Congressional Record, Volume 143 Issue 59 (Thursday, May 8, 1997)

[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 59 (Thursday, May 8, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4134-S4136]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

Mr. FEINGOLD. I rise today, with my friend and colleague, Senator
Wellstone, and others to start up the conversation again about the need
to clean up our election system and pass meaningful, bipartisan
campaign finance reform. I am pleased to announce that as of yesterday
the so-called McCain-Feingold legislation now has reached a milestone
of having 30 cosponsors in the Senate, with the addition of the
distinguished senior Senator from West Virginia, Senator Robert Byrd,
as a cosponsor.
The senior Senator from Minnesota, of course, was a leader on this
issue long before I got here and continues to be, not only in our
legislation but on other aspects and ideas about how we can clean up
this system.
One of the things that really highlights the importance of this issue
is the type of work that was recently done by Public Citizen in
releasing a report that lays out the fact that the McCain-Feingold
bill, and I am sure other alternatives as well, really would make a
difference, that had we done the job last July the elections of 1996
would have looked very different.
They have analyzed three components of the legislation. One is the
voluntary limits on overall spending that candidates would agree to in
order to get the benefits of the bill. They analyzed the fact that the
McCain-Feingold bill would ban soft money completely, as any good
reform proposal must do. And Public Citizen analyzed the requirement in
the bill that if you want the benefits of the bill, you cannot get more
than 20 percent of your total campaign contributions from political
action committees.
Very briefly, since I want to obviously hear from the Senator from
Minnesota, I just want to report what the figures were. Over the last
three election cycles, had these provisions been in the law and had all
candidates for the U.S. Senate in 1992 and 1994 and 1996 abided by the
limits, $700 million less would have been spent on these campaigns--
$700 million. That is just for Senate races in three cycles; in other
words, just one whole series of Senate races for 100 seats--$700
million of less spending. It would have been $259 million in less
spending overall by candidates because they would have agreed to an
overall limit for their State; $50 million less in political action
committee receipts and $450 million less in soft money.
I wish to indicate, since some get in the Chamber and say this is a
proincumbent bill, the Public Citizen report shows it is just the
opposite, absolutely the opposite of a proincumbent bill. This is a
prochallenger bill. Ninety percent of the Senate incumbents over the
last three election cycles exceeded the limits for the McCain-Feingold
bill--90 percent of the incumbents. Only 24 percent of the challengers
exceeded these limits. So the challengers in most cases would have been
the ones who would have been more likely to get the benefits of the
bill; 81 percent of the incumbents exceeded the 20 percent PAC limit
and only 13 percent of the challengers exceeded the 20 percent PAC
limit.
So there are many arguments that are posed against the bill, most of
which do not hold water, including the notion that the bill is
unconstitutional. We will address that on another occasion, but today I
thought I would just use a few minutes of this time to indicate that
this notion that this bill is protection for incumbents is false and
just the opposite is the case as is indicated by Public Citizen.

At this point I would like to----
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I wonder whether the Senator will yield
for a question.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brownback). The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I was listening to my colleague from Wisconsin, and I
thank him for leading this reform effort, in fact I thank Senator
McCain and other Senators as well. I know the Presiding Officer has
done a lot of work and has spoken out about trying to really reduce the
role of big money in politics.
The question I ask my colleague has to do with this whole issue of
incumbents and challengers. It has been said sometimes that the debate
about campaign finance reform is really less a debate between Democrats
and Republicans and all too often is more a debate between ins and
outs; that, if anything, part of the inertia here and the slowness to
embrace reform and the fierce opposition has to do with the fact that
right now the system is really wild for those people who are in office.
My question for my colleague is does he feel some sense of urgency
and will he consider coming to the floor every week now with other
colleagues--the two of us are sort of getting started. There are a
number of Senators who feel very strongly that this is a core issue,
the influence of money in politics, and the most important thing we
could ever do would be to pass a significant reform measure. Is my
colleague from Wisconsin beginning to feel as though it is really going
to be important that every week from now on for Democrats and
Republicans who are serious about reform to be out on the floor and
beginning to frame the issues, especially focusing on what are going to
be the solutions?
Mr. FEINGOLD. I do really thank the Senator from Minnesota. In fact,
I would very much like to join with him in coming out here each week,
assuming we are permitted the time. This is the time to start this
effort in the Chamber. We had great help from the President of the
United States in endorsing the legislation and getting us off to the
right start at the beginning of the year when there was a great deal of
attention paid to this issue.
Obviously, there are other priorities; the whole issue of balancing
the budget has taken much of center stage for the last few weeks and
obviously is now on a track, whether one likes it or not, that is
moving in a direction that will be resolved one way or another.
That is why I think this is the time, as the Senator from Minnesota
is suggesting, to have an awful lot of the conversation here on the
floor between now and the day we pass campaign finance reform be about
this issue. We have to talk to the American people this way and in
every other way about what the real facts are about this issue because
it has been often distorted.
For example, the point of the Senator from Minnesota about whether or
not this is really a Republican-Democrat issue. It is not. The Public
Citizen report, for example, points out there is not a lot of
difference between the parties in terms of this issue: 54 percent of
the Democrats who ran for the Senate in the last three election cycles
exceeded the limits; 59 percent of the Republicans exceeded it. It is
not a vast kind of difference, and the Members here really know that.
The problem is somehow encouraging Members, incumbents here to realize
that their lives and their jobs would be better and the opportunities
for others who want to run for office would be better if we do this.
But I think we do need to be out here talking about this, if not on a
daily basis at least on a weekly basis, to let people know this is a
serious effort and that we do intend to succeed.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I wonder if my colleague will allow me
to share a concern with him and get his response. Let me tell you what
my worry is. I do not have any doubt that people in the country know
that too much money is spent, that they know there is too much special
interest access, that they know all of us spend too much time raising
money. I have no doubt that people understand that. As a matter of
fact, I think one of the things that is making it more and more
difficult for people to get involved at the grassroots level is when
they see these huge amounts of money contributed by some folks and some
interests and then they get a letter: We would like you to make a $10
contribution and be involved in our grassroots effort.

