[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 17, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H7483-H7484]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   CLEAN MONEY, CLEAN ELECTIONS BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Tierney] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon just to speak briefly 
on the issue of campaign finance reform.

[[Page H7484]]

  As the Speaker knows, we have had very little opportunity for 
deliberation and debate of this issue in the current Congress, over the 
objections of a fair number of people who really believe strongly that 
the American people deserve and in fact are requesting that Congress 
deal with this matter.
  One of the bills that has been presented of the many bills that are 
before this Congress that could be debated and deliberated and voted 
upon this session, if the Republican leadership so desired, is the 
clean money, clean elections bill which I was proud to sponsor, H.R. 
2199.
  I would like to take a little bit of this time to explain some of the 
concepts in this bill so people will understand just what one of the 
proposals is that could be dealt with in this particular session.
  The clean money, clean elections bill would have a privately funded 
candidate, if so desired, and a publicly funded candidate. That would 
be the option.
  If you are a clean money candidate, or the publicly funded candidate, 
then the campaign would start six months before your primary date. That 
is when the effort would begin.
  Anything before then would only be an opportunity to collect seed 
money, so-to-speak, just $35,000 or less in contributions of $100 or 
less to fund the operation of an office and a campaign staff to help 
you get your grassroots organization to get together. There would be no 
money involved in that small seed amount for TV or radio or other 
advertising.
  From that period of six months prior to the primary date onward up 
until the thirtieth day before the election, one month before the 
election, candidates would seek to qualify these public funded 
candidates by collecting a set number of $5 contributions from 
individual residents of the state.
  Once that amount was received and you were qualified for the primary, 
if in fact you won the primary, you would be qualified for the final. 
The total amount you could receive as a clean money candidate for the 
primary and the general election would be 80 percent of the national 
average of campaign expenditures by all winning House candidates for 
the previous three election cycles. That amount would be limited and 
set. In addition, if you opted to be a publicly funded candidate, you 
would receive TV and radio time free, and that would be compensation to 
the broadcast companies for the spectrum that they already receive from 
the American public.

  This should be a strong incentive for people to forego the private 
money chase, to become a member of this system of clean money 
financing.
  Soft money would be prohibited. And, yes, if you elect to have 
private funding, you can certainly go about and raise as much as you 
want, but there are strong disincentives for you not to do that.
  Issues campaigns run for a private money candidate against a clean 
money candidate would count toward the private money candidate's sum. 
If they surpassed the limits allowed in the campaign, the clean money 
candidate would get offsetting moneys, so that this would always be an 
evenly balanced campaign.
  The five objectives that are basically addressed in this particular 
bill, Mr. Speaker, are as follows: It would eliminate any perceived and 
real conflicts of interest caused by the direct financing of campaigns 
by private interests; it would limit campaign spending by requiring 
that candidates who choose to participate in the clean money system 
spend no more money than the fixed amount of funding that they receive; 
it allows qualified individuals to run for office, regardless of their 
economic status or their access to large contributors; it frees 
candidates and elected officials from the burden of the continuous 
money chase; last, it would shorten the effective length of campaigns 
by defining the point at which candidates receive clean money financing 
to pay for campaign expenditures.
  Mr. Speaker, this bill creates a voluntary system. Candidates may 
choose to rely upon private financing, though the system provides 
strong incentives not to do that. For candidates, it also gets rid of 
the system of disfavored soft money.
  It creates a level playing field. There would be no unilateral 
disarming of any party. In effect, Mr. Speaker, I find that is 
generally the complaint of one side of this House or another, that many 
of the campaign finance bills would disarm unilaterally one faction 
against the other. That is not the case with this bill. It sets an 
even, level playing field, so the candidate with the message, with the 
ability to organize, get their message out, put together a strong 
grassroots campaign, would be the candidate that would get the voters' 
attention.
  It is, I think, Mr. Speaker, a fact that best organized candidates 
would prevail, and voters would in fact prevail. They would own back 
their own electoral process and they would once again have faith and 
the system would have credibility.
  Mr. Speaker, I put that out there as one of the options that are 
available for people as they wonder why it is that this House under the 
Republican leadership has not dealt with the issue of campaign finance 
reform.
  I say there are a number of other credible bills up for consideration 
that deserve a chance to be debated, deserve the deliberation of this 
great body, and deserve to come to a vote in a meaningful way.
  I would urge the Republican leadership to put this matter on the 
floor of the House before we go home for recess this fall, and I hope 
that other Members who have presented their bills will take the 
opportunity to address to the public the substance of their bills so 
that we can in some fashion have a debate that I think is much deserved 
and long overdue.

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