[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 141 (Thursday, October 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12287-S12288]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, before the Senate adjourns and we all go 
home and spend time with our families and our constituents, I wanted to 
join my good friend, Senator Feingold, to discuss the issue of campaign 
finance reform.
  This year, Senator Feingold and Senator Thompson and myself 
introduced comprehensive campaign finance reform legislation. Our bill 
was the first bipartisan effort in this area in over 10 years. We 
worked hard, and we fought a valiant fight. Unfortunately, we did not 
succeed. But I am here today to put the Senate on notice that the fight 
is far from over--as a matter of fact, it is just beginning.
  Our effort is about restoring the public's faith in the Congress and 
the electoral system. It is about elections being won or lost based on 
idealogy, not fundraising. It is about leveling the playing field 
between challengers and incumbents. And it is about bringing a dramatic 
change to the status quo.
  Mr. President, poll after poll demonstrates that the public has lost 
faith in the Congress. One of the reasons this has occurred is because 
the public believes--rightly or wrongly--that special interests control 
the political and electoral system. In order to limit the ability of 
special interests to control the process, we must enact campaign 
finance reform.
  Well, Mr. President, as I stated, we will continue in our efforts. We 
will be introducing a new campaign finance reform bill on the first day 
of the 105th Congress. And we will be taking all necessary steps to 
ensure that our bill is addressed early in the Congress.
  During consideration in the 104th Congress, countless hearings were 
held on this matter. I believe we all learned a considerable amount 
from those hearings. But as every schoolchild knows, some day you have 
to move past the classroom, go into the real world, and put what you 
learned to good use. We are at that stage.
  Mr. President, as I have often noted, if we do nothing on this matter 
we invite the contempt of the American people and such contempt is a 
poison that hurts our democracy. Simply, we must act to pass campaign 
finance reform.
  In closing, Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Thompson and most 
importantly, my good friend, Senator Feingold, for all they have done 
on this subject. I am deeply grateful to have them as my comrades-in-
arms as we move forward to fight for this needed reform again.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to join with my colleague 
and good friend, the senior Senator from Arizona, to once again urge 
our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join us in making a 
commitment to pass meaningful bipartisan campaign finance reform.
  Just a few months ago, we had an abbreviated but spirited discussion 
here on the Senate floor about the issue of campaign reform. The 
Senator from Arizona and I, along with the Senator from Tennessee, 
Senator Thompson, brought to this floor the first bipartisan campaign 
finance reform bill in a decade.
  The importance of the bipartisan nature of that effort should not be 
glossed over too quickly. For the previous 10 years, the battle over 
campaign reform had been marked by partisan skirmishes--Democrats 
accusing Republicans of defending the status quo, Republicans accusing 
Democrats of attempting to rig a system to protect their congressional 
majorities. And not surprisingly, nothing was accomplished.
  But last year, in what one newspaper called the ``most hopeful and 
remarkable legislative development in Washington of 1995'', three U.S. 
Senators of vastly differing political and philosophical ideologies, 
sat down in a room and drafted a comprehensive reform proposal that was 
designed to be fair to Democrats, Republicans, liberals and 
conservatives alike.
  We certainly had our differences. I have long been a supporter of 
public financing. The Senator from Arizona believes we can encourage 
candidates to limit their campaign spending and reduce campaign costs 
by providing free television time to congressional candidates. The 
Senator from Tennessee is one of this Congress' most ardent advocates 
of congressional term limits. But despite these differences, we also 
found we had many commonalities in how we believe our political system 
should function.
  For example, we each have significant misgivings about the role money 
plays in our electoral system. We shared a concern that more and more 
Americans are choosing not to run for public office because they lack 
the access to the millions of dollars necessary to run a competitive 
campaign. We were troubled that Americans have come to view their 
elected leaders and representatives with a depth of cynicism not seen 
since the early 1970's.
  That is why we put together a proposal that could be supported by 
Democrats and Republicans alike. That proposal, for the first time 
ever, would have provided congressional candidates access to low-cost 
media and postage rates in exchange for a candidate's voluntary 
compliance with limits on their campaign spending. Specifically, 
candidates would have had to agree to three limits: a limit on their 
overall spending based on the size of their State, a strict limit on 
the amount of personal funds they expend during their campaign, and a 
requirement to raise at least 60 percent of their campaign funds from 
individuals residing in their home States.

  The proposal had a number of other important provisions as well. The 
bill would have sharply limited the influence of political action 
committees. It would have reformed the congressional franking process 
which has seen its share of abuse in recent years. It would have 
restricted the practice of bundling campaign contributions to 
circumvent contribution limits. It would have provided candidates 
greater protection from independent expenditures and required greater 
accountability for those who engage in negative advertising.
  And perhaps most importantly, it would have essentially shut down the 
soft money system--a system that has shown itself this year to be 
completely

