[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 37 (Friday, March 27, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1685-H1686]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  (Mr. DOGGETT asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, in a Congress that has been full of 
outrageousness, what we have seen here this afternoon represents by far 
the greatest outrage of all.
  To imagine that the Republican leadership, as announced by the 
majority leader, could get together in a secret meeting and plot to 
deny the American people an opportunity to have a bipartisan discussion 
and debate about how to clean up our corrupt campaign finance system is 
incredible.
  The majority leader has placed this matter on the docket for action 
on a

[[Page H1686]]

day that many Members of this body will be at the funeral of a 
distinguished statesman, a Republican colleague, the late Honorable 
Steve Schiff in Albuquerque.
  Unfortunately, on Monday, it will not only be Mr. Schiff who is 
buried, but campaign finance, an incredible action in which Members are 
denied any opportunity to offer an amendment, any opportunity to debate 
beyond 20 minutes per side, and in which, if after all those 
contortions to defeat campaign finance, if that is not enough, if only 
a simple majority of this body should vote for campaign finance reform, 
it would be defeated because they demand a two-thirds vote. A disgrace 
has occurred here today.

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