Mr. President, I want to of course thank the Senator from California who is of course is the Chair of the key committee on this bill, for her persistence in trying to get this bill through the Senate.

We came to the floor twice this spring to try to get consent to pass the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act. Each time, an objection was made on behalf of an unidentified Republican Senator. Yet no Senator has come to us to let us know what his or her objection to the bill is. The source of the objection apparently didn’t want to be identified, but when the President signed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act last week, as Senator Feinstein pointed out, S.1, fortunately secret holds became a thing of the past. I’m very proud to have been involved deeply with trying to pass that legislation. If an objection was lodged today, the objecting Senator would have had to come forward within six session days. And as far as I know, this was going to be the first test of the new rule on secret holds and I was looking forward to learning who the real objector was, as this rule requires, if an objection was made on an unidentified senator.

But now it appears that the Senator from Nevada has actually identified himself as the objector of the bill so we know what is going on here. I believe that the new provision under the new law is the reason that this individual identified himself. I don’t think that would have happened had it not been for the positive deterrent effect that this new legislation has and I think that Senator Feinstein and I can site this as the first time this was successfully forced in the case of a secret hold.

This underlying bill about disclosure that I offered along with others is completely non-controversial. This bill simply puts Senate campaigns under the same obligation to file their reports electronically that the House and Presidential campaigns have been forced to do for years. There is simply no reason that the information in Senate campaign finance reports should remain less accessible to the public than any other campaign finance reports.

We are now up to 41 bipartisan cosponsors, and as the Senator from California pointed out, not a single concern about the bill was heard in the Rules Committee, the bill passed that committee by voice vote, and no one has come to us with any concerns about it at all so the time has come to get it done.

Mr. President, the Senator from Nevada has made an alternative proposal to bring up the bill but to make an amendment. The amendment that he wants to offer has nothing to do with this bill. Indeed it is a very controversial proposal to require groups that file ethics complaints to disclose their donors. I’m sure that charitable and advocacy organizations will find this amendment quite controversial. It should be referred to the appropriate committee and given very searching study before it is offered on the floor. As the Senator from California said it would certainly be a poison pill for the underlying bill which thus far has had no public opposition whatsoever so I am pleased the Senator from California objected and we are happy to make that objection very public.

I want to thank the Chairman of the Rules Committee, the Senator from California. I will say again that it looks like we made a little bit of progress here. No longer is there a secret hold on the bill. Instead the Senator from Nevada has made it plain that he is the one holding up the bill by insisting on offering an unrelated amendment. That is unfortunate but at least we know what we’re dealing with. I hope in the days ahead we’ll be able to prevail on him to change his approach. There are some bills where it is simply not appropriate to seek to add extraneous and controversial amendments. The amendment he proposed is surely a poison pill for this bill and we really need to get this bill in place soon so that these requirements of disclosure will apply during the 2008 election season.