[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 131 (Friday, September 26, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9994-S10026]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 BIPARTISAN CAMPAIGN REFORM ACT OF 1997

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). Under the previous order, the 
Senate will now proceed to the consideration of S. 25, which the clerk 
will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
  A bill (S. 25) to reform the financing of Federal elections.
  The Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, may I make a unanimous-consent 
request for 10 seconds?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent that Michael Smith, who is an 
intern in my office, be granted the privilege of the floor during 
debate today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, today the Senate begins to formally debate 
what is probably the most discussed and least understood issue before 
the Nation, campaign finance reform. I have made clear, for the last 
several months, actually, that the Senate would, in due time, after 
finishing its work on the budget and the 13 appropriations bills, move 
to this matter. I indicated all along that I knew this issue would come 
up, that it should come up, and it should be debated. And, therefore, I 
have kept that commitment and we will begin our debate. We will have a 
full debate, and we will have some votes. Maybe not the votes that 
everybody would like to have, but critical, key votes on assessing 
where the Senate is.

[[Page S9995]]

  Are we near a consensus yet? Are we prepared to stop trying to claim 
an advantage here or an advantage there and see if we can come together 
in a consensus in this area? I have my doubts that we have reached that 
point yet. But we begin the debate, I hope, in a respectful and 
thoughtful way. I trust no Member of this body doubted my intention to 
do what from the very beginning I said we would do, in terms of calling 
this legislation up.
  We are taking up this issue now under a unanimous-consent agreement 
identical to the one I propounded a few days go and to which the 
minority leader did not at that time agree. So at the outset of this 
debate, I want to make this clear. President Clinton's standing on this 
subject of campaign finance reform is a case study of the problem, not 
an exemplar of the solution. Indeed, it would take the Senate, and the 
House too, staying in marathon session all the way through Christmas, 
just to trace the appalling campaign finance practices that were so 
large a part of President Clinton's reelection effort.
  Just today I understand from WTOP radio news this morning, the 
President is in Houston after last night calling, trying to get 
Senators ginned up to come in here and speak on this subject. But what 
is he going to be doing in Houston? I have his whole schedule, off the 
wire service, as well as the remarks made this morning on WTOP. I will 
put it in the Record.
  I ask unanimous consent to have it printed in the Record at this 
point.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

     Friday, Sept. 26
     White House
       President Clinton:
       In Little Rock and Houston. All times local.
       11 a.m. Departs private residence, Little Rock.
       11:15 a.m. Arrives at Adams Field.
       11:30 a.m. Air Force I departs en route Houston.
       12:40 p.m. Air Force I arrives at George Bush 
     Intercontinental Airport, Houston.
       12:50 p.m. Departs airport en route San Jacinto Community 
     College.
       1:20 p.m. Arrives at San Jacinto Community College.
       1:30 p.m. Addresses the college community.
       2:40 p.m. Departs college en route down-time location.
       3 p.m. Arrives at downtown location.
       7:15 p.m. Addresses DNC dinner. Private residence.
       8:10 p.m. Departs residence en route airport.
       8:30 p.m. Arrives at airport.
       8:45 p.m. Air Force I departs en route Little Rock.
       9:50 p.m. Air Force I arrives in Little Rock.
       10 p.m. Departs airport en route private residence.
       10:15 p.m. Arrives at private residence for overnight.
                                  ____


             WTOP Radio Report September 26, 1997, 9:30 EST

       Mark Knoller, CBS News Reporter traveling with the 
     President in Little Rock, Arkansas, filed the following story 
     for CBS World News which aired on CBS radio affiliate 
     stations including WTOP radio on Washington at 9:30 a.m. 
     Eastern Time on Friday, September 26, 1997:
       ``It took the White House by surprise when Senate Majority 
     Leader Trent Lott announced that the Senate would begin 
     debate today on campaign finance reform. The White House 
     thought it would have several more weeks to plot strategy for 
     passing one version or another of the McCain/Feingold bill.
       ``So, as Mr. Clinton finished a five-hour round of golf 
     last evening, he quickly placed calls to a handful of 
     Senators to talk strategy for today's debate.
       ``The President has loudly proclaimed campaign finance 
     reform as one of his top legislative priorities for the fall. 
     And this week, he threatened to call Congress back into 
     session if it adjourned without taking up the issue.
       ``With his own political fund raising practices the subject 
     of a Justice Department review and the possibility that it 
     could lead to the appointment of an independent counsel, 
     there is a political component to the President being seen as 
     Cheerleader-in-Chief for campaign finance reform.
       ``But as it turns out, the Senate debate begins on a day 
     that will find the President on a day trip to Houston. His 
     schedule there includes a fund raising dinner for the 
     Democratic National Committee which expects to raise 
     $600,000, some of it from contributions the President wants 
     to outlaw.
       ``In Houston, the President will also talk about new data 
     showing that his college tuition tax credit plan will help 
     increasing numbers of people attend at least two years of 
     college. With the President in Little Rock, I'm Mark Knoller, 
     CBS News.''

  Mr. LOTT. Among other things he will be doing in Houston today is 
attending a fundraiser tonight, where it is estimated they will raise 
$600,000, some of which if not much of which is exactly the kind of 
money that he has said, ``Oh, we ought to stop.'' What is he saying 
here, ``Oh, please stop me before I do it again?''
  So, I think we need to start off making it clear what is going on 
here. A lot of what is going on is an effort to change the subject. 
``Oh, gee whiz, the Governmental Affairs Committee has come up with 
some things that are a real problem. Gee, why won't the Attorney 
General appoint independent counsel? We have to have another subject on 
the griddle here.'' But that's OK. That's fine. Finally we will, maybe, 
shed a little light on what is going on here.
  It seems that much of what will need to be done with regard to 
violation of the laws--before you start changing laws to try to see if 
you can fix problems, wouldn't it help if the laws already on the books 
were obeyed and enforced? Wouldn't it be better if we found out how 
people violated the laws last year? Who did it? What do we need to 
tighten it up with regard to illegal foreign contributions, direct and 
indirect?
  But it seems that much of the task of what really went on will be 
left to others, unless the Attorney General can discover still more 
ingenious reasons for delaying what increasingly seems inevitable, the 
appointment of independent counsel.
  For us here, we will do what we are going to do anyway, before Mr. 
Clinton's unnecessary and irrelevant letter. We will at least have the 
opportunity to lay before the American people the pros and cons of 
various proposals for campaign finance reform.
  In the process, I think it will become clear that in campaign law, as 
tax law, there is no bad idea that cannot be made presentable by taking 
on the label of ``reform.'' This is our chance to see more closely some 
of the ideas that have been presented and whether or not they will 
really work--or not; whether they will be fair; and whether they will 
encourage discourse and expression of views and opportunities for 
candidates to go directly to the people instead of being filtered by 
the news media.
  Let me offer this comparison. On the issue of campaign reform we have 
been like a customer in a used-car lot. The salesmen have been talking 
about this little beauty's wire wheels and leather upholstery, and it 
has all sounded pretty good. But now we get to look under the hood and 
find out why this deal looks too good to be true and, in fact, probably 
is.
  Before we launch into the details, though, I want to pay tribute to 
those of our colleagues who have worked on this issue at great length 
and in good faith. Some of them I agree with and with others I 
disagree. And, hopefully, we will disagree without being disagreeable. 
But all those who have pursued this issue out of personal conviction, 
rather than political expediency, merit our commendation. My 
disagreements on this matter with Senator McCain and Senator Feingold 
are well known--and may well become more emphatic in the course of this 
debate. But I recognize the sincerity of their views and I thank them 
for their cooperation that has enabled us to take up other legislation 
without being intercepted or interrupted or heckled. They have been 
responsible. They deserve the right to talk about their bill and we 
deserve the right to point out where the problems are. And I think we 
have set up a way to consider this legislation in an orderly manner.
  Senator Mitch McConnell more than anyone else has argued against 
their position. Entirely apart from the part that I agree with him, he 
stands today as an example of political courage, someone who is willing 
to challenge the prevailing wisdom because it is incorrect and because 
it would violate or restrict the fundamental rights of Americans.
  Legislation is never considered in a vacuum and this legislation is 
no exception to that rule. The Senate will be debating campaign finance 
reform against a background of lurid exposes about the campaign of 
1996. All summer long the Nation has heard news about people ignoring 
the law, fleeing the country to avoid the law, explaining away the law, 
refusing to testify about their actions and the law. From

[[Page S9996]]

all that, some may conclude that we need more laws. Others may wonder 
why we don't enforce the laws we already have concerning campaign 
finance, and let the personal chips fall where they may.

  The fact is, this country already has so many campaign laws and 
campaign regulations that to avoid breaking the law most congressional 
campaigns have to hire a battery of legal experts just to avoid fines 
and censure by the Federal Election Commission. No longer do you sit 
down, like I did in 1972, and fill out my campaign finance reports, you 
know, in longhand, and try to make sure it adds up, send it in and 
struggled to get it in on time. Nah. Now you have to have legal advice, 
you have to have a CPA, you have to have somebody familiar with the FEC 
laws. It becomes one of the burdens of elections. Why don't we, 
instead, go with freedom, open it up, have full disclosure and let 
everybody participate to the maximum they wish.
  But, no, no, no, no; we keep tightening down, tightening down, 
tightening down. Do you know what really is involved here? There are a 
lot of people who don't want the people involved. They want the news 
media to dictate, through their editorial columns and their editorials 
in their news articles, who will be elected.
  Boy, I know how that works. I have had to deal with that in my State. 
If I hadn't been able to get the money to get my message across, how 
could a conservative Republican be elected in the State of Mississippi, 
where the courthouses were all owned and operated by Democrats almost 
entirely, so I had the so-called court house gang fighting me and the 
biggest newspaper in the State bashing me regularly in its editorials 
and in its news stories in the form of editorials. You know, I took 
basic 101 journalism in high school and I know the difference between a 
news story and an editorial. But my friends in the print media quite 
often get that a little confused. As well as the largest television 
station in the State, which regularly took my head off any way they 
could.
  So, how did I win? Because I had the opportunity to take my case to 
the people, raise the money to get my message across over the head of 
the opposition, and the people gave me the opportunity to serve in this 
body.
  The fact is, today's political campaigns are forced to operate within 
a web of campaign law first devised almost a quarter century ago. No 
matter how unworkable some of them are, how out of date some of them 
are, instead of pulling back and clearing away, the temptation is 
always to add on.
  That is what happened with the IRS. Can you believe it? The U.S. 
Senate Finance Committee, with jurisdiction over the Internal Revenue 
Service, this week had its first ever oversight hearing on the 
violations, abuses, intimidations, and threats from the IRS. We are 
partly to blame. We have been hearing about these problems for years. 
What did we do about it? More laws. We kept adding on. We kept putting 
on more pressures. Unfortunately, too often we added more taxes.
  The same is true here. The temptation is to restrict and limit free 
speech. Add on another restriction, one on top of another, with regard 
to campaign spending or the ability to raise money. Add on another 
reporting requirement. Add on another financial incentive, often from 
the taxpayer's purse, for campaigns to behave or advertise in a certain 
way.
  Remember now some of the things that have been advocated along the 
way, I believe, in the campaign finance reform bill proposed originally 
by Senators McCain and Feingold--a form of public financing of 
campaigns. People don't support that. Great; we are going to have the 
U.S. Treasury dollars go to candidates with a system of incentives and 
punishments and voluntary do this, don't do that; oh, by the way we 
will give you free broadcasting. The American people know there ain't 
nothing free. Somebody is going to pay. But that is kind of what the 
push has been.
  I hope the debate we are starting today will break us out of that 
regulatory rut. We now have a chance to go back to square one and to 
reconsider the fundamental principles of what all along has been taken 
for granted.
  For example, with today's computer technology--so rapid and so 
revealing beyond the imagination of the lawmakers of 1974 when the 
present law was enacted--perhaps the public good would best be served, 
not by restricting donations to campaigns, but by promoting them, with 
full disclosure--full, total, and immediate disclosure.
  I wonder what would happen if every donation to a Federal campaign 
had to be logged onto the Internet as it was received by the campaign. 
Anyone interested in the integrity of that campaign, the identity of 
its donors, the possibility of undue influence or corruption, would be 
able to track the campaign's revenues dollar by dollar as they come in. 
Maybe we could agree on that.
  Then let interested Americans donate as they will, for this one 
overriding reason: Because spending money to advance your own political 
views is as much a part of the right of free speech as running a free 
press.
  I think the whole problem can be summed up in this one example. 
Suppose a distinguished surgeon feels strongly about a particular 
issue, whether it is Government control of health care or environmental 
policy or our entanglement in Bosnia. Her work is her life. She is 
saving lives every day. She has no time to devote to politics. Instead, 
she donates to candidates who agree with her views.
  But her college-age son, on the other hand, has plenty of time, and 
he disagrees with his doctor-mother on just about everything, which 
wouldn't be unusual for a young college student to disagree with his or 
her parents. So he cuts back on his classes and volunteers 40 hours a 
week for the candidates who oppose her candidates. In the process, he 
saves those candidates a considerable amount of money doing for free 
what they otherwise would have to pay for.
  Now, which of those two is a good citizen: The wealthy physician who 
writes checks to campaigns, or the pugnacious young man who gives them 
his time and labor?

  My answer is both of them. Our campaign laws ought to encourage both 
their public spirit and their political involvement.
  But our laws don't do that. They don't advert at all to the student 
volunteer or, for that matter, to the Hollywood personality whose 
donated performance brings in, say, $1 million for a Presidential 
campaign. For some reason, campaign contribution limits seem to stop 
right outside the gated driveways of some of the richest and most 
influential personages of the land.
  But those laws do apply to the doctor and to everyone else who sits 
down to write a check, to put their money where their views are. I have 
made no secret of the fact that we need more such people, not fewer, 
and that our present campaign laws should be reformed so that they 
don't discourage citizen involvement of any sort.
  That is especially important with regard to issue advocacy by the 
whole range of public policy organizations, left or right, liberal to 
conservative. The inclination by Government to regulate speech--or 
expenditures that are the equivalent of speech--is hard to contain.
  It starts with the understandable wish to discourage slander and 
libel in campaigns. It proceeds to various schemes to review and 
control the content of campaign ads, and it ends up in attempts to 
restrict the essential right of private citizens to expose the records 
of candidates and reveal where they stand on crucial issues of the day.
  Do I like this? When I am the brunt of some of that, no, I don't like 
it, and we can probably get bipartisan agreement that some of the 
negative aspects of it are not good. We don't like it. But how do we 
tell a private citizen that he or she can't pick a billboard and say, 
Congressman X or Senator X voted wrong on an issue? I think we need to 
think long and hard about that.
  I hasten to add that, in its current form, the legislation before us 
does not do all of those things. I have been speaking more generally 
about various proposals that have won considerable credence in the 
media which, come to think of it, is the very last place those 
proposals should be tolerated. After all, once we lower the bar between 
Government and free expression of political ideas, we imperil that 
expression for everyone.
  I am not suggesting that every aspect of campaign financing is so 
clear

[[Page S9997]]

or so simple that all well-meaning persons will inevitably come to the 
same conclusion about it. They won't. But there is one campaign finance 
issue about which that is the case, about which all persons of good 
will should, indeed, reach the same conclusion.
  That is the principle that no person should be compelled to 
financially support a political campaign, especially a campaign with 
which he or she does not agree. Surely we can agree on that.
  Our instinctive reaction is to say, ``Oh, that's out of the question; 
you can't be compelled to contribute to a candidate or campaign you 
don't agree with or against your will; it couldn't happen in America.''
  Well, it does. It happens all the time, and it is happening now. I am 
referring to the great scandal in American politics, what is to my mind 
the worst campaign abuse of them all: The forceful collection and 
expenditure of business fees or union dues for political purposes. This 
is not something that is aimed at businesses or at unions because I am 
unduly critical of them. We want more business. We want jobs. We want 
them to be involved in the political process. I am the son of a 
shipyard worker, a pipefitter, who was a union steward for a while.
  I think we should encourage union members to be involved and active 
in politics. My own father was and so were my grandfathers on both 
sides of the family. So I have made the point over the years to go into 
plants and mills and stand at the gates and go into union halls--yes, 
union halls. I have had some interesting times there, because I quite 
often ask union members, ``Do you agree with these things?'' and run 
down the list. They don't agree with them; they agree with me. It is 
the union ratings of who is voting right or wrong. The local union 
members in my hometown more often agree with me than they do with the 
union bosses in Washington.

