Bob Wise: “I rise to speak today in the more dispassionate time of special orders, and one day following the vote on campaign…”

“I rise to speak today in the more dispassionate time of special orders, and one day following the vote on campaign finance reform, to talk about campaign finance reform and what the future is. I am not particularly interested in getting into a partisan dispute today. I think that it was worthwhile defeating the bill yesterday which put more money into politics, it did not take money out, but that was yesterday. Let us talk about some of the very real factors that are affecting campaign finance reform, and some of the difficulties in crafting a bill that deals not only with candidates but the overall issue of campaign finance reform. First of all we had the Buckley versus Vallejo decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1970's, which began a trail of decisions or started a line of decisions which effectively says that expenditure of money is the equivalent of speech; that as someone has the ability to say anything they want, if money enhances or permits them to say that, they can then expend that money. So free speech and expenditure of money begin to be equated as the same. That is, I think, a disturbing trend, but that is a judicial decision. So first of all we have that case, and what that then did effectively say, that we could not limit how much an individual could spend in their own campaign. If we have a billionaire, that billionaire can spend a billion dollars, if they want, of their own money for their own campaign.”