[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 126 (Tuesday, August 1, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H8148-H8153]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRAVEL EXPENSES AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of may
[[Page H8149]]
12, 1995, the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. Smith] is recognized
for 40 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from
Ohio [Mr. Hoke].
Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the gentlewoman from
Washington yielding so I could finish what I tried to start earlier
with respect to just talking about some of the problems that have been
exposed in the Department of Energy and Secretary O'Leary's travel.
What I was saying before is that the Secretary has demanded that 23 of
the DOE program offices each advanced moneys from their program budgets
to pay for at least two of the invited delegation members on a trade
mission to South Africa. These are for non-DOE employees. In many cases
those moneys are then reimbursed back, not to the program departments,
program offices, but directly to the Secretary of Energy, and the GAO
has come out with a report that indicates the impropriety of that and
that that is not the way that the program money is supposed to be
spent. I am going to talk a little bit more about that in a moment.
The per diem cost on this trip that is coming up August 18 for 6 days
where there are going to be some 47 people going on this trip, the
total cost of this delegation's trip is $700,000. Now there are 35
individuals planning to go to South Africa separately from the official
delegation from the Department of Energy, 28 in advance, 7 separately.
This is down, by the way, from 51, Mr. Speaker. There were going to be
51, but apparently, due to some criticism that has been levied from the
Congress, it is down now to 35, and they are going to go for and
spending at least 2 weeks in the country in advance doing advance work
for reasons that are not completely clear. That raises the overall cost
of the mission to approximately $1.2 million.
Well, what is wrong with that? Well, first of all, let us look at the
justification that the Secretary has made for a previous trade mission.
She claimed that she has gotten $19\1/2\ billion in business for U.S.
firms as a result of that. Almost all of these claims were based on
memoranda of understanding and letters of intent, not on actual
contracts. Actually the DOE has not provided any accounting that shows
that there are actually signed contracts, and frankly it begs another
question, and that is would these firms have made these agreements
otherwise? Would they not still have gone to contract this business?
Would they not still be interested in creating these relationships? I
would certainly think they would.
Second, the DOE inspector general conducted an audit of two of
Secretary O'Leary's previous trade missions and found problems with
respect to managing the cost of DOE international travel and recouping
the costs associated with non-Federal passengers. Let me give you what
the four suggestions were from the Inspector General, the IG.
First, prepare formal procedures for acquisition of international air
services including a clarification of responsibilities for all
interested parties.
Second, implement full cost-recovery policy for non-Federal
passengers as provided for in 10 C.F.R. 1009.
Third, establish a procedure which insures that the Department
collects passenger air fares before the trip occurs.
Fourth, establish accounts receivable for non-Federal
passengers on the India and Pakistan flights and aggressively pursue
collection of air fare costs from those passengers.
Well, those four steps have not been taken. There does not appear to
be any plan to reimburse the program offices that fronted the money for
the South Africa trip. In fact, this has been the problem with previous
trips, the previous trips to India and to Pakistan. As the money being
transferred was properly authorized and appropriated by Congress, I
find it extremely troubling that funds that have already been obligated
are now being redirected without any congressional consultation or
approval. While it would be easy to dismiss that as an oversight by
DOE, unfortunately there is a long history of congressional concern
regarding DOE's reprogramming practices.
And lastly, Secretary O'Leary has proposed a substantial
reorganization of DOE, and that is to her credit. I would eliminate DOE
completely, but she has proposed a substantial reorganization of DOE
with significant numbers of Federal jobs being eliminated, and at the
same time it seems extremely strange that the Secretary is mounting an
extensive international expedition with already strained program
offices bearing the burden of the costs.
According to the L.A. Times, Mr. Speaker, the Secretary has spent
more on her travels than any of her Cabinet colleagues. She stayed in
higher-priced accommodations using more expensive flight classes and
more expensive with the very, very high-security details as a result of
that. Secretary O'Leary is always accompanied by large entourages on
these trips.