  Sometimes, by the way, I think businesses do this, too, that somehow 
you have to contribute fees, or some process is used to get your money 
and put it in campaigns. The individual should have the final say and 
total control over how that happens. They should either have to write 
out the check for a specific purpose or give specific approval before 
those dues or those fees could be used.
  I have heard complaints from union members about how disgruntled they 
are about the way their dues are mishandled by the national union 
officers. I have heard their anger and frustration knowing their unions 
are financially supporting a candidate whom they oppose. When they ask 
me why this is permitted, how am I supposed to answer? ``Well, the law 
just allows that.''
  The courts are saying that shouldn't happen, but, buddy, you are 
going to hear a lot of screaming and hollering on the floor of this 
body about, ``Oh, we can't have that opportunity for members or 
employees of a business or a union to direct where their contributions 
go, where their dues go.'' I think that is going to be pretty hard to 
defend for the average blue collar working man and woman wherever they 
are.
  Should I tell them those who wrote our earlier campaign laws 
deliberately slanted those laws to hurt certain interests and advance 
others? Should I tell them that much of what passes for campaign 
finance reform today would only worsen those deliberate inequities?
  As far as I am concerned, righting that wrong is the price of 
admission to campaign finance reform. If a Senator is willing to free 
employees and union members from that compulsory contribution of their 
hard-earned wages to political campaigns, then I can accept that 
Senator as a legitimate participant in the campaign reform debate, 
whether or not I agree with his or her views on the rest of the 
subjects. At least we know they want fairness, an opportunity for 
people to have some say where their dues, their fees, will go.
  But anyone who is not willing to take that essential first step to 
protect the earnings and consciences of employees and union members 
against the political diversion of their fees or expenses or union 
dues, that person, in my mind, has no standing in the debate we are 
beginning today.
  Madam President, I never deceive myself into thinking the American 
people follow every word that is spoken on the floor of the Senate. I 
hope not. They usually are too busy making America better by pursuing 
their own individual dreams. But this debate, I think, will catch and 
hold their attention for a while, and I think they are going to be 
interested in what they hear.
  They may not have been able to read both sides in some of the news 
media, but hopefully they are about to hear it from me and from others 
and from the media that will tell both sides of the story and tell what 
the options are. At the end of what I think we are going to see this 
debate deliver will be a sea change in opinion as the public rethinks 
the role of candidates, of donors, of volunteers, of issue advocacy 
groups, and of Congress itself, whose track record on legislating on 
this issue has not been stellar.
  In the past, the Supreme Court has had to overturn patently 
unconstitutional campaign reform legislation. Let us do nothing now to 
force a repetition of that rebuke. As a Member of the House and Senate 
over the years, I have heard, ``We can't worry about that; we don't 
know what they will do. Let's just do what we want to do and then we 
will see.'' I don't think that is very responsible. You can always 
argue what is constitutional and not constitutional, but free speech is 
pretty easy to discern, and it ought to be hard to limit.
  In the very recent past, there were 38 Members of the Senate who were 
willing, on the record, to amend the Constitution to give a Federal 
agency, the Federal Election Commission, the power to limit the first 
amendment rights of individual Americans. That, I trust, is an idea 
whose time has come and gone and will never come again.

  In closing, Madam President, I would like to recall a line from what 
was probably the first drama written and performed in America. It was 
called ``The Candidate, or the Humours of a Virginia Election.'' In it, 
a seasoned older candidate advises a younger one that when he makes 
promises he knows he cannot deliver, he should say, ``upon my honor,'' 
otherwise they won't believe you.
  Well, thus far, in the national debate about campaign finance reform, 
much has been said ``upon my honor.'' Now comes the real test of ideas, 
so the American people can decide for themselves whom to believe and 
whom to trust about this matter that goes to the heart of their 
personal rights and their political liberty.
  I yield the floor, Madam President.
  Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader is recognized.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Madam President, this Congress has spent many, many 
months and millions and millions of dollars to investigate perceived 
abuses in the 1996 election. There have been cries of outrage and 
shock. The American people are deeply cynical about whether Congress 
will ever pass campaign finance reform because they believe 
politicians' self-interests will, once again, override public good. If 
after all the hearings, all the press releases, all the statements, we 
do absolutely nothing, that cynicism is justified.

  The American people are not dumb. They know the system is broken. 
They know we now have an opportunity to fix it, but they do not think 
we will. But we can use this opportunity, the next several days, to 
prove them too pessimistic. We need a sincere bipartisan effort to 
clean up our own house.
  So, Madam President, this is a defining moment. People who think they 
can kill this effort with political gamesmanship--without anyone 
noticing--are wrong. If we squander this opportunity, it will not go 
unnoticed.
  Today, we begin one of the most important debates that we will have 
in this Congress. We have sought this opportunity for almost a year. I 
appreciate the majority leader has now agreed to this debate. I hope 
his colleagues will not act to block meaningful reform now that we have 
the opportunity to deal with it. This is not only an easier way to 
resolve this issue, it is by far a better way. The American people have 
a right to hear full and open debate. And we have an opportunity and a 
responsibility to conduct it.
  I appreciate, too, President Clinton's determination to see that we 
have a good debate and his willingness to take the extraordinary step--
and I hope

[[Page S9998]]

that it will not be necessary--of calling a special session of Congress 
to make sure that there is sufficient time for a thorough debate.
  It has been a generation since the last campaign finance reform laws 
were signed. Today, those laws are practically useless. Some have been 
circumvented by new loopholes. Senator Lott has noted all of the 
attention to abuse and the fact that we have so many laws on the books 
today.
  The fact is that many of those laws are unenforceable because they 
have been poorly drafted, because they intentionally, in many cases, 
created loopholes, because they are ambiguous, because we do not have 
the teeth in the Federal Election Commission system to deal with it.
  Just today in the Wall Street Journal there is an article that the 
former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Haley Barbour, is 
now being investigated by a grand jury for fundraising infractions he 
may or may not have committed as chairman over the last couple of 
years.
  So, Madam President, this is not a Republican problem or a Democratic 
problem. This is an American problem, an American problem evidenced by 
grand jury investigations, by special counsel investigations, by 
congressional investigations. The investigations go on and on. And if 
we do not deal with it, the cynicism will rise, the participation in 
democracy will fall, and we will all be the victims.
  So, Madam President, we have an opportunity today to build on the 
history.
  In 1971 and in 1974, Democratic Congresses enacted major reforms that 
we thought would address many of these problems. We limited the amount 
of money in politics and required candidates to disclose where they got 
their money. But, unfortunately, many of those reforms, as we all well 
know, were thrown out by the controversial decision of the Supreme 
Court in 1976, Buckley versus Valeo.
  For the last 21 years, since that decision, Democrats have tried to 
overcome obstacles put in place by that ruling. We have tried to find 
ways to address the complexities, the problems, the shortcomings of 
that decision.
  It was 10 years ago, at the opening of the 100th Congress, that then-
majority leader Robert C. Byrd introduced a bill to limit spending and 
reduce special interest influence. We had to fight through eight 
cloture votes, eight filibusters, in order to get the opportunity to 
finally vote on the issue. Democratic sponsors modified the bill to 
meet Republican objections. But in the end, Republicans continued to 
oppose the bill, and ultimately it died.
  It was 8 years ago in the Democratic-led 101st Congress, both the 
House and the Senate passed campaign finance reform bills. President 
Bush threatened to veto the bill because it contained voluntary 
spending limits, effectively killing the bill.

  Six years ago, in the 102d Congress, also a Democratic-led Congress, 
again the House and Senate passed campaign finance reform bills. And at 
that time the President--President Bush --vetoed the bill, with the 
backing of nearly every congressional Republican.
  In the 103d Congress, we passed campaign finance reform with 95 
percent of the Democrats in the Senate and 91 percent of the Democrats 
in the House voting for reform; 95 percent in the Senate, 91 percent in 
the House, voting for the reform. Yet, Republicans filibustered the 
move to take the bill to conference.
  Senator McConnell has boasted of that filibuster that ``My party did 
the slaying then.''
  The 104th Congress, supposedly the ``reform Congress,'' also 
presented opportunities for campaign reform. It appeared reform might 
actually happen when President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich shook hands 
in Vermont and pledged to create a commission on campaign financing. 
But the commission never materialized.
  Then, Senators McCain and Feingold introduced their bipartisan reform 
plan. Again, reform seemed within reach. And 46 of 47 Senate Democrats 
voted for McCain-Feingold. Republicans in the Senate filibustered the 
measure. Meanwhile, Republicans in the House introduced a bill that 
would have allowed a family of four to contribute $12.4 million in 
Federal elections--125 times more than the current allowed amount. We 
did not get anywhere in that Congress either.
  That brings us to this Congress, the 105th. In his State of the Union 
Address in January, President Clinton made it very clear the importance 
that he put on the priority that Democrats have reiterated throughout 
this year, that we pass campaign finance reform. He called upon us to 
do it by July 4.
  During the balanced budget negotiations in February, the President 
and Democrats in Congress asked our Republican colleagues to make 
campaign finance reform one of the top priority issues on which a 
bipartisan task force could be established. They refused to do so.
  In the House, Republicans have voted five times in this Congress 
against bringing campaign finance reform to the floor. Here in the 
Senate, we actually have had one vote on campaign finance reform. That 
was a vote this past March to kill a constitutional amendment that 
would have allowed reasonable limits on campaign spending.
  The problem is very simple, Madam President. The problem is the 
amount of money, the decades of delay. In the two decades since Buckley 
versus Valeo, since the Congress passed the only real campaign reform 
laws on the books today, the amount of money in politics has 
skyrocketed. It is no accident, no coincidence, that voter turnout and 
public confidence in this institution has plummeted. Even Nero would 
have put down his fiddle before now. But we just keep on playing, while 
spending on political campaigns spins out of control.
  That is the fundamental problem. We all know that. We hear talk in 
this debate about hard money and soft money, this money and that money. 
That isn't the core problem. The core problem is that there is too much 
money, period. Too much money.
  Total congressional campaign spending has exploded in the last 20 
years. We spent $115 million on Federal campaigns in the 1975-76 
election cycle. Ten years later, in the 1985-86, we spent $450 million. 
In the last cycle, 1995-96, Madam President, we spent $765 million on 
Federal campaigns.
  Each election cycle shatters another spending record; 1996 was no 
exception. Spending in Federal campaigns increased 73 percent over the 
previous Presidential cycle; 73 percent in four years. To put that in 
perspective, during the same period, wages rose 13 percent, college 
tuition rose 17 percent, but Federal campaign spending rose 73 percent.
  The average cost of winning a Senate seat in 1996 was $4.5 million. 
To raise that much money, a Senator has to raise $14,000 a week, every 
week, for 6 years.
  I am currently--I am sure the majority leader is, too--seeking 
candidates to run for the U.S. Senate. I wish I could give you some 
indication of how difficult it is to tell a candidate, ``I want you to 
run. I want you to seek one of the highest offices in the land. But to 
do that, you're going to have to somehow raise $4.5 million between now 
and next November. I know you don't have those kinds of personal 
resources. And I don't know how you'll raise the money. But never mind, 
you can do it. And I promise that you will never be indebted to any 
contributor. I promise that, regardless of how much you spend, you'll 
never have one of those contributors come back and ask you for 
something.''
  Madam President, the system is broken. That experience is repeated 
over and over and over again. How many more times will we have to tell 
someone who may consider running for the U.S. Senate, ``You can't 
afford it. This is now a club for millionaires. You either have lots of 
money, or you're indebted to somebody for the rest of your life.'' But 
that is the choice. That should not be the American way. That should 
not be allowed to happen to the political system we have believed for 
all these years.
  The average cost of winning a House seat in 1996 was $660,000. To 
raise that much money, Members in the House had to raise $6,000 a week, 
every week, for 2 years. It is demeaning. It is distracting. It takes 
us away from what we should be doing.
  It used to be you worked the fundraisers around the Senate schedule. 
Now we work the Senate schedule around the fundraisers.

[[Page S9999]]

  What I am describing now, Madam President, is a problem. We have not 
even reached the crisis stage yet. But we projected, given current 
rates of political inflation, what the typical Senate race will cost in 
our lifetime, 28 years from now, the year 2025. In the year 2025, if 
nothing changes, a typical Senate race will cost $145 million per 
candidate--per candidate. Are you going to tell your son or your 
daughter you want them to get into political life? Are you going to 
tell your son or your daughter that somehow in their lifetime, if they 
want to seek higher office, that they have to spend $145 million of 
their own money, or raise that much from other people? I do not even 
think Jay Rockefeller could afford that.
  The effect of the money, Madam President, is quite clear. Beyond the 
sheer amount of money is the effect the money has. At the very least, 
in the eyes of most Americans, the current system makes Congress appear 
to be for sale to the highest bidder.
  A recent Harris Poll shows that 85 percent of the people in this 
country already think that special interests have more influence than 
the voters. Eighty-five percent think if you are going to come up 
against a special interest, Congress is going to listen to the special 
interest first.
  Three-quarters of Congress think that we are largely owned by special 
interests today. Democracy cannot survive long in such a deeply cynical 
atmosphere, Madam President. We cannot survive that. It is no secret 
why voters are not going to the polls anymore. They do not think it 
makes any difference. ``What difference does it make as long as the 
special interests have the power, between the elections, to decide what 
we do?''
  So, Madam President, if we do nothing at all, problems are going to 
worsen.
  The recent explosion in the so-called ``independent expenditure ads'' 
is just another illustration, another example of what we are facing. It 
is a particularly virulent form of political advertising. In my view, 
independent expenditures are the ``crack cocaine'' of negative ads. 
They are potent, they are deadly, and they are going to kill the 
system.
  They are not tied publicly to any candidate--no reporting, no 
accountability. We do not even know who is running the ads half the 
time.
  In the last election cycle, Republicans spent $10 million on 
independent expenditures; Democrats spent $1.5 million. But those 
figures are nothing compared to what we are going to see in this cycle.
  Independent expenditure ads push candidates to the margins. 
Candidates become bit players in their own races. The debate is defined 
by whoever has the most money. That is ultimately who dominates the 
media. We used to interrupt programs for ads. These days, we interrupt 
the political ads for programs.
  The solution? Well, we have been grappling with that question for a 
long time. There are those who look at all of this and contend that 
nothing is wrong, that this is America, this is free speech. What is 
wrong with the system? You ought to be able to go out and raise $145 
million if you want to be a U.S. Senator.
  The majority leader just said last March, ``The system is not 
broken.'' Madam President, the majority leader, for whom I have great 
respect, in my view is wrong. We believe the system is badly broken, 
and so do the American people. Ninety-two percent think we spend too 
much money on politics today. Almost 9 in 10, 89 percent want 
fundamental change in our system.
  I have great respect for the sponsors of the legislation. Senators 
McCain and Feingold have spent a tremendous amount of their time, at 
the expense of other issues, to fashion a bipartisan piece of 
legislation that will allow us to move ahead--not solve all the 
problems--but move the ball ahead.
  It is not a perfect solution. It doesn't include the most critical 
component of reform, in my view, which is overall spending limits. But 
it gets us off dead center. If it doesn't address central problems, it 
does address several of the major problems we have in our system today. 
It bans soft money and regulates independent expenditures. It provides 
better disclosure, so people have a good idea of who is giving how much 
to what candidate and why. It limits the ability of the super-rich to 
buy political office.
  Forty-six of forty-seven Senate Democrats already voted for the 
McCain-Feingold bill last year.
  Now, earlier this month, all 45 Democrats in the Senate signed a 
letter reiterating their support for the legislation. Even after the 
bill was changed, Democrats would say we still support the McCain-
Feingold bill unanimously. Every single man and woman in the U.S. 
Senate Democratic caucus would walk to the floor this afternoon and 
vote for it.
  We are pleased that four brave Republicans have said they, too, will 
now support this effort. We only need one more Republican vote. I 
believe in the end we will have that vote and more.
  The McCain-Feingold bill is the least we should do. Democrats will 
offer amendments to strengthen it. If we were in the majority, we would 
fight to cap spending. The Buckley versus Valeo decision was only 5-4, 
and 126 legal scholars have said spending limits are constitutional. 
But we don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good. We hope 
those who disagree with us will resist the temptation to kill this 
chance with poison pills.
  Our goal should be reform, not revenge. If one side or the other 
tries to use this debate to settle political scores or punish enemies, 
we will fail. We are confronted with a systemic problem and we need a 
systemic solution.
  Madam President, as I said at the beginning, we spent a lot of time 
and a lot of money investigating abuses in past election cycles. We 
have all put out our press releases, expressed our indignation, our 
shock, and now the American people are waiting. They wonder whether 
politicians' self-interests will once again override the public good. 
They wonder if after all the hearings, all the press releases, if after 
all that we do nothing, what then? They know the system is broken. They 
know this is going to be our only chance perhaps this Congress to fix 
it. I hope we can demonstrate that their pessimism, their cynicism, in 
this case, is not warranted.
  I hope we can rise up to what we did last July when Republicans and 
Democrats, against the odds, decided to come together and balance the 
budget in the next 6 years and put this economy on track well into the 
next century. We did it then. We did it with the Chemical Weapons 
Treaty last spring, and now we can do it again. With the leaders we 
have from Arizona and Wisconsin, with Democrats and Republicans working 
together, we can make it happen. This is our chance.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allard). The Senator from Arizona is 
recognized.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, the Senate now begins a debate that will 
determine whether or not we will take an action that most Americans are 
convinced we are utterly incapable of doing--reforming the way we are 
elected to office. Most Americans believe that Members of Congress have 
no greater priority than our own reelection. Most Americans believe 
that every one of us--whether we publicly advocate or publicly oppose 
campaign finance reform--is working either openly or deceitfully to 
prevent even the slightest repair to a campaign finance system that 
they firmly believe is corrupt. Most Americans believe that all of us 
conspire to hold on to every single political advantage we have, lest 
we jeopardize our incumbency by a single lost vote. Most Americans 
believe we will let this Nation pay any price, bear any burden to 
ensure the success of our personal ambitions--no matter how dear the 
cost might be to the national interest.
  Mr. President, now is the moment when we can begin to persuade the 
people that they are wrong. Now is the moment when we can show the 
American people that we take courage from our convictions and not our 
campaign treasuries. Now is the moment when we can begin to prove that 
we are--in word and deed--the people's representatives; that we are 
accountable to all the people who pay our salaries, and not just to 
those Americans who finance our campaigns. Mr. President, now is the 
moment when we should take a risk for our country.
  I am a conservative, and I believe it is a very healthy thing for 
Americans

