On the recordFebruary 13, 2002
Shays-Meehan does not prohibit speech of any type. It seeks to stop the use of soft money to pay for campaign ads. This is a long-standing authority that Congress has been able to exercise, starting with prohibitions on corporation monies in 1907, unions in 1947, and then 1974 for Buckley v. Valeo. Soft money is not protected by the Constitution. Soft money was created by the FEC in 1978. It is a creature of the Federal bureaucracy. It has no particular standing under the Constitution. The Supreme Court has never held soft money to be constitutionally inviolate, and to argue that the Congress cannot undo what a Federal agent has wrought is to deliberately ignore who is the master and who is the servant. There is no free-speech violation in Shays-Meehan and no reason to support this amendment.
Source
govinfo.gov
