Sean Patrick Maloney: “I appreciate the gentleman organizing this hour tonight for us to express our support for campaign finance reform, and I…”

“I appreciate the gentleman organizing this hour tonight for us to express our support for campaign finance reform, and I congratulate the freshman class for their work in their task force. As my colleagues know, the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] announced today that his committee will move forward with hearings next week. The gentleman has replaced his lawyers. He has got roughly a $15 million budget to go forward. There have been 46 depositions. Yet not one penny has been spent, not one hearing has been held, and not one witness has been called in an effort to figure out how to solve the problem. Mr. Speaker, the closest this Congress came to making any real move on this issue was in March, when the Senate voted down a resolution which proposed a constitutional amendment to allow mandatory campaign spending limits. Yesterday, the President repeated his request for a resolution on campaign finance reform. He has pledged that he would sign one into law. There are 85 different pieces of legislation floating around Capitol Hill now trying to address the problem of campaign finance reform, and there is a virtual graveyard of proposals that have died in former Congresses. Yet none of these 85 proposals have had a hearing or have been given serious review or consideration by a committee in this Congress. Mr. Speaker, if we take a look at this list, of course, there is the bipartisan Freshman Task Force proposal which would ban soft money.”