[[Page S10000]]

to be skeptical about the purposes and practices of public officials 
and refrain from expecting too much from their Government. Self-
reliance is the ethic that made America great, not consigning personal 
responsibilities to the State.
  I would like to think that we conservatives could practice the self-
reliance which we so devoutly believe to be a noble public virtue, and 
rely on our ideals and our integrity to enlist a majority of Americans 
to our cause, rather than subordinate those ideals to the imperatives 
of fundraising. I would like to think the justice of our cause, the 
good sense of our ideas will appeal to a majority of Americans without 
the need to fund that appeal with obscene amounts of money.
  I am a conservative, and I believe in small government. But I do not 
believe that small government conservatives are chasing an idealized 
form of anarchy. Government is intended to support our constitutional 
purposes to ``establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide 
for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the 
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.'' When the people 
come to believe that government is so dysfunctional, so corrupt that it 
no longer serves these ends, basic civil consensus will suffer grave 
harm and our culture will be fragmented beyond recognition.
  I am a conservative, and I believe that a conservative's primary 
purpose in public life is to give Americans a Government that is less 
removed in style and substance from the people, and to help restore the 
public's faith in an America that is greater than the sum of its 
special interests. That, I contend, is also the purpose of meaningful 
campaign finance reform.
  Mr. President, opponents of campaign finance reform will argue that 
there is no public hue and cry for reform, despite the fact that more 
and more public polls show that the people support reform by ever-
widening margins. A recent poll commissioned by my own party revealed 
that the public now considers campaign finance reform to be among the 
most important issues facing the country.
  But no matter, opponents will note that they have stood for 
reelection and won with their opposition to reform on full public 
display. Thus, they will argue, the people don't really care about 
reform. But that is because the people don't believe that either the 
incumbent opposing reform, or the challenger advocating it, will 
honestly work to repair this system once he or she has been elected 
under the rules that govern it. They distrust both of us. They believe 
that this system is so thoroughly riddled with financial temptations 
that it corrupts us all.
  The opponents will argue the people are content. I will argue that 
the people are alienated, and that this explains why fewer and fewer of 
them even bother to vote.
  This problem should motivate all public officials to repair both the 
appearance and the reality of government corruption. Whether great 
numbers of elected officials are, in fact, bribed by campaign 
contributors to cast votes contrary to the national interest is not the 
single standard for determining the need for reform. Although, it would 
be hard to find much legislation enacted by any Congress that did not 
contain one or more obscure provision that served no legitimate 
national or even local interest, but which was intended only as a 
reward for a generous campaign supporter.
  Mr. President, I do not concede that all politicians are corrupt. I 
entered politics with some of the same expectations that I had when I 
was commissioned an ensign in the United States Navy. First among them 
was my belief that serving my country was an honor, indeed, the most 
honorable life an American could lead.
  I believe that still. Regrettably, many Americans do not.
  I am honored to serve in the company of many good men and women whose 
public and private virtue deserves to be above reproach. But we are 
reproached, Mr. President, because the system in which we are elected 
to this great institution is so awash in money that is taken so 
disproportionately from special interests that the people cannot help 
but suspect that our service is tainted by it.
  If most Americans feel they have sufficient cause to doubt our 
integrity, then we must seek all reasonable means to persuade them 
otherwise. Reform of our campaign finance laws is indispensable to that 
end.
  As long as the wealthiest of Americans or the richest organized 
interests can make six figure contributions to political parties and 
gain the special access to power such generosity confers on the donor, 
most Americans will dismiss even the most virtuous politician's claim 
of fairness and patriotism.
  And who can blame them when they are overwhelmed by appearance that 
political representation in America is measured on a sliding scale. The 
more you give, the more effectively you can petition your government. 
If a Native American tribe wants to recover their ancestral lands--pay 
up, the Government will hear you. If you want to build a pipeline 
across Central Asia--pay up, the President will discuss it with you. If 
you want to peddle your invention to the Government--pay up, you get an 
audience with Government purchasing agents. But if all you pay is your 
taxes, and you want your elected representatives to help you seek 
redress for some wrong, send us a letter. We'll send you one back.
  Mr. President, this a dark view of our profession, and I do not 
believe it fairly represents us. I believe such instances of influence 
peddling are, thankfully, an exception to the honest government that 
most public officials work hard to provide this Nation. But we cannot 
blame the people for thinking otherwise when they are treated to the 
spectacle of influence and access peddling which assaulted them in the 
last election; when they are told repeatedly that campaign 
contributions are the only means through which they can petition their 
Government; the politicians are selling subway tokens to the government 
gravy train.
  Mr. President, the opponents of reform will tell you that there isn't 
too much money in politics. They will argue there's not enough. They 
will observe that more money is spent to advertise toothpaste and 
yogurt than is spent on our elections.
  I don't care, Mr. President. We should not concern ourselves with the 
costs of toothpaste and yogurt marketing. We aren't selling those 
commodities to the people. We are offering our integrity and our 
principles, and the means we use to market them should not cause the 
consumer to doubt the value of the product.

  Mr. President, Senator Feingold, Senator Thompson, Senator Collins, 
and the other sponsors of this legislation have but one purpose--to 
enact fair, bipartisan campaign reform that seeks no special advantage 
for one party or another, but only seeks to find common ground upon 
which we can all begin to restore the people's faith in the integrity 
of their Government.
  Each of us may have differences as to what constitutes the best 
reform, but we have subordinated those differences to the common good, 
in the hope that we might enact those basic reforms which all Members 
of both parties could agree on.
It is not perfect reform. There is no perfect reform. We have tried to 
exclude any provision which would be viewed as placing one party or 
another at a disadvantage. Our purpose is to pass the best, most 
balanced, most important reforms we can. All we ask of our colleagues 
is that they approach this debate with the same purpose in mind.
  Mr. President, on Monday, we will offer a substitute amendment to S. 
25, which represents a substantial change to the original McCain-
Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act, but at the same time, maintains 
the core--the heart--of the original bill.
  I strongly believe in all the provisions of the original bill. In 
fact, as the debate proceeds, we intend to offer a series of amendments 
that would restore the component parts of our original bill. We intend 
to proceed to those amendments in good time.
  For now, I would like to outline for my colleagues the contents of 
our substitute.
  Before I do, I want to stress the purposes upon which this 
legislation is premised:
  First, for reform to become law, it must be bipartisan. This is a 
bipartisan bill. It is a bill that affects both parties fairly and 
equally.
  Second, genuine reform must lessen the amount of money in politics.

[[Page S10001]]

 Spending on campaigns in current, inflation-adjusted dollars has risen 
dramatically. In constant dollars, the amount spent on House and Senate 
races in 1976 was $318 million. By 1986, the total had risen to $645 
million, and in 1996, to $765 million. If you include the Presidential 
campaigns, over a billion dollars was spent in the last election. And 
as the need for money escalates, the influence of those who give it 
rises exponentially.
  Third, reform must level the playing field between challengers and 
incumbents. Our bill achieves this goal by recognizing the fact that 
incumbents almost always raise more money than challengers, and as a 
general rule, the candidate with the most money wins.


                                TITLE I

  Title I of the modified bill seeks to reduce the influence of special 
interest money in campaigns by banning the use of soft money in federal 
races. Soft money would be allowed for State parties in accordance with 
State law.
  In the first half of 1997 alone, a record $34 million of soft money 
flowed to political coffers. That staggering amount represents a 250 
percent increase in soft money contributions over the same period in 
1993.
  We do differentiate between State and Federal activities. Soft money 
contributed to State parties could be used for any and all state 
candidate activities. Soft money given to the State could be used for 
any State electioneering activity.
  If a State allows soft money to be used in a gubernatorial race, a 
State senate race, or the local sheriff's race, it would still be 
allowed under this bill. However, if a state party uses soft money to 
indirectly influence a Federal race, such activity would be banned 120 
days prior to the general election. Voter registration and general 
campaign advertising would be allowed except in the last 120 days prior 
to the election.
  To compensate for the loss of soft money, our legislation doubles the 
limit that individuals can give to State parties in hard money. The 
aggregate contribution limit in hard money that individuals could 
donate would rise to $30,000.
  Our soft money ban would serve two purposes. First, it would reduce 
the amount of money in campaigns. Second, it would cause candidates to 
spend more time campaigning for small dollar donations from people back 
home.


                                TITLE II

  Title II of the modified McCain-Feingold seeks to limit the role of 
independent expenditures in political campaigns. The bill does not ban, 
curb, or control real, independent, non-coordinated expenditures in any 
manner. Any genuinely independent expenditure made to advocate any 
cause which does not expressly advocate the election or the defeat of a 
candidate is fully allowed.
  The bill does responsibly expand the definition of express advocacy, 
which the courts have ruled Congress may do. In fact, the current 
standards for express advocacy were derived from the Buckley versus 
Valeo case. As we all know, that Supreme Court case stated that 
campaign spending cannot be mandatorily capped. This bill is fully 
consistent with the Buckley decision, and I would ask unanimous consent 
that a letter signed by 126 constitutional scholars which testifies to 
the constitutionality of McCain-Feingold be printed in the Record at 
this time.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                   Brennan Center for Justice,

                                 New York, NY, September 22, 1997.
     Senator John McCain,
     Senator Russell Feingold,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senators McCain and Feingold: We are academics who 
     have studied and written about the First Amendment to the 
     United States Constitution. We submit this letter to respond 
     to a series of recent public challenges to two components of 
     S. 25, the McCain-Feingold bill. Critics have argued that it 
     is unconstitutional to close the so-called ``soft money 
     loophole'' by placing restrictions on the source and amount 
     of campaign contributions to political parties. Critics have 
     also argued that it is unconstitutional to offer candidates 
     benefits, such as reduced broadcasting rates, in return for 
     their commitment to cap campaign spending. We are deeply 
     committed to the principles underlying the First Amendment 
     and believe strongly in preserving free speech and 
     association in our society, especially in the realm of 
     politics. We are not all of the same mind on how best to 
     address the problems of money and politics; indeed, we do not 
     all agree on the constitutionality of various provisions of 
     the McCain-Feingold bill itself. Nor are we endorsing every 
     aspect of the bill's soft money and voluntary spending limits 
     provisions. We all agree, however, that the current debate on 
     the merits of campaign finance reform is being sidetracked by 
     the argument that the Constitution stands in the way of a ban 
     on unlimited contributions to political parties and a 
     voluntary spending limits scheme based on offering 
     inducements such as reduced media time.


I. Limits on Enormous Campaign Contributions to Political Parties from 
Corporations, Labor Unions, and Wealthy Contributors Are Constitutional

       To prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption, 
     federal law imposes limits on the source and amount of money 
     that can be given to candidates and political parties ``in 
     connection with'' federal elections. The money raised under 
     these strictures is commonly referred to as ``hard money.'' 
     Since 1907, federal law has prohibited corporations from 
     making hard money contributions to candidates or political 
     parties. See 2 U.S.C. Sec. 441b(a) (current codification). 
     In 1947, that ban was extended to prohibit union 
     contributions as well. Id. Individuals, too, are subject 
     to restrictions in their giving of money to influence 
     federal elections. The Federal Election Campaign Act 
     (``FECA'') limits an individual's contributions to (1) 
     $1,000 per election to a federal candidate; (2) $20,000 
     per year to national political party committees; and (3) 
     $5,000 per year to any other political committee, such as 
     a PAC or a state political party committee. 2 U.S.C. 
     Sec. 441a(a)(1). Individuals are also subject to a $25,000 
     annual limit on the total of all such contributions. Id. 
     Sec. 441a(a)(3).
       The soft money loophole was created not by Congress, but by 
     a Federal Election Commission (``FEC'') ruling in 1978 that 
     opened a seemingly modest door to allow non-regulated 
     contributions to political parties, so long as the money was 
     used for grassroots campaign activity, such as registering 
     voters and get-out-the-vote efforts. These unregulated 
     contributions are known as ``soft money'' to distinguish them 
     from the hard money raised under FECA's strict limits. In the 
     years since the FEC's ruling, this modest opening has turned 
     into an enormous loophole that threatens the integrity of the 
     regulatory system. In the last presidential elections, soft 
     money contributions soared to the unprecedented figure of 
     $263 million. It was not merely the total amount of soft 
     money contributions that was unprecedented, but the size of 
     the contributions as well, with donors being asked to give 
     amounts $100,000, $250,000 or more to gain preferred access 
     to federal officials. Moreover, the soft money raised is, for 
     the most part, not being spent to bolster party grassroots 
     organizing. Rather, the funds are often solicited by federal 
     candidates and used for media advertising clearly intended to 
     influence federal elections. In sum, soft money has become an 
     end run around the campaign contribution limits, creating a 
     corrupt system in which monied interests appear to buy access 
     to, and inappropriate influence with, elected officials.
       The McCain-Feingold bill would ban soft money contributions 
     to national political parties, by requiring that all 
     contributions to national parties be subject to FECA's hard 
     money restrictions. The bill also would bar federal 
     officeholders and candidates for such offices from 
     soliciting, receiving, or spending soft money and would 
     prohibit state and local political parties from spending soft 
     money during a federal election year for any activity that 
     might affect a federal election (with exceptions for 
     specified activities that are less likely to impact on 
     federal elections).
       We believe that such restrictions are constitutional. The 
     soft money loophole has raised the specter of corruption 
     stemming from large contributions (and those from prohibited 
     sources) that led Congress to enact the federal contribution 
     limits in the first place. In Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme 
     Court held that the government has a compelling interest in 
     combating the appearance and reality of corruption, an 
     interest that justifies restricting large campaign 
     contributions in federal elections. 424 U.S. 1, 23-29 (1976). 
     Significantly, the Court upheld the $25,000 annual limit on 
     an individual's total contributions in connection with 
     federal elections. Id. at 26-29, 38. In later cases, the 
     Court rejected the argument that corporations have a right 
     to use their general treasury funds to influence 
     elections. See, e.g., Austin v. Michigan Chamber of 
     Commerce, 494 U.S. 652 (1990). Under Buckley and its 
     progeny, Congress clearly possesses power to close the 
     soft money loophole by restricting the source and size of 
     contributions to political parties, just as it does for 
     contributions to candidates, for use in connection with 
     federal elections.
       Moreover, Congress has the power to regulate the source of 
     the money used for expenditures by state and local parties 
     during federal election years when such expenditures are used 
     to influence federal elections. The power of Congress to 
     regulate federal elections to prevent fraud and corruption 
     includes the power to regulate conduct which, although 
     directed at state or local elections, also has an impact on 
     federal races. During a federal election year, a state or 
     local political party's voter registration or get-out-the-
     vote drive will have an effect on federal elections. 
     Accordingly, Congress may require

[[Page S10002]]

     that during a federal election year state and local parties' 
     expenditures for such activities be made from funds raised in 
     compliance with FECA so as not to undermine the limits 
     therein.
       Any suggestion that the recent Supreme Court decision in 
     Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC, 116 S. 
     Ct. 2309 (1996), casts doubt on the constitutionality of a 
     soft money ban is flatly wrong. Colorado Republican did not 
     address the constitutionality of banning soft money 
     contributions, but rather the expenditures by political 
     parties of hard money, that is, money raised in accordance 
     with FECA's limits. Indeed, the Court noted that it ``could 
     understand how Congress, were it to conclude that the 
     potential for evasion of the individual contribution limits 
     was a serious matter, might decide to change the statute's 
     limitations on contributions to political parties.'' Id. at 
     2316.
       In fact, the most relevant Supreme Court decision is not 
     Colorado Republican, but Austin v. Michigan Chamber of 
     Commerce, in which the Supreme Court held that corporations 
     can be walled off from the electoral process by forbidding 
     both contributions and independent expenditures from general 
     corporate treasuries. 494 U.S. at 657-61. Surely, the law 
     cannot be that Congress has the power to prevent corporations 
     from giving money directly to a candidate, or from expending 
     money on behalf of a candidate, but lacks the power to 
     prevent them from pouring unlimited funds into a candidate's 
     political party in order to buy preferred access to him after 
     the election.
       Accordingly, closing the loophole for soft money 
     contributions is in line with the longstanding and 
     constitutional ban on corporate and union contributions in 
     federal elections and with limits on the size of individuals' 
     contributions to amounts that are not corrupting.


     ii. efforts to persuade candidates to limit campaign spending 
  voluntarily by providing them with inducements like free television 
                        time are constitutional

       The McCain-Feingold bill would also invite candidates to 
     limit campaign spending in return for free broadcast time and 
     reduced broadcast and mailing rates. In Buckley, the Court 
     explicitly declared that ``Congress . . . may condition 
     acceptance of public funds on an agreement by the candidate 
     to abide by specified expenditure limitations.'' 424 U.S. at 
     56 n.65. The Court explained: ``Just as a candidate may 
     voluntarily limit the size of the contributions he chooses to 
     accept, he may decide to forgo private fundraising and accept 
     public funding.'' Id.
       That was exactly the Buckley Court's approach when it 
     upheld the constitutionality of the campaign subsidies to 
     Presidential candidates in return for a promise to limit 
     campaign spending. At the time, the subsidy to Presidential 
     nominees was $20 million, in return for which Presidential 
     candidates agreed to cap expenditures at that amount and 
     raise no private funds at all. The subsidy is now worth over 
     $60 million and no Presidential nominee of a major party has 
     ever turned down the subsidy.
       In effect, the critics argue that virtually any inducement 
     offered to a candidate to persuade her to limit campaign 
     spending is unconstitutional as a form of indirect 
     ``coercion.'' But the Buckley Court clearly distinguished 
     between inducements designed to elicit a voluntary decision 
     to limit spending and coercive mandates that impose 
     involuntary spending ceilings. If giving a Presidential 
     candidate a $60 million subsidy is a constitutional 
     inducement, surely providing free television time and reduced 
     postal rates falls into the same category of acceptable 
     inducement. The lesson from Buckley is that merely because a 
     deal is too good to pass up does not render it 
     unconstitutionally ``coercive.''
           Respectfully submitted,
     Ronald Dworkin,
       Professor of Jurisprudence and Fellow of University College 
     at Oxford University; Frank H. Sommer Professor of Law, New 
     York University School of Law.
     Burt Neuborne,
       John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law, Legal Director, 
     Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of 
     Law.