Now the last thing that I want to do, and I guess my main concern in
sharing all of this, and I do not want to use up any more of the
gentlewoman's time, and I appreciate her giving it to me, is that it
seems to me there is a real problem with respect to an abuse of the
travel accounts at the Department of Energy, and somebody has got to
blow the whistle. A senior DOE official provided me with the graphics
of a T-shirt that Secretary O'Leary was going to distribute to each
participant of the South Africa trip that was created at the Department
of Energy on a Department of Energy computer. I understand that they
have been working furiously all day to vet or to purge the computer of
this work so the graphics would not show up, but it was designed and
was going to be created and purchased at taxpayers expense. I think
that it appears now the Secretary's office has canceled the T-shirt
order, and, if I have anything to do with that, I am glad of that.
Obviously creating some T-shirts that look like a rock concert is not
the issue. The issue here is that there is an arrogant and flagrant
abuse of taxpayer dollars with respect to travel expenses at a time
that those programmatic moneys are being taken out of the area that
specifically insure the safety and the safeguarding of our nuclear
programs in the Department of Energy.
{time} 1900
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. The gentleman is making an example that is
pretty flagrant, but people around America see these things. They live
and they see and they hear their neighbors talk about these things, and
I think it makes sense, then, when we see the polls that we just saw
that came out in the last few days, a bipartisan pollster took a poll
on the confidence in government, and, basically, we flunked. Seventy-
five percent of the people do not trust government, whether it be
politicians or whether it be these agencies. They see things like this
and they feel robbed.
We have to do what the gentleman is doing. We have to dig it out, we
have to make it public, and we have to change the old ways.
Mr. HOKE. What is unfortunate about this is that this was shared with
me by a top official in the Department, and now they are scrambling
like crazy. They are probably watching this very broadcast and saying,
``Oh, my goodness, what will we do next?'' What they have done is
purged their computers. They have canceled the orders. I think that is
great, but they will try to hang one DOD staffer out to dry, cover the
whole thing up, and claim the Secretary knew nothing about it and had
nothing to do with it, and that this was strictly the idea,
independently, of one person. I thank the whistleblowers in our
Government.
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has really
brought into focus what we wanted to talk about tonight, and that is
confidence in government.
There are several Members of Congress that have been working on
building confidence in government now for several weeks, in fact, clear
from last December, when many of us were elected, and we have this
knowledge that people do not trust this place of Congress because of
the practices, and yet we watch us do so many things. The people have
watched us do so many things. At first, we opened up hearings that have
never been opened. We stopped proxy voting. That is where a Member
sends a pile of votes and lets
[[Page H8150]]
someone else vote for them. Good representation, is it not? We
decreased the size of staff here so people are not drafting legislation
that have very little to do with it and then policymakers come out here
and run somebody else's legislation.
Mr. Speaker, we also got the amount of cost of this place down, and
yet the poll comes out and 75 percent of the people still do not trust
us. I think it is because every day there is a new report on a trip one
Member took to one warm place in the middle of winter, or a gift that
they received, or a report on something like the sugar lobby, about who
got the most money from the sugar lobby, or, last week, the report came
out on who got the most money from the tobacco lobby, always assuming
if we vote a certain way, we voted that way because we got the money.
Now, Mr. Speaker, that is clearly not true with everyone on every
vote, but it is awfully hard to keep a straight face and convince the
American people that the money is not connected to the vote.
We resolved finally, a group of us, that we would have to draft
something that was clean, honest with the American people, honest with
the incumbents that are here, treating them with respect, but that
worked, and we drafted the Clean Congress Act, 2072. At first, we tried
to reduce contributions from special interests, but everyone said why
leave anything? Then we tried to raise contributions for individuals to
balance, and they said, ``Oh, good, now the rich control campaigns.''
It always came back to one basic
premise: We needed to get groups out of D.C. and close the checkbooks;
literally stop any checkbook from being opened in Washington, DC., and
drive the campaigns back home.
PACs had a good original purpose, but they have been perverted from
the very beginning from their purpose. We find that what happens now is
the very best people come here, often running against those that got
their money from PACs. A lot of freshmen did this year. They get here
and they have had a PACs spending war, because the incumbent they
challenged was funded by PACs.
Mr. Speaker, these Members get here with debt. They are here 80 hours
a week. They get to go home to their home district maybe on the
weekend, because we vote the rest of the week, and we throw everyone
into a system of paying off debts with PAC money and then we turn
around and we have a new opponent that is raising PAC money, and so it
goes, and so it goes.
Good people come here with good intentions, and it is like swimming
in a polluted lake. We just do the best we can with the system we have.
