Kevin Brady: “one of the tenets in Washington is if your argument does not have substance, describe it as a loophole. The fact of the…”

“one of the tenets in Washington is if your argument does not have substance, describe it as a loophole. The fact of the matter is Congress hates to admit its mistakes, and this debate tonight is proof. When Congress targeted unreported Federal PACs, stealth PACs, 2 years ago in the bill that I supported, we unintentionally fired into the crowd, putting new and burdensome Federal reporting requirements on a lot of people we should have never done it to, these people like local legislators, school board candidates, school bond issues, local sheriffs, who have nothing to do with stealth PACs. It turned out to be more like stealth legislation. They had no idea they got caught up as innocent victims in this bill and are facing heavy penalties for unknowingly violating Federal law. Without Congress acting responsibly now to correct our mistake, finding the true stealth PACs among the more than 13,000 unnecessary reports is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. You have to ask yourself, what national policy interest is served by forcing local candidates to report to Washington what they spent to buy the highest bidder at the local county fair? We are trying to scrutinize stealth PACs, not stealth FAA supporters. We took great care to follow the intent of the law and everyone who files today will file tomorrow because we have created no loopholes.”