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




                              {time}  1445
          SHAMEFUL LEADERSHIP PLAGUES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

  (Mr. WEYGAND asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WEYGAND. Mr. Speaker, I am a member of the freshman class, a 
freshman class that came in here on the role of amending our campaign 
finance laws to make it better for all citizens to participate in this 
Congress. It was a bipartisan commission of freshmen, freshmen 
Republicans and Democrats, who crafted a bill, who worked hard all last 
year and this year.
  So what does the Republican leadership do here today? It says, to 
heck with all that you have done, to heck with the people of America, 
do not consider what is a bipartisan, good-faith effort to revise our 
laws with regard to an open government. We are going to close it down. 
We are going to take what we have done in a smoke-filled back room and 
put it before you and try to jam it down the throats of America. That 
is what the Republican leadership has said here today.
  We should be ashamed of what they have done, we should be ashamed of 
the leadership that they have shown America, and we should vote down 
anything they present to us next week; and I ask my fellow colleagues, 
particularly the freshmen, to oppose what they are doing to us next 
week and oppose what they are doing to America.

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