L. Paxon: “there are many controversial amendments that are being offered and have been offered, but not this one. On this one…”

“there are many controversial amendments that are being offered and have been offered, but not this one. On this one there is near unanimity in this body, whether we are on this side of the aisle, Republicans, or that side of the aisle, Democrats, liberals or conservatives, from whatever region of the country, there is agreement that this amendment needs to be part of this legislation. As a matter of fact, in March when we voted on a similar amendment, a similar piece of legislation, H.R. 34, the Illegal Foreign Contributions Act, it passed with 369 votes. There are few things in this body that have enjoyed the depth and breadth of support that this idea did in the form of the legislation then, H.R. 34, and today in the form of the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Fossella). Why should there be such unanimity? It is just common sense, for two reasons. First, only U.S. citizens and U.S. nationals should be allowed to contribute to Federal campaigns. Back at home this is not rocket science. People would assume this should be the case. We should not even be talking about this, because they would have assumed long ago we would have made sure this was the case. Of course, number two, common sense is a result of this amendment in the action of the gentleman from New York, no foreign dollars would be allowed to be part of our system.”