Kevin Brady: “new campaign laws will not help if we do not first enforce the ones we have, and Congress must enforce and must ensure…”

“new campaign laws will not help if we do not first enforce the ones we have, and Congress must enforce and must ensure the free expression of speech, and that is why I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the freshman reform bill. Each year, we seem to drift farther and farther away from the original intent of Congress as a citizen legislature, electing people from all walks of life and stations of life. A citizen Congress is disappearing in great part due to horribly expensive campaigns whose costs are out of control and getting worse. Today, it takes about $1 million. The average cost of winning a competitive seat in Congress is $1 million. That means a lot of good people in our community will never raise their hands to run for Congress because they do not have $1 million and they do not know how they would find it, and those costs are doubling every 4 years. For a Nation founded on representative government, that is alarming. Madam Chairman, I love being part of a Republican Congress that is known for challenging business as usual in Washington. Now is the time and we are the ones who take on the difficult past of bringing some common sense to these campaigns. It will not be easy. Nothing important ever is. But it will be worth it to make sure that, someday, our children do not wake up in the future to find that our Congress is reserved for only the wealthy few. When it comes to doing the right thing in America, money is not everything.…”