Angie Craig: “Under McCain-Feingold, it would be against the law to use soft money to conduct a local voter registration drive for 120…”

“Under McCain-Feingold, it would be against the law to use soft money to conduct a local voter registration drive for 120 days before the election. These get-out-the-vote drives, which have proven to be effective tools for increasing all of our parties' interests and the public's interests, would simply be banned. Why would we want to ban all that I have mentioned? Because under these new laws in McCain-Feingold's plan State and local officials would have to use hard money instead of soft money. And already by what I have said, the public is confused. What is hard money? What is soft money? How does it get applied? We have the FEC that is out there now trying to make rulings on something that happened 3, 4, 5 years ago. What we are talking about is timely reporting, not creating greater obstacles for the process. Most importantly, what we are talking about, Mr. President, is free speech. It is what the majority leader has called very clearly the greatest scandal in America. Well, the greatest scandal in America is not campaign financing. The greatest scandal in America is trying to suggest that there is a scandal when it does not exist, a scandal that under anyone's measurement just does not meet the muster. Poll America. I have mentioned that polling. And it does not work. Back home in my State, when I suggested at town meetings that campaign finance is an issue, they scratch their heads and say, ``Why?'' Most importantly, today, now they are coming out and saying, ``No.”