[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 105 (Wednesday, July 17, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H7769-H7773]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2215

  But we keep hearing this from the Republicans, it is okay to keep 
coming with those individual large contributors.

[[Page H7770]]

  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, before the gentleman leaves, I 
just want to comment, and I think it is true in your office, and I 
would be curious to know, we have received 362 letters in favor of 
limiting campaign finance in congressional campaigns. We have received 
two to suggest we ought to spend more money, or are opposed to the 
limits. It is running over 150 to 1 in favor of exactly what we are 
doing.
  I presume your mail is in the same category, so what boggles my mind 
is how do you come up with a bill they have come up with that goes just 
opposite, that blows all the lids, takes all the limits off current law 
and says just more money, more expensive campaigns, money buys 
influence, let us get more of it?
  Mr. PALLONE. I really think what happens, Mr. Speaker, is that the 
Republican leadership takes advantage of the fact that the campaign 
finance system is a complicated structure and that most people really 
do not understand how it applies to individual races. We understand it 
because we are in it, but a lot of people do not. So they just try to 
basically throw out to the public these myths.
  I am very glad to see that this latest effort on their part to try to 
basically raise the individual limits and get so much more money into 
campaigns have been exposed. As I think I mentioned before, or maybe I 
did not, we have all the public interest groups opposing this bill: 
Common Cause, Public Citizen, the League of Women Voters. There was an 
editorial in the New York Times today, as well as in a lot of my local 
papers, criticizing the proposal. We even have some of the Republicans 
who put out a letter opposing it.
  We are sort of fortunate, in a way, that this has been exposed for 
what it truly is, a way to try to put a lot more cash into the 
campaigns. But I think a lot of times it is a complicated subject, and 
it is very difficult sometimes to make people understand how it works 
in practical terms.
  That is why I think it is so important to do what the two of you are 
doing tonight, by trying to expose it for what it really is.
  Mr. FARR of California. I appreciate you coming down tonight. You 
have a family, it is a little late, and you have young kids at home. I 
hope you will get a chance to see them tonight with the little time 
that is left. That will leave the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. 
Meehan] and myself here. We have been two of the sponsors of the major 
alternatives to the bad bill that we have been talking about all night.
  I want to just publicly thank you for the effort that you have had in 
leading the bipartisan effort to bring a sensible bill to the floor for 
a vote, and hopefully you will get that vote. I am certainly supportive 
of it. If that is not successful, then the bill that I have authored, 
which is just about the same bill with some minor changes, I hope will 
prevail in lieu of that.
  Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield for just a 
minute, we have been working hard on this bipartisan bill. The 
gentleman from Connecticut, Chris Shays, and the gentlewoman from 
Washington, Linda Smith, ironically enough, Linda Smith and I, for 
example, we do not agree on very much. She is a conservative Republican 
and I am a more progressive Democrat. But the one thing that we do 
agree on is the fact that we will never get to balance the 
budget fairly, we will never get decisions made in Washington on the 
merits until we change the campaign finance laws.

  It is really frustrating to be here again, near the end of another 
session, and see all the publicity that the Republican majority got 
about having reform week and see it turn into nothing but a total 
fluke, a sham. They are not going to do it. It is just really, really 
frustrating.
  The one thing about it that I think that the American people get is 
that the worst thing that we could do is nothing. The worst thing we 
could do is to publicize a reform week and then have nothing. I think 
ultimately the American people will have their say. It may be a 
complicated issue, but they understand that we need less money, not 
more money, spent in the electoral process, in elections in this 
country. They understand we need to level the playing fields so that 
people of average, modest means are able to get onto the people of 
average, modest means are able to get onto the ballot in districts all 
across America; whether they are liberal or Democratic, Republican or 
conservative, are able to get on and run for Congress. That is what 
democracy is all about.
  As long as we have the corrupting influence of millions and millions 
and millions of dollars being spent on these campaigns, the American 
public is going to be suspicious of decisions that have been made. I 
think ultimately, maybe it will not be this Congress, but I think 
ultimately the American people are going to demand the type of reform 
we have been fighting for.
  Mr. FARR of California. I appreciate my colleague's passion on this, 
Mr. Speaker. The gentleman got married last weekend and he is down here 
giving up part of his honeymoon to be here and talk about reform week.
  Mr. MEEHAN. I thought we were going to be here to do reform week. I 
have been working for 3 years. I can just imagine my wife at home 
saying, wait a minute, they are not doing campaign finance reform. You 
told me you had to be there for campaign finance reform. But what are 
you going to do? The Committee on Rules just a few hours ago made the 
decision to block again changing the way our campaigns are financed. I 
guess the priest said forgiveness is important, so hopefully she will 
remember that when she finds out that campaign finance reform again 
ended up on the back burner.
  Mr. FARR of California. I think the biggest tragedy that would be 
caused by a vote on the Republican bill, if that ever became law, is 
that I think it would kill the very dream that people have when they 
come into this building that they or maybe a relative or son or 
daughter, and certainly as I talk to, I know you talk to all the school 
children that we meet with every week, and I would like to instill in 
them that there are ordinary people serving in Congress, and that they 
too, maybe not even knowing it at young school age or high school age 
or a young student in college, that they could someday serve in the 
United States Congress, because if they look around, that is what this 
Congress has been made up of.

