Political Quotes

“let me remind the House that oftentimes when people talk about tomorrow, the other day that they refer to is yesterday. And in this particular case, there was a yesterday not too long ago when the substance of the Thomas legislation was offered as an amendment to Shays-Meehan in committee and the majority decided that they did not want to have it be a part of the Shays-Meehan package. The plain English of where we are tonight is embodied in the rule that the majority created to govern this debate, that is that this is not an amendment to Shays-Meehan, this is a substitute. All too often some are eager to take a substitute over the real McCoy or, in this case, the real Shays-Meehan. A substitute just will not do, because what we have come to understand even here in this House is that the time has come to reform our campaign finance laws. It is embodied in this bipartisan approach, and the only way that we can get to the Shays-Meehan approach, which a majority of us agree on, is that we have to move the substitutes aside and focus on the real reform that is embodied in the base bill that we will have a chance to vote on once we dispose of the Thomas amendment.”