Louise Slaughter: “Mr. Speaker, I did not anticipate participating in this debate today, but as a new Member of this House, as a freshman…”

“Mr. Speaker, I did not anticipate participating in this debate today, but as a new Member of this House, as a freshman, I want to rise to express my frustration over the fact that we have not been able to put real campaign finance reform on the agenda. Mr. Speaker, we cannot pick up a newspaper without reading about another scandal. Bipartisan scandals, scandals in the White House, scandals in the Republican National Committee, scandals involving a certain chairman to investigate other scandals. What is frustrating to me is that there are a number of good and solid proposals dealing with campaign finance reform that have been introduced in this House in a bipartisan way, and yet we cannot get a date certain in which we can debate these issues, in which we can vote on these issues, up or down. Every major editorial board in this country has editorialized on the need for this Congress to move fast on the issue of campaign finance reform. The American people, if my colleagues read the polls, overwhelmingly believe that the time has come for us to move forward on campaign finance reform, and yet we cannot get a date, we cannot get a commitment from the leadership on the Republican side to bring this issue up and to do what the American people want us to do.”