  I think that the bill that is being debated in the Committee on Rules 
to be brought to the floor as the major bill, as the Republican 
leadership bill for campaign reform, would kill the opportunity for 
ordinary people to become Members of Congress. That would be the 
greatest tragedy we could ever perform on this institution that we are 
so proud of.
  Mr. MEEHAN. There is no question about that. I did get married last 
weekend, and I come from a large family, and my father worked as a 
compositor at the Lowell Sun, and my mother raised 7 children. I am 
very fortunate to have the opportunity to have been able to get elected 
to the Congress.
  Could you imagine a system where the political parties, the bosses in 
Washington, determined, well, we are going to spend a few hundred 
thousand dollars in the Fifth District up in Massachusetts because we 
do not want to see this former prosecutor get elected. I never would be 
here, and there are a lot of other people who would not be here if we 
had a campaign finance system that allowed an individual person to 
contribute $3.1 million to political parties all over the country, and 
then those parties can funnel this money into congressional races.
  There is no way that a lot of people would be here, and increasingly, 
more and more people are getting elected to Congress because of money. 
It is the wrong direction. The American people understand that. They 
feel that. They may not understand the intricacies of election law, but 
they know that we need less money, not more money, in the system. That 
is why the Republicans are going to have a lot of difficulty getting 
the votes on this ridiculous bill to increase the influence of money in 
American politics.
  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's 
remarks. I want to continue on, because we have in the gallery tonight 
guests that are here watching this debate, and I think we see night 
after night people coming here to watch.


                announcement by the speaker pro tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would remind the gentleman that he 
should refrain from references to the guests in the gallery.
  Mr. FARR of California. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. People come here from 
all

[[Page H7771]]

