Russ Feingold: “This arms race of soft money spending on issue ads has to stop. And the way to do that is to ban soft money and bring…”

“This arms race of soft money spending on issue ads has to stop. And the way to do that is to ban soft money and bring these types of ads within the election laws in a fair and reasonable way that respects the constitutional rights of all citizens. That is what we have done in the McCain-Feingold bill. Contrary to the completely inaccurate and sometimes dishonest advertisements that have been run across the country saying that we use a different approach, we, in fact, maintain a clear respect for free speech, which both Senator McCain and I strongly adhere to. We have addressed in our bill, which is in the form of the amendment before us today, the two biggest problems in our campaign finance system--soft money and phony issue ads. Mr. President, if we do not act on this bill, the exploitation of the loopholes will continue to spiral out of control. In the year 2000, we will see both Presidential candidates promising to limit their private fundraising in order to receive public funds while their parties pursue parallel or even intertwined campaigns with issue ads funded by as much as $600 million in soft money. Is that the kind of campaign we want to see in the first Presidential election of the next century? I do not think so. We need to make the next campaign a cleaner, less corrupt, less out of control Presidential campaign. We do not want more of the same of what we saw in 1996.”