[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 29, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E774-E776]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        COMMENDING NEWTON MINOW

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. SIDNEY R. YATES

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 29, 1997

  Mr. YATES. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to 
introduce an old and dear friend to you and my colleagues in the House, 
the Honorable Newton N. Minow. In days past Newton was the law partner 
of the greatest two-time loser in American politics, the late Gov. 
Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. During the early 1960's Newt was head of 
the Federal communications Commission [FCC] and in describing the 
marvels of television coined the phrase ``a vast wasteland.'' He is 
currently a partner in the Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin. Two 
weeks past, this next Wednesday, April 16, the Economic Club had the 
good fortune to share in Newt's wisdom and wit.
  I enjoyed Newt's speech so much that I requested he send me a copy so 
I could bring it to the attention of my colleagues. Mr. Speaker, I 
would like to insert Mr. Minow's speech into the Congressional Record.
  I commend Newton Minow for his past contributions to public service 
and I urge my colleagues to read the following statement.
  The speech follows:

                          Econoic Club Speech

       Campaign spending is as old as the republic. When George 
     Washington ran for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1757, 
     his total campaign expenditures, in the form of ``good 
     cheer,'' came to ``28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum 
     punch, 34 gallons of wine, 36 gallons of beer, and 2 gallons 
     of cider royal.''
       Today, the era of good cheer is gone. For four decades now, 
     campaign expenditures have been driven relentlessly upward by 
     one thing: television. In 1960, in what would be the first 
     presidential campaign to make wide use of television, 
     Democrats and Republicans together spent $14.2 million on 
     radio and television commercials. In 1996, candidates for 
     federal office spent more than 128 times that amount on 
     television and radio commercials, an estimated $1.8 billion.
       After the presidential campaign scandals of 1972, Congress 
     tried in 1974 to end the suitcases of cash which sloshed 
     around campaigns in return for favors. But as we now know--
     and continue to learn--the 1974 campaign reform law has 
     failed to solve the problem.
       In the 1996 federal elections, the campaign finance laws 
     were bent beyond recognition. We learned about the 
     availability of the Lincoln bedroom to major contributors; 
     the President's meeting with a convicted stock swindler, a 
     Chinese arms merchant, and others of dubious background and 
     intention; the Vice President's raising campaign cash at a 
     Buddhist temple; and the Republicans soliciting ``season 
     ticket holders,'' donors of $250,000 who hoped for special 
     treatment for their special interests, including access to 
     important government officials. And don't forget 
     Congressional censure of Newt Gingrich for mixing campaign 
     cash with his television program. The only bipartisan 
     agreement in Washington these days is on one proposition: 
     ``Show me the money!''
       Strict limits on campaign contributions imposed by the 1974 
     Act were washed away this year in a flood of ``soft money,'' 
     donations not limited by law because of the foolish fiction 
     that such money was not used to support or oppose particular 
     candidates. Together, the two parties collected $88 million 
     in soft money in 1992; last year they multiplied this by 
     three--to $263.5 million.
       Interest groups ranging from the AFL-CIO to the U.S. 
     Chamber of Commerce bathed in another form of soft money, 
     which they used to broadcast so-called ``issue'' commercials. 
     Theoretically, at least, issue commercials are not supposed 
     to advance or oppose anyone's candidacy, and so are exempt 
     from the 1974 law's requirement of full disclosure of who 
     contributes money and how that money gets spent.

