccuracies put into the record mainly because a lot of people cannot even understand the rules and regulations, and I would not be surprised if just about everybody who ever filled out a financial reform at one time or the other inadvertently had some inaccuracies. All the challenges to these records have always been done by opponents and usually politicized, and it has not been motivated for the best of reasons. New reforms are now being proposed, and I predict they will be no more successful than the numerous rules and regulations that we imposed on candidates in the 1970s. The reason I say this is that we are treating a symptom and not the cause. The symptom, of course, is very prevalent. Everybody knows there is a lot of big money that influences politics.”