[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.
____________________