  Mr. McCAIN. Our bill establishes a so-called bright line test 60 days 
out from an election. Any independent expenditure that falls within 
that 60-day window could not use a candidate's name or likeness. Ads 
could run which advocate any number of causes. Pro-life ads, pro-choice 
ads, anti-labor ads, pro-wilderness ads, pro-Republican Party ads, pro-
Democrat Party ads--all could be aired in the last 60 days. However, 
ads mentioning the candidates could not.
  If soft money is banned to political parties, money will inevitably 
flow to independent campaign organizations. These groups run ads that 
even the candidates who benefit from them often disapprove of. Further, 
these ads are almost always negative attacks on a candidate and do 
little to further healthy political debate. As we all know, they are 
usually intended to defeat a candidate, and are often, in reality, 
coordinated with the campaign of that candidate's opponent. They are 
not genuinely independent, nor are they strictly concerned with issue 
advocacy.
  Our bill explicitly protects voter guides. I believe this is a very 
important point. Some groups have unfairly criticized our original bill 
when they argued that it prohibited the publication and distribution of 
voter guides and voting records. While I view those arguments as 
misinformation, the sponsors have, nevertheless, worked to make our 
legislation even more explicit in its protection of such activities.
  Let me stress--so no one can have any grounds to assume otherwise--
this legislation completely protects voter guides. I will read the 
provision addressing this matter in the hope that it will allay any and 
all concerns about voter guides.
       (C) Voting Record and Voter Guide Exemption.--The term 
     express advocacy shall not include a printed communication 
     which is limited solely to presenting information in an 
     educational manner about the voting record or positions on 
     campaign issues of two or more candidates and which:
       (i) is not made in coordination with a candidate, or 
     political party or agency thereof;
       (ii) in the case of a voter guide based on a questionnaire, 
     all candidates for a particular seat or office have been 
     provided with an equal opportunity to respond;
       (iii) gives no candidate any greater prominence than any 
     other candidate; and
       (iv) does not contain a phrase such as ``vote for,'' ``re-
     elect,'' ``support,'' ``cast your ballot for,'' (name of 
     candidate) for Congress,'' ``(name of candidate) in 1997,'' 
     ``vote against,'' ``defeat,'' or ``reject'' or a campaign 
     slogan or words which in context can have no reasonable 
     meaning other than to urge the election or defeat of one or 
     more candidates.'

  Mr. President, I hope this clear and concise language dispels any 
rumors that this modified legislation will adversely affect voter 
guides.


                               TITLE III

  Title III of the modified McCain-Feingold bill mandates greater 
disclosure. Our bill mandates that all FEC filings documenting campaign 
receipts and expenditures be made electronically, and that they then be 
made accessible to the public on the Internet not later than 24 hours 
after the information is received by the Federal Election Commission.
  Additionally, current law allows for campaigns to make a best effort 
to obtain the name, address, and occupation information of the donors 
of contributions above $200. Our bill would eliminate that waiver. If a 
campaign cannot obtain the address and occupation of a donor, then the 
donation cannot and should not be accepted.
  The bill also mandates random audits of campaigns. Such audits would 
only occur after an affirmative vote of at least four of the six 
members of the FEC. This will prevent the use of audits as a purely 
partisan attack.
  The bill also mandates that campaigns seek to receive name, address, 
and employer information for contributions over $50. Such information 
will enable the public to have a better knowledge of all who give to 
political campaigns.


                                TITLE IV

  Title IV of the modified bill seeks to encourage individuals to limit 
the amount of personal money they spend on their own campaigns. If an 
individual voluntarily elects to limit the amount of money he or she 
spends in his or her own race to $50,000, then the national parties are 
able to use funds known as coordinated expenditures to aid such 
candidates. If candidates refuse to limit their own personal spending, 
then the parties are prohibited from contributing coordinated funds to 
the candidate.
  This provision serves to limit the advantages that wealthy candidates 
enjoy, and strengthen the party system by encouraging candidates to 
work more closely with the parties.


                                TITLE V

  Last, the bill codifies the Beck decision. The Beck decision states 
that a nonunion employee working in a closed shop union workplace, and 
who is required to contribute funds to the union, can request and be 
assured that

[[Page S10003]]

his or her money will not be used for political purposes.
  I personally support much stronger language. I believe that no 
individual--a union member or not--should be required to contribute to 
political activities. However, I recognize that stronger language would 
invite a filibuster of this bill and would doom its final passage. As a 
result, I will fight to preserve the delicately balanced language of 
the bill, and will oppose amendments offered on both sides of the aisle 
that would result in killing campaign finance reform.
  Mr. President, what I have outlined is a basic summary of our 
modifications to the original bill. I have heard many colleagues say 
that they could not support S. 25, the original McCain-Feingold bill 
for a wide variety of reasons. Some opposed spending limits. Others 
opposed free or reduced rate broadcast time. Others could not live with 
postal subsidies to candidates. Others complained that nothing was 
being done about labor.
  I hope that all my colleagues who raised such concerns will take a 
new and openminded look at this bill. Gone are spending limits. Gone is 
free broadcast time. Gone are reduced rate TV time and postal 
subsidies. And we have sought to address the problem of undue influence 
being exercised by labor unions. All the excuses of the past are gone.
  Mr. President, on Monday I will review the provisions of the 
substitute again and will lay the modified bill before the Senate. I 
look forward to discussing the specifics of the measure at that time.
  Mr. President, the sponsors of this legislation claim no exclusive 
right to campaign finance reform. We offer good, fair, necessary 
reform, but certainly not a perfect remedy. We welcome good faith 
amendments intended to improve the legislation.
  But I beg my colleagues not to propose amendments designed to kill 
this bill by provoking a filibuster from one party or the other. The 
sponsors of this legislation intend to have votes on all relevant 
issues involved in campaign finance reform, and we will use every 
resource we have under Senate rules to ensure that we do.
  If we cannot agree on every aspect of reform; if we have differences 
about what constitutes genuine and necessary reform, and we hold those 
differences honestly--so be it. Let us try to come to terms with those 
differences fairly. Let us find common ground and work together to 
adopt those basic reforms we can all agree on. That is what the 
sponsors of this legislation have attempted to do, and we welcome 
anyone's help to improve upon our proposal as long as that help is 
sincere and intended to reach the common goal of genuine campaign 
finance reform.
  Mr. President, when I was a young man, a long time ago, I would 
respond aggressively and often irresponsibly to anyone who questioned 
my honor. I am not a young man now, and while I have been known to 
occasionally forget the discretion which is expected of a person of my 
years and station, I lack both the will and the ability to address 
attacks upon my honor in the manner I once addressed them. I now prefer 
to clear up peacefully the misunderstandings that may cause someone to 
question my honor. That is the task which I believe the sponsors of 
McCain-Feingold have undertaken.
  I remember how zealously a boy would attend the needs of his self-
respect. But as I grew older, and as the challenges to my self-respect 
grew more varied, I was surprised to discover that while my sense of 
honor had matured, its defense mattered even more to me than it did 
when I believed that honor was such a vulnerable thing that any empty 
challenge threatened it.
  Now, I find myself faced with a popular challenge to the honor of a 
profession of which I am a willing and proud member. It is imperative 
that we do all we can to address the causes of the people's distrust.
  Meaningful campaign finance reform will not cure public cynicism 
about modern politics. Nor will it completely free politics from 
influence peddling. But, coupled with other reforms, it may prevent 
cynicism from becoming utter alienation, as Americans begin to see that 
their elected representatives value their reputations more than their 
incumbency. I hope it would even encourage more Americans to seek 
public office, not for the honorifics bestowed on election winners, but 
for the honor of serving a great nation.
  Mr. President, we must not fear to take risks for our country. We 
must not value the privileges of power so highly that we use our power 
unfairly, and subordinate the country's interests to our own comfort. 
We may think that we trade on America's good name to stay in office and 
shine the luster of our professional reputations, but the public's 
growing disdain for us is a stain upon our honor. And that is an injury 
which none of us should suffer quietly.
  Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin is recognized.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I want to begin by once again expressing 
my admiration and gratitude to the senior Senator from Arizona for his 
extraordinary leadership on the issue of campaign finance reform. This 
effort has already been a long and difficult one, but it is all about 
his courage and his exceptional commitment to the good of this country. 
He is in a more difficult situation than I am in as a member of the 
majority party. But the fact is he is one of the greatest Republicans 
of our time. And they are lucky to have him.
  Mr. President, I also want to thank Senator Lott, the majority 
leader, for helping us get this bill up to the floor. And I also 
appreciate the fact that he took some time this morning to say a little 
bit about how he got here; about what it was like for him to try to be 
elected to the U.S. Senate.
  I think those kinds of stories and accounts are going to be very 
important as this debate proceeds because we need to tell the American 
people just what is involved in running for the Congress these days. We 
need to tell them the truth about how many people are truly invited to 
participate in a process that is so awash in money that almost every 
American must feel like they are not invited to participate.
  I also want to, of course, especially thank my leader, Senator 
Daschle, not only for his powerful statement on behalf of our bill but 
also for his leadership in working diligently to make sure that all 45 
members of the Senate Democratic caucus are in support of the McCain-
Feingold bill; a bill that has been initiated by a member of the other 
party. That is a great tribute to him and to the cause of 
bipartisanship in favor of campaign finance reform.
  I also want to do something that may not be terribly popular out here 
as the debate goes on. I want to thank the President of the United 
States, because the fact is he has been diligent, consistent, and 
persistent in support of this particular piece of legislation. He has 
offered his personal help. He has offered the help of his staff. Before 
it is finished, before we claim our final victory on this issue, I am 
going to certainly repeat the fact that President Clinton has been 
fighting for reform.
  Mr. President, it was just over 2 years ago that the Senator from 
Arizona and the Senator from Tennessee, Senator Thompson, and I began 
this long, sometimes tortuous, journey on the path to campaign finance 
reform. In fact, it was September 1995 when we first introduced our 
bipartisan reform proposal, a proposal that is centered on the premise 
that it is imperative that we reduce the role and influence of money on 
our electoral system.
  For 2 years, though, Mr. President, the Senator from Arizona and I 
have been stymied by opponents of reform who desperately cling to the 
absurd notion that the more money you pour into the political system 
that our democracy somehow gets better. Sometimes the comparison is 
made that we spend as much money on elections as we spend on potato 
chips. I don't know what this has to do with the question of political 
reform but it is an argument we are treated to anyway. Of course, no 
one outside the Washington Beltway believes in that argument. No one 
outside of this town thinks we need more money spent on the political 
process. In fact, if you talk to any average American they will tell 
you they are just horrified by the amount of money that is spent on our 
electoral system. But they are tired of excessive spending. They are 
tired of the onslaught of negative attack ads all throughout a campaign 
season. And, yet, they are even more tired--they are

[[Page S10004]]

sick and tired--of the ongoing revelations of abuse and wrongdoing 
related to elected officials and campaign fundraising.
  Nonetheless, our opponents, such as our colleague and our friend, the 
junior colleague from Kentucky, continue to argue that more campaign 
spending somehow strengthens democracy and expands citizen 
participation. Of course, I disagree with him on this point. And so do 
the facts.
  The facts say this: The 1996 election speaks for itself. In 1996, 
candidates and parties spent in excess of $2 billion. That was an all-
time record amount of campaign spending.
  In a year where we spent more money on Federal elections than in any 
other year in our history, let's ask the question: Was democracy 
strengthened? Did we expand citizen participation? We all know the 
answer. Mr. President, we did not. Almost a year after the fact we are 
still feeling the fallout from the 1996 elections. After months of 
hearings by the Governmental Affairs Committee, led by the Senator from 
Tennessee, it is clear that we had widespread abuse and wrongdoing on 
both sides of the aisle. We have had congressional investigations, a 
Justice Department investigation, an FBI investigation, and even a CIA 
investigation, all relating to the way we elected our representatives.

  That doesn't sound like the strengthening of democracy to me.
  As for participation, we had the lowest voter turnout in 72 years--a 
clear sign that the electorate was not exactly energized by all this 
campaign spending. We know the truth. They were turned off.
  Perhaps most disheartening, our campaign finance system just lacks 
any sense of fairness anymore.
  In 1996, incumbents outspent challengers by ratios of 2 to 1 and 3 to 
1, and to no surprise. The reelection rate for Members of the House and 
Senate remained well above the 90 percent level.
  As the Senator from Arizona has said, the time for reform is right 
now.
  Over the course of the last several months, the Senator from Arizona 
and I have had two clear consistent messages. The first was that our 
preference was to work with the majority leader in scheduling debate on 
bipartisan reform legislation. Thankfully for the kind of cooperation 
that serves this body very well, we have achieved that.
  Of course, the majority leader has already begun the debate. He says 
we should not shift the subject. He wants to focus instead on the White 
House. But I think what we ought to focus on is the whole system. We 
ought to focus on the question of whether this system has anything to 
do with the principle that everybody's vote should cost the same.
  We are already hearing talk about filibusters--about ways to make 
sure the legislation does not pass.
  But I do want to say that I am very impressed with the way in which 
this bill came to the floor, and I am grateful.
  Our first choice always was the cooperative approach.
  Mr. President, our second message was one that the Senator from 
Arizona just made very plain once again. That is our willingness and 
continued willingness to make the changes that need to be made to do 
the right thing.
  We demonstrated this willingness to compromise when we worked with 
the junior Senator from Maine who suggested a number of changes to our 
bill that I think actually strengthen the bill. I think there may be 
amendments out on the floor by either party that can make the bill 
stronger, and a better reform bill.
  That is the spirit in which Senator McCain and I come to the floor. 
We know that this bill isn't perfect. It is not the ideal Feingold 
bill. It is not the ideal McCain bill. That is how we got together--by 
compromises and trying to come up with a reasonable passage.
  Prior to the August recess, the Senator from Arizona and I stood here 
on the Senate floor with some of our colleagues and expressed the hope 
that this debate would occur. We also said that if we were unsuccessful 
with that effort we would bring the legislation to the floor in 
September.
  Mr. President, for opponents of campaign finance reform, for those 
Washington interest groups--whom I like to refer to as ``the Washington 
gatekeepers''--who joined with the Senator from Kentucky in opposing 
any changes to our current system, it is September. It is a Friday in 
September. And we hope for all of those who have declared this bill 
dead over and over again that today will be remembered for them as 
``Black Friday.''
  For the rest of the country, for the 90 percent of the Americans who 
believe we should be spending less on our elections, for the 
underfunded challengers who are consistently blown out of the water by 
well-entrenched incumbents, and for those who believe that the first 
amendment is a right belonging to all Americans, not just a commodity 
for the wealthy few, I hope this Friday will be remembered as the day 
we took the first step in providing with this reform proposal the first 
real opportunity to fundamentally change the nature of our political 
system.

  The base package of reforms the Senator from Arizona and I have 
pieced together represents a solid first step on the path to more 
comprehensive reform.
  As he has already highlighted, the package will ban so-called soft 
money. That means that the Washington soft money machine that has 
fostered the multihundred-thousand dollar contribution from 
corporations and labor unions and wealthy individuals will be shut down 
forever. The American people won't have to hear about outrageous levels 
of contributions that they couldn't even dream of giving even once in 
their lives.
  The base proposal also modifies the current statutory definition of 
``express advocacy.'' It does not affect issue advocacy. It redefines 
in an appropriate manner ``express advocacy'' to provide a clear 
distinction between expenditures for communications used to advocate 
candidates and, on the other hand, those used to advocate issues. And 
that is all it does.
  It does not do, as the majority leader has suggested, ban billboards. 
Of course, it doesn't. It doesn't touch voter guides. We explicitly 
provide that voter guides are permitted. And it doesn't ban one single 
television or radio ad, ever. It simply does not do that. And we will 
repeat that statement as often as it needs to be repeated.
  Candidate-related expenditures will be subject to current Federal 
election laws and disclosure requirements. Of course they will. But 
that is all.
  No form of expression will be prohibited.
  That statement is simply inaccurate.
  The proposal will require greater disclosure of campaign 
contributions and expenditures, and provide the Federal Election 
Commission with the tools to better enforce our campaign finance laws.
  It includes a strict codification of what is known as the Supreme 
Court's Beck decision, thus requiring labor unions to notify nonunion 
members that they are entitled to request a reduction of the portion of 
their agency fees used for political purposes. Of course, I find it 
laughable that anyone could believe that the central problem in the 
campaign finance system is an issue of union dues. That is laughable on 
its face.
  What about corporations? What about all of the other special interest 
groups? Does anyone really believe that labor is the only problem? 
Nonetheless, we try to reasonably and appropriately address this issue 
rather than ignoring it.
  Finally, the base package includes a provision that for the first 
time encourages candidates to abide by some kind of a voluntary 
fundraising restriction. That is a significant step.
  As my colleagues know, the Supreme Court ruled in the decision in 
Buckley versus Valeo that it is fully consistent with the first 
amendment to offer candidates incentives to encourage them to 
voluntarily limit their campaign spending.
  In fact, the Buckley Court specifically upheld the Presidential 
system that we have today which offers public financing in exchange for 
candidates agreeing to voluntary spending limits.
  The Senator from Arizona and I have added a provision to this base 
package that tracks that concept.
  Under current law, Mr. President, political parties are permitted to 
make expenditures in coordination with the Senate candidate up to a 
certain limit. That limit is based on the size of each State.

[[Page S10005]]

  In California, for example, the parties are each permitted to spend 
about $2.8 million in coordination with the candidate.
  Our proposal provides that candidates who decide to pour a great deal 
of their own personal funds into a campaign would simply no longer be 
entitled to those party expenditures on their behalf.
  Specifically, if a candidate agrees to limit their personal spending 
to less than $50,000 per election, they will continue to receive help 
from their party committees. If they don't, they just won't receive 
that money.

