Frank Pallone: “I really think what happens, Mr. Speaker, is that the Republican leadership takes advantage of the fact that the…”

“I really think what happens, Mr. Speaker, is that the Republican leadership takes advantage of the fact that the campaign finance system is a complicated structure and that most people really do not understand how it applies to individual races. We understand it because we are in it, but a lot of people do not. So they just try to basically throw out to the public these myths. I am very glad to see that this latest effort on their part to try to basically raise the individual limits and get so much more money into campaigns have been exposed. As I think I mentioned before, or maybe I did not, we have all the public interest groups opposing this bill: Common Cause, Public Citizen, the League of Women Voters. There was an editorial in the New York Times today, as well as in a lot of my local papers, criticizing the proposal. We even have some of the Republicans who put out a letter opposing it. We are sort of fortunate, in a way, that this has been exposed for what it truly is, a way to try to put a lot more cash into the campaigns. But I think a lot of times it is a complicated subject, and it is very difficult sometimes to make people understand how it works in practical terms. That is why I think it is so important to do what the two of you are doing tonight, by trying to expose it for what it really is.”