[[Page E775]]

       How did this happen? Dick Morris claims the credit for 
     himself. After the 1994 Republican Congressional victory, 
     Morris developed the Democrats' 1995 and 1996 campaign 
     strategy: take control of the airwaves early, before the 
     Republicans could pick their candidate--and never let up. To 
     pursue this strategy, the Democratic National Committee and 
     the Clinton-Gore campaign spent an estimated $1 million to $2 
     million per week.
       On October 13, 1995, President Clinton signed the Federal 
     elections Commission vow that in return for public financing, 
     he would spend no more than $37 million in privately raised 
     funds during the upcoming primary season. That same morning, 
     a White House coffee for large donors to the Democratic 
     National Committee began what would soon become a habit. The 
     money raised from that event and others like it eventually 
     allowed the DNC to spend an additional $44 million for 
     television ads. Because so many of those commercials were 
     issue ads, federal contribution caps did not apply. Donors to 
     the cause, including corporations and labor unions, both of 
     which are barred by law from giving money directly to a 
     candidate, spent freely, without accountability.
       The Republicans did even more. By election day, the 
     Republican National Committee had raised more money than the 
     DNC. The Party solicited record contributions from 
     telecommunications, tobacco and pharmaceutical companies, 
     enough to pay for $18 million in television advertising 
     between May 1996 and the GOP convention in August. They, too, 
     pursued the ``issue advertisement'' strategy. One of the 
     RNC's more controversial issue advertisements was a 60-second 
     spot with 56 seconds of biographical material about Senator 
     Dole and 4 seconds of issues. The RNC insisted this was not a 
     plug for Dole and so was within the federal election 
     guidelines.
       Not only did Democrats and Republicans take advantage of 
     the law, so did countless organizations with a cause and the 
     ability to finance it. Millions of dollars in cash swept 
     through House and Senate elections in the states, turning 
     campaigns into ideological contests with little or no 
     relevance to local voters. Some candidates for Congress 
     discovered ads for the first time on radio and television--as 
     many as 300 a day in their districts, either attacking or 
     favoring them--but had no idea where the ads had come from, 
     or who had paid for them.
       Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres once said that 
     ``television has a good side and a bad side. The good side,'' 
     Peres said, ``is that television makes dictatorship 
     impossible. The bad side is that it makes democracy 
     unbearable.''
       Tonight, I suggest we amend Mr. Peres' observation, in two 
     respects. First, television does not necessarily make 
     democracy unbearable. At its best, television makes democracy 
     stronger by opening the workings of government to the public. 
     In our own country, whether television's cameras are on the 
     floor of Congress, in a courtroom in Los Angeles, or at a 
     Presidential Debate, they provide unique opportunities for 
     the public to see and to understand how their government 
     works--and, just as importantly, where it fails.
       At its worst, however, television can become a tool of 
     dictatorship. In any country that suffers a coup, the 
     nation's television and radio broadcast facilities are the 
     very first institutions to come under siege. Rulers and 
     rebels alike know that whoever controls the airwaves controls 
     the country.
       In our country, we have allowed television, the greatest 
     instrument of communication in history, to create for us a 
     different kind of dictatorship--a dictatorship of the dollar. 
     In the 1996 elections, total expenditures on all federal 
     races came to approximately $2.1 billion, of which $1.8 
     billion was spent to buy broadcast TV time! Thus, almost $9 
     out of $10 went to buy time on radio and television. Fund-
     raising, not governing, became the principal business of our 
     elected officials. Our best public officials are leaving 
     public service, sick and tired of the current system. Al Hunt 
     in The Wall Street Journal quotes a model of integrity, 
     Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton (Chairman of the House 
     Foreign Affairs Committee) when he announced this year that 
     he would not run for re-election. ``My colleagues talk about 
     money constantly. The conversation today among members of 
     Congress is so frequently on the topic of money: money, 
     money, money and the money chase. Gosh, I don't think I ever 
     heard it when I first came here.''
       The rest of the world looks with horror at our national 
     campaigns. They are too long, they are too negative, they 
     constantly make personal attacks on the opposition, they are 
     exercises in deception, they turn the voters off and away 
     from the voting booth. In 1996, fewer than half the nation's 
     registered voters even bothered to go to the polls, the 
     second lowest turnout since 1824.
       By allowing unlimited political advertising on television 
     and radio, the United States stands almost alone in the 
     world. Only three countries do not require some form of free 
     broadcast time for candidates in national election campaigns. 
     They are Malaysia, Taiwan and the United States. Thomas 
     Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin would be 
     horrified to learn how we have abused the democratic process 
     they bequeathed to us. Television authorities in Great 
     Britain, France, the Netherlands and Japan ban political 
     advertising from the airwaves entirely. In England, the law 
