Political Quotes

“Congress, if this should be part of the Constitution, might well make just such a decision on the relatively rational grounds that all political speech they want to be directly attributable to candidates and not to permit anyone to engage in a partisan political debate except through the candidate's committees. Now, I must say to my friend from Kentucky, I doubt that would happen in the Congress immediately after the adoption of a constitutional amendment like this. The sponsors of this constitutional amendment are all supporters of the McCain-Feingold proposal, and my inclination is that they would be content with the passage of that legislation with this constitutional provision in effect. They know, or at least the most thoughtful and principled of them know, that McCain-Feingold is blatantly unconstitutional under the first amendment as the first amendment exists today. I rather imagine they would be satisfied with this reform as their predecessors were satisfied with the 1974 reforms. As soon as this reform showed itself to be as ineffective as 1974 has, as soon as it had pushed communication into another channel, they would be back to close off that channel.”