We decided to drain the lake. We realized that most people are in the
middle of a campaign right now, and that campaign started the day after
most of us were elected, with often our prior opponents announcing they
were running against us again and they started raising PAC money to get
us out of office.
We cannot lay down our arms in the middle of a war. That would not be
bravery, it would just be stupidity. We do say that at the end of this
campaign cycle, we want everyone to disarm at the same time and send
the campaigns home. Do not take money from anybody outside our State.
Groups can organize still, even put together their groups and call them
PACs, they just cannot give money to Federal candidates. We want to
drive campaigns home.
Mr. Speaker, I want to show you just a couple of charts that show why
it is so vital. It used to be PACs played a little bit in the race, to
let some of the groups that had a little more trouble become a part of
the political system. Over the last 10 years especially, however, we
have seen an elevation of PACs that totally excludes the individual and
leaves the individual as a minor player instead of a major.
The total PAC contributions have gone from right at 80 million, less
than 80 million in 1984, to 132 million this last campaign cycle. This
is just to the House, not the Senate. If you start looking at what
people started raising in January to pay off debt, especially these new
Congress people that ran against PAC kings and queens, who raised
millions before they even filed against them, they are paying off debt.
They have to clean up their old campaign, and they are facing a new
person who is adding to that level, too.
Mr. Speaker, some will say let us just change the numbers and leave
it here; let us continue to get money from groups and just change the
numbers a little bit, or from larger individual contributions. I will
tell you, however, to look at what it does. Incumbents get over 53
percent of their money from PACs. That is not including the wealthy.
That is just PACs. Excuse me, 43 percent; 53 percent from individuals.
Not quite half and half. 2\1/2\ percent or so from parties.
Challengers, on the other hand, have to raise over 80 percent of
their money from individuals. That sounds pretty good to me, if it was
on both sides. In PACs, they get 11 percent. Now, do you wonder, and it
is no wonder, that challengers have had a tough time getting through
these doors? The fluke of last year
was the people getting fed up. Will they stay fed up to that level?
Probably not. They get weary.
Mr. Speaker, they kicked a lot of old-timers out. Sorry old-timers
listening on the screens, but last year they put in new blood. Should
the new blood have to swim in the polluted lake? We advocate no, and so
we are asking the American people to join us. We are going as a
delegation to the United We Stand Conference next month, or this month,
on the 12th. We are presenting the challenge to the Nation through that
group.
This group is organizing around the Nation. We have pulled in other
good government groups and grass roots groups all over the Nation, and
we are raising the voice of the American people. If you want to raise
your voice with the American people, whether you are Members in your
offices or others listening, join us in supporting 2072, but at least
become a part of the voice. If the American people do not speak out and
say this is enough, then it will be the same next campaign, and the
next campaign, and we will build a new generation of PAC kings and
queens.
I would like now to yield, Mr. Speaker, to Charlie Bass of New
Hampshire, a gentleman who is also moving in this area, working on
campaign reform, and I think you have a plan to try to move campaigns
back to the State, too.
Mr. BASS. I thank the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. Smith] for
yielding to me, and I want to commend her for the courageous effort
that she has made as a freshman Member of Congress to swim against a
tide of incumbency.
I said many times during my campaign last year that there are really
three parties in Washington, Republicans, Democrats, and incumbents,
and the incumbents is the largest party of all. I think on November 8
many of us who did not take any significant amount of political action
committee money showed that we can make a difference here in
Washington. As one of those new Members of Congress who is here today,
and proud to be here, I want to create a Congress that the American
people can be proud of, a Congress that is elected by people and
supported by people from Members of Congress' districts.
I also want to commend the gentlewoman for standing up here tonight
and bringing to the American people the need to reduce the influence of
special interests, to require that campaign funds come from a
candidate's own district. I am here tonight to discuss with you, also,
an idea I have thought about for many years, as one who has sponsored
legislation in my own home State to limit campaign spending overall, to
limit the influence of special interests in my own home State, and to
establish, among other things, a legislative Ethics Committee to limit
independent expenditures.
Mr. Speaker, I feel that we ought to be returning some of the power
to qualify Federal offices to the States, and it is my intention in the
coming week to send out a ``Dear Colleague'' letter to my friends
asking them if they would be willing to join me in an effort to repeal
the provision of the Federal Election Campaign Act, which preempts all
State and Federal regulations for Federal officeholders.
