Washington, D.C. – Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) made the following statement at a news conference on campaign reform today:

"Thank you very much Senator McCain, Senator Feingold. I am here with them today to announce that I think campaign reform legislation should be a high priority in the Senate this year, and I am looking forward to taking an active role in this effort.

Candidates must comply with a lot of rules in the federal election process. They must disclose the source of all contributions they receive. There are limitations on the amounts of those contributions, and all expenditures have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission.

Candidates are unable to compete with independent groups and others who don't have to disclose what they spend attacking candidates and supporting candidates. This has made the federal election process very unfair. That is one reason why I am interested in being a part of this campaign reform effort. John McCain and Russ Feingold have focused the attention of the nation on this issue, and the work they have done has been very important.

We have an evenly divided Senate in a partisan sense this year. It seems to me the time is now, when we should try to find common ground and see if we can reach a consensus in the Senate on campaign reform.

There have been a lot of changes suggested changes by Senators on this subject. I frankly am very impressed with the Snowe/Jeffords Title of the McCain/Feingold bill. There are other parts of McCain/Feingold that I don't find all that attractive, but I think we need to move this issue to a high priority on the agenda of the Senate this year. I am glad to be a part of this effort."

Cochran's response to the question "Why now?":

"I have been in favor of campaign reform for a long time. When I was a member of the House over 20 years ago, I was a part of an effort with John Anderson to modify the campaign finance laws. When I came to the Senate, we had opportunities to make some improvements, but we really haven't achieved what I thought was all we should do to help make the election process something all Americans could be proud of. I think we have a system now that is too heavily influenced by fundraising and the spending of money not just by candidates, but other groups, whether they are political parties, and I think we should protect their role incidently, or other organized groups without any requirements to disclose the sources of contributions, or what their agenda is, or how much money is being spent, or what way the money is being spent. We know a lot of advertising is being purchased, but how else is the money being spent to influence federal election outcomes? I just think that the whole system has become overwhelmed by organizations which use enormous sums of money to influence campaigns. Maybe that's protected under the freedom of speech clause, but I think we can require disclosure, and some limitations can be imposed. They are imposed on candidates, and it seems to me they should be imposed on others."