  It is a basic concept. If you want to pour millions and millions of 
dollars of your personal money into a campaign to try to buy a Senate 
seat, you should be able to do so.
  We don't disagree with Buckley versus Valeo on that point. We don't 
disagree. We just do not think you should get some kind of a benefit, 
some kind of a privilege after you have done so.
  It is very important to recognize that distinction.
  That is what Buckley said, and that is what this proposal reflects. 
We should not reward such candidates. We should not give them the equal 
benefit with their opponent who is not a millionaire and who should be 
able to receive that.
  So, Mr. President, that is the outline of our base package. It is 
modest reform. It is a strong step in the right direction, and it 
provides us with the vehicle to move campaign finance reform forward.
  But there is another piece to our effort. The base package makes 
several important reforms.
  But the one thing it does not do enough of is doing something about 
the position of incumbents and challengers in financing their 
campaigns. We know what the problems are. Incumbents consistently blow 
away challengers who lack the resources to run their campaign.
  The flow of campaign cash through the corridors of Congress 
undermines public confidence and trust in this institution. 
Officeholders spend more time panhandling for campaign contributions 
sometimes than they do on the Nation's legislative business.
  That is why the Senator from Arizona and I are announcing our 
intention to offer a McCain-Feingold amendment to our own vehicle. Why? 
Because we want some accountability on this issue. We want to see that 
the Members of the U.S. Senate are prepared to stand up in the public 
spotlight and tell the American people whether they are willing or 
unwilling to change a system that is so clearly rigged in their own 
favor.
  Mr. President, that road is going to be a true test of reform. That 
will be one of the votes that tells us how serious the U.S. Senate is 
with fundamentally changing a political system that has spiraled out of 
control, and has led to so many charges of abuse and undue influence; 
and, yes, Mr. President, corruption.
  Our amendment will again build on what the Supreme Court said was 
permissible in the Buckley decision. The amendment offers an incentive 
to candidates to encourage them voluntarily to limit their fundraising. 
The incentive in this case is a half-priced discount on television 
time. And that, of course, would have more to do with reducing the cost 
of campaigns than anything else.
  Candidates who wish to receive the discounted television time would 
have to agree to three simple rules. First, they would have to agree to 
raise a majority of their campaign funds from people who live in their 
own State. That seems reasonable. Second, they must agree to raise no 
more than 25 percent of their total campaign contributions from 
political action committees. Finally, they have to agree again to spend 
no more than $50,000 of their own personal money on a campaign.
  By doing so, Mr. President, we would provide candidates, for the 
first time ever, with the opportunity to run a competitive campaign 
without having to raise and spend millions of dollars. It tries to 
level the playing field. It is fair to both parties, and that 
provision, that amendment that we will offer, is clearly 
constitutional.
  There will be a vote on that amendment, and we will find out if 
Senators favor or support changing the rules that have so clearly 
fallen apart in recent years. I look forward to that debate. I look 
forward to the other amendments that will be offered that could well 
improve this bill even more.
  So before concluding, I do want to again thank my colleague from 
Arizona, but I want to make two points, two points that I think will be 
something of a road map to what will happen in the next few days.
  First, there is going to be, if you have a scorecard, two different 
groups out on the floor. One group of Senators is going to try to force 
a filibuster. They are going to offer amendments and use procedural 
tactics in any way they can to force either the Democrats or the 
Republicans to filibuster. The majority leader already said today, with 
great pride, that he would get the other side to filibuster. He has 
already announced that that is his goal. But there is another group of 
Senators, Mr. President. That is the bipartisan group. That is not the 
filibustering group. That is the group of Senators from both parties 
who are working together to avoid a filibuster and reform our system. 
Keep your scorecard. There are two very clear groups--the filibusterers 
and the bipartisan Senators. That is where we are in the difference on 
this issue.
  The second final point I want to make, Mr. President, is that not 
only are there two groups of Senators on this issue--and we will find 
out exactly who they are--there are also two different visions of our 
democracy represented in the Senate. One vision is the vision of a 
representative democracy. The other vision is what I like to call a 
vision, an acceptance of something that is more akin to a corporate 
democracy. We have become a corporate democracy.
  What do I mean by that? When I was 13 years old, I received a gift of 
a share of stock. One of our relatives wanted to teach me how the stock 
market worked and how our economy worked. I think it was maybe a $13 
stock in the Parker Pen Co., one of our great prides in Wisconsin and 
in my hometown of Janesville. My father told me that in addition to 
owning a share of that stock, I would have a vote at the stockholders' 
meeting. And being already interested in politics, I thought: Great. 
When is the election? When is the stockholders' meeting? I want to go 
vote. And he laughed. He said, ``Well, I better tell you something. The 
number of votes you get depends on how many shares you have. You don't 
have the same vote and the same power as everyone else because it is a 
corporation. It is based on how much money you are able to put into the 
corporation, and so you could go to the shareholders' meeting but your 
vote wouldn't count very much.''
  Mr. President, sadly, that reminds me more of America today than ever 
before. This is not a democracy anymore of one person-one vote. If we 
keep this system of $300,000, $400,000 contributions and access to 
politicians based on contributions, we will have sealed this as a 
corporate democracy, not a representative democracy.
  That is the question before us. Will we abandon all the other 
Americans who simply cannot afford the cash to play the game? We have 
to reject the corporate democracy, Mr. President. We have to return to 
a representative democracy. That is what this country is all about. 
That is what this institution is all about. Fortunately, in the coming 
days, we will find out who is on which side.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the opening 
statements made on this issue. I appreciate the sincerity of those who 
have made them. I wish to make this first personal point before I make 
some additional points. The Senator from Arizona said that there is 
only one purpose here, and that purpose is to enact fair and effective 
campaign finance reform. I wish to make it very clear that I accept 
that purpose on behalf of the Senator from Arizona, the Senator from 
Wisconsin, the Senator from Tennessee, or anyone else involved in this 
matter. I do not challenge for one moment their sincerity. Certainly we 
cannot challenge their earnestness. Certainly we cannot challenge their 
motives. I want it clearly understood that

[[Page S10006]]

I have that kind of feeling about what they are doing.
  I want it equally understood that I think they are fundamentally 
wrong and that, in their effort to get to what they consider to be a 
sincere and proper goal, they could do irreparable damage to our Nation 
and to the fundamental freedoms about which I care just as passionately 
as they do. I hope they will grant to me the same sense of honor and 
integrity that I am more than willing to grant to them, and that we 
will not get into the name-calling business of saying, if you oppose 
McCain-Feingold, you are somehow opposed to anything that is true and 
beautiful and worthwhile.
  I believe McCain-Feingold cuts at some of the most fundamental 
freedoms we have in this country, and I am going to outline that. I 
want everybody to understand that I am not acting because I believe 
something sinister or improper is going on here.
  As to the second point, before I go into some of the specifics I want 
to talk about, I would say to Senator Feingold, I think you ought to 
meet Senator McCain. From the notes I have made in this morning's 
debate, Senator Feingold said, if I quote him correctly, ``No form of 
expression will be prohibited,'' just after Senator McCain said, ``No 
ad mentioning the name of a candidate will be allowed in the last 60 
days of the campaign.''
  I do not find those two statements coinciding with each other. 
Indeed, the Senator from Arizona, in his summary of the things that 
would be allowed and would not be allowed, gave us a whole list of that 
which would be allowed to take place and that which would be prevented. 
To me, we are debating ways in which Government power will be marshaled 
to control legitimate speech, and we are saying, with all of the 
intensity of middle-aged theologians debating how many angels can dance 
on the head of a pin, that this will be allowed and that will not; this 
is permissive but that is not; 60 days is legitimate but 61 is not, 
back and forth, in and out on all of these particulars. We are going to 
marshal the full power of the Federal Government of the United States 
of America and focus that power like a laser beam on this particular 
ad, this particular contribution, this particular activity, all in the 
name of campaign finance reform.
  Mr. President, to me marshaling Government power to regulate what can 
and cannot be said in another context is called censorship. And 
marshaling the power of the Federal Government to censor political 
speech is not an activity in which I would lightly engage.
  The statement was made by the minority leader that Buckley versus 
Valeo was a close call; it was only 5 to 4. On the issue of whether or 
not spending money in campaigns represented protected speech under the 
first amendment, Buckley versus Valeo was 9 to nothing. And in every 
subsequent decision from that time forward, the Court has reemphasized 
that. Let us understand that. We are talking about the most fundamental 
political right that we have in this country, the right of free debate 
and speech in a political campaign. I want to lay that down as the 
fundamental predicate, when we get into the details of this, when we 
argue with the Senator from Arizona about what is and what is not wise 
and proper, we are talking about tinkering with the fundamental right 
of Americans to engage in robust political activity. We should tread on 
this ground very, very carefully. I think that is why the Supreme Court 
slapped down the first attempt to tread on this ground by such an 
overwhelming margin.

  Now, some specifics. The Senator from Arizona laid down the three 
principles that we are going to see preserved in the substitute bill to 
McCain-Feingold, S. 25. I am delighted there will be a substitute bill 
to S. 25.
  I have gone through S. 25 reading it personally. If ever there were a 
maze of regulations subject to misinterpretation and reinterpretation 
by bureaucrats enforcing them, this is the maze.
  This morning on this floor we had a series of speeches regarding the 
IRS and how the Tax Code is used and abused with ordinary citizens. I 
wonder what the IRS or regulators like those who work for the IRS would 
do with the provisions of S. 25? Saying, well, you could have run that 
ad, but you can't run this ad; you could have had this guide, but you 
can't do that guide; this was OK last Tuesday, but it is not OK on 
Thursday.
  Now, the fundamental assumption here underlying what we are hearing 
is that money is the only factor in determining the outcome of an 
election, and that if we can only level the playing field, which we 
hear over and over again, in terms of money, then we will have fair 
elections.
  Well, when we raise the issue of people who defeat incumbents without 
having as much money as incumbents have, we are told always, well, that 
is the exception that proves the rule. That is an aberration. That is 
not the way things normally happen; incumbents normally win. Yes, 
incumbents do normally win. And they normally win for a whole series of 
reasons, not necessarily connected with money.

  I am interested that Senator Feingold is raising this issue when he 
is one of the challengers who defeated an incumbent in order to get 
here. And, while I will not pretend to be an expert on his campaign, 
it's my understanding that he spent less than his incumbent opponent in 
order to do it, thus demonstrating that maybe the ability to 
communicate better than your opponent has something to do with who 
wins. Maybe the ability to write a smarter ad than your opponent does 
may have something to do with who wins. Maybe even having a more 
powerful message than your opponent has something to do with who wins. 
Or maybe which State you live in, whether it be predominantly 
Republican or Democrat, in terms of the leanings of the voters in the 
first place, has something to do with who wins. It is not necessarily 
money as the only ingredient in what happens.
  All of us here, because we live in the beltway circumstance, saw the 
ad campaign that went on in the senatorial race in Virginia in 1996. 
You couldn't avoid it if you lived anywhere in the Washington area for 
any period of time. Mark Warner spent something like $25 million trying 
to defeat Senator John Warner. He didn't succeed. He outspent him 
overwhelmingly. What advantages did John Warner have to fight off that 
kind of money barrage as an incumbent? There are those here who will 
say his only advantage was, as an incumbent, he could raise more money. 
Clearly he could not raise more money. There is not enough money in the 
world to warrant raising more money than Mark Warner spent in that 
race.
  I know my opponent in the primary race in Utah outspent me 3 to 1. He 
spent $6.2 million in a primary in Utah. When I say there isn't enough 
money--to spend more money, he was buying ads on Saturday morning 
cartoons. He had run out of places to spend it.
  Yes, there are finite limits. I think Mark Warner reached those 
finite limits in Virginia. Why didn't he defeat John Warner if he had 
that kind of money advantage? John Warner had 18 years of service in 
the U.S. Senate, which means 18 years of answering phone calls, sending 
letters, attending bar mitzvahs, going to Rotary Clubs. John Warner was 
known as the most popular politician of either party in the State of 
Virginia. That is a fairly significant advantage for an incumbent to 
have, regardless of money.
  John Warner has spent 18 years with name recognition against somebody 
of whom no one had ever heard. Yes, money buys name recognition. An 
incumbent doesn't have to spend any money to buy name recognition. That 
is a significant advantage.
  John Warner had a staff. I can give that example. I didn't run 
against an incumbent Senator but I ran against an incumbent Congressman 
who had a congressional staff. When the Congressman wanted to come to 
Washington to attend a fundraiser with a PAC group, who paid for it? 
The taxpayer, because it was a trip back and forth from his 
congressional district to the Capitol. When I came to Washington 
challenging him, trying to hold a fundraiser among the PAC's, who paid 
for it? My campaign paid for it. I had to raise that money. It put us 
on a level playing field. Both have the same amount of money, I don't 
get to come to the fundraiser but my opponent does because he's an 
incumbent.
  When my opponent put out a press release accusing me of committing a

[[Page S10007]]

crime, which he did--actually, that was one of the good things about my 
campaign. Everybody thought he had lost his mind, and I got some extra 
votes as a result of it. Nonetheless, when my opponent put out the 
press release accusing me of a crime, who prepared it? His press 
secretary. Who paid the salary of the press secretary? The taxpayers. 
He was an incumbent. He is entitled to a staff.
  When my press people went to the press conference to say, ``No, Bob 
Bennett did not commit that crime,'' who paid their salary? My campaign 
did. So let's put him on a level playing field. He gets his staff paid 
for as an incumbent by the taxpayers. I, as a challenger, don't get my 
staff paid for. I have to raise the money.

  Incumbents have all kinds of advantages that have nothing to do with 
money. They also, sometimes, have some disadvantages that have nothing 
to do with money. We have the example--perhaps an extreme one but let's 
use an extreme one to make a point--back in the 1994 election, Mike 
Synar, the Congressman from Oklahoma, lost his primary. He spent 
$325,000. His opponent spent less than $10,000. His opponent's campaign 
consisted entirely of distributing his business card, sticking it under 
windshields in parking lots, and written on the back of the business 
card was the phrase, ``Not the incumbent.'' And he beat the incumbent. 
The incumbent in that circumstance had a $325,000 to, let's say, 
$10,000 money advantage; he had the disadvantage of a voting record 
that members of his particular congressional district didn't like.
  We cannot let ourselves get into this notion that money is the only 
factor and then write laws based on that assumption because, if we do, 
we will do violence to the Constitution and freedom of speech.
  Now, let me go down the three points that the Senator from Arizona 
made, as the core points of McCain-Feingold and the proposed change 
that we will have. First, he said it must be bipartisan. I will grant 
him that. McCain-Feingold will damage both parties equally, damage the 
process for everybody. It doesn't play favorites. It will be equally 
bad.
  Second, he says we must lessen the amount of money overall in 
campaigns. If he had listened to the expert testimony that we have had 
in the Governmental Affairs Committee this last week, he would find 
that even people who support McCain-Feingold, who come out of the 
academic community and commented on this, told us you cannot control 
the amount of money in political campaigns. The Senator from Kentucky 
has said, ``Controlling political money is like putting a rock on 
Jello. You put it on one place and it squeezes out another.'' And these 
experts said the same thing. They said political money has been in the 
process ever since George Washington was President and will always be 
in the process, and we have had a continuing process of simply trying 
to control it. But you are not going to eliminate it. It is always 
going to be with you.
  Mr. KERRY. Will my friend yield for a question?
  Mr. BENNETT. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. KERRY. As I listened to my colleague suggest that you cannot 
control money, I can't help but think back to----
  Mr. BENNETT. May I correct that? I said you cannot control the total 
amount of money. You can control where it flows.
  Mr. KERRY. That is fair, Mr. President. Let me nevertheless ask the 
same question I was going to ask, because I think it is relevant. Last 
year in Massachusetts, Governor Weld and I agreed on a fixed amount of 
money that we would spend in our race. We agreed on a fixed amount of 
money for our media, and a fixed amount of money for the campaign on 
the ground, so to speak. We agreed, both of us, to have no money from 
the national political parties and no money from independent 
expenditures. We set up a mechanism whereby we were able to control not 
having those independent expenditures come in. In the end, we had a 
campaign that had no national money, no independent expenditures, and 
we spent the fixed amount of money that we said we would.
  So I ask my colleague, how it is he can say that you can't control it 
when in fact there is evidence of it having been controlled in that 
race, as well as in Governor races and other races in the rest of the 
country where they have accepted limits?
  Mr. BENNETT. I thank my friend from Massachusetts for an example that 
I think makes my point. You made the decision, your opponent made the 
decision, and you are in control in this circumstance of the amount of 
money that is spent. What McCain-Feingold does is take that decision 
out of your hands and put it in the hands of the bureaucracy.

  When I say you can't control the amount of money, I should be more 
specific. You can't control it by Government fiat. You certainly can 
control it in terms of what happens in your own campaign, just as I 
made the decision in my campaign that there would be no negative ads. I 
refused to run any ads attacking my opponent. But I would oppose any 
Government rule that would say to me I could not make a different 
decision if I wanted to. And I would oppose any Government regulation 
that would say that you and Governor Weld could not have made that 
decision on the basis that you wanted to, instead of there being more 
particulars that would be imposed upon you by Federal law that would 
say, ``Well, you have come fairly close but we are going to put this 
regulation and that regulation on top of the decision that the two of 
you jointly made.''
  I applaud you for what you did. I think every campaign would be 
better off if the candidates could sit down in advance and make that 
kind of a deal. But I want every deal to be a separate deal, made by 
separate candidates, rather than dictated from this Chamber.
  Mr. KERRY. Will my friend yield for a further question?
  Mr. BENNETT. I will be happy to yield for a question.
  Mr. KERRY. I would ask him that, now having at least established one 
can arrive at a control, the issue is whether or not the Government 
might play a role in that? I ask the Senator if he is aware that, in a 
number of States and in a number of cities, they have in fact passed 
legislation where there is an accepted regime of control for how much 
is spent in a campaign, or for the mechanism for raising it? The city 
of New York, State of Maine, a number of other States have accepted 
this.
  So, really, the question is not whether or not you can do it, I would 
submit to my friend, it is whether or not one is willing to do it, 
whether you have the desire of doing it. That is really the bottom-line 
question, I would suggest.
  Mr. BENNETT. May I respond to my friend, and then I see the Senator 
from Kentucky wants to get into this.
  In the first place, I think we ought to wait for some experience from 
these cities and States as to what happens before we rush to Federal 
legislation on the basis of the bills that they have passed. I think it 
is salutary that the States are being used as a lab, to see what works 
and what does not. I don't know that there has been any constitutional 
challenge to any one of these statutes yet. I would expect there would 
be. And I would like to have the reasoning of the courts before us 
before I rush to Federal legislation. Then, as I said, I would like to 
have some on-the-ground experience to see how it really works.
  If I may give a separate kind of example, in the State of Utah we 
allow corporate contributions for statewide races--Governor, attorney 
general, Lieutenant Governor, what have you. There has not been a hint 
of scandal. There is no outcry to stop that. And we have had a series 
of outstanding Governors, both Democrats as well as Republicans, every 
one of whom has been a man of highest rectitude.
  So, if you are going to look for a local example of something that 
works, you could say, based on my State's experience, that we ought to 
open the whole thing up and let corporate contributions come in as well 
as individual contributions. The one thing that we do have in Utah that 
has made it work is full and complete disclosure so that everybody 
knows that, if the Utah Power and Light Company has given to X 
campaign, that is on the public record. And when the Governor goes to 
deal with utility regulation, everybody knows how much the power 
company gave him.

