Richard Gephardt: “I rise today first to congratulate the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr.…”

“I rise today first to congratulate the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) for their excellent across-the-aisle, bipartisan work in bringing about this legislation. I might say that I hope that this bipartisan effort that they have put together with lots of Members from both parties is something that we cannot only win with today, but have repeated with other bills: the patients' bill of rights, education. We ought to be able to find a way to work across party lines to get things done for the American people. I want to congratulate both of them vociferously for the hard work that they have done day in and day out to get us to where we are today. I would also like to recognize the work of our Democratic Blue Dogs and their discharge petition effort which forced the leadership to take our demands for a vote on campaign reform seriously. Because of their work, 202 Members of the House signed the discharge petition, urging the Republican leadership to bring Shays-Meehan to the floor, and we are able to be here today on the floor discussing this because of that discharge petition and the work that was done, again, in a bipartisan way to get this on the floor. The truth is, some of the Republican leaders have done their best to prevent this issue from coming to the floor, despite the fact that a bipartisan majority of the House wants this vote.”