Russ Feingold: “I do really thank the Senator from Minnesota. In fact, I would very much like to join with him in coming out here each…”

“I do really thank the Senator from Minnesota. In fact, I would very much like to join with him in coming out here each week, assuming we are permitted the time. This is the time to start this effort in the Chamber. We had great help from the President of the United States in endorsing the legislation and getting us off to the right start at the beginning of the year when there was a great deal of attention paid to this issue. Obviously, there are other priorities; the whole issue of balancing the budget has taken much of center stage for the last few weeks and obviously is now on a track, whether one likes it or not, that is moving in a direction that will be resolved one way or another. That is why I think this is the time, as the Senator from Minnesota is suggesting, to have an awful lot of the conversation here on the floor between now and the day we pass campaign finance reform be about this issue. We have to talk to the American people this way and in every other way about what the real facts are about this issue because it has been often distorted. For example, the point of the Senator from Minnesota about whether or not this is really a Republican-Democrat issue. It is not. The Public Citizen report, for example, points out there is not a lot of difference between the parties in terms of this issue: 54 percent of the Democrats who ran for the Senate in the last three election cycles exceeded the limits; 59 percent of the Republicans exceeded it.”