[[Page S10008]]

  Mr. McCONNELL. If the Senator will yield just for an observation?
  Mr. BENNETT. I will be happy to.
  Mr. McCONNELL. The Senator from Massachusetts was talking about State 
and local referenda. There have been some. Most of them have either 
been struck down by the courts, as in the case of Missouri, Minnesota, 
Oregon, and Cincinnati. The balance are in litigation, such as the new 
State law in Maine which virtually no one believes will be upheld by 
the Federal courts.
  The Senator is correct, there has been some experimentation at the 
State and local level. Virtually all of them have been struck down or 
are on the way to being struck down.
  Mr. BENNETT. I thank my friend from Kentucky for that additional 
information. Let me go back to the three points made by the Senator 
from Arizona: Must be bipartisan--I agree, this is bipartisan. Two, 
must lessen the amount of money overall in politics--if the experts 
that have testified before our committee are correct, and I believe 
they are, in a free society that is simply an impossible goal. You can 
disclose it, and I think we should; you should shine as much light, 
sunshine, exposure as you can, and I think we should. You should do 
things about getting people better informed of what is going on, and I 
think we should.
  I am perfectly willing to talk about amending the current laws to go 
in that direction. But you should not kid yourself that in a free 
society, somehow Government can control the total amount of money 
people want to spend in political advocacy.
  So we come to the third principle, laid down by the Senator from 
Arizona, that there must be a meaningful campaign finance reform, which 
is we must level the playing field between challenger and incumbent. We 
must help the challenger.
  I have already made the point, and will make it again, that the best 
way you can help the challenger in the field of money is to allow the 
challenger to raise more money than the incumbent. If you level the 
playing field and say to the challenger--my own example again 
repeated--you cannot raise any more money than the incumbent, but the 
incumbent starts out with all of the name recognition, all of the years 
of going to Rotary Clubs and bar mitzvahs, all of the staff paid for by 
the taxpayer available to him, all of the record of answering letters 
and doing favors and congressional constituent service, and you can't 
spend any more to try to overcome that advantage in the name of 
campaign finance reform, you have decapitated the challenger and 
guaranteed that the incumbent is going to get reelected in virtually 
every circumstance.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. BENNETT. I yield for another comment.
  Mr. McCONNELL. As an observation on what the Senator said about 
leveling the playing field, that was raised in the Buckley case, and 
the Supreme Court said it was constitutionally impermissible for the 
Government to try to level the playing field. In fact, the Court said:

       The concept that Government may restrict the speech of some 
     elements of our society in order to enhance the relative 
     voice of others is wholly foreign to the first amendment.

  So my friend from Utah is correct, even if it were possible somehow 
for the Government to figure out how to micromanage and level the 
playing field, it is truly constitutionally impermissible for the 
Government to try to do that.
  Mr. BENNETT. I thank my friend from Kentucky for that additional 
information about this particular issue.
  Mr. President, I want to end as I began by expressing my deep concern 
over this whole attempt to tiptoe into the area of free expression in a 
free society regarding political activity and political speech. I know 
it is frustrating to see large amounts of money come into a campaign. I 
have heard my friend from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, tell of his 
personal experience when Buckley versus Valeo was handed down, where he 
was in a Senate race with the man who became Senator Heinz. The story 
ends well because Senator Specter became Senator Specter as well, but 
not in that race.
  He, Senator Specter, was running the campaign. There were spending 
limits. Buckley versus Valeo struck those limits down in terms of an 
individual American being allowed to spend whatever amount of money he 
wanted to spend in expressing his own point of view. As Senator Specter 
said, ``Senator Heinz had virtually unlimited resources and I did not. 
And Senator Heinz put those resources into the race and I was 
prohibited.''
  ``Now,'' says Senator Specter, ``my brother had enough money to fund 
my campaign, but my brother was forbidden to put that money into the 
campaign and, therefore, I was at an unfair disadvantage to John 
Heinz.''
  My solution to that would be let his brother put the money in the 
campaign. If we are going to level the playing field, and Heinz has x 
amount of money that he can put in and Senator Specter has a brother 
who has x amount of money he can put in, in the spirit of the decision 
just described by the Senator from Kentucky, I would have no problem 
with saying, OK, let Senator Specter's brother put it in, let's level 
the playing field by letting both sides spend.
  Now, if Senator Specter's brother put it in, it darn well better be 
disclosed where he got the money, where it came from and let people ask 
the question: What did Arlen Specter's brother expect to get in return 
if Arlen Specter took enough money from him to match John Heinz?

  Or to put it in a more contemporary circumstance, we see in the 
Presidential situation where we have these kinds of limits, in this 
last election, Jack Kemp wanted to run for President. Those of us who 
know Jack and can read his body language could tell he was anxious to 
run for President. He looked at the fundraising problem that he faced 
under the present limitations, and he said, ``I can't physically do it. 
I have to go out and raise this much money at $1,000 apiece. I can't 
physically stand the wear and tear.''
  Sitting at Jack Kemp's elbow, figuratively, was somebody who believed 
in everything Jack Kemp believed in. His name is Steve Forbes. Steve 
Forbes could have funded a Kemp campaign for President without noticing 
it. But under the circumstances in which we currently are operating, 
Steve Forbes is forbidden to do that. So, ultimately, what did he do? 
He ran for President himself. At some point in this debate, I will have 
some comments about that, too, and what happened with that injection of 
money coming from Steve Forbes.
  But wouldn't it be a better kind of system if Steve Forbes could say, 
``Jack, you're better known than I am, you have more experience in this 
arena than I do, you probably have a better chance of making it, you 
represent the same ideas I feel strongly about, here's a check for $15 
million; go to it, Jack.''
  The first question that Jack would have been asked is, ``What did you 
promise Steve Forbes in order to get $15 million?'' And that might be a 
very embarrassing question for Jack to answer. Indeed, Jack might say, 
``Steve, I'm not going to take your money because I don't want to have 
to answer that question.'' But that is the kind of openness and honesty 
that I think would make the system a whole lot better than what we are 
talking about here.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield before he 
leaves, I would like to ask him a question.
  Mr. BENNETT. I will yield for a question.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I was listening with great interest to my friend from 
Utah in describing the Government controls over political speech that 
are a part of or actually at the heart of McCain-Feingold. I know, for 
example, that there is this distinction which the Senator from Utah 
referred to in terms of what is commonly referred to as issue advocacy. 
Do things on the 61st day before the election, but if it is the 60th 
day or closer, you can't do other things.
  I am sure my friend from Utah knows this, but an agency of the 
Federal Government would be put in charge of making these decisions, 
would it not?
  Mr. BENNETT. An agency of the Federal Government would decide what 
was permissible and what was not on the 60th day.
  Mr. McCONNELL. So an outside group seeking to criticize a Member of 
Congress--they didn't like how he or she voted on day 58 before an 
election--

[[Page S10009]]

would then be prohibited by the Federal Government from expressing 
criticism of this incumbent during that period, would it not?
  Mr. BENNETT. That is correct.
  Mr. McCONNELL. And is it reasonable to assume, I ask my friend from 
Utah, if that would be an enormous advantage to incumbents?
  Mr. BENNETT. Well, the assumption is that it would be an advantage to 
incumbents because it would give them freedom from criticism by an 
outside group in that period. My sense of smell tells me the outside 
group would, even under McCain-Feingold, probably find some way to try 
to get around that.
  For example, as I understand the Senator from Arizona, he said there 
can be no criticism by name of a candidate, so perhaps the outside 
group would say, ``The Congressman from the Third Congressional 
District of Utah is terrible, but we didn't name him.''
  Mr. McCONNELL. But this agency would have to decide whether that was 
specific enough.
  Mr. BENNETT. The agency would have to decide, and once the agency 
decided, yes, it is all right to attack the Congressman but not to 
attack him by name, or, no, you can't say the Congressman from the 
third district, but you can say some Congressman, or whatever, you 
would, again, have Government dictating that which was permissible 
speech in terms of the content of the ad.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I say to my friend from Utah, looking at the McCain-
Feingold bill, section 303, it gives the FEC the authority to seek an 
injunction. So the FEC could choose to go to court and shut this group 
up, could it not, under this authority?
  Mr. BENNETT. It could.
  Mr. McCONNELL. So you can imagine a group of aggrieved citizens who 
have been dramatically and adversely affected by a vote of an incumbent 
Member of Congress on the 57th day before an election essentially shut 
up because of the proximity to the election, quieted by the heavy hand 
of the Federal Government, unable to criticize an official action of a 
Member of Congress during that time period. Is the Senator from 
Kentucky right in assuming that would be the likelihood of this?
  Mr. BENNETT. I believe the Senator is partly right. I think either 
that would be the likelihood, that a group would be deprived of its 
right to exercise free speech in that area, or another equally likely 
outcome, in my view, is that the outcry from the group over the 
injunction would be sufficiently significant in the press that it would 
override any discussion of substantive issues from that point forward 
and the last 60 days of the campaign would be spent bickering over 
whether or not the group really should or should not have had that 
right. Either way, it distorts the political dialog in a way I find 
corrosive and damaging to the intent of the Constitution.
  Mr. KERRY. Will my colleague yield?
  Mr. BENNETT. Let me yield to the Senator from Massachusetts, and then 
I will come back to the Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah for his 
effort to have a good discussion, and I think that is a very important 
part of what we are trying to achieve here. I, obviously, want the 
Senator from Kentucky to be a part of that.
  The allegation has been made by the Senator from Kentucky that 
somehow someone is being shut up or shut out of the system. Wouldn't it 
be true, notwithstanding the effort to seek an injunction as to 
expenditure for ads under the aegis of this entity, that they would, 
nevertheless, be free to participate, like every other citizen, by 
raising so-called hard money, money for the campaign for the candidate, 
by participating in the campaign itself, by holding fora, by holding 
any kind of participatory effort that they want, which, in effect, is 
only limiting the clutter and the impartiality of the last 60 days of a 
race because of the undue influence of money.
  My question is, wouldn't America be better off to have a 
participatory process where people are encouraged to come out of their 
offices and into the meeting halls and candidates are encouraged to go 
into the living rooms rather than simply rely on money to distort the 
process?
  Mr. BENNETT. I respond to my friend from Massachusetts by saying 
that, of course, the country would be better off if all of those things 
happened. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that the 
prohibitions of one kind of expression that are outlined in McCain-
Feingold would automatically produce all of the other more beneficial 
kinds of expression that the Senator from Massachusetts has described.
  There is no credible cause-and-effect relationship between the two. 
We are back to the fundamental point that I am trying to make in this 
entire presentation, which is, we are talking about ways in which the 
Government will regulate speech. And that, in any other context, is 
called censorship. And I am opposed to it.
  Now, I must go back to the Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I say to my friend from Utah, this is an interesting 
hypothetical to discuss, but there is virtually no chance the courts 
would allow the kinds of restrictions on issue advocacy in the McCain-
Feingold bill. The Supreme Court addresses issue advocacy; that is, the 
way others are able to criticize our records.
  What the Senator from Massachusetts is saying, I think, is that he 
would like that criticism to be less effective. In other words, do not 
use something really effective like television, just go out and go door 
to door. There isn't any chance the Supreme Court is going to say, 
``Deny to an aggrieved group the opportunity to use the most effective 
way to criticize our records,'' which we all know requires: (a) The 
expenditure of money, and (b) the use of television. That is the 
easiest way for that criticism to have an impact.
  The good news is--the good news is--there is virtually no chance that 
any court in America would uphold the kinds of restrictions on issue 
advocacy by groups that are contained not only in the original McCain-
Feingold bill but in the substitute that in all likelihood will be 
offered Monday. That is the good news.
  I thank my friend from Utah.
  Mr. BENNETT. Does the Senator from Massachusetts ask me to yield 
further for an additional comment? If he does, I will be happy to do 
so.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask the Senator simply to acknowledge 
what I think he would acknowledge is the state of the law, which is 
that there is a distinction that the Court has drawn between issue 
advocacy of the kind the Senator from Kentucky was referring to--which 
I would not seek to restrict; I understand the first amendment--and 
express advocacy of a candidate.
  There is a clear distinction the Court has drawn between a legitimate 
effort to talk about an issue in the abstract and an effort to help a 
candidate get elected. I think that most Americans would feel, in fact, 
in answer to the Senator saying, ``Well, there's nothing in here that 
connects the amount of money to the effort to get people, you know, 
into the living rooms and out of their offices,'' I suggest 
respectfully to my colleague, there is, because the more the money, the 
more there is this effort to simply have these distorted 30-second 
advertisements, the less people feel connected or need to connect to 
the politician or the process and the more they are in fact alienated 
from it.
  In the experience of Massachusetts, where we set a limit on what we 
would do, I in fact felt an enormously greater incentive to go out and 
organize at the grassroots level because I knew it was that much more 
important.
  So would my friend from Utah acknowledge that in fact there is a 
distinction between express advocacy and issue advocacy and there is in 
fact a connection in the way that we can begin to bring people back 
into the process by getting rid of the cynicism that they have and the 
sense of being absolutely separated from all of this money?
  Mr. BENNETT. I can respond to the two questions by my friend from 
Massachusetts.
  Yes; there is clearly. The answer to his first one, an attempt to 
define the difference between issue advocacy and express advocacy in 
terms of a candidate, how that would play out under McCain-Feingold in 
terms of the 60-day rule is still very troubling to me and, in my view, 
does indeed cross over the line and become censorship.
  Now, as to his second question, this is a matter of 
political experience. Obviously, every Member of this Chamber

[[Page S10010]]

has his or her own political experience to draw back on. I will only 
comment in terms of my own, that I am known in Utah as a politician who 
believes perhaps more strongly than any other in the importance of 
grassroots organization.

  I am currently spending all the money that I am currently raising in 
building such an organization. Some of the people who work for the 
Senator from Kentucky under the other hat he wears as chairman of the 
Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee are a little disturbed that I 
do not have more money left in the coffers from the amount I have 
raised, and where has its gone?
  It is going right now into building a precinct-by-precinct, voting-
district-by-voting-district campaign organization so that if I have no 
money for television, I have at least one person for every 10 or 20 
households who will go out and knock on doors on my behalf. I am 
building that organization right now. I believe in that fundamentally.
  However, my personal experience says that I cannot energize these 
folks without some ads on television. I can give them all the letters, 
I can give them all the phone calls, I can tell them all how wonderful 
they are, but until they see something on the screen, they are not 
convinced I am a serious candidate.
  Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield further?
  Mr. BENNETT. If I may finish.
  At the same time, my experience in the last campaign is that when 
there were ads attacking me, I found that the general public did not 
pay any attention to them and did not care. But my own troops all 
panicked until I was able to get back on television and answer those 
ads. And they heaved a gigantic sigh of relief.
  By the same token, I am told by my opponent's people--Utah is a small 
enough State that virtually all the politicians talk to each other, 
particularly when the campaign is over--that it was one of my ads 
puncturing my opponent's attack on me that took all the starch out of 
their door-to-door grassroots organization.
  The former chairman of the Democratic State committee said, ``I was 
shaving in the morning, feeling good about the campaign. We were 
closing the gap on you. Our attacks were taking hold. I had the radio 
on and heard your voice come on on the radio. At the end of 60 seconds, 
I said, `It's all over. He has just punctured our balloon. There's no 
way we can get anybody going again.' ''
  So, these things play hand in hand. Everyone has his or her own 
experience in it. We come back to the basic posture that I took. We, as 
candidates, should be in charge of our campaigns. We, as candidates, 
should make the decision as to what is said, when it is said, how it is 
said. We should make the decision whether we use grassroots or 
television or radio or billboards or handbills or newspapers.
  Those around us who want to get into it should be free to make their 
own decisions in that regard. The heavy hand of the Federal Government 
should not be in that circumstance saying, ``This group can; that group 
cannot. And 61 days is OK; 60 days is not. The public is not smart 
enough to sort through all of this and make their own decisions. We 
must regulate how the money is raised. We must regulate how it is 
spent.''
  I am perfectly content to have the Federal Government regulate from 
whom it is raised. I think the ban we have had on corporate 
contributions since Mark Hannah's days is legitimate. In terms of 
direct contributions to candidates, I think that is a legitimate 
restriction which we have had in this country for longer than I am old. 
I have no problem with that.
  I am perfectly willing to have the Federal Government involved in 
requiring full disclosure so that everybody knows if I take money from 
Fred Thompson, I am going to have to answer for that, that everybody 
knows what I am doing. I have no problem with that.
  But I have serious, serious fundamental problems, in terms of my 
devotion to the Constitution, people who know me know on the floor how 
strongly I feel about this--I think we are treading on very, very 
sacred ground when we say the Federal Government is going to start to 
make these kinds of decisions for candidates and groups and ordinary 
Americans, and it is going to do it in a way that carries the full 
punitive power of the Federal Government behind it.