     prohibits advertisements by any person or organization that 
     is ``wholly or mainly of a . . . political nature'' or 
     ``directed towards any political end.'' Instead, British 
     law provides free television time to political parties to 
     air their own programs on important public issues.
       Most of the world's democratic nations which do allow 
     candidates to buy advertising time--such as Australia, 
     Canada, Germany and Sweden--also provide free time to 
     candidates and their parties. Unlike our own country, these 
     democracies do not believe the only way to provide political 
     broadcast time is to sell it.
       As you know, there are many proposals in Congress and 
     elsewhere to ``reform'' campaign finance. Most proposals 
     focus on the supply side of the problem: on who gives the 
     money, how much they can give, and for what purpose. There 
     are proposals to limit contributions, to prohibit ``soft 
     money,'' to prohibit contributions from labor unions and 
     corporations, to raise the limit on individual contributions, 
     to curb spending on behalf of candidates by independent 
     organizations, to prohibit PACS, to encourage candidates 
     voluntarily to limit spending, to speed up disclosure of 
     contributors and their contributions, to use public money to 
     pay for campaigns, and to amend the Constitution of the 
     United States. Former Senator Howard Baker suggests that if 
     you can't vote for a candidate, you can't contribute to the 
     candidate.
       There are a lot of good ideas--and some bad ideas--being 
     discussed and debated. I do not favor limiting individual 
     contributions, but I do favor immediate public disclosure of 
     contributions, even before checks are cashed. I favor ending 
     ``soft money'', PACs, contributions from unions and 
     corporations, and ending phony outside expenditures unless 
     they are truly independent and not developed in concert with 
     candidates and their campaigns. But dealing only with the 
     supply side of the equation will not work so long as demand 
     exists. I agree with a young journalist from Chicago, 
     Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, who writes, ``money in politics is 
     like water running downhill; it will always find its way. . . 
     .''
       So, this evening, my focus is exclusively on the demand 
     side of the equation--which has received little attention in 
     the current debates. And I will focus--ruthlessly focus--on 
     one specific public policy decision that our country will 
     soon make on the relationship of television and political 
     campaigns.
       Let us focus on four words: ``public interest'' and 
     ``digital television.'' You've been hearing a lot about 
     digital television lately--but not much about the public 
     interest.
       Last year, Congress passed and the President signed the 
     1996 Telecommunications Act. Under the new law, broadcasters 
     are eligible to receive new digital television channels. 
     Congress directed that, unlike other telecommunications 
     service providers, broadcasters do not have to pay for their 
     new channels. They get them free. Digital transmission will 
     allow broadcasters to offer multiple channels instead of one, 
     and if they wish, to use those extra channels for services 
     such as data transmission, paging services or pay-per-view 
     movies. Estimates of the value of these new digital channels 
     ranges from $30 billion to $70 billion.
       Why should broadcasters receive this spectrum, these 
     digital channels, free? This was the question former Senator 
     Majority Leader Bob Dole put to his colleagues on the Senate 
     floor last year before the law was passed. Senator Dole said:
       ``Spectrum is just as much a national resource as our 
     nation's forests. That means it belongs to every American 
     equally. No more, no less. If someone wants to use our 
     resources, then we should be fairly compensated.''
       Last month, former Senator Dole wrote in the New York 
     Times: ``We don't give away trees to newspaper publishers. 
     Why should we give away more airwaves to broadcasters?'' 
     Senator Dole wants broadcasters to pay for spectrum, just 
     like everybody else. Why should we give away a national 
     resource that could be worth as much as $70 billion?
       Senator John McCain, Republican Chairman of the Senate 
     Commerce Committee, said the spectrum is ``the most valuable 
     asset that I know of in America today. Perhaps in the world 
     today.'' Congress, however, rejected that advice, and decided 
     to give the spectrum away for free. The Federal 
     Communications Commission began to award digital spectrum 
     assignments to broadcasters on April 3rd. However, under the 
     law, including recent emphasis in the 1996 Telecommunications 
     Act, the FCC made it plain that those receiving digital 
     channels are obligated to serve the public interest. So the 
     question before us is this: What should be the public 
     interest obligations of digital broadcasters?
       On March 11, President Clinton announced that he will soon 
     appoint a Presidential Commission to advise him, the 
     Congress, and the Federal Communications Commission on this 
     question. Should broadcasters have specific public-service 
     obligations in return for their use of a big slice of the 
     publicly owned spectrum--property now known to be worth many 
     billions of dollars?
       I have been deeply involved in these issues for many years. 
     In 1969, I served as chairman of a bi-partisan Commission for 
     the Twentieth Century Fund on Campaign Costs in 
     the Electronic Era. Over the decades, I have testified in 
     Congress many times on these issues, and written 
     extensively on them.
       Based on that experience, I suggest the time has come to do 
     some thinking outside

