Thomas M. Barrett: “when I saw this bill came up today, I thought I read the calendar wrong; I thought it was April Fool's Day. Because this…”

“when I saw this bill came up today, I thought I read the calendar wrong; I thought it was April Fool's Day. Because this is an April Fool's joke. This bill should be up Wednesday, not today, because this bill is nothing more than a joke and a pretense to reform our campaign finance system. These bills do nothing more than deform the system. Because this is not an honest attempt to reform the system. The only honest attempt to reform the system is a bipartisan attempt. The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrich) and his followers have refused to let this House consider any bipartisan legislation. It is an attempt to gag not only the workers in this country in this bill but the members of the minority party. Mr. Speaker, the American people are not going to be fooled by this. It may be April Fool's week, but it is not the time to try to pull one over on the American people. What we should be doing in this House is addressing real campaign reform. Let us do the McCain-Feingold bill. Let us do the freshmen bipartisan bill. But we have to do it on a bipartisan basis. Any attempt to jam this down our throats on a partisan basis is nothing more than a sham, and the American people know it. The people of this House know it.”