This vote was on the adoption of a constitutional amendment to give Congress “power to set reasonable limits on the amount of contributions that may be accepted by, and the amount of expenditures that may be made by, in support of, or in opposition to, a candidate for nomination for election to, or for election to, Federal office.” The amendment is an outright attack on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) explained that “the Hollings constitutional amendment [sums] up the reformers’ agenda for the past quarter century as they have sought to root out of American political life any speech or activity which could conceivably affect an election or be of value to a politician.”
The Senate rejected S. J. Res 4 on March 26, 2001 by a vote of 40-56 (Roll Call 47). We have assigned pluses to the nays.