[[Page E776]]

     the box, outside conventional approaches, and outside the 
     Beltway.
       We can begin by examining the British system of using 
     broadcasting in political campaigns in the public interest. 
     The British system is simple and direct. Political parties 
     are granted, by law, free time on radio and television in the 
     three or four week period before the election. The parties 
     have complete freedom to make their cases; smaller parties 
     receive time on an equitable basis. This year, for the first 
     time, there will also be debates between the leaders of the 
     political parties. There is no sale or purchase of broadcast 
     time--no money is involved. The campaign is mercifully short, 
     and the voters are well informed. Indeed, because the 
     campaign programs are simulcast on all channels, there is 
     ample political discussion for the voters.
       We should connect the dots: digital television and public 
     interest. We should condition the awarding of digital 
     broadcast licenses on a broadcaster's commitment to provide 
     free time and not sell time.
       People who understand television well--and make their 
     living from it--like this idea. Don Hewitt (producer of 60 
     Minutes on CBS) and Reuven Frank (former President of NBC 
     News) advocate an end to buying and selling political 
     commercials. Barry Diller (formerly of ABC and Fox 
     Television) favors specified free time for candidates during 
     campaigns as part of campaign reform.
       There are, of course, many other important policy questions 
     about free time. I have addressed Presidential elections 
     only, not Congressional elections, not primaries, not state 
     and local elections. This is to focus our analysis on the 
     basic principle: No citizen has a constitutional right to buy 
     or sell our natural resources--land, minerals, water, trees 
     or broadcast spectrum--without Congressional approval. Just 
     as Congress has the authority to clean up our natural 
     environment, it has the authority under our Constitution to 
     clean up the current political broadcasting mess we have 
     inflicted on our republic. Once that principle is 
     established, we can analyze and debate many other vital 
     questions about how to apply that fundamental concept fairly 
     to our political process.
       What about the First Amendment? The First Amendment is the 
     highest value and treasure in our life. As Judge Learned Hand 
     said so well, ``We have staked upon it our all.''
       First, there is the issue of whether Congress can 
     constitutionally require broadcasters to give free time 
     contemplated by this approach. In resolving that issue, let 
     us listen again to Senator McCain--a courageous man who 
     suffered four years of torture as a war prisoner in Vietnam--
     four years to reflect on democracy and freedom. Here's 
     Senator McCain:
       ``Let me go back to the First Amendment thing. What the 
     broadcasters fail to see, in my view, is that they agree to 
     act in the public interest when they use an asset that is 
     owned by the American public. That's what makes them 
     different from a newspaper or a magazine. I have never been 
     one who believes in government intervention, but I also 
     believe you that when you agree to act in the public 
     interest--and no one forced them to do that--you are then 
     obligated to carry out some of those obligations. . . . If I 
     want to start a newspaper, I buy a printing press and [get] a 
     bunch of people and we start selling newspapers on the 
     street. If I want to start a television station, I've got to 
     get a broadcasting license. And that broadcasting license 
     entails my use of something that's owned by the American 
     public. So I reject the thesis that the broadcasters have no 
     obligation. And if you believe that there is no obligation, 
     then they shouldn't sign the statement that says they agree 
     to act in the public interest. Don't sign it, OK?''
