[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 24, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H805-H806]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            CAMPAIGN REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Well, Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons I ran for this 
office was I did not really do a great job of housekeeping. When I was 
a young housewife many, many years ago, housekeeping was supposed to be 
your specialty. We had dust kittens under the bed that probably weighed 
about 10 pounds. But now I must say as I look around this House, we got 
some housekeeping we need to do that actually by comparison would make 
my dust kittens under my bed look small, because there are some big 
clumps of dirt in this place, and it really all gravitates around 
campaign finance reform.
  I think that Common Cause on the outside has been doing a great job 
of 

[[Page H806]]
pointing out how, if we do not move to do some campaign finance reform, 
the people who ran against Washington have become the Washington they 
ran against. And we all know how rapidly that happens to people. Voters 
have moved from being disillusioned with that to now being flat-out 
cynical about it, and they have every right to be.
  When I first ran for office, my average campaign contribution was 
$7.50. Now, as an incumbent who has been around for 23 years, my 
average campaign contribution, PAC's and individuals, is $50. There are 
not many people that could say that, but that is exactly what Jefferson 
had in mind.
  Tonight, as we know, there is a huge Republican dinner, one more 
time, where people are paying a gazillion dollars for whatever. You 
know, I hate to tell those people, but in my district you can get a 
chicken dinner, a really good chicken dinner, for $5 to $10. So 
obviously they are not going there for the chicken. They are going 
there for some other reason.
  This is one of the very few countries in the world that pretends 
someone would give you $10,000 because they believe in good government 
and did not want anything for it. Having finished today the Armed 
Services Committee bill and looking at all of the stuff that got jammed 
in that bill that the President did not want, the Joint Chiefs did not 
want, the Pentagon did not want, but some special interests wanted that 
had given people a lot of campaign money, and guess what? They got it. 
They got it. They got their B-2's, they got their whole laundry list of 
whatever it was they wanted, although generals did not want it and the 
President did not want it, and what does that say?

                              {time}  1600

  I think that it is so important for this bipartisan group who has 
introduced the bipartisan Clean Congress Act to get this moving. I hope 
every American holds Members' feet to the fire to discharge this bill 
and get it on the floor.
  What are some of the things in this bill? Doing away with political 
action committees, so you go back to individual contributions. That is 
what it is supposed to be about, not big, huge groups.
  It also asks that we collect 60 percent of what we get from the State 
that we run in. If you are getting 100 percent of your money from a 
State that you are not representing, you have got to wonder who is 
calling the tune and whose tune the Member is dancing to.
  There are other things in here that ban tax-funded taxpayer mailings 
during election years and many other of these areas that we really need 
to clean up, too.
  This is what is wrong here. This place looks like a coin-operated 
legislative machine. The average American feels they do not have the 
coins to put in, and they do not. So they feel they will never be heard 
here, and many are not. That is why when you look at your priorities 
you scratch your head and say, Wait a minute, how did these priorities 
get here?
  Well, they got here because of this ridiculous funding process. I 
think it is so important we clean this House of that special interest 
money. It is more important than probably anything else we do, because 
that is the only way we get to real priorities, the people's 
priorities, and not the fat cat priorities.
  So I encourage every American to take some time and think about this, 
and say we want our Government back as we start to close this century 
out and this decade out, and ask every Member to move on this 
bipartisan bill that will clean this House and correct this great 
injustice, I think. Finally we will be able to have real priorities and 
not big money priorities.

                          ____________________