[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 109 (Tuesday, July 29, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H5986]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1700
              THE PROBLEM OF CAMPAIGN FINANCES IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Miller of Florida). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Allen] is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about the problem of 
campaign finances in this country. Today is a good day to be talking 
about this subject, because we have an agreement, a budget agreement, 
entered into by the President and by the Republican leadership, and 
that budget agreement and tax agreement has drawn strong support across 
the aisles today.
  The problem I want to discuss today is an area where we also have 
some bipartisan agreement. I have been the co-chair of a freshman task 
force with the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Asa Hutchinson. This 
freshman task force has spent 5 months working on the issue of campaign 
finance reform. I want to speak a few words about the problem, and then 
describe a little bit what we have been going through.
  All of the freshmen went through the experience in 1996 of going 
through a different kind of an election, an election where there was a 
vast amount of money spent in our races to influence our races, either 
by the national parties or by outside groups that were not connected 
with our campaigns. So in many ways, we felt as if we did not have the 
same kind of role in the campaign that candidates had had in the past. 
In short, there was too much money in politics. Soft money was a big 
part of the problem. Soft money is the $100,000, the $500,000, the $1 
million contributions that go to national parties for so-called party-
building activities.
  A long time ago, when this provision was created, the thought was 
that this money would go to help get out the vote, to help build the 
party organizations. In 1996 we saw that money flowing down into 
districts around the country to be used for negative advertisements. 
That simply has to stop, because every individual contributor, every 
voter, every citizen is diminished when that kind of big money 
contribution is part of the political process.
  Our task force that I cochaired with the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. 
Asa Hutchinson, worked for 5 months on this particular issue. The 
gentleman from Florida, Mr. Allen Boyd, the gentlewoman from 
California, Ms. Ellen Tauscher, the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Bill 
Pascrell, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Nick Lampson, and the gentleman 
from Wisconsin, Mr. Ron Kind, were members of that task force.
  We learned together. We held hearings. We had participants, groups 
that had made contributions, that had run ads, come in and testify. We 
had advocates for all sorts of change come in and testify. We went 
through a 5-month process to try to work out on a bipartisan basis what 
would be the kind of campaign reform that would be significant reform 
but would also be practical, that could be passed this particular year.
  We have a bill. It is the Bipartisan Campaign Integrity Act of 1997. 
I am proud to be an original sponsor of that bill. It does three 
particularly important things. First, it bans soft money. It takes the 
biggest of the big money out of politics. Second, it provides that 
those groups that want to advertise will have to undergo a further 
disclosure than they have in the past. They will have to identify who 
the group is and they will have to identify what they are spending 
their money on, if they spend more than $25,000 in a district, or an 
aggregate of $100,000 around the country. Third, we will have faster 
reporting by candidates of their contributions, and electronic 
reporting in many cases, and more disclosure than we have had in the 
past.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ALLEN. I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to say to my friend, the 
gentleman from Maine [Mr. Allen] that it has been a pleasure to work 
with him on this task force. I think he has done an outstanding job 
with his colleagues. I want to commend him for his work on this. I will 
say more later, but I just wanted to say what a joy it has been to work 
in a bipartisan fashion with the gentleman and his colleagues.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much. We have had 
a good time. We have learned a lot. We have learned that, among other 
things, a group of freshmen new to this Chamber can come into this 
Chamber and learn to work together across the aisles. The gentleman 
from Arkansas [Mr. Hutchinson] has been an extraordinary leader in this 
endeavor, and other members, Republican members of the task force, have 
really done an outstanding job.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to address a couple of things, in addition. 
We have critics. No surprise. There are always critics. There are those 
who say we have not gone far enough. They want candidate limits or they 
want public financing.
  To them I say whatever their agenda, however important further reform 
may be, the fact is that if we are going to act this year, we have to 
ban soft money. We have to take the biggest of the big money out of 
politics. There may be unfinished business for other times, but at 
least we must do that much.

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