The effect of this repeal would be to give States, such as New
Hampshire or the State of Washington, or, for example, the State of
Indiana, which currently has a law on its books that says that anyone
who contracts with the State cannot contribute to candidates,
[[Page H8151]]
or lobbyists cannot contribute to candidates. If that is what the
people in Indiana want to do, they should be able to do that.
We are in a Congress now that says that we ought to give States more
rights. We have a new attitude here that says that local control is
better. I feel that the people and voters of New Hampshire or any other
State in this country should be able to set the qualifications and
determine spending limits, determine other limits, as long as they are
more stringent than the Federal limits, and enact those laws and have
them apply to candidates for Federal office.
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I understand the gentleman
intends to distribute that this week. That means all the Members
listening would have a chance to take a look and sign on. I know that I
certainly will look at anything seriously and get it moving that
returns power to the States and gets those campaigns back into the
streets of the States where we come from instead of the side rooms or
the side cafes and rooms around this place.
Mr. BASS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield back, nothing
that I would envision by repealing this preemption provision, which, by
the way, is only three lines long, would in any way affect any laws we
made here in Washington to restrict the influence of political action
committees and so forth. It would allow the States, however, to go
farther than anything we decided to do here in Washington.
Let me point out that in a State like California, and my colleague
here is from California, lives in the State of California, and they
have different conditions, different populations, different numbers of
Members of Congress, a larger delegation and different demographics, it
may be different from Alaska, where there is only one Member of
Congress in a huge and rather less populated State, or my home State of
New Hampshire.
We established campaign spending limits in New Hampshire. I think we
were the first in the country to do so after the Buckley-Valeo case in
1972, which outlawed campaign spending limits, and now other States
have adopted. Vermont, I think, Arizona, and other States. I think
these new laws should apply to Members of Congress as well as State
officeholders. They do, in effect, apply in a de facto sense because
nobody has challenged these new laws.
I think if we were to repeal the Preemption Act, then we would allow
the States to have more control over the people they send to Washington
and not center all the control of the Federal election process in one
place, Washington, DC. It is time we turned that trend around, and I
thank the gentlewoman from Washington for yielding to me.
{time} 1915
Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I would be honored to yield to
someone who has worked on this long before me, but been very serious
about the battle.
Mr. HORN. I commend you, as did my colleague, for the eloquence and
energy that you bring to this project. It is going to take a lot of
that and we are going to need a lot of allies. I think you are
absolutely right. Our problem with government is too many people are
running the government, be it the executive branch or Congress over the
years, based on public opinion polls. They have not sat down to think,
as the gentlewoman has, with the climate of distrust for representative
government, which is shocking, that we have got to deal with the real
problems. And the real problems are exactly what the gentlewoman is
talking about: Over use of money and its influence in American
politics.
Now, the Republican Party grappled with this in the 103d Congress,
and we came forth with an excellent proposal. It banned PAC's, it
banned soft money, that money from labor unions and corporations,
organized groups, that go to the political party to conduct
registration drives, administration of their own operations. It also
said raise most of the money in your constituency.
Now, those fundamentals I think are basic, and I think most of us
would agree with that. The argument comes, do you do it at the three-
fourths level, the majority level, or whatever.
I had an opponent last time that raised 1 percent of his money in the
38th Congressional District in California, and 99 percent of his money
in the east coast, Midwest and other parts of California. I do not
think that is good for representative government. If your local
citizens cannot back you, why do we expect others to back us except for
one reason, that they can get their agenda through you imposed on the
legislative process.
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I was trying to explain to one
of the major news magazines today what was bothering me about this
place and why I wanted to change it, and I finally came to a cultural
issue. That sounds odd. I said I want to change the culture. The
culture becomes centered on Washington, DC, and people do not have to
go home after a few years, because they become a chair or they meet
enough of the special interest groups, and the money kind of comes in
after you are elected.
So what this will do, if you take any versions of this, the one they
introduced last year, eliminating PAC's, making it all come from people
mostly in your State, or all in your State, I prefer all in your State
obviously, but it changes the culture, because instead of us fighting
the war here we move it back into the streets of America, the war of
public opinion, I cannot stay here next year if I want to run for
office if my opponents are at home raising money, and I cannot raise it
here anymore. It will drive the incumbents back home. You will not have
people just staying here.