       Senator McCain has accurately described the public trustee 
     concept for broadcasting, found to be constitutional by the 
     Supreme Court repeatedly, in 1943, 1969, 1993, and again on 
     March 31 this year. Indeed, the issue here is not free time, 
     but the voters' time. Professor Cass Sunstein, the 
     distinguished and respected First Amendment scholar at the 
     University of Chicago Law School, writes: ``Requiring free 
     air time for candidates, given constitutional history and 
     aspirations, is fully consistent with the basic goals of the 
     First Amendment. The free speech principle is, above all, 
     about democratic self-government.''
       Then there is the second issue. Could Congress at the same 
     time lawfully say to the candidates, ``You have been given a 
     generous, free opportunity to reach the electorate over the 
     most powerful medium, broadcasting, to say, without 
     interference, whatever you want. As a condition of accepting 
     that offer, you will not buy further time on this medium. For 
     experience has shown that with such purchases comes the drive 
     to raise great sums of money, with all its abuses and 
     detriments to sound governance.''
       I believe Congress could do these things, and that they 
     would be constitutional because, in the current language of 
     the Supreme Court, such a law would be ``content neutral.'' 
     As Justice Stevens emphasized, as long as the law does not 
     regulate the content of speech rather than the structure of 
     the market, the law is consistent with the First Amendment. I 
     believe Congress could go even further and constitutionally 
     prohibit broadcasters from selling time for political 
     purposes. Congress has already passed the Equal Time law 
     and a law guaranteeing candidates the right to buy time at 
     the broadcasters' lowest rate. Both have been held 
     constitutional by the courts. Banning cigarette 
     commercials on television has been held constitutional in 
     light of the danger to health and broadcasters' public 
     interest obligations. Congress should debate whether our 
     current system of buying and selling broadcast time is a 
     grave danger to our national health. I would happily see 
     these reforms tested at the Supreme Court.
       Three years from now, we will have entered a new millennium 
     and a new presidential campaign season. By then, we will also 
     be into the era of new digital television. Almost fifty years 
     ago, E.B. White saw a flickering, experimental television 
     demonstration and wrote, ``We shall stand or fall by 
     television--of that I am sure . . . I believe television is 
     going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this 
     new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision, we 
     shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance to the 
     general peace, or a saving radiance in the sky.''
       Instead of a saving radiance in the sky, we now have a 
     colossal irony. Politicians sell access to something we own: 
     the government. Broadcasters sell access something we own: 
     the public airways. Both do so, they tell us, in our name. By 
     creating this system of selling and buying access, we have a 
     campaign system that makes good people do bad things and bad 
     people do worse things, a system that we do not want, that 
     corrupts and trivializes public discourse, and that we have 
     the power and the duty--a last chance--to change.
       Will we change? I leave you with a story President Kennedy 
     told a week before he was killed. The story was about French 
     Marshal Louis Lyautey, who walked one morning through his 
     garden with his gardener. He stopped at a certain point and 
     asked the gardener to plant a tree there the next morning. 
     The gardener said, ``But the tree will not bloom for one 
     hundred years!'' The Marshal looked at the gardener and 
     replied, ``in that case, you had better plant it this 
     afternoon.''

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