over the world to watch Congress in session. It is an opportunity to 
see how in this country laws are made.
  What we are about tonight is the special order talking about what is 
going on in a room upstairs here called the Committee on Rules room, 
where they determine the rules to bring bills to the floor: whether the 
bill will come to the floor, what kind of amendments can be offered to 
the bill, how much time there will be for debate, whether the 
amendments are in order.
  As we saw, this was the promise that this would be the week that 
these issues would all be addressed on the floor. We are here at almost 
10:30 at night in Washington, DC, and we have no resolution to this 
promise that was made to this Congress.
  Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I 
guess the only promise we have is that we are not going to have reform 
week.
  Let me also say one of the reasons why there was reform in terms of 
what happened on the floor of this House when television cameras were 
brought in, the American people got an opportunity to see what happened 
firsthand, was to get people involved in the process. I think once the 
American people hear the debate on this floor, they are going to 
respond to the fact that the Republicans have not done anything about 
reform week.
  Not only that, you mentioned the letters in your office. Clearly the 
American people who watch the debate on the floor here day in and day 
out, and there are thousands who do, who watch the debate day in and 
day out, will be appalled to find out that we are doing nothing on 
campaign finance reform.
  I wanted to mention one other thing, Mr. Speaker. I mentioned the 
tobacco industry, because I have been involved in the whole issue of 
trying to prevent kids in America from being susceptible to tobacco, a 
product that kills over 400,000 people a year in this country. One of 
the difficult things about that battle is the amount of money that 
tobacco companies invest in political campaigns and in the political 
parties.
  When I see a bill come before the Congress of the United States at a 
time when States all over America are increasing the tax on cigarettes, 
we are still providing subsidies to tobacco companies. Guess what? 
Every time there is a proposal that comes before the floor, it loses, 
to end these subsidies.
  The assault weapons ban. That debate that we had on the floor of the 
Congress on assault weapons I felt was really an appalling debate. 
There was a press report that shows that there were Members in the 
majority, the leadership are the party that made commitments to the NRA 
and other groups that we would have a vote to reverse the ban on 
assault weapons. No one in America wanted that assault weapons ban to 
be repealed. All of the public opinion polls were against it. Even in 
the U.S. Senate they did not take up this battle. Senator Dole said, 
``I want nothing to do with it.''
  What did we do? As a payback to over $300,000 that were contributed 
by these interests, the NRA and other interests, we have a debate for 
an entire day on repealing the assault weapons ban. Think of it. We 
pass the toughest, smartest crime bill, bipartisan, by the way, and 
Republicans helped pass that bill, as well as Democrats did. We pass 
it, and then in this Congress there were compliments made in the last 
election, all kinds of money invested, literally millions of dollars 
invested in special interest gun lobby money, and we spend an entire 
day voting to repeal the assault weapons ban.
  As far as I can see, Mr. Speaker, that was nothing more than payback 
time. I said that at that time. We had a whole day debate over it on a 
Friday. And here we are, trying to debate one of the fundamentally most 
important reforms a country like ours could ever institute, campaign 
finance reform. And guess what? The Committee on Rules is up there 
determining we are not going to debate it this week, we are not going 
to deal with it. They were only going to give us an hour or so on it 
anyway.
  I just think back to an entire day on repealing the assault weapons 
ban that was part of the crime bill, with bipartisan support. And here 
we are, and we cannot even get a vote on campaign finance reform. It is 
absolutely incredible to me and incredible to the American public, how 
that could happen.
  Mr. FARR of California. It may speak to how bad it has gotten in 
Washington. That is that the interests that you just talked about and 
others really would not want a campaign reform bill. You can see them 
out lobbying against it.
  What it would do, it would limit the amount of money that they could 
give any one candidate. It would require that if they put out bulletins 
independent of the candidate, that they would have to disclose those as 
a campaign piece. If they put out your voting record and said your 
voting record is good because it supports us or it is bad because it 
opposes us, that at campaign time could be considered a campaign piece, 
and they would have to be registered as giving an in-kind contribution 
to the candidate that it benefited. They do not like that. They do not 
want that kind of disclosure.
  So this campaign reform really hits, the Democratic version hits at 
the very concerns that some of the biggest special interests and most 
controversial special interests in Washington have.

                              {time}  2230

  On the other hand, the leadership bill comes to the floor with no 
limits. They could buy and sell and own campaign elections throughout 
America.
  Mr. MEEHAN. Actually, if the gentleman will yield, I would never 
believe that the majority party would come in with a bill like that. I 
just never would have believed it. Let me just say there are a number 
of Republicans who are committed to campaign finance reform. I have 
worked diligently, day in and day out with the gentleman from 
Connecticut [Mr. Shays] and the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. 
Smith]. They are fully and totally committed to campaign finance 
reform.
  Mr. Speaker, the problem is with their leadership. The problem is 
when the Speaker of the House testifies before a congressional 
committee that there is not enough money being spent in the political 
process, that in fact we need to raise the limit, more than double the 
limits of what individuals can contribute. Then the problem is with the 
Republican leadership. That is what the American people are responding 
to. How is it that we have a leadership that promised to change the way 
Congress does business, has an opportunity to fundamentally change the 
way Congress does business?
  The President has been asking for this bipartisan bill all year long, 
challenging the Congress to pass limits on how much money is spent, 
challenging the Congress to set some limits on special interest money. 
We lost by six votes in the bipartisan bill over in the U.S. Senate. If 
the House could pass real bipartisan campaign finance reform, I believe 
that it would result in action in the other body. But instead, we have 
a bill that even Members of the Republican party are embarrassed about, 
totally embarrassed.
  Some of my colleagues read the Dear Colleague letter that was sent 
around by, I believe, 10 Republican Members, Republican Members who 
want to see real campaign finance reform. They are embarrassed and they 
are appalled. What do we do? We say, All right, if you guys are 
embarrassed, if you guys are appalled, we'll do nothing. Let's take it 
up later.
  That never ever should have been done. We should have known it was 
coming when the Speaker testified before the congressional reform 
committee and said: Hey, look, we do not need to limit how much money 
is spent. We need to increase it so we can compete with Coca-Cola and 
the major companies.
  We are talking about elections in a democracy. We are not talking 
about selling away to the highest bidder. We are talking about how we 
elect people to the U.S. Congress and whose interest they are going to 
represent. We are not talking about competing with Motorola or 
competing for billions of dollars in advertising on the television set. 
Absolutely the wrong message. We should have known this was going to 
happen as soon as the Speaker said he wanted to see more money in the 
process.
  Mr. Speaker, I guess we should not be surprised, but I have to admit 
I am surprised that just 2 weeks ago the press releases were going out 
about reform week. And here we are, Wednesday at 10:30. Everyone is 
going home tomorrow at 4, and we have done nothing on reform, 
absolutely, positively nothing.