[[Page S4135]]

They are a little cynical, and they figure: Come on, give us a break;
we know the people who are most involved in this process. It is not us
and our family.
This is the core issue for a representative democracy. But my concern
is that the Rules Committee starts next week, and there will be an
effort, as I have at least looked at a preliminary list of witnesses--
not to talk about any particular witness--there is going to be a pretty
strong effort on the part of the Rules Committee, which I have called
in the Chamber of the Senate, a merry-go-round for reform, to basically
frame this issue and the issue will be not enough money is spent; all
we need is disclosure so that we can make people realize how bad it is,
without doing anything to make it better. As I look at the ways in
which the Rules Committee moves forward starting next week, I see the
beginning of the debate. I see the beginning of the debate.
So I say to my colleague, will he agree with me that it is going to
be important for those of us who are committed to reform, Democrats and
Republicans--and there is a pretty significant group--to start coming
out on the floor? We will figure out the vehicles, and it is not
necessarily amendments, but there are always ways of speaking. Should
we not now every week be out here framing this issue and over and over
again saying what are going to be the solutions to these problems and
are we or are we not going to take action in this Congress?
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I think we have to do this on the floor,
in part because of the witness list. We went through this last year,
where the committee hearings were used for a great deal of time and you
did not get the feeling that the goal was to find a solution or to pass
a bill. The goal was to sort of talk it to death. The floor is a superb
place to do this.
In fact, I would say to my friend from Minnesota, I think one of the
best editorials that has been written on this subject, that I think we
can sort of elaborate on on the floor in the coming weeks, is something
from the Washington Post of April 21, 1997, entitled, ``Skirting the
Real Scandal.''
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent this editorial be printed in
the Record.
There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the Washington Post, Apr. 21, 1997]

