Joseph Knollenberg: “I am a cosponsor of the Doolittle bill and am proud to stand here in front of my colleagues in full support of that…”

“I am a cosponsor of the Doolittle bill and am proud to stand here in front of my colleagues in full support of that bill. I congratulate the gentleman from California (Mr. Doolittle) for bringing forward this bill, and I thank him for yielding me time. Campaign finance is like so many other issues. There are two basic philosophies. Free speech and free market is one philosophy; increasing the size of the Federal Government with more restrictive regulations is the other philosophy. Mr. Chairman, I stand before our colleagues in favor of free speech. Over time, a big-government approach has choked our campaigns. Regulation without provision for inflation has dwindled the real value of contributions to just 30 percent of what it was when enacted. Indeed, Mr. Chairman, these strangling limits may be what led the Democrats into all of their campaign finance irregularities. Let us pass the Doolittle substitute. Let us free up political speech as America's founders intended, in the tradition of Thomas Payne, the publisher of free political speech in that famous document, Common Sense, that enabled the creation of this great Nation. Mr. Chairman, I urge support of the Doolittle substitute.”