Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I think that in the words of the gentleman that just preceded me to give the enforcers the right to enforce and the wherewithal to enforce is a great proposition if there were adequate, competent and reasonable enforcers; or certainly if they were fair enforcers. But, unfortunately, I do not think any of that is the case when we are talking about the Federal Election Commission. The Federal Election Commission has not done an adequate job since I have followed their activities over the last 10 or 15 years. I can remember when it used to allow its General Counsel into the deliberations, and the court ruled that the commissioners should stop that, and then they did not stop it. I can remember when one former senator, who was a former Member of this House as well, who had a case before this commission, and somehow he got an appointment as an ex officio member of the Federal Election Commission and sat in on the deliberations even though he had a case pending. I can remember when Federal Election Commission officers and maybe Commissioners traveled to the Democrat National Convention in August of 1996, presumably on taxpayers' dollars. Year after year they hire a press office of about five people to turn out press releases complaining that we are holding down their budget, and yet since 1991 we have increased their budget by 85 percent.”