[[Page H7772]]

  Mr. FARR of California. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, does the 
gentleman get the sense that this reform effort, so-called reform 
effort by the Republican leadership is actually imploding on them, that 
it is blowing up? Because we frankly have, between the Members that 
have cosponsored your bill and the Members that have voted for my bill 
in the past, we have enough votes to put our bill out. Frankly, we have 
enough time left where that bill could become law and signed by the 
President, and we have a letter from the President saying, if the 
measure gets to his desk, he will sign it. He is very supportive of the 
Farr bill.

  I get the sense that one of the reasons we see a lot of this sort of 
slippage and speculation here that things are blowing up is because we 
really have a chance to do campaign reform because the American public 
has spoken. They want it. They like this bill. They like your bill. 
They like my bill. They like them so much better than the alternative 
that they have allowed their voices to be heard here in Washington.
  The letters are coming in. The League of Women Voters, a strong 
advocate group here, nonpartisan, has let Congress know that they want 
to see campaign reform.
  Does the gentleman have a sense that the Republican bill is really 
exploding in their face, so to speak?
  Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting. I have talked to a lot of 
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and they say: Look, the 
President is going to sign campaign finance reform.
  There are all kinds of different versions. But if it is true campaign 
finance reform, this President is going to sign it. I believe that. The 
President is willing to compromise. If he can get any kind of limits on 
how much money is spent, I think he is going to sign the bill. An I 
think that is what they are afraid of.
  Mr. Speaker, what do they do? They come up with the only possible 
idea or notion to make the President not sign the bill. Okay, we will 
put more money in the process. Obviously the President is going to sign 
this bill. I am reminded of when the Congress rushed to pass campaign 
finance reform when President Bush indicated he was going to veto the 
bill. That bill got right over to the President's desk right away so 
the President could veto it, and everyone went home. But now we have a 
President that is over there at the White House waiting for a campaign 
finance reform bill, willing to sign it, pushing the Congress to try to 
get some kind of limits, and guess what? Congress is blinking.
  There is not going to be a campaign finance reform bill that is going 
to go to the President's desk. I will tell the gentleman that there is 
no greater failure of this Congress that the inability of the Congress 
to get a campaign finance reform bill over to the President's desk. 
That will be viewed in history and by the American people as the single 
biggest failure of this Congress, to get that bill or some bill that 
the President can sign over to him. Republicans have come up with the 
only conceivable bill that the President would not sign, a bill that 
increases rather than decreases the influence of money in American 
politics.
  So I give them credit for that. They have found a bill the President 
cannot support. It is a bill that increases the amount of money 
individuals can contribute.
  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I am not sure they can even get 
enough support from their own Congress. Fortunately I do not think they 
will get the support.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I heard my 
colleague say some people over here were interested in the debate. I 
wanted to actually have a debate instead of people throwing softballs 
back and forth at each other.