What a wonderful thing for America when America's people reclaim the
political system. Will it not be great to see some people who have not
had to go home but once every 2 months or so, and then for special
things, have to go back and explain votes? I am talking about this
whole place. I know Members who say they go home every so often. They
have been here long enough, they do not have to do that anymore. That
is a serious statement, do not have to do that anymore.
Mr. BASS. Mr. Speaker, I am taken by the comments of my colleague
from California about sources of income. I think the gentleman makes an
excellent point. If you received 2 or 3 percent of the money from your
district that you run on, and it is a high dollar campaign, who do you
really represent? Who do you really represent?
That is what is so cancerous about this system. If all the money
comes from the Route 495 Beltway or some big metropolitan area where
there may be some special issue, the key here is you ought to be
accountable to the people who sent you to Washington. Those are the
people that really count, and there is nothing wrong with that. There
ought to be limitations on sources of income, and that ought to be one
of the highest priorities of this Congress in campaign spending reform.
The gentleman from California could not have done a better job in
illustrating that. From my own perspective, I have a similar experience
in that my opponent's funds were less than 10 percent from the whole
State of New Hampshire, and I think that was
made very clear that there was some question as to the quality of that
representation. I think the gentleman, talking in his own home State of
California, makes an equally good point.
Mr. HORN. If the gentlewoman will yield a moment, the other thing you
started on, you are quite correct, what is the cancerous decay.
Even though these are all wonderful people, all nice people, and they
are doing wonderful things, but when you raise the money as easy as it
is when you are a committee chair, when you are a ranking minority
Member, when you are in a position of influence and you come to
Washington, as you both have suggested, and every night of the working
week you can either go to the Democratic National Club or the
Republican Capitol Hill Club, and you will find it $500 a clip, not
just once a year, but now increasingly four times a year, and if you
are a committee chair in the last Congress, Democrat-controlled, or
this Congress, Republican-controlled, it is $1,000 a clip.
Who is bringing those checks? The PAC people. Are they based in your
district? No. They might have a plant
[[Page H8152]]
there, but most of them that show up do not have a plant there, because
you sit on the right committee that affects their livelihood, be it
agriculture, be it commerce, be it banking and financial institutions,
whatever it is. And so they say, if you talk to the PAC representative,
why are you doing it, they say, gee, if I do not do it, I will not have
access and I have got to be able to get my message over.
That is a pretty sad commentary on representative government, if you
have got five hundred a crack on a quarterly basis or one thousand a
crack, in order to have access to get your message across.
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I think the point is I do not believe that
most people just say well, you did not give me $1,000, so you do not
have access. I think what happens is everyone thinks that. So now some
might be playing hard ball and saying ``Do not even come see me if you
do not bring money.'' That is the exception. The American people think
that is how it operates.
But it has it started to be that is they do it because someone on
another issue might counter you, and if you do not do it, what if they
do it, and it becomes a spending war here.
In Washington State, when I first arrived, it bothered me there as
much, and I was in the State legislature, as it is doing here. I
realized they had fund raisers immediately before a session, even
though they did not have them officially during the half year or so
they were in session. They would have them and just back people up into
these huge rooms and continually, several a night, raise money. They
had office funds, which is where the gifts were put, and that is the
money they could use for stereos and things like that, then they would
have campaign funds. And every chair kept track of who came and who did
not come, and it was pretty blatant there. I do not know if it is here
or not, but the American people perceive both as disgusting.
It took me actually 4 years of trying with the legislature, to
finally have an initiative. I abolished office funds, removed all fund
raising where we vote, which is what I would like to do here, stopped
any kind of transfer of money from one candidate to another, forced the
special interests, our Supreme Court is a little different, more
liberal, and our Constitution is, to very small amounts of
contributions, literally took them out of power in 2 years, and
returned it to where grass roots candidates
flipped the legislature to beat nearly 60 new people in 1 year, and
there are only 98.
So what happened is people, when they had a chance, they came in. But
it was impossible. For 40-some years it stayed about the same. In fact,
the Senate stayed in party control for 42 years with no change,
somewhat like here. And what happened is the place became so ingrown,
the staff was ingrown, it is a terrible terminology, that staff
actually drafted bills, they became so powerful. When the Chair was
there so long, they did not have their own ideas, so staff came in.
They became powerful. The whole place separated more and more from the
people.
