Darlene Hooley: “hopefully today will be a day where the American public wins. Five years ago as a freshman class president, I joined new…”

“hopefully today will be a day where the American public wins. Five years ago as a freshman class president, I joined new Members of the 105th Congress view this institution and the way they view the White House. We pledged that no matter what or how tough the going got, we would clean up the way elections are run. We knew that massive amounts of unregulated money have a corrosive influence on our political process. In fact, unregulated soft-money giving has increased by 137 percent since we made our pledge. And so here we are, on the verge of finally doing something about it by passing campaign finance reform. But if we do not pass a clean version of the Shays-Meehan bill, the campaign finance reform obstructionists will once again rest easy, knowing that the will of the public will be subverted by special interests, only this time in conference committee. It is time we kept our promise. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting ``no'' on the Ney substitute as well as any poison pill amendments that will be considered.”