  Mr. MEHAN. Go ahead. Ask a question.
  Mr. KINGSTON. The question is, as I have listened to my colleague and 
the gentleman who left earlier, and I believe we are in the same class, 
the gentleman is a freshman class Democrat.
  Mr. MEEHAN. Could the gentleman ask a question?
  Mr. KINGSTON. Absolutely. I did not want to derail it by just coming 
out. But the Democrats had a reform bill, Republican freshmen had a 
reform bill in the 103rd previous Congress. Then if I recall correctly, 
the Democrats controlled the House, the Democrats controlled the 
Senate, and President Clinton was in the White House. I am just kind of 
wondering why we did not have campaign reform then. If it is fair to 
blame it on Republicans at this point, why would it not be fair to 
blame it on Democrats?
  Mr. FARR of California. I am glad the gentleman asked, because in the 
103d Congress with a bipartisan vote, we passed a bill over to the 
Senate. It was very similar to the bill that President Bush had vetoed 
in 1992. That bill ironically was filibustered by none other than 
Senator Gramm who blocked it from the conferees being appointed. It was 
again a Republican defeat of a Democratic bill as it had been in the 
102d, in the 101st and 100th Congress, every one of those Congresses.
  Mr. MEEHAN. If the gentleman would yield to me, I am really glad for 
that question because that is exactly what happened with the bill. 
There was a Republican filibuster. This House passed it, it was 
bipartisan because that is when I started working with my colleague 
from Connecticut, Chris Shays. Let me just say, I have worked 
diligently in a bipartisan way to pass campaign finance reform. I have 
worked with Republicans on campaign finance reform in this session 
since I got here. There are a number of Republicans who are committed 
to campaign finance reform. There are 20 Republicans on my bill who 
want to see a bipartisan bill pass. We have worked with both sides. The 
gentleman wants to ask a question, we have answered the question, and 
the public record is clear. This bill in the last Congress was killed 
by a Republican filibuster. If we want to lay blame, we will give a 
little bit of the blame to Democrats that are not pushing the bill 
quickly enough. But the bottom line to this is we have an opportunity 
to pass a bipartisan campaign finance reform bill, and what do the 
Republicans come up with? With a bill that increases how much money is 
spent on elections.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Are we going to debate or grandstand?
  Mr. MEEHAN. Neither part have had the audacity to submit to the 
Congress a bill that increases limits.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Are we going to debate or grandstand?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hayworth). The gentleman from Georgia 
will suspend. The gentleman from California controls the time.
  Mr. FARR of California. I thank the Speaker. We have a few minutes 
left. I would rather not yield to the gentleman. He can have the next 
hour and speak as much as he wants.
  Mr. KINGSTON. And I will be glad to yield to you on my time if you do 
want to have a debate.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Georgia will suspend. The 
gentleman from California controls the time.
  Mr. FARR of California. I thank the Speaker.
  Mr. MEEHAN. If the gentleman will yield further, obviously we are 
finishing up our debate. The gentleman had a question, and it was a 
great question, ``Should we not blame the Democrats?''

  The truth was the bill in the 103d Congress had bipartisan support, 
it died in a Republican filibuster, and never got to the President. 
Clearly President Clinton would have signed that bill had it gotten 
there on time.
  Mr. FARR of California. We do not even need to go back to last year. 
We can talk about this year. We have the same action by the Republican 
leadership in the Senate this year on the bill that was a counter bill 
to the one the gentleman has authored in this House.
  Mr. MEEHAN. That is exactly right. It was a bipartisan bill. I worked 
with Senator McCain who did an outstanding job working this bill and 
trying to get Members of the Republican Party to support this bill. 
What happened? The Republicans killed that bill in the U.S. Senate. I 
worked diligently with Senator McCain on that. He did a great job. But 
the Republican majority in the Senate killed that bill. I testified 
before a Senate committee over there. The fact of the matter is that 
the increases in campaign contributions that the Republican Party are 
enjoying at this point I think prevents any real campaign finance 
reform.
  Just for the record, that bill over in the Senate that the gentleman 
from California [Mr. Farr] mentioned is a

[[Page H7773]]

bipartisan bill. It is not about Democrats or Republicans. I recognize 
the fact that we cannot get a bill to the President without Republican 
support. That is why I went out and worked with the Republicans to get 
a bill that we could agree on, a bipartisan bill. But it has to limit 
how much money is spent. Otherwise, it is not real reform. I am 
delighted to have had this opportunity to speak out about my bipartisan 
bill and the really sorry state of affairs that we are faced with here 
on Reform Week, day 3, I guess. We are going to leave tomorrow, I 
guess, not doing anything in terms of any of the reforms that were 
advertised, including campaign finance reform.
  Mr. FARR of California. I think history will show as we end this 
debate here that the Democratic caucus with bipartisan support in the 
past has passed campaign reform out of this House, in the 103d 
Congress, the 102d Congress, the 101st Congress, and the 100th Congress 
and in every one of those instances, that action has been thwarted by 
Republican actions either in the Senate or a veto by a Republican 
President. It is obvious that the campaign reform that we are talking 
about that the American public wants and has supported these number of 
years is about to be thwarted by actions in this House as well, It is a 
tragedy. It is a tragedy that Reform Week has diminished into this kind 
of strained effort to not have effective campaign reform. I thank the 
gentleman for coming down tonight and being in the well and sharing his 
thoughts with me as one of the leaders in campaign reform in America.
  Mr. MEEHAN. I compliment the gentleman for having this hour on 
campaign finance reform.

                          ____________________