Burgess Owens: “the gentlewoman makes a persuasive case, and I would not want to argue with the fairness, logic or commonsense…”

“the gentlewoman makes a persuasive case, and I would not want to argue with the fairness, logic or commonsense arithmetic of what she has to say. It makes sense. The important thing is that Shays-Meehan makes sense as it is right now, and if this amendment is being offered as another way of tinkering with it in a way which makes it impossible to get a settlement between the two Houses, then that I would be certainly opposed to. But I cannot argue with the logic. All of us ought to understand that the American public out there, our constituents, are like the little child in Hans Christian Anderson's tale of ``The Emperor's New Clothes.'' They understand what is happening. They understand what makes sense. If we are tinkering and posturing in order to prevent anything moving forward, they can understand that. In the long run, we will have to be on the side of logic, and this amendment certainly makes a lot of sense. In fact, the campaign finance reform bill law which is in effect in New York City governing municipal elections is a very good law that I would point to as a good model.”