Sean Patrick Maloney: “my amendment which I offer along with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and with the support of the gentleman of…”

“my amendment which I offer along with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and with the support of the gentleman of Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) and the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), it is a bipartisan amendment. It would create an independent commission to study and recommend changes to our campaign finance laws. This amendment is identical to the substitute introduced earlier this week by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. White) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Franks) except for one important point. The White amendment, had it passed, might have blocked and killed the Shays-Meehan bill. Due to the structure of the rule, had the White amendment received more votes than Shays-Meehan, it would have prevented Shays-Meehan from becoming law. This amendment works in conjunction with Shays-Meehan. It strengthens and supports Shays-Meehan. It lets us fix some of the most important problems with our campaign finance system today and creates a commission to solve the problems that remain tomorrow. I think this option is the best of both worlds. Shays-Meehan can be signed into law so that we can ban soft money and provide for greater disclosure of our third-party expenditures; but, at the same time, we will create a commission to fix problems that are not addressed in Shays-Meehan.”