[[Page S12288]]

out of control. Soft money, a term used to describe an unregulated and 
unlimited flow of money between the special interests and Washington 
lawmakers, is severely undermining and compromising the effectiveness 
of the Presidential system and is making a mockery of every single one 
of the limits we have in current law that governs how much individuals 
and entities may contribute to congressional candidates.
  So what happened here on the Senate floor last June, Mr. President? 
After a limited debate we were unable to gain the 60 votes necessary to 
overcome a procedural hurdle and cut off a filibuster. But we did 
receive a remarkable 54 votes, including several from our colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle. Let me repeat that, Mr. President. A 
strong majority in the U.S. Senate voted in favor of advancing the 
McCain-Feingold reform proposal.
  Some have said that this doomed any hope for campaign finance reform, 
that this was the end of the line for this issue. On the contrary Mr. 
President, this is clearly just the beginning for bipartisan campaign 
finance reform. It took us 3 years to reform our lobbying disclosure 
laws. It took us 3 years to finally reform the Senate's rules on the 
acceptance of lobbyist-provided gifts, meals, and vacation junkets. And 
it may take us just as long to see real campaign reform enacted into 
law.
  I for one am fully confident that we will prevail. We will prevail 
because it is becoming increasingly difficult for opponents of campaign 
reform to defend an indefensible system that is crumbling all around 
them. To suggest that the current system is fair, is functional, and is 
worthy of the voters' trust is simply an absurd proposition and no one 
is buying it.
  We have already begun to hear some of the numbers coming in and it is 
becoming clear that the current trend of skyrocketing campaign costs 
will continue through the 1996 elections. The distinguished Senator 
from Arizona and I will be back here during the opening days of the 
105th Congress to discuss those numbers and to shine a spotlight on 
some of the darkest corners of our political system.
  Two years ago at this time, my Republican colleagues were touting 
their Contract With America and the issues they hoped to address in the 
first 100 days of the new Congress. I said it countless times then that 
one issue that was conspicuously missing from that contract was 
campaign finance reform. I was, quite frankly, astonished that although 
other reform issues were mentioned, there was not a single word about 
what has to be considered the mother of all reform issues. It was 
entirely omitted from the contract.

  Not surprisingly, we did not debate campaign finance reform in the 
first 100 days of the 104th Congress. Or the second 100 days. Or the 
third, or the fourth. In fact, we did not debate campaign finance 
reform here in the Senate until 18 months after the start of the 104th 
Congress. Eighteen months, Mr. President. It was a pretty good strategy 
by our opponents. They knew that by waiting so long to schedule debate 
on campaign reform that it would be highly unlikely that there would be 
enough time in the legislative session for a proposal to work its way 
through the legislative process and become law.
  In the House, the strategy was even simpler. They just refused to 
allow the bipartisan reform bill modeled after the McCain-Feingold bill 
to come up for a vote. By only allowing votes on a Democratic reform 
bill and a Republican reform bill, the House leadership guaranteed that 
no reform bill would leave the House alive.
  So rather than throwing any kind of knockout punch, the Congress has 
chosen to bob and weave around the issue of campaign finance reform. 
This cannot be allowed to happen in the 105th Congress, and that is why 
the Senator from Arizona and I are joining today to call on our 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle to agree to debate campaign 
finance reform here on the Senate floor during the first 100 days of 
the 105th Congress. It does not matter if Republicans retain control of 
this body or if Democrats can reclaim the majority--campaign reform 
must be the subject of floor debate in the first 100 days of 1997, 
regardless of the outcome of the elections.
  Mr. President, the campaign finance reform landscape has experienced 
a significant shift in recent years. When I arrived here in 1993 and in 
the years before that, there was certainly a significant block of 
Senators that believed that money had little role in the outcome of 
elections. They believed that the embodiment of true political reform 
was to have unlimited campaign spending coupled with even less 
regulation of the entire campaign finance system.
  Some still cling to that viewpoint, Mr. President, but not many. I'd 
like to point to a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives 
just about 2 months ago. On July 25, the House voted on legislation 
backed by Speaker Gingrich that had as its foundation the Speaker's 
view that our campaign system is not overfunded as most of us believe, 
but is in fact underfunded. That legislation, known as the Thomas bill, 
would have opened up the campaign finance system and permitted 
unlimited campaign spending to continue without providing any 
assistance to challengers and not a single reform of the soft money 
process.
  What happened to that bill, Mr. President? Quite simply, it was 
obliterated on the House floor by a vote of 259 to 162. Nearly 70 
Republican House Members, nearly 70 of them Mr. President, rebelled 
against the Speaker and voted against his bill.
  We have seen some amazing things happen in the other body over the 
course of the last 2 years. We have seen some eye-opening votes over 
there. But I cannot think of another single vote where so many 
Republican House Members defied Speaker Gingrich and voted against a 
bill that he was so prominently a part of.
  Mr. President, considering that the Speaker's point of view was so 
universally condemned on the floor of the House, and considering that 
the McCain-Feingold bill received a majority of votes in this body, I 
not only think that bipartisan campaign finance reform is a strong 
possibility, I think that it is a strong probability. Republicans want 
it, Democrats want it, incumbents want it, challengers need it, and 
most importantly, the American people are demanding it.
  I would hope that our other colleagues, on both sides of the aisle, 
will join the senior Senator from Arizona and I in insisting that the 
105th Congress address the issue of campaign finance reform in the 
first 100 days of the next congressional session. I want to once again 
thank my colleague and friend from Arizona for his perseverance on this 
issue.

                          ____________________