[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 79 (Friday, May 12, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6583-S6584]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE BUDGET RESOLUTION
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, last night the Budget Committee, in the wee
hours, passed the budget resolution for the U.S. Senate on which we
will shortly go to work. There are many, many questionable choices
within that resolution. There will be a time, a very fixed time
obviously, a minimum number of hours that we have to debate it here on
the floor, with a finality for that debate, and it is predetermined.
But I would like to just talk for a moment, if I can, about a couple of
aspects of that budget as we frame the debate about where we are going
in this country.
First, I would like to call the attention of my colleagues to one
provision that is in this budget that this Senator finds profoundly
disturbing, and that I hope other colleagues will think hard about
before we ratify it in the course of the budget process.
A lot of things are being proposed in America today under the banner
of deficit reduction. I think there is a unanimity here that we
obviously have to reduce the deficit. We are going to be bankrupt if we
do not. We cannot continue down the road that we are going on. But
there also ought to be an application of common sense to the choices
that we make as we do that. Reducing the deficit does not predicate
that we simply come in with a machete or a pickax and chop away at
things that make sense, while simultaneously leaving out there the
things that do not make sense.
One of the items that has fallen under the budget committee's
ideological approach to this issue is the Presidential campaign fund.
For whatever reasons--I can give you the descriptions that are given,
but I think the agenda is considerably different--the committee has
chosen to eliminate the mechanism by which Americans for the years
since Watergate have funded Presidential elections. That method is to
have a checkoff on your tax form with which you decide to give money to
the Presidential election fund. It is a voluntary mechanism in America.
But it has been a most important mechanism by which we have freed
Presidential politics from the demeaning process of requiring our
candidates to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from special
interests all across this country.
It has worked, Mr. President. The system has worked. President Ronald
Reagan used it. President George Bush used it. I believe President Bush
in the course of his career as a Vice President and as a President,
used something in the order of $200 million in order to run for the
highest Federal office in this land.
The majority leader, Robert Dole, has used it in the past. Other
Presidential candidates in this Senate have used it, Republican and
Democrat alike. No one has suggested that system is wrong, corrupt, not
working, or not freeing the Presidential process from the rather
terrifying money chase that we in the U.S. Senate have to go through.
Yet, this Budget Committee, in an effort to try to whack away at the
deficit, is going to do away with this campaign financing mechanism.
Mr. President, for the life of me I don't understand why--but I
understand the argument that will be made. The argument will be the
soft, easy, political sloganeering arguments that, ``Gee, politicians
should not be getting welfare.'' It sounds really catchy.
And the American taxpayer should not necessarily be paying. That is
the argument you are going to hear. But I will bet you that four
members of the Republican caucus who are running for President are
prepared, in a matter of weeks, to ask for that money and will take it
and will use it.
Now, it seems to me, Mr. President, if we cannot remember the lessons
of Watergate and remember the degree to which this country felt a
revulsion at what happened during that period of time, when stacks of
cash and enormous sums of money were changing hands in an effort to try
to curry favor and votes in America, if we do not remember that lesson,
then we have not learned much about what was wrong with American
politics in the course of the last years.
So I hope that before we just accept what the Budget Committee has
done, Members will think hard about what is really good for this
country in the context of political campaign finance reform. This
Senate has twice passed campaign finance reform in the last years. We
passed it in 1992, and the House passed it, but President Bush vetoed
it. We then passed it again in 1994, but it died mostly because the
House of Representatives did not want to take it up.
The bottom line, I think all colleagues will agree, is that we saw a
period of scandal in America that brought reform, and it would be
irrational now in the face of the extraordinary impact of money in
American
[[Page S6584]] politics to suddenly take away our capacity to free
both of our candidates, or any major party candidate, from having to go
out and raise these extraordinary sums of money which most Americans
have come to agree distort the American political process.
That is not the only issue raised in this budget, and we will have
ample time in the days ahead to discuss it.
Mr. President, I see that the majority leader is in the Chamber. I do
not know if he had an announcement or a procedure.
Mr. DOLE. Announcement. I would like to get back on the bill.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me just say to the majority leader, I
had asked if there were any amendments. There were no amendments, and I
allowed whatever amendments were there to be done before speaking. If
there is an amendment that is ready to go forward, I am not trying to
delay the process or hold up the Senate, but I thought I would call
attention to this issue in the absence of that.
Mr. DOLE. I do not have any problem with that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. DOLE. If the Senator will yield.
Mr. KERRY. I would like to retain the right to the floor, but I will
yield.
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