[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 125 (Monday, July 31, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H8004]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       RESTRICTIONS ON POLITICAL ADVOCACY MISGUIDED AND MISPLACED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Skaggs] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, later this week the House will take up 
consideration of the appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, 
Health and Human Services and Education. I want to call my colleagues' 
attention to the fact that not included in this appropriations bill are 
some 13 pages of legislation, something we are not supposed to do on 
appropriations bills.
  The topic of this 13-page legislative provision is ``Political 
Advocacy.'' It flies directly in the face of the first amendment to the 
Constitution which says that this body, the Congress, shall make no law 
concerning free speech, freedom of association, or the right to 
petition the Government. But that is precisely what this 13-page piece 
of legislation, buried in this appropriations bill, will do.
   Mr. Speaker, the subtitle of this title says, ``Prohibition on the 
Use of Federal Funds for Political Advocacy.'' As it happens, of 
course, that is already illegal. The real sweep of this legislative 
proposal has very little to do with Federal funds. What it does have to 
do with is your use of your own funds. Every single American citizen, 
nonprofit organization, recipient of a Federal research grant likely is 
going to be swept into the impact of this incredible and chilling piece 
of legislation.
   Mr. Speaker, if you look at the definition of ``political 
advocacy,'' which is one of the principal operative concepts in this 
bill, it includes virtually everything that you might have thought was 
protected speech under the first amendment to the Constitution. Even an 
inkind contribution to a political campaign; even the purchase of 
something that has nothing to do with politics, if the person or the 
organization you are purchasing it from happens to have used more than 
15 percent of its resources on political advocacy. Again, political 
advocacy includes just about anything having to do with trying to 
affect the political debate in this country not just at the Federal 
level, but at the State and local levels as well.
   Mr. Speaker, the other principal concept that makes this such an 
overarching and intrusive provision has to do with the definition of 
grant, because it is only grantees, recipients of grants, that are 
swept into this new regime of accounting for political speech. But 
again, if you look at the definition of grant, it is not just what you 
might think in a commonsensical way; that is, the provision of funds to 
somebody directly from the Federal Government. No, it is much broader 
than that. It includes anything of value provided, not given, but 
provided, to any person or organization.
  So if you consider, as absurd as it may seem, that this political 
advocacy restriction applies to anyone who gets a grant, it will 
impact, for instance, the following kinds of people: Disaster victims 
getting emergency housing assistance grants; nurses who may have 
received a national research service award; low-income tenants 
receiving section 8 housing grants; researchers receiving money from 
the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation; 
and, Indian tribes. Now, State and local governments are excluded, but 
not Indian tribes, for instance, getting grants for economic 
development activities.
  So it is incredibly far reaching and intrusive, and it not only 
affects what you can do with public money, but it affects what you can 
do with your own
 money. If you fall into this trap, and almost all of us will, you 
could not spend more than 5 percent of your own money on any of these 
political advocacy activities, State, Federal, local, anything at all, 
or you would be disqualified from getting any kind of Federal grant, 
again broadly defined, over a period of 5 years.

  Mr. MILLER of California. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SKAGGS. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from 
California.
  Mr. MILLER of California. I thank the gentleman for taking his time 
in pointing out what is an incredible amendment to the bill that we 
will be asked to vote on.
  Mr. Speaker, let me ask the gentleman from Colorado a question. As 
the gentleman just described it, as I understand it, if you are a big 
farmer in the central valley of California and you are receiving a 
water subsidy, or you are a timber company and you are receiving 
hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies in road building or water 
subsidies, or if you are a mining company and you have received land 
under a grant from the Federal Government, or if you are an oil company 
and you are receiving royalty subsidies or tax subsidies, you can come 
here and lobby all you want to increase those subsidies, to reduce them 
or to change the law. But if you are a public interest group and you 
have received any Federal money, you then have a limitation on money 
that you have privately raised or the private sector has participated 
with you; is that correct?
  Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, actually, this goes even farther and 
includes some of the groups that the gentleman from California 
mentioned.
  Now, it would not affect defense contractors, for instance, but the 
way I read it, somebody getting Burec water at a subsidized rate would 
indeed be swept under the provisions of this proposal.

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