[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 161 (Wednesday, October 18, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1969]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN SPENDING LIMITS

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                           HON. MARCY KAPTUR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 18, 1995

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I introduce today a constitutional amendment 
that would, for the first time, allow Congress and the States to set 
reasonable limits on campaign expenditures.
  This amendment is necessary because campaign spending in our country 
is out of control. An estimated $540 million was spent on all elections 
in the United States in 1976--but by 1992, the amount spent had grown 
to $3 billion. And in the last House and Senate elections, a total of 
$724 million was spent--up more than 60 percent just since 1990. 
Candidates and elected officials have become professional beggars.
  Our Nation's elected representatives spend too little time doing the 
people's business, and too much time raising campaign funds. Yet the 
Supreme Court has ruled, in the case of Buckley versus Valeo, that 
campaign spending limits are an unconstitutional infringement on 
political expression. My amendment would change that by making it 
clear--as similar legislation introduced in the Senate by Senator 
Hollings would do--that Congress and the States are free to enact 
reasonable limits on election expenditures.
  I had hoped that a constitutional amendment would not be necessary. 
But campaign finance reform was conspicuously missing from the 
Republican Contract With America. And despite the Speaker's telegenic 
handshake with President Clinton in New Hampshire, where he vowed to 
develop a bipartisan commission to recommend changes to our system of 
financing campaigns, the Speaker has now backed off this issue.
  But this issue is too important to ignore. If passed, my amendment 
will go a long way toward rebuilding the public trust in our domestic 
system of government. To ensure that our Government is truly ``of the 
people, for the people, and by the people,'' we must end the current 
practice of allowing elections to be bought by the highest bidder.

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