Trent Lott: “spring has come early to Washington this year, and the Senate's return to the subject of campaign finance will…”

“spring has come early to Washington this year, and the Senate's return to the subject of campaign finance will strengthen the impression that we have already entered the television rerun season. The evening news, I fear, for the next few nights will seem like a replay of events from last fall when two irreconcilable points of view met on the Senate floor and reached a stalemate. We agreed to try again at some time before March 6, and so, pursuant to that agreement, I have laid down a bill that embodies the most important campaign finance reform of all: paycheck protection. The bill, S. 1663, is at the desk. It is as simple as this: No one should be forced to make a political contribution. That is pretty elementary, and overwhelmingly Americans, including union members, agree with that. No one should be compelled by a union or a corporation or a Congress to give their hard-earned dollars to a candidate or a campaign. And yet, millions of our fellow Americans are held up like that, not at the point of a gun but through misuse of their union dues. I am the son of a shipyard worker, a pipefitter, a pipefitter union member, and even, as I understand it, temporarily a union steward. I grew up in a blue-collar family. I grew up with my father going to work in a shipyard, and I am very sympathetic to how they work--the conditions they used to have to work in and the fact that those conditions are better now.”