[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 119 (Wednesday, September 10, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H7123]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            SCHEDULE CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM LEGISLATION NOW

  (Mr. KIND asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KIND. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call upon the leadership in 
the majority party in this House to schedule what is the most pressing, 
most important issue that we should be dealing with in the 105th 
Congress this fall, and that is campaign finance reform. But, we are 
running out of time.
  Mr. Speaker, I am a proud member of a bipartisan freshman task force 
on campaign finance reform. We are six Republicans, six Democrats, 
freshmen, working together to try to draft what would be a good 
bipartisan piece of legislation.
  And we did, Mr. Speaker. It is not the comprehensive reform that I 
would like to see; it is incremental; it gets the biggest of the big 
money out of the political system, the soft money ban.
  Mr. Speaker, all we are asking is just to get it scheduled for a 
floor debate and for an ultimate vote, but we are running out of time. 
Next year is another election season. Lord knows we are not going to 
pass campaign finance reform then. The year after that we are looking 
at the year 2000 and the Presidential race, and it is going to be tough 
to do it.
  Mr. Speaker, it is now or never this fall, and ``no'' is not an 
acceptable answer. My constituents in western Wisconsin did not send me 
to this place to accept no as an answer. Even we freshmen realize that 
the system is broke and that the very survival of this democracy is at 
stake. Schedule campaign finance reform now.

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