The moment we removed the money, within 2 years the whole place
flipped, and a whole bunch of old-timers did not like the idea of
running without money, and a bunch of challengers said ``We have the
chance.'' They hit the streets in the most vibrant campaign cycle we
ever had.
Mr. HORN. If you will recall, a few years ago Members in this House
were able to retire and take the campaign fund they had in their bank
account with them. In some cases, that meant they could take $1 million
into retirement. That no longer can be done. Congress finally faced up
to the idiocy of that operation.
But you mentioned these office funds at the State legislature. One of
the things eventually we are going to have to deal with, and I am going
to put in a bill this year on that, among other things we are all going
to do, is dealing with leadership PAC's, where whether it be the other
body in this Congress, or this body, regardless of party, you have
major leaders with PAC's that they have built up. That is why some of
them are major leaders. That is why some of them 5, 10, 15 years ago
have been major leaders, or Lyndon Johnson in the 40's and 50's, is
they raised the money in their State, they doled it out to the Members,
and, guess what? The Members that they doled it out to just happened to
vote for them when Congress reconvenes and chooses its leaders. That is
a further influence of money that often overcomes talent.
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. You, know, we saw that in the State. They
would have these big fund raisers, and actually the special interests
did not want to take on another incumbent, so what they would do is
give a whole lot of money or channel from their membership a whole lot
of money to one member who they would like to see as a chair of a
committee or some leadership. They would then take that money and give
it to someone else, not only for their own benefit, but to launder the
money. So that they did not have to worry about that PAC. If they lost
this bet on that particular raise, they did not have to worry about
them getting mad, and they would play both sides.
Mr. HORN. That is exactly what happens nationally as well. It is the
old line of a lobbyist, the railroad owner in New York 100 years ago.
He said when I am in a Democrat's district, I am a Democrat. When I am
in Republican's district, I am a Republican. But I am always for the
Erie Railroad.
That is what is really gets down to. They are always putting their
agenda first. if we do what you and Charlie Bass and I and others are
suggesting, let us get that back to the district. Then it is the
district's agenda, which is what representative government is all
about.
I found it sort of ironic, I have not taken PAC money in either the
1992 campaign when I was first elected or in 1994. It is sort of
humorous. Out of the blue came $20,000 in PAC money, which the campaign
manager, my son, immediately sent back, and just explained we do not
take PAC money.
People could not believe it. There is about 35 of us in this Chamber,
maybe with the freshman now 40, that do not take PAC money. That is 10
percent of the House, including Members in both parties, about equally
divided. We have got to encourage others to do the same. One of our
problems is the Supreme Court of the United States, which might say you
cannot ban PAC money. Those people have a right to give all they can.
Well, I think that is personally nonsense. I think Congress ought to
be able to cap the amount of money, either individuals give, which we
do, and the amount of money PAC's give, which we do. Now, the question
would be, if we are for banning PAC's, do we have to let them give just
$1,000 at most to get by the Supreme Court. I think we also ought to
limit what individuals can spend of their own money.
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Buckley versus Valeo is a decision that
both at the State level, and I had one Supreme Court case against our
initiative, and won, by the way, in our State, and they used Buckley
versus Valeo, and there are some State supreme court decisions.
You have to really watch that and decide whether or not this Supreme
Court would look at it the same way, and whether they would decide
allowing them to go ahead and organize, so you do not remove their
ability to associate, and spend within their group, if that would
satisfy now. Because if you look at the language, it was pretty squishy
total to begin with. And we have a new Supreme Court. We also probably,
to be a little safer than totally banning PAC's, letting them organize,
work within their Members. We do not remove their ability to associate
and we do not remove their ability to participate. That seems to be an
easier place to be with a constitutional challenge.
But we do have to wrestle with this, and I think we the Congress
should set the best policy we can to clean up this place, do the best
job we can, bring all of our ideas together, and run with it.
Now, we are taking a plan to Dallas this month and we are taking it
to groups all over the Nation, and we are just saying we want to call a
truce next November. We want it to be over. We want this place to have
no more special interest money, and we want to work on that direction.
But so many people are coming up and saying we can make it better. And
I think this place had better work in honesty with the American people
and come out with something good, or we are going
[[Page H8153]]
to face next November's election with people going, ``This Congress was
just like the other Congresses,'' and we are not just like the other
Congresses. We have done some revolutionary things.
