Roscoe Bartlett: “I want to spend the first few minutes this evening talking about oral arguments that were recently made before the…”

“I want to spend the first few minutes this evening talking about oral arguments that were recently made before the Supreme Court. It was on the Wisconsin Right to Life, Incorporated, versus the Federal Election Commission. Now, it is not clear from that title what we are talking about. What we are really talking about is a test of the constitutionality of a clause in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that prohibits any issue advocacy advertising, electioneering they call it, 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election. Now, in the State of Maryland in a nonpresidential year, our primary is in September, and it is, as a matter of fact, less than 60 days before the general in November. So we are prohibited from issue advocacy ads 30 days before the primary, which are added immediately to the 60 days before the general. So for 90 days, 3 months, before the election, we cannot communicate with our constituents. I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that few people are seriously considering the next election 90 days before it occurs. So for all practical purposes, we in Maryland, and many other States like us that have primaries close to the general election, are almost completely prohibited from communicating with our constituents through issue advocacy ads. This is political speech, and what this Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act does is to deny political speech 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election.”