[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 131 (Friday, September 26, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H8025-H8026]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  THE HOUSE LEADERSHIP SHOULD SCHEDULE DEBATE AND A VOTE ON CAMPAIGN 
                             FINANCE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington, [Mr. Smith] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ADAM SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to echo the 
comments of my colleagues and urge that this body bring up campaign 
finance reform and pass meaningful campaign finance reform in this 
session.
  I think the biggest reason I want to see this happen is because of 
the lack of confidence that the public has in this body. There is a 
crisis in our democracy that I think too few people have noticed; that 
is, the majority of

[[Page H8026]]

the citizens of this democracy do not have trust and confidence in 
their government. That is essential in a democracy. The people are the 
government. If they do not trust us, we have a crisis that blocks our 
ability to stand up to almost any meaningful issue.
  I have said before that it is impossible to lead if no one is willing 
to follow. We cannot step up to problems like health care, Social 
Security and Medicare reform, balancing the budget, or education. A lot 
of meaningful issues have taken longer and longer to deal with because 
the public does not trust its leaders.
  There are a lot of reasons for that. Some of them are justified and 
some of them are not, admittedly. One reason for the distrust is the 
system by which we elect our Representatives, the system by which we 
finance campaigns. There is a perception and a reality out there that 
the campaigns are funded almost exclusively by people with a lot of 
money. If you do not have a lot of money to bring to the process, you 
have no access to the process, and that has turned people off. We are 
seeing lower and lower numbers of people participating in the system. 
We need to show them that we can change this system in order to get 
their confidence back, so we can govern again.
  Ironically, I have heard a lot of my colleagues tell me that, gosh, 
when we go home for town meetings, when we talk to people, no one is 
talking about campaign finance reform. It is not really an issue they 
care about. It is not a so-called pocketbook issue. It does not 
directly affect their ability to get a job or feed their family or 
educate their children, so therefore, they really do not care about it.
  But what I have heard when I go home on the weekend, and go out and 
talk to the people in my district, is the reason they do not care about 
it is because they do not think we are going to do anything about it.
  We sort of have a self-fulfilling prophecy with Members of Congress 
saying, gosh, the public does not care, and not doing anything about 
it, so yes, the public does not care because they do not think anything 
is going to happen. They do not believe this body is ever going to step 
up to the plate and change it, because they think we are comfortable in 
the current system.
  If we want them to care about it, we have to show them we are serious 
about it. That is the first point. The second point is, they do care 
about it on a deeper level. They care about it in the sense that they 
do not trust the system of government. We do not want a democracy where 
the people do not care about their system of government.
  We cannot say we do not need to step up to an issue because apathy 
has overtaken it. We need an active and involved electorate in a 
democracy, if we are truly going to be able to represent the people. 
That means we need to pass campaign finance reform.
  I rise specifically in support of House bill 1776, which is the 
updated version of the Shays-Meehan bill. I do that because there are 
two very important aspects to that bill. First of all, it bans soft 
money. I do not believe that there is anything wrong with people 
participating in our election system. I, for one, do not believe that 
we should go to an exclusively publicly financed system. I think it is 
very important that the members of a community are personally involved 
in campaigns, that they support the candidates that they like and get 
involved in the process so they are more involved in it down the road. 
It is important that people contribute.
  The only time we have a problem is when those contributions are so 
large from certain people as to drown out the rest. When someone has 
the ability to give $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 to a system, I can 
readily understand how one of my constituents says, gosh, all I can do 
is afford to give $50, and what difference does it make, if the 
politicians are going to get $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 from somebody 
else?
  Back in the 1970's we came up with a reform proposal to deal with 
this. We placed limits on the amount people could contribute: $1,000 
for an individual, $5,000 for a group of individuals, what is known as 
a PAC. I think that is perfectly appropriate. Those are real limits 
that allow everybody to participate up to a certain point.
  The problem is, with soft money those limits are meaningless. We see 
fundraisers every day around here for $5,000, $10,000, as much as 
$25,000 or $50,000 a person. I remember hearing a story from somebody 
about how many $100,000 contributors Michael Dukakis had back in 1988, 
and I was stunned by this notion. I said, but there are limits, $1,000 
per person. How could any Presidential candidates have a $100,000 
contributor? The answer of course was it was soft money.
  It was interesting to me. The person who was telling this made no 
distinction whatsoever between the soft money contribution and the 
individual contribution. There is a very good reason for that. Around 
the halls of Washington, DC, there is no distinction. Soft money has 
rendered limits meaningless. We need to ban soft money in order to make 
those 1970 reforms have some meaning.
  I can understand the cynicism of the public in dealing with that 
issue. I urge that we support campaign finance reform. The other aspect 
of the bill that I like is putting some teeth in the Federal Elections 
Commission and actually enforcing the laws.

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