  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I want to commend the distinguished Senator from Utah 
for his very enlightening presentation. Since I have not yet spoken on 
issue advocacy, I want to pick up for a few moments what we were 
discussing at the end of the colloquy with the Senator from 
Massachusetts. On the question of issue advocacy, the Court has not 
been vague on this at all. This is not a gray area.
  The Court has been quite precise in the area of issue advocacy. Issue 
advocacy is criticism of us. Groups are entitled to do it at any time 
they want to and as loud as they want to. We never like it. We can 
stipulate that we never like it. Now, the biggest group in America in 
the field of issue advocacy on television is the AFL-CIO, and it is 
mostly targeted to Members of my party. We can stipulate that we do not 
like it worth a darn. But no effort to try to restrict that through 
legislation in the Congress is going to change it.
  It is not a gray area. The Nation's experts on the first amendment, I 
think we would all agree, is the American Civil Liberties Union. In a 
letter to me earlier this year, they said this about the provisions in 
McCain-Feingold dealing with issue advocacy. This is the exact quote, 
Mr. President:

       Worst of all is S. 25's blunderbuss assault on issue-
     oriented speech. The weapon is an unconstitutional expansion 
     of the definition of ``expressed advocacy'' in order to sweep 
     classic issue speech within the zone of regulation as 
     independent expenditures.

  So let me just make it simple. There isn't any chance, Mr. 
President--no chance--that through legislation, we can shut up all of 
these groups who seek to criticize us. We can stipulate that we do not 
like it, but they are going to keep on doing it. No amount of standing 
up here on the floor of the Senate and arguing that somehow we are 
going to be able to purify the process and get rid of all these critics 
is going to get the job done.
  In this whole field, Mr. President, at the end of the day we get back 
to the Constitution. You begin and you end this debate with the First 
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as the Senator from Utah has 
pointed out. This is core political speech, according to the U.S. 
Supreme Court. That is not Mitch McConnell's interpretation. That is 
not Bob Bennett's interpretation. This is the law of the land. As the 
Senator from Utah said, when you start moving around in this field, you 
better tread lightly. The courts were not only good in the Buckley 
case, they have been good since. The whole trend has been to more 
broaden the area of permissible political discourse in this country.
  The Court has said it is impermissible for us to decide how much 
political speech is enough--impermissible. In spite of that, the 
reformers persist in promoting the notion that it is somehow desirable 
for the Federal Government to determine how much political discourse we 
are going to have in our campaigns in this country.
  You hear them say time and time again--we heard it this morning, and 
we will hear it next week--``We're spending too much in American 
politics.''
  Remember what the Supreme Court says that means: that they are 
saying, ``We're speaking too much. We're speaking too much.'' How much 
is too much?
  Last year, there was a lot of political speaking because there was a 
war on out there for the future of the country. We had a change in 
1994, and a Republican Congress came in for the first time in 40 years. 
The status quo forces didn't like it, and they fought back in 1996. A 
good deal was said. That is speech. A lot of it cost money, and 
spending did go up.
  When all was said and done, I say to my friend Utah, we spent per 
eligible voter last year $3.89, about the price of a McDonald's value 
meal. Looking at it another way, of all the commercials that were shown 
on television last year, 1 percent of them were political commercials. 
And they say we are speaking too much. They think it is a good idea to 
shut all these people up, shut down those outside groups that are 
criticizing us, put a cap on how much a campaign can say.

[[Page S10011]]

  Who gets the power then? Conspicuously exempted--and I am not arguing 
we ought to take away the exemption--but conspicuously exempted from 
the Federal Election Campaign Act is the press.
  I have looked and I have searched to see whether there is any 
provision in here, and I say to my friend from Utah, that the press 
cannot criticize us in the last 60 days of an election. I have been 
looking feverishly to see if I can find if there is any prohibition on 
the press endorsing candidates in the last 60 days of the election. 
Maybe I just have not read this carefully enough, but I cannot seem to 
find it.
  So what we are talking about here is a transfer of power away from 
groups that want to comment about our record and talk about us, 
frequently in an unfavorable way. The original version of McCain-
Feingold wanted to shut up the campaigns themselves so they could not 
talk too much. And I hear from Senator McCain, he is going to offer an 
amendment to try to bring that back.
  We shut down the campaigns and we shut down the issue groups. Who 
gets to talk? Who gets to talk about Government interference in the 
last 60 days of the election? Why, the press gets to talk. We know darn 
good and well that all of this issue advocacy restriction in here is 
flatout unconstitutional and is not a question in anybody's mind that 
knows anything about the Supreme Court.
  OK, so issue advocacy survives in the courts. Even if we passed it 
here, somehow that spending limits on campaigns survives, so you are 
going down the home stretch, you are in the last few days, and the 
campaign runs out of money and you can't say anything. But the labor 
unions are there with issue advocacy, they have raised their money by 
checking off union dues, taking it in many instances from people 
involuntarily. They are hammering away at you, the liberal press is 
running exposes on the front page and endorsing your opponent on the 
editorial page--welcome to the brave new world of campaign finance 
reform where the groups are shut up, the candidates are shut up, and 
the press is running the game.
  Now, the good news is the Court will not allow this to happen. But 
what is sad is that anybody would even be proposing this. What is 
disturbing is that anybody would even be suggesting that it would be a 
good idea to have less political discourse in this country.
  There is a lot of discussion going on all the time about public 
affairs in this country. The press is talking about it every day. Most 
objective studies would indicate that 85 to 90 percent of the people in 
that line of the work are on the left. Hollywood is making statements 
all the time about what kind of society we have. Many of us feel about 
100 percent of them are on the left. So you have the press on the left, 
you have Hollywood on the left, and the candidates and the groups with 
the Government clamping down on what they can say in the heat of a 
campaign. It sounds like something straight out of Orwell's ``1984.'' 
Yet there is serious discussion here on the floor of the U.S. Senate 
that this somehow would be an improvement in the American political 
system.
  Write it down--we are not speaking too much in the American political 
process. We are not going to pass this unconstitutional piece of 
legislation. If we were foolish enough to do it, the courts would 
strike it down. The argument we hear is the people are crying out for 
us to do this, that they are just desperate for us to pass this kind of 
legislation. Let me say in a survey taken just a few months ago by a 
reputable polling firm which I was just looking at this week, they 
asked 1,017 registered voters open-ended what they thought the most 
important problem in America was, and not a single one of them 
mentioned campaign finance reform. Then the pollsters thought maybe it 
will be different if they put it on the list, so they put it on a list 
of 10 topics. It came in dead last of the 10.
  We will hear time and time again, as I have today, and we will hear 
it more next week, that everyone is clamoring for us to pass this big 
Government solution to this nonexistent problem of too much political 
discussion in this country. Eighty-seven percent of the people, by the 
way, would be less likely to vote for a Member who supports 
unconstitutional reform.
  Now the proponents of this legislation this week sent out a press 
release saying they had found 126 people who said this bill was 
constitutional. My reaction to that is that I could probably find 126 
people who say the Earth is flat. But the people who handle this 
litigation, America's experts on the first amendment--the American 
Civil Liberties Union, and clear and unambiguous decisions by the U.S. 
Supreme Court--make it abundantly clear that this is unconstitutional.
  Now, the people of the United States did not send us up here to pass 
blatantly unconstitutional legislation. Sure, you can craft a question 
that will get the answer you want. Spending limits on the surface 
sounds like a good idea. If you ask people if they are in favor of 
spending limits they will say yes. On the other hand, if you rephrase 
the question and say do you think there ought to be a limit on how many 
people can participate in your campaign, 99 percent of them will say 
no. The same issue expressed a different way.

  So the people are not clamoring for us to shut down political 
discussion in this country. They are not clamoring for us to push 
people out of the process. They are not asking us to make it impossible 
for them to criticize our records in proximity to an election. Sure, if 
you ask them about the influence of special interests they will say 
that is a terrible thing. Do you know the definition of a special 
interest, Mr. President? Special interest is a group that is against 
what I am trying to do. But of course the organization I belong to--
whether it is the VFW, the Farm Bureau, the National Rifle Association 
or the Electrical Workers Union--we are not a special interest. We are 
a bunch of Americans trying to do the right thing for our country. The 
term special interest is meaningless. It is a pejorative term applied 
to any group opposed to what we want done.
  As a practical matter, the founders of this country knew that there 
would be a seething cauldron of special interests. They expected us to 
organize. They expected us to contribute to campaigns. They expected us 
to be criticized if we came here to serve in the Senate or in the 
House. We were not to be above criticism. They envisioned lobbyists. 
That is another part of the First Amendment. It gives people the right 
to petition the Government. A lobbyist, of course, is a person working 
for a group trying to do something I'm against. But the person we have 
hired to represent our group in Washington is doing the right thing.
  Mr. President, this is going to be a good debate. There may be an 
effort in this bill to shut off campaigns, to quiet the voices of 
independent groups who want to criticize us, but there is going to be 
plenty of discussion on this issue here in the Senate. I hope, Mr. 
President, that many people will take an opportunity to listen in 
because when they hear the words ``campaign finance reform,'' they 
don't understand that generally means somebody is trying to put the 
Government in charge of their ability to participate in the American 
political process.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, proponents of campaign finance reform 
say it is an assault on the Constitution. I say that McCain-Feingold is 
an assault on an incumbent's protected system that is rapidly losing 
faith with the American people. These claims about government takeover, 
and government regulation, and big government, of course, resonate with 
me as well as they do many other people, because I'm against that. I'm 
against the more intrusive government and I'm against more and more 
regulation, and I'm against government doing things that it should not 
be doing, especially the Federal Government.
  However, I think we have too quickly divided up into liberal and 
conservative counts and Democrat and Republican counts on this issue. 
As I read my history, Senator Barry Goldwater, the father of modern 
conservatism, in many people's view, was one of the most avid 
proponents of campaign finance reform a few years ago.
  So let's go back to the basics. People who are basically conservative 
think that the Government ought to do the things the Government ought 
to do and

[[Page S10012]]

not things that it shouldn't. What should the Government be doing? Mr. 
President, if the way we elect our Federal officials and the 
motivations that they come to Washington with is not relevant and is 
not something that we ought to be concerned with, then what is? That is 
the basis of Government. Government does a lot of things it should not 
be doing, but how we elect our Federal officials, who are the arbiters 
of everything else in society anymore, seemingly, is certainly the 
subject of our attention.
  As I listen to this debate today, it is almost like under the current 
system we don't have regulation and that we are trying to impose 
regulation on an otherwise pristine system. We have the most heavily 
regulated system in the area of campaign finance reform than almost any 
other area in the country. Under the current system, you have a Federal 
Election Commission with detailed rules, timeframes, limit frames and 
so forth. You have $1,000 limitation; you have $5,000 limitation for 
PACs; you have $20,000 limitation as far as committees are concerned; 
an overall $25,000 limitation as to how much you can contribute in 1 
year. You have soft money rules, you have hard money rules, you have 
percentages of soft money you can do certain ads with--there has to be 
a certain percentage of soft and hard money. You have transfers of 
money going back and forth between State and national parties, all 
under a detailed set of rules that nobody understands. To run in a 
political campaign any more nowadays you have to have a team of lawyers 
and a team of accountants and a team of people keeping up with all the 
regulation.

  That is our current system. My friend from Utah talks about our 
friend Jack Kemp and Mr. Forbes and how it would be much better if we 
had a different kind of system in our Presidential primaries. That is 
our current system he is complaining about. I think he makes some good 
points there. I think we ought to look at limitation amounts there. I 
think they are somewhat ridiculous and too low. All of that is our 
current system.
  So, what we are doing here, it looks to me like in McCain-Feingold is 
basically two things: One is a ban on soft money; secondly, it is 
saying about independent expenditures, that if you have candidate 
expenditures, you call them that and treat them that way.
  Under the current law, express advocacy is regulated now. It is 
regulated now. This idea that we are going to cut off somebody from 
saying something or that we are going to shut people up and close 
people off is simply not true. That makes interesting rhetoric but it 
is not in this bill, it is not in this legislation.
  What it basically says is two things. In 1974 we passed a law and we 
went along for almost two decades, electing Presidents under that law. 
Not a breath of scandal as far as campaign finance reform under that 
law and under the rules that we set forth then, for soft money problems 
in that entire period of time.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. THOMPSON. I yield.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Did I hear the Senator say since the passage of the 
Presidential system it has been scandal free?
  Mr. THOMPSON. Up until----
  Mr. McCONNELL. Until 1976, the year in which the explosion of soft 
party money occurred, was right in the Presidential election cycle.
  Mr. THOMPSON. No, the soft money problem really rose its head in 
about 1988, but it really didn't become a major problem until this last 
election.
  Mr. McCONNELL. But the Senator is referring only to years in which 
there are Presidential elections, which are the years of the system he 
is applauding, where you have voluntary spending limits that the Court 
upheld; has the Federal system been effective, I ask my friend from 
Tennessee?
  Mr. THOMPSON. For about two decades we did not have a soft money 
problem because people abided under the rules laid down in 1974.
  What has happened since that time is that soft money has come into 
the system and now we have about $262 million in soft money in the 
system that we didn't have back in 1974 when we laid down the rules at 
that time.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Let me make sure I understand what the Senator is 
saying. The soft money problem has arisen in the Presidential years, 
for the most part. Is it not reasonable to assume that the reason the 
candidates having been spending the limit of the taxpayer funds, 
turning to soft money, it is a way to get around the spending limit, is 
that not correct?
  Mr. THOMPSON. Yes, yes, that is absolutely true.
  That, therein, lies the problem. We had a system for about two 
decades whereby people made a deal with the Government to run for 
President, and that is we will take millions of dollars in public money 
and we don't raise any private money.
  The Supreme Court held that up, it worked fine, no scandal, no 
constitutional problem, until we decided that there was not enough 
money in the system and that there were ways that we could get more 
money for our Presidential campaigns. We have just seen the results of 
that. The soft money situation started. We figured out a way that money 
could be given to the parties for the benefit of the Presidential 
candidates, and you could just add that, to the public financing that 
we already had. And so in this last campaign we had about $262 million 
in soft money, in addition, which was about 10 times what it had been a 
decade before. And that is the situation that we have now.
  So some people are saying, look, let's basically go back to what we 
thought we were doing in 1974. A lot of people disagree with that, 
certainly. A lot of people don't think we ought to do that. A lot of 
people don't like things that smack of public financing at all. A lot 
of people don't realize that we have public financing for Presidential 
campaigns in this country, as anathema as that phrase is. But now, 
after a situation that worked pretty good for a while, nobody was 
saying there wasn't enough money in our Presidential campaigns. I don't 
think anybody was saying we didn't have enough commercials during the 
Presidential years. It worked pretty good. But now we have this 
additional influx. We had a system that some people opposed and that 
some people thought was good. It was our system. To say that it was 
totally laissez faire, free market, unregulated is simply unfair. We 
had a system. Now we have seen a gaming of the system, whereby millions 
of dollars in addition though that is put on the plate.
  Now, at a minimum, if that is what we ought to want to do, we ought 
to revisit this as Congress. This is not something Congress came up 
with. Congress didn't say soft money was a good idea. Congress didn't 
say the current system we have is what we want. It was done little by 
little, by the FEC, by a court decision here, and by the FEC; advisory 
opinions. And then one party would see an opportunity for soft money 
and the other party, instead of blowing the whistle, would jump on the 
bandwagon, too. So we now have tremendous sums of money poured into our 
Presidential campaigns that we did not envision in 1974.
  Now, again, if we think that is a great idea, let's come back as a 
Congress and put our stamp of approval on that. But just under the idea 
of congressional prerogatives alone, under the idea that we should not 
let some commission downtown set such important rules for us, where we 
have legislated something quite different, under those ideas, we ought 
to revisit it. That is another good reason why we are having this 
debate.
  On the other hand, some of us don't think that is such a good idea, 
that we should not only revisit it, but we should do something about 
it. I think that, basically, what we are doing in the soft money debate 
here is going back originally to where we were when we last legislated 
in this area. When we passed the current law in 1974, we did not say it 
was OK for major corporations and major labor unions to give hundreds 
of thousands of dollars for the benefit of Presidential candidates in 
addition to what was publicly financed. We have gotten totally away 
from what we said we wanted.
  Mr. SPECTER. Would my distinguished colleague yield for a question?
  Mr. THOMPSON. Certainly.
  Mr. SPECTER. On the issue of soft money and where it has gone, there 
is

[[Page S10013]]

a very strong point that if the definition of issue advocacy, issue 
commercials, contrasted with advocacy commercials, if that distinction 
was sharpened up--my colleague and I discussed this at some length with 
Attorney General Reno when she appeared before the regular judiciary 
oversight hearing back on April 30 and the questions were propounded to 
her about these commercials on both sides, Republican and Democrat--
Republican commercials extolling the virtues of Senator Dole, and 
Democrat commercials extolling the virtues of President Clinton, and 
knocking each other in reverse. Those were somehow viewed as 
being issue commercials as opposed to advocacy commercials.

