Jim Baird: “I agree. Absolutely. The Shays-Meehan bill is a start. It is a first step, an important and essential first step, and…”

“I agree. Absolutely. The Shays-Meehan bill is a start. It is a first step, an important and essential first step, and one we should take today or tomorrow. We should not wait until the end of this year. But there are other things we can do, and the gentleman raises an interesting point. Throughout my campaign, for example, I said that we needed to have informative voter pamphlets. In our State of Washington a candidate for the United States Congress is allowed 250 words in the State voter pamphlets. Two hundred and fifty words, with critical issues like national defense, health care, Social Security, our children's education, stopping crime. With those issues on the table, we get 250 words to condense a lifetime of community service and teaching and training and experience. Two hundred and fifty words. We need informative voter pamphlets. We need to work with the media. And I think that is part of what the gentleman is addressing. In our district we have some very, very responsible broadcast stations, stations that do grant candidates time; that do air debates. We need to encourage those stations, and we need to encourage the viewers to not just dive for the remote and say, oh my goodness, it is a political debate, I have to watch something else. Because if they do that, candidates have no choice but to change them with advertising, and a 30-second advertisement will not tell them as much as a 1-hour debate.”