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A question from Phil Conners of New Brunswick, NJ:
If the Supreme Court is going to strike down these provisions that limit speech (like Buckley v. Vallejo), why doesn't the Congress eliminate these provisions before passing it?
Rep. Pappas responds:
I do not believe that Congress should be in the business of limiting
political or religious speech by the citizens of this nation. The public's
trust would be restored quicker if we could bring integrity to the existing
laws rather than changing constitutional guarantees of free speech.
Rep. Tauscher responds:
As you know, the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 in the case of Buckley v. Vallejo that limitations on spending by political candidates are unconstitutional because they curtail the free speech of the candidate. The Court has shown no indication that it is inclined to overturn this landmark decision.
Many members of Congress would like to limit the amount of money that candidates can spend on campaigns but no consensus has formed about how to achieve that goal. Some would directly challenge the Court's Buckley decision by passing legislation restricting candidate spending in federal elections. Others propose developing incentives for candidates to voluntarily limit the amount of money that they spend.
I believe too much money is spent on election campaigns and support efforts to develop a constitutional way to limit spending. In the meantime, I support a more streamlined version of campaign finance reform that was developed by the Freshman Campaign Finance Reform Task Force, of which I am a member. Our proposal would ban all contributions of so called "soft money", place greater disclosure requirements on third party expenditures, and require more timely disclosure by candidates of the contributions they receive.
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