Thomas Daschle: “we have just received the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill from the House. As I have said before, this bill…”

“we have just received the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill from the House. As I have said before, this bill gives us the first real chance in a generation to limit the access of special interests to the political process. I had intended to ask consent to take up and pass this bill immediately. However, the Republican leader has indicated to me that he was making progress on reaching an agreement on how to proceed with campaign finance reform. Therefore, I am willing to withhold my unanimous consent request at this time, pending an update from the Republican leader on how discussions on this issue in his caucus are proceeding. As my colleagues will recall, we tried to reach an agreement to take up the House-passed bill before the President's day recess. Opponents of reform objected, saying that they wanted time to look over the bill. They have now had more than a week. What they have found, I am sure, is a bill that is very similar to the McCain-Feingold bill that the Senate passed last spring. At the time, we spent 2 weeks on McCain-Feingold. We had a full, fair, and open debate, and we passed that bill with a strong bipartisan majority. I see no reason why we can't take this bill up and pass it quickly. In fact, the only reason I can think that anyone would oppose consent would be to take one more shot at keeping this bill from becoming law—either by filibustering or by trying to send this bill to a conference.”