Bill Bennett: “As I read the language of this amendment, the determination of what is reasonable and what is not reasonable is left to…”

“As I read the language of this amendment, the determination of what is reasonable and what is not reasonable is left to the Congress. And under those circumstances, I can see a Congress of incumbents deciding that it was eminently reasonable not to allow anyone to oppose them. Indeed, if I may quote, to the Senator from Kentucky the rationale currently being given by the White House for the excesses to which they went in extracting expenditures which now have had to be returned in the millions of dollars. Their rationale was that they were facing the possibility that the Republicans would win the election, and that that possibility was so overwhelmingly devastating to the future of the country that they had no choice but to go to the absolute limits of propriety and, on occasion, beyond in order to prevent that from happening. If someone believes that is reasonable, certainly I agree with the implications of the question from the Senator from Kentucky that Members of Congress might agree that it is reasonable to put such low limits on the amount that could be spent in opposition to an incumbent that, in fact, the net result would be zero in support.”