Skirting the Real Scandal

The subject that has been most discussed by the politicians
thus far this year has been not the budget, nor the state of
the economy, nor the various aspects of health care nor peace
in the Middle East. It has been campaign finance--and the
discussion has been almost entirely fraudulent. It is widely
agreed, and rightly so, that we are in the middle of a
campaign finance ``scandal,'' and both parties are forced by
convention to express their indignation at that. But they are
huffing and puffing about a problem that neither is willing
to describe accurately--for the good reason that both are
complicit in it and have a vested interest in perpetuating
precisely what they must denounce. It is like one of those
plays in which the characters can't or don't communicate and
instead spend their time talking past one another and the
truth. The point keeps getting missed--on purpose.
The basic problem is that the cost of conducting a campaign
for federal office has been bid up to a point that is
destructive of the very democratic process it is said to
represent. The cost at both the congressional and
presidential levels is obscene. One reason may be that so
many of the candidates, lately including those for president,
have had so little to say. It's not just TV that's expensive.
Blur is expensive. In any case, the candidates and parties
increasingly have responded to the cost by overriding or
circumventing even the relatively modest set of rules put in
place in the 1970s in response to the last great fund-raising
scandal, that of the Nixon administration.
The rules imposed then were meant to limit the extent to
which offices and office-holders can be bought, but in last
year's presidential race, both parties tossed them almost
completely out the window. Both pretended to abide by the law
while raising money in amounts and from sources that the law
forbids, and the amounts were huge. It is hard to decide
which was worse, the pretense or the excess. The law is
written in such a way that the violators could be fairly
confident that they would suffer no penalty; this beat has no
real cops.
That is the fundamental scandal that neither party will
confront. The president, safely past his last campaign,
claims now to want to strengthen a set of rules whose
weaknesses he led the way in exploiting. The claim is
unconvincing. He converts his own excesses into an agenda.
Most of the congressional Democrats don't want to talk about
the excess in the system either. In part, they seek to
protect the president, in part to protect themselves: What
could be so wrong, after all, with a system that elected
them? The Republicans have the hardest time of all, because
they are the stoutest defenders of the system that they
attack the president for having used to such advantage.
Because no one can quite afford to talk about Topic A, they
all talk about topics B, C and D: What are the ground rules
going to be for the various congressional investigations of
the subject? Should or shouldn't the attorney general seek
appointment of an independent counsel? The Justice Department
says one reason it hasn't gone to such lengths is that so
much of the fund-raising at the center of the dispute
involved so-called soft money rather than hard, meaning money
that went to the Democratic National Committee rather than to
the president's campaign organization. The law, the
department's career prosecutors say, doesn't apply to soft
money, so technically they have no violations to prosecute.
And technically that may be so, but of course the point is
that in the last campaign the distinction between hard and
soft money disappeared. Both parties raised much more hard
money than the law allows and merely called it soft to avoid
regulation. The Republicans could make that point; it would
strengthen their argument for an independent counsel. But
they are the last to want soft money regulated. They want a
counsel, but not a counsel who might insist on strict
enforcement of the campaign finance laws.
The whole question of an independent counsel, and of
turning what happened last year into a criminal as distinct
from a broader civic offense, is to some extent a red
herring. We don't mean to suggest that there ought not be a
criminal inquiry, and in fact several are going on. An
independent counsel continues to look into the sprawl of
issues called Whitewater, including whether an effort was
made to buy the silence of possible witness and former
associate attorney general Webster Hubbell. A Justice
Department task force and congressional committees are
looking into the fund-raising squalor. If people committed
crimes in the course of that fund-raising, they ought to pay
the price, whoever they are. And the truth--the full truth--
ought to be extracted from them, whether criminal or not.
But the churning about the lurid particulars of how that
money was raised last year ought not be allowed to take the
public eye off the broader questions: What do you do about
the solicitation system generally? How do you keep electoral
outcomes, and the policy outcomes to which they lead, from
being bought? The politicians--both parties--are conducting a
kind of mock debate about the lesser issues as a diversion
and an alternative to dealing with the central one. That's
the ultimate scandal, and they should not be allowed to get
away with it.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, let me just read the last paragraph of
this. The editorial basically talks about the way in which Members of
Congress are very skilled about talking around the edges of this thing:
Foreign contributions are the problem, or the problem is what the White
House did, or what we need is an investigation, or what we need is an
independent counsel, or we need investigations--all so you can talk
about everything but the need to actually pass reform. This is what
they identified, and I thought the last paragraph was effective. As it
says:

But the churning about the lurid particulars of how that
money was raised last year ought not to be allowed to take
the public eye off the broader questions: What do you do
about the solicitation system generally? How do you keep
electoral outcomes, and the policy outcomes to which they
lead, from being bought? The politicians--both parties--are
conducting a kind of mock debate about the lesser issues as a
diversion and an alternative to dealing with the central one.
That's the ultimate scandal, and they should not be allowed
to get away with it.

Mr. President, I think that is exactly what the Senator from
Minnesota is referring to, talking around the edges, using the
committee process to avoid talking about what is really going on, the
need to change this big money system, and to talk about it on the
floor.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, if my colleague will just yield for one
other question, another concern, and then I will leave the floor and
let him conclude. I wonder whether the Senator from Wisconsin would
agree with me that--I mean, in, oh, so many ways--what we see happening
in the country is every election year we see cited the figures: People
spend more and more money in the campaigns and fewer and fewer people
participate. People are really losing heart.
I have said before that I do not see it as corruption as in the
wrongdoing of individual officeholders. But I see systemic corruption,
where these campaigns have become TV-intensive, relying on huge amounts
of money and, therefore, you have this huge imbalance of influence and
power where too

