[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 18 (Wednesday, February 12, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H512]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM SHOULD BE A TOP PRIORITY
(Mr. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to address the House
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, in this past election season spending
levels for Federal elections shattered all previous records, at nearly
$2 billion. The President and our leadership met yesterday and agreed
on five priority items for this Congress, but guess what was missing?
Campaign finance reform.
Let me make a suggestion. As David Broder noted in today's Washington
Post, the reason campaigns are so expensive is because television
advertising costs so much. That is why I have reintroduced H.R. 84, the
Fairness in Political Advertising Act. It would reduce the cost of
elections by requiring television stations to make free time available
to both candidates as a condition of the stations renewing their
licenses, and I urge my colleagues to join me on this bill.
I challenge the leadership to make campaign finance reform a priority
and to enact the Fairness in Political Advertising Act. Democracy
should not cost $2 billion.
Mr. Speaker, I am submitting the article referred to earlier for
inclusion in the Record:
[From the Washington Post, Feb. 12, 1997]
A TV Time Bank for Candidates
(By David S. Broder)
When you're trying to figure out one of those interlocking
wooden puzzles, sometimes it helps to turn it upside down.
That is what happened to me one morning recently when I had
breakfast with Reed Hundt, the chairman of the Federal
Communications Commission.
The topic was campaign finance legislation--or so I
thought. But when I remarked that the history of campaign
finance laws and regulations was fraught with unintended
consequences, Hundt immediately corrected me. ``We're not
talking about campaign finance legislation.'' he said.
``We're talking about giving candidates and voters more
access, and these measures have almost always succeeded. The
Voting Rights Act has been a success. The provisions that
allowed presidential debates have worked.''
Hundt's point was this: For decades, the campaign finance
debate has focused on the source and volume of funds--the
supply side of the problem. Government has attempted to
regulate who could give (and who could not), the size of
their contributions and, to the extent the courts allowed,
the amount candidates could spend.
Hundt suggested that we turn the problem around by asking
where the money goes and whether that cost can be reduced,
i.e., examine the demand side of the equation.
The answer is obvious. Most of the money goes into buying
television ad time. Campaigns are expensive because
television costs so much.
In 1996, Hundt encouraged former Washington Post reporter
Paul Taylor's foundation-financed campaign to persuade
television and cable operators to make small blocks of free
time available to the presidential candidates. Taylor had
some success, but never got the broadcasters to agree on a
single time when all viewers would find the candidates
talking directly to them.
Now Hundt is promoting a radical expansion of Taylor's
``free time'' proposal. He thinks broadcasters should be
required to donate almost $2 billion worth of commercial time
to a ``political time bank'' that would be available free to
candidates for federal and state office.
That sounds like a huge burden to impose, but Hundt points
out that the estimated $1.8 billion of paid political ads in
the 1995-96 election cycle was only 2.5 percent of the
television ad revenue in that period.
He also noted that, under a law passed last year, the
government is about to hand broadcasters a gift of
incalculable value in the form of a new spectrum of
digital TV channels which can be used for movie theater-
quarterly programs or for a wide variety of other high-
fidelity communications.
Last week, Hundt's longtime friend, Vice President Al Gore,
made that point a matter of administration policy--without
endorsing Hundt's specific proposal. ``Digital technology,''
Gore said, ``will greatly enhance the opportunities available
to broadcasters to utilize multiple channels. The public
interest obligations should be commensurate with these
opportunities.''
Hundt has found one ally high up in the broadcasting
industry. Barry Diller, who has been a key player for years
and now heads his own company that controls a number of TV
stations and the Home Shopping Network, told an industry
convention in New Orleans last month that in return for the
gift of the new digital TV spectrum, ``I propose that we take
sole responsibility for the cost of airing all political
advertising messages for all government candidates and to use
this lever as the impetus to abolish all forms of the current
system of political contributions.''
Diller conceded that it ``would cost us over a billion
dollars in lost revenue'' in the peak year of each election
cycle. ``But,'' he added, ``it would also radically change
the nature of our rotten political fund-raising system.''
Advocates of some campaign finance bills are considering a
way to incorporate the ``free time bank'' into their
proposals. Taylor will hold a conference on the subject in
Washington next month. But he and Hundt both concede this is
not a panacea.
Important policy and administrative issues would remain:
Could independent groups buy time for ``education'' or
``independent expenditure'' campaigns? Who would divvy up the
``time bank'' among the thousands of Democratic and
Republican candidates in each election? If the national
parties controlled the time, how would dissident or maverick
Democrats and Republicans fare? And how would minor parties
be protected in the allocation of time?
These are all important questions. But this proposal offers
a way to reduce the costs of campaigns drastically by
eliminating or greatly slashing the expense of television
advertising. It deserves to be part of the coming debate.
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