Ron Kind

The gentlewoman may not take the money, the parties take the money, and to be fair, the Democratic Party is also dipping into the tobacco till, perhaps not to the extent that the Republican Party is. No one has clean hands on this floor…

But we all know standing in this body, too, we all know standing in this body as well the soft money which was originally set up for getting out the vote, and that is now being diverted for independent expenditures and issue advocacy ads.

where I come from, and perhaps this may not be true in my colleagues' congressional districts, but the average person in western Wisconsin believes that under the current finance system, even though it is legal for a wealthy individual or…

let me show the trend. This gives a better idea of what too much money means to the average American throughout the countryside: When we start with soft money contributions of $45 million and $86 million and suddenly it explodes to $262…

I rise today as a proud new parent of a baby boy born to Tawni and myself a week ago last Wednesday. Tawni and Matthew are doing very well at home right now. Matthew's older brother Johnny is also recovering from all the excitement. I…

I am a proud member of the freshman bipartisan task force on finance reform. If we are truly interested in passing finance reform that is going to pass and withstand constitutional challenges, the freshman bill is the bill to support. But…

Tomorrow we are going to start a debate about the biggest issue confronting this United States Congress, and that is campaign finance reform. There has been a lot of allegations about technology transfer to China in recent days and a lot…

Speaking again as a member of the freshman task force that has been working on this issue, I can certainly state for the record that we have not been party to any negotiations as far as a schedule, as far as the form in which the…

I am one of the freshman Members that participated in the bipartisan task force for the better part of a year and a half now, and it is going to be our base bill that is brought up eventually. But we are hearing these rumors as well that…

Mr. Speaker, I want to speak for a second about the process of the multiple bills we have facing us today. The debate we are having tonight is long overdue. The political process is in need of reform, yet for almost a year and a half we in…

Mr. Speaker the campaign finance reform legislation we are considering today, and the process by which we reached this point is a complete sham and a fraud. The Republican leadership of the House of Representatives is engaged in a purely…

I rise in strong support tonight for this legislation. I urge my colleagues tonight to get behind and support this charter school legislation. I am a supporter of school choice... I oppose, however, the voucher plan that we earlier voted…

Mr. Speaker, we are gathered here today not to mourn the loss of our beloved friend, Walter Capps, though mourn him we will and we must, but really to celebrate his life and the effect that he had on all of us here. I am a proud member of…

we are now in day 83, 83 days after July 4, the day that the President asked this body to enact campaign finance reform. I do not know what we are so concerned about, what we are so afraid of on this side of the congressional House. The…

Just to pick up on a point the gentleman was making a little earlier, is that not really the crux of the issue, and why we are working so hard in the freshman class at least to enact campaign finance reform? It is about the influence of…

hopefully something good will come out of the investigations that we are seeing on Capitol Hill that will highlight the problem of soft money in the political process. If there was not any soft money in the last election cycle, we would…

I just want to commend and congratulate my colleague, the gentleman from Montana [Mr. Hill], in his role in this whole process. I do not think anyone in the task force had more energy and more analysis and insight on what we were trying to…

I want to give a different perspective. That is the perspective of my son, Jonathan, who is approaching his first birthday, and what this tax cut is going to mean to him. The Treasury Department and even the Congressional Research Service…

I rise today to report to my colleagues in the House about a terrific program that I had the pleasure to visit during our 4th of July recess last week. The program is the National Youth Sports Program, which is one of the Department of…

I am here today to ask for the leadership in this Congress to take a lead on this issue, to start responding to the calls for help from the American people and figure out a way to get big money out of the American political process. I wish…

I rise today to formally congratulate the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers and to thank them for finally returning the Vince Lombardi trophy back home to the State of Wisconsin where it belongs. This season, Packer fans old and new…