[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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