Bob Menendez: “our system of campaign finance is out of control, drowning in money, including the money of corporate polluters and scam…”

“our system of campaign finance is out of control, drowning in money, including the money of corporate polluters and scam artists like the Enron crowd, and in the process drowning out the voices of working Americans and their families. I ask why do we not have a patients' bill of rights and why do we have a fiasco like Enron? The unlimited, unregulated special interest soft money has got to go. It has got to go now, today, once and for all. Mr. Chairman, democracy is about the people. It is about every single person who can hear my voice. This is their House, their Congress, their government, and they want it back. But the Republican leadership has done everything it can to kill this bill. In fact, the only way we got this bill to the floor was by getting Members to sign a discharge petition to force the leadership to give this bill a chance. Well, today they may try to defeat campaign finance reform with procedural tactics and poison bill amendments, and we have to defeat those efforts. Millions of special interest soft money should not undermine the millions of Americans who want their vote to be the powerful tool in this democracy. For the sake of our democracy, we have to defeat these tactics, level the playing fields, get the special interest soft money out of politics once and for all, and return this government to the American people. Vote for Shays-Meehan.”