Willie Hefner: “I have an awful lot of respect for the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr.…”

“I have an awful lot of respect for the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) and the folks that have worked so hard for campaign reform. We are awfully selective around here. I have been here for 24 years, and I have never seen a Committee on Rules that operates like this Committee on Rules does now. The other day, not a week ago, we considered a budget that is absolutely going nowhere, it is a total disaster, and they ignored Members offering a budget that possibly could have passed. But they were not entitled to offer that budget. Now, here they are, they are allowing over 200 amendments and many of them are not germane. We are not the United States Senate, we have to have germaneness here. But the Committee on Rules says, we will waive all points of order and we can just go ahead and offer those amendments. We talk about the First Amendment, and some of these people would seem to think that it is okay if some advocacy group sends out a letter or a postcard that says, if you vote for Bill Hefner and Mike Dukakis, which happened in my election, there is no disclaimer on it, you do not know where it came from, and you say, if you shut that down, that is not violating their First Amendment rights.”