Russ Feingold: “it was not too long ago, just last June, when I joined the senior Senator from Arizona and the senior Senator from…”

“it was not too long ago, just last June, when I joined the senior Senator from Arizona and the senior Senator from Tennessee, as well as the senior Senator from Minnesota and other Senators, in offering in this body the first bipartisan campaign finance proposal in over a decade. Although the legislation had received unprecedented bipartisan support, including the backing of President Clinton and Ross Perot and Common Cause, 161 different editorial boards nationwide and some 60 congressional Democrats and Republicans, we in this body did fail to invoke cloture on that measure by 6 votes. We have heard some interesting arguments during the past summer about this in the public debate, when we did finally debate campaign finance reform for just 2 days under a series of rules that would not allow us to amend the bill but would only allow us to have a debate for 2 days and then vote immediately on cloture. That was the deal we had to accept, just to have this issue heard in this body and before the American people.”