John Tierney: “I congratulate him on once again having the tenacity to stay with the Shays-Meehan bill and bring it back to this House.…”

“I congratulate him on once again having the tenacity to stay with the Shays-Meehan bill and bring it back to this House. With all due respect, I suggest that the proposal by our colleague from California is a step backwards, certainly not a step forward. I would say that we should support the Shays-Meehan bill and note that that is in fact only a partial reform. The bill that I propose pending before this body and some day, hopefully, we will get it as part of a rule and be able to debate it is the clean money, clean elections bill and in fact calls for public financing of campaigns. I understand all of the arguments that the gentleman from California has made. There is nobody that I hear in the district, no average citizen, that thinks that it is going to be easier on elections if in fact they can raise money or thinks that people are going to stop raising money at some point in time. In fact, if we raise the limits, they are going to spend more, raise more, have more TV ads and go on. The clean money, clean elections bill will in fact be the one process by which we can lower the cost of campaigns.”