Andrea Joy Campbell: “I have a great degree of admiration for my good friend and colleague who proposes this amendment. And I have some…”

“I have a great degree of admiration for my good friend and colleague who proposes this amendment. And I have some sympathy for the concept of the amendment because, when the original bill was passed in 1974, it had expenditure limits and it had contribution limits. And I can understand how the two would march together or not at all. But that simply is not the case with Shays-Meehan. In other words, there is in Shays-Meehan a prohibition on sham issue ads. That is a good prohibition whether the rest stands or falls. There is in Shays-Meehan a prohibition on contributions of a soft money nature. That is a good prohibition whether sham issue ads stand or fall. In other words, this bill is unlike the 1974 bill where, in order to get expenditure limits, one had to have contribution limits, and vice versa. Here, both are good. There is no quid pro quo. There is not, for example, a sacrifice that Democrats make in order to get a sacrifice for Republicans to make. Both provisions of this bill, the sham issue ad ban and the prohibition on soft money, are good. Second, I think it is only fair that the authors of Shays-Meehan be allowed to offer their proposal and have it voted on as their proposal. Third, I would just like to point out to all of our colleagues how frequently unanticipated provisions of bills are struck down. The clearest example of this is the one House veto, the legislative veto, struck down by the Supreme Court in INS versus Chadha.”