Russ Feingold: “I want to state first of all that, as we get to the end of the Republican contract of 100 days, it is time to take…”

“I want to state first of all that, as we get to the end of the Republican contract of 100 days, it is time to take stock. Everyone is taking stock of what is in the contract, what is passed, what has not passed, what is not in the contract. The piece I want to discuss today is something that just is not included; that is, whether we are going to ban the practice of allowing gifts and special benefits from private interests to Members of Congress. I want to thank my colleague, the Senator from New Jersey, Senator Lautenberg, and the Senator from Minnesota, Senator Wellstone, for keeping up this fight during a series of months when in effect it appears that the effort to ban the gifts has been ruled out of order. It is not part of the contract. So we do not come out here and talk about it. This came up in the very first week when we addressed something that Democrats have supported that was included in the Republican contract-- there have not been many--namely to make sure that Members of Congress have to live by the rules that we make for everyone else. It makes sense. It passed overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, and a lot of us thought--certainly the three Senators behind the gift ban--what a perfect opportunity the first week to get rid of this outrageous practice. So we tried to put it on the bill. We were defeated by almost a pure party line vote.”