But when you throw a little dirt in the barrel, it makes the whole
barrel look dirty, even though you know it is cleaner. It still looks
dirty and we need to get rid of that dirt.
Mr. HORN. You are absolutely correct, because unless we do,
everything we do will be called into question, when it simply is not
true. I think if we treat the voters as they are, intelligent,
thinking, human beings, I have always found you get an excellent
response. If you level with them, tell them what the problem is, just
as you are leveling with them, and saying ``Look, we know it is a
problem. We want to do something about it.''
What galls me when I hear some of our colleagues on the floor talk
about the gift ban, but they are taking PAC money practically by the
wheelbarrow fulls, we ought to combine both, the gift ban and the ban
on PAC's or severely limiting PAC's.
{time} 1930
And then let us get that package before the House and let us see if
some of those gift ban people are quite willing to give up their
several hundred thousand dollars of PAC money for their $50 gift ban.
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I looked at a lot of the bills when I first
got here thinking, I do not care if they are Democrats or Republicans,
I was a Democrat 30-some years and then a Republican after that, lesser
time, and my husband says, ``Honey, you're not born a Democrat; you're
not born anything.''
But at 32 I changed. And I looked at all of them thinking, there has
to be something good in there. I found holes big enough to fly a 747
bound to a warm place paid for by a lobbyist in it. They were using
them for political tools.
I looked at one we faced on the first day. They had left trips. They
just called them fact-finding trips, but if you looked at it, not only
did they leave trips, they left trips for their wife or husband. They
left trips for their staffs. Those are the big gifts. So they did not
even deal with gifts. They had 20-some pages of exceptions, then they
played around with whether you could eat a hot dog with a lobbyist. I
do not give a rip if they eat a hot dog with a lobbyist. I care deeply
about them going to Mexico to check something out. And we all know
Americans go to Mexico.
So they have played games long enough. The American people do not
trust us. So we do have to come out with a package. And 2072 says no
gifts, no trips and no money from any special interest group here, only
people from your States.
People are saying, why do you not just let people give you money
here? Because lobbyists are people, wealthier people. And Bill Gates,
bless his heart, he can give everybody here as much as we would want,
it probably does not even affect him. So we can shift it to individuals
and say, let us just let individuals take everywhere, go ahead and give
everywhere, but those individuals will shift right into this place and
instead of having lobbyists fund raisers or PAC fund raisers, we are
going to end up with large donor, trial lawyers for certain people,
medical for other people, they are going to move in with large, large
checks. And the influence is going to stay here. So we have to move it
out.
Mr. HORN. On that very point, I mentioned the Republican bill we
brought to the floor in the 103d Congress. We had a compromise bill
also that we tried to get to the floor. The Democratic bill came in
where they want the public to pay for their campaigns. The Republican
bill came in, no PAC money, no soft money, raise most of it in your
district. But the so-called Synar-Livingston bill, Mike Synar, then a
Representative from Oklahoma, now suffering some ill health, was the
leader on it with Bob Livingston, the chairman of our Committee on
Appropriations now. And there were eight others of us that did not take
PAC money, generally, that were on it.
And what he did was cut PAC's down to $1,000 from their current
$5,000 in the primary they can give you and $5,000 in the general
election. He cut them down to $1,000, and he cut the present maximum of
$1,000 from an individual down to $500 and felt that was par and that
would pull back both of them, a little bit of nuclear disarmament, as
you have been talking about. Of course, what happened was the
Democratic leadership knew we could get that passed in the House.
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. They were not real serious.
Mr. HORN. And they would not let us get to the floor and the
Democratic-controlled Committee on Rules refused to let us have a vote
on Synar-Livingston. And obviously, I think we could have passed that.
I think enough Democrats who were holding out for the public financing
and did not like the complete abolition of PAC's would have bought that
package. But they would not even let us vote on it.
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I think it points to the fact that many
people here over the years know what the American people want. And they
want this place cleaned up. But they are not real serious about doing
it. But they want to make it look like they are trying. When I got done
looking at all the proposals that were being floated out, so many of
them were a game.
I want to thank the gentleman for joining me.
Mr. HORN. I thank you for your leadership in this area.
Mrs. SMITH of Washington. We will work together and we will make it
happen with the people's help.
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