Tom Udall: “One of the parts, and I think the gentleman touched on it, that I believe is a particularly valuable part of this bill…”

“One of the parts, and I think the gentleman touched on it, that I believe is a particularly valuable part of this bill, is the setting up of a blue ribbon panel to study the entire campaign finance system. Those of us here in the House that have worked on this issue realize that we probably need some people to take a big comprehensive look at the whole system, spend 18 months and come back to us with some of the issues that we are not addressing here. The gentleman and I both know that in a campaign today 80-85 percent of our money is spent on television. Well, these are airwaves that are owned by the public. The broadcasters and media people get these licenses. In Britain they have great debates when they enter into an election. They are all publicly televised at no cost. I think there are parts of this bill where we could make the bill stronger, but I believe the way to do it is to have this big broad commission go out and do their very best to find out how we can get back to work in this body, how we can lessen the impact of special interests, how we can do everything we can to make sure that the people's voices are heard in our democracy. I think this commission idea, although it is not mentioned that much, I think is a good one, of getting citizens to go out and report back to us.”