[[Page S4136]]

few people give way too much of the money that is given, and are given
access and influence, and too many people are left out of the loop.
This becomes a real problem for a representative democracy because it
is not true any longer that each person counts as one and only one.
So I ask my colleague whether he would agree that it is going to be
important, not just for us to speak 20 minutes a day, but now for us to
begin to get together? I ask him whether, as a leader in this effort--
and he has been a leader of this effort --whether we might really be
reaching out to other colleagues who feel very strongly about this, who
really want people in our country to believe in the political process--
all of us should want to change this--and get some people together and
come out on the floor of the Senate? We are going to keep framing this
issue and we are going to keep calling for reform and we are going to
make it crystal clear that we are not going to let the Senate, or the
Congress, become a politics of diversion on this.
It is fine to identify problems. If some people want to say we do not
have disclosure, fine. If some people want to say it is influence of
foreign money, fine. If some people want to say it is just the rules
that have been broken and no more than that, fine. But the people in
the country know too much money is spent, there is too much special
access, there is too much time spent raising money, and we have to
build the McCain-Feingold bill that is out there. We want to move that
forward and we want to eventually have an up-or-down vote.
Does my colleague agree that we need to start turning up the heat?
Mr. FEINGOLD. Not only do I agree, but I ask the Senator and I make
sure we reach out to Members of both parties in this body who are
cosponsors, and others who I think are very interested in reform and
have not yet chosen to cosponsor it, to do just that.
There are myths about the legislation and about the effort that have
been perpetuated in an effort to make the public ignore the issue,
thinking it cannot be resolved. But the facts speak differently. There
have been newspaper articles indicating that we have fewer cosponsors
than last year. That is just false. We have 30 Members of the U.S.
Senate as cosponsors of this bill. I guess if we do not come out here
on the floor and start to indicate these facts, it is very hard for the
average citizen to relate to it.
One of the reasons it is hard for them to relate to it is, when they
start hearing about $100,000, $200,000 contributions, it is pretty hard
for them to feel invited into the process. It is pretty hard for them
to believe that anything will ever change. They are so used to
believing that this system and this town is dominated by interests and
powers that they cannot control, that the people of the country, when
they are asked in a poll, may not say that campaign finance reform is
the No. 1 issue. I think, if you ask them whether they think we ought
to do the job and whether it is important, of course they would say
yes. Many would support almost every aspect of the legislation we are
proposing.

But, for the average citizen, if you asked them what is their No. 1
concern, what are they going to say? They are going to say, ``We are
concerned about our kids' education, we are concerned about crime in
our neighborhood.'' Those are the things that people should identify,
should feel free to identify, and they should not have to worry about a
system that has gone out of control so far away in Washington. That is
not the stuff of the daily lives of people in this country. That is not
what it takes to make ends meet.
But the fact is, until we clean up this system here, the ability of
this Government to assist those families in getting through and making
ends meet will be seriously compromised. When we reach the point that
Members of this body get on the floor and say that what the problem is
is that we do not have enough money in politics, and then we do not
pass a piece of legislation, and then we have an election--we find out
the result. More money was spent in these last elections than in any
other election and we had the lowest voter turnout in 72 years. That is
not just a fluke. It is because more and more people are feeling that
they are no longer part of a system that is supposedly premised on the
notion of one person one vote.
So, today begins the effort to speak here on the floor on a regular
basis--not just about the McCain-Feingold bill, but about the fact that
we are not going to allow this year to pass without an effort to bring
this issue back to the floor. Again, my lead author on this bill, the
Senator from Arizona, Senator McCain--I always have to apologize for
his being right and my being wrong last year when he said it would
probably take a scandal to get this passed. I said, please, don't say
that. I want to get it passed this year. But he was right. It took
something like the abuses of the 1996 election to get people in this
body, to get people across the country, to realize that this just is
not a quantitative change in what has been happening in elections since
1974. What happened was a qualitative change, a major change in the way
in which elections are conducted.
Basically, the current election system is falling apart through the
use of loopholes and abuses and how much money people are willing to
raise through soft money and their own campaigns.
So our goal here is to make sure everyone knows this issue is not
``not there.'' It will become one of the dominant issues, not just in
the media and the newspapers, as it has been, but it will become one of
the dominant issues here in the floor in the not too distant future.
How much time do I have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coats). The Senator has 2 minutes 28
seconds remaining.
Mr. FEINGOLD. I yield the remainder of my time and I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, what is the order? How much time does
each Senator have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under a previous order, the Senator from New
Mexico, or his designee, is recognized to speak up to 15 minutes, but
at 10 o'clock, the order also requires that the bill be laid down.
Mr. DOMENICI. Also required to do what?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That the pending bill will be laid down.
Technically, the Senator from New Mexico has approximately 11 minutes.
Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Chair.
(The remarks of Mr. Domenici and Mr. Wyden pertaining to the
introduction of S. 718 are located in today's Record under ``Statements
on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the floor.

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