  The question I take up with my colleague at this point, which is a 
corollary to the soft money, is whether the soft money would really 
have so much effect, and whether we couldn't contain it by 
congressional enactment on the question of constitutionality. I would 
be interested in the answer to two questions of the Senator, the 
distinguished lawyer Senator Thompson. If we said that--short of saying 
vote for President Clinton or vote against Senator Dole, instead if the 
likeness appears and the language is very strong urging the election of 
one and the defeat of another, I ask if that would satisfy 
constitutional muster, in the Senator's opinion, and what effect that 
would have on limiting the utility of all this soft money that we found 
in the 1996 Presidential election?
  Mr. THOMPSON. As the Senator knows, much of the soft money went for 
those kinds of ads. I would not be supporting a provision that I did 
not think would pass constitutional muster. What this bill does is 
basically what the Senator says. It says that you look to the 
circumstances. If something is called an issue ad, but it is really an 
ad for a particular candidate, it is called such. If it walks, quacks, 
and acts like a duck, we are going to call it a duck. You can still say 
whatever you want to say. Nobody is shutting anybody off. There are no 
free speech implications here. But if you are really going to do a 
candidate ad--and in some cases, we have candidates going around 
coordinating with independent groups, and the groups run an attack ad 
on their opponent, the candidate dictates where and when that ad is 
going to be, and all the details and the composition of it, and it is 
called an independent expenditure.
  What this would do would be to say we have a regulatory system. 
Whether anybody likes it or not, we already have a regulatory system. 
If it is an express ad for a particular candidate, it is already 
regulated. What this legislation would do is say you would look at the 
factors, look at the given situation. If it is an express ad, if it is 
really for a candidate, we are just going to call it that, and it is 
going to be regulated under the same system express ads are regulated 
under now.
  Mr. SPECTER. If the Senator will yield further, on the issue of so-
called independent expenditures, they appear in many cases--if not 
most--not to be independent at all, and that there is, in fact, 
coordination. Some people on the independent expenditure group are 
members of the candidate's staff collaterally, and there is good reason 
to flout the law because the remedies taken by the Federal Election 
Commission are often very late and very ineffectual. One piece of 
legislation that is pending would sharpen the requirements as to 
independent expenditures, calling for a tough affidavit with strong 
penalties, in addition to the regular perjury penalties, for the person 
who makes the so-called independent expenditure. And then finally, the 
FEC would require a corollary affidavit by the candidate on whose 
behalf the expenditure was made and the campaign committee to try to do 
something with teeth in it to stop the so-called independent 
expenditures, which are in fact coordinated. Would my colleague think 
that would be of some help to stop that pernicious practice?
  Mr. THOMPSON. Well, I think that is a direction that we are trying to 
head in. I am not for trying to sit down and detail what somebody can 
say or not say. That is clearly unconstitutional. You can't do that. 
The Buckley case made a distinction between contributions and 
expenditures. Basically, it said you can't regulate expenditures. 
Independent groups ought to be able to do whatever they want to do 
whenever they want to do it. But we decided a long time ago that, as 
far as campaign finance was concerned, we were electing the judges of 
our society in a way--you know, when we go to elect judges in our 
system, they are supposed to be independent. The litigants on either 
side can do things and get paid large sums of money, and so forth, but 
what you can do with regard to a judge is highly, highly narrow, in our 
system, and is regulated.
  In a sense, we are the same way. I mean, we get elected by people--
one vote, one person; it is an equal deal. No matter how poor or rich 
you are, or your status in society, your vote counts as much as anybody 
else's. We are elected. I represent all of the people of the State of 
Tennessee, no matter how many votes I get. The President represents all 
of the people of the country. We come up here and we are supposed to 
represent everybody. We are supposed to pass legislation evenhanded. We 
have different views on different things. We have support here and 
opposition there. But we are supposed to try to give it our best 
objective shot as to representing all of the people.
  Given that situation in a democracy, we decided a long time ago that 
we were going to place some rules on it, because it didn't look good 
and it didn't make us feel good and didn't give us confidence in our 
system if we saw hundreds of thousands of dollars going into the 
pockets of people from interests who we were regulating or who we were 
passing laws on, when the people maybe on the other side of the issue 
didn't have the money to do that. Are you going to be able to take 
money out of campaigns? Of course not. But we decided once upon a time 
that a person ought to have a limit of $1,000--I personally think that 
is too low--and $5,000 for a PAC, and $25,000 overall.
  We have a regulated system now because we know in our democratic 
society there needs to be some kind of control on the amount of money 
that goes into the pockets of politicians. It is pretty simple and 
basic. The Supreme Court or nobody else has ever said otherwise. The 
Supreme Court, in Buckley, has recognized that we do and we can 
regulate on the contribution side of things--on the contribution side--
how much money we can get. There is no question in my mind that we can 
regulate the soft money that is now coming into our system. This is not 
a constitutional argument. What we have now is a system that protects 
incumbents. It is a system that is becoming more and more isolated, 
more and more specialized, making it so that only a professional 
politician who has been out there raising money all his life, or some 
wealthy individual, is going to be able to be a part of the system 
anymore.
  My friend from Utah, a few minutes ago, made a very effective case 
that not only do incumbents have tremendous fundraising advantages, but 
they have other advantages. I agree with that. But that just makes the 
fundraising advantages that much more. The money goes to the 
incumbents. Maybe I just haven't been at it long enough. I have never 
run for office before this one. I had never run before about 3 years 
ago. I have run as a challenger against a person who was a 
congressional incumbent, and then I have run as an incumbent. I don't 
think we ought to get too bogged down with our own personal war 
stories, but I have seen it from both sides. I have had the 
disadvantages and the advantages of both sides of it. But all I know is 
that all the PAC money goes to incumbents. It doesn't matter what 
anybody believes anymore; it is their likelihood of getting reelected. 
Incumbents get reelected 90 to 95 percent of the time. The more upset 
the American people get with us, the more heavily incumbents become 
entrenched. I wonder why that is.
  Well, I think that part of it is what we are dealing with here today. 
For those who want to make this out as some kind of new regulatory, big 
Government scheme that we are imposing on an otherwise pristine system 
that we have here now, we heard some testimony the other day in the 
Governmental Affairs Committee, and I had heard things like it before. 
This was from a businessman, a gentleman representing a bunch of 
businesses in this country. He said, ``We are tired of this

[[Page S10014]]

system, tired of this soft money, tired of being hit up. We are tired 
of the extortion overtones of what is happening.'' What we have now is 
a system, and what we had in this country in this last Presidential 
race was people sitting in the White House--and it could have come from 
a Senate office or congressional office, or anyplace of power--making 
calls to individuals saying, ``I think it would be a good idea if you 
would send us $50,000 or $100,000.'' And they feel that it probably 
would be a pretty good idea, from their standpoint, to maybe go ahead 
and send it on.

  Now, for those who are concerned about the coercive nature of big 
Government, chew that one over for a little while. That is what we have 
now. We have gotten to the point now that, since the soft money 
situation is totally unlimited, any politician can call up, and as long 
as they go through the guise of running it through one of the parties, 
which, in turn, will inure to their benefit, they can ask anybody for 
any amount of money.
  So I think the American people look at that, and they don't think the 
system is on the level.
  It all gets back to pretty basic stuff for me. I think the American 
people look at a system where we spend so much time with our hand out 
for so much money from so many people who do so much business with the 
Federal Government who we are basically regulating and legislating on, 
and they look at that system and the amounts of money that are involved 
nowadays, and they don't have much confidence in it.
  We will continue to see those lists in the newspapers of the hundreds 
of thousands and millions of dollars of contributions and the pieces of 
legislation put up against those contributions, the implication being 
that there indeed is a quid pro quo. People look at that, and there is 
a very little wonder that we are now having less than half our people 
voting. My understanding is we only have 6 percent of the American 
people making political contributions.
  So during the last few months we have had hearings that I think have 
been very enlightening. I want to talk about that a little bit later in 
a little bit more detail in terms of some of the things that have come 
out that in large part have to do with the actions of individuals and 
the ability that we gave them to pursue unlimited amounts of soft 
money.
  I think that the first thing we have to do, of course, is have 
accountability for those who have violated the law, for those who 
engage in improper activity, as part of what we have to be about.
  I think the public record is developed now so that without question 
there needs to be an independent counsel to look at this entire mess--
not who made a phone call from what room and just focus on that--this 
entire mess that we have seen over the last several months. We need 
someone independently to take a look at that.

  But, my friends, if we think that accountability is going to solve 
our problem as far as the system we have in this country, we are making 
a terrible mistake because whoever is in power, if they have the right 
to pressure people for unlimited amounts of money, our system is 
constantly going to be and will remain a scandal waiting to happen. I 
hope that we will have learned that from this last one.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, first of all, I thank the Senator from 
Tennessee for his comments and his leadership on a lot of these issues 
with respect to this legislation, and this issue in general.
  I associate myself with the comments that he has made about the 
impact that our current system is having on the politics of our 
country. That is what this debate is about. In my judgment, this is the 
most important debate which we will have in the Senate this year--
perhaps the most important debate and opportunity that we have had to 
address the concerns of the American people, and with respect to this 
system, in many years.
  I heard the Senator from Kentucky, for whom I have great respect for 
his capacity of advocacy and depth of his commitment to this issue. No 
one should doubt that he is passionately committed to the 
interpretation he has both of the Constitution and the issues at stake.
  But, as the Senator from Tennessee has just pointed out, while it 
sounds good to suggest to people that somehow regulating campaign 
finance is going to shut down debate, the fact is the Supreme Court has 
already approved of that kind of regulation. What we see today is an 
abuse of what the Supreme Court intended to take place. The Supreme 
Court drew a distinction between express advocacy and issue advocacy, 
and properly so.

  I am confident that the Senator from Tennessee and I would agree that 
both of us want a healthy and robust debate in this country and no 
limitation on the first amendment right to discuss an issue. But there 
is a distinction between an issue and what some of the money under the 
guise of issue expenditure is seeking to do. What it is clearly seeking 
to do as an abuse of what the Supreme Court established is not to 
simply talk about the issue but rather to affect the election and 
impact express advocacy.
  The Supreme Court has made it very clear that express advocacy is 
something that seeks to defeat or help a candidate. Issue advocacy can 
discuss Social Security, it can discuss welfare reform, and it can 
discuss any of the issues that we vote on and argue about in the Senate 
without talking about a candidate--without attacking the candidate's 
record--which properly ought to be left to the campaign, in the 
judgment of the Supreme Court.
  We will argue, I think, considerably over this in the next days. I am 
prepared as we go further in this debate to discuss at considerable 
length what the Supreme Court has actually said and not said and how, 
in fact, there is nothing in McCain-Feingold that is impermissible 
constitutionally.
  What I think we need to focus on as we go forward here is the overall 
disarray of the system that the Senator from Tennessee has referred to 
and that all of us need to address as we think about how we are going 
to bring people back into a good-faith relationship with their 
Government. There isn't anybody in politics today--neither an observer 
nor a critic nor a pundit nor a participant--who could properly say 
that the American people believe this system is on the level or believe 
that somehow this whole process is responsive to their real needs.

  The poll data show that 92 percent of Americans believe that money is 
what gets something done in Washington; 88 percent of the people 
believe that if you give money, you will get something back in return; 
49 percent of Americans believe that the special interests, the 
lobbyists, et cetera, basically run the Government.
  I don't know how you can be in public life and not be concerned about 
that kind of impact on the body politic of our Nation.
  If that many people believe that their representatives are affected 
by money, we ought to be concerned about it. If that many people in 
America believe that the way you get something done is by contributing 
money, we ought to be concerned about it.
  All you have to do is listen to a fairly candid statement by one 
person before the committee the other day who, in giving something like 
$400,000 or $300,000, said that it was clearly given directly to affect 
that person's access and that person's ability to be able to get 
something done.
  Mr. President, this isn't the first time that we have heard this 
discussion here--not by any means. We have had a century of different 
efforts to try to plug what most people have accepted at one point or 
another as a series of loopholes and try to do justice to the 
relationship that we want to have with the voter.

  Mr. President, four decades ago, another Senator from Massachusetts, 
Senator John F. Kennedy, warned of the rising costs of political 
elections and the dangers they posed to the American political process. 
He said that there was the danger of political contestants ``becoming 
deeply obligated to the big financial contributors from the worlds of 
business, labor, and other major lobbies,'' and that there was the 
danger of equal access to the political system being shattered.
  That is what former President Kennedy said before he became 
President. The fact is that today equal access has been shattered. It 
has been shattered.

[[Page S10015]]

 The truth is today that all of us understand the impact of money on 
American politics, on the capacity to be elected, and on people's 
perceptions of our politics.
  Back in 1959 when John Kennedy said a solution must be found to the 
soaring costs of political contests, the total amount of money spent 
back then on all congressional races, both the House and the Senate 
total, was $6.3 million--on all the House and Senate races, just about 
1960.
  The median cost of a single candidate race for the U.S. Senate today 
is $2.6 million.
  In the Presidential contest prior to Senator Kennedy's remarks back 
in 1959, the two Presidential candidates spent a total of $12.9 
million. In the last Presidential election they spent more than $150 
million just in the money that is allowed to go directly into their 
campaigns, and over $600 million, maybe $700 million, if you count all 
the soft money that flowed as an excuse to do away with the other 
limits that have been put in place.

  Mr. President, it is very, very clear that the American people have 
reached a point where they understand that the rising costs of 
campaigning is nothing less than outrageous. Last year the House and 
Senate candidates spent more than $756 million--a 76 percent increase 
just since 1990.
  There is nothing in our economy, nothing in the increases in the 
costs of campaigning, that justifies a 76 percent increase, except the 
Armageddon of the new arms race we have for money in campaigns.
  The more money you get, the more you can blast your opponent, the 
more you can put out whatever your message is, the more you can distort 
the electoral process.
  Last year more than $4 billion was spent on all elections, and 20 
years ago it was less than $600 million.
  The American people, as Senator Thompson just pointed out, business 
people and others, are tired of having politicians call them and say, 
``Well, we need $20,000, we need $50,000, we need $75,000.''
  I think it is clear that the damage that such amounts of political 
money have done to the increase of our public cynicism is inescapable. 
These amounts heighten the perception that Federal lawmakers respond to 
the special interests and not to the public interests; that Federal 
lawmakers favor those who are greedy over the needy; the Federal 
lawmakers are, in reality, increasingly becoming Federal lawbreakers.
  We know that power has its own corrupting capacities. History has 
proven that many times over. Now we are seeing that money and power are 
becoming one and the same, and both together are having an increased 
corruptive and corrosive process on our system. Even if it were only 
the perception that that were happening, that perception is something 
that we ought to be sensitive to and willing to respond to.
  It seems to me that the headlines of the last months, while they have 
been singularly directed at our party--my party--I don't think anybody 
here in a candid discussion of this issue could not in fairness agree 
that they have embroiled both parties --all politicians; the entire 
system.
  Only a few months ago we were seeing memos circulated where 
leadership members of the Republican Party were chastising openly those 
people who give money, suggesting that they were going to get hurt in 
the legislative process if they continued to give to Democrats. Senator 
Thompson just talked about the sort of extortion air that hangs over 
this city and our system as a consequence of those kinds of threats. 
All of us are harmed by that.
  All of us ought to be reaching for a means of being able to get rid 
of the capacity of any member of the electorate to make those kinds of 
determinations.
  In the latter part of the 19th century, the chieftains of industry in 
this country found that the use of wealth served them well, and they 
used it brazenly by purchasing Senate seats from the State legislatures 
in Colorado, West Virginia, Illinois and Pennsylvania. The 17th 
amendment to our Constitution put an end to that practice, but Congress 
still had to use taxpayer money in order to investigate and determine 
the results of congressional elections in Michigan, Pennsylvania, 
Virginia, Illinois, and other States as a consequence of that.
  Abuse of campaign funds has obviously contributed to the worst 
scandals that we have known in this country--the Teapot Dome scandal 
and the Watergate scandal. And today now we are living through another 
investigation of the impact that money has on the political process.
  Mr. President, it just really is time for us to find a commonality of 
ground where we can come to some kind of compromise and agreement that 
the current system cannot continue to work. It seems to me clear that 
``the power of the Government to protect the integrity of the elections 
of its officials is inherent.'' It is something that we ought to adhere 
to.
  That is not my comment. That was something Theodore Roosevelt said in 
his fourth annual message to the Congress. He said then, ``There is no 
enemy of free Government more dangerous and none so insidious as the 
corruption of the electorate.''
  That is what Senator Kennedy was speaking to 40 years ago when he 
talked about how ``adequate Government regulation of the elective 
process [is] the most vital function of self-government.''
  Mr. President this actually goes back to the very Founding Fathers' 
efforts with respect to the kind of Government they tried to put up. In 
the Federalist Papers, James Madison pointed out, ``The aim of every 
political Constitution is * * * to obtain for rulers men who possess 
the most wisdom to discern, and the most virtue to pursue the common 
good of the society.'' And the second aim he said was ``to take the 
most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous while they 
continue to hold the public trust.''

  ``Keeping them virtuous while they hold the public trust.''
  I do not think they could have conceivably imagined the degree to 
which our capacity to go to voters and ask for their vote has become 
tied to our ability to be able to raise large sums of money.
  Mr. President, when I came to the Congress in 1985, and when I ran in 
1984, I made a decision then to try to run for office without taking 
the larger sums of money. I did not suggest then at any time, and in 
debates since then on campaign finance reform I have made it very 
clear, that if regulation of some level of political action money were 
part of the reform system I would take it. I don't think there is an 
inherent problem with political action committee money. But I do think 
that what people object to is the perception that the large amounts of 
money are what somehow distort the system. And so I have run now for 
the Senate three times without taking PAC money. I may be the only 
Member of the Senate who has been three times elected since PAC money 
was allowed and not taken it. I am proud of that, but I have to say 
that I do not know if I can continue to do that with the current rate 
of escalation in the cost of campaigns.
  Last time I ran for office in 1996, I had the most expensive Senate 
race in the United States of America--$12 million. I raised more money 
without PAC money than any other person running for the Senate--$10 
million, but obviously simple math shows that that left me a gap of $2 
million. And so now in my first year of my third term in the Senate I 
continue to spend time raising money for the race that took place a 
year ago. I continue to have to try to put away a debt assumed in order 
to run for office. I do not think people should have to assume debt to 
run for office, but countless Senators have done that, countless 
candidates are forced into doing it.

  If I believe strongly in the ideas and policies I do believe in, if I 
want them to be heard, if I want to be able to fight for them, the way 
the American system is now set up, I have to do that. You have to go 
out and look for the money. Clearly, as we have learned, this 
institution is increasingly an institution which is represented by 
people who either have their own money or have enormous access to great 
sums of money. And the truth is that challenger after challenger after 
challenger falls short for lack of capacity to stand on the same ground 
as the incumbent.
  Now, are there examples like the Senator from Utah gave where, 
indeed, a challenger may be well-heeled and an incumbent does not spend 
as much? You bet there is. I spent less than each

[[Page S10016]]

of my opponents when I was an incumbent because I was not able to raise 
as much as they were because they had their own money and they would 
write their own check. I believe that our system is out of kilter 
because of that inequity as well as the result of the amount of money 
that people have to go out and raise in the system. It seems to me we 
have an opportunity here to be able to address all of those concerns.
  I know that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have a 
particular concern about the capacity of some of our supporters to be 
able to use their structure to unfairly imbalance the playing field--
specifically, obviously, the labor movement and some other entities. I 
would want to say that I think that is a fair concern. If we are going 
to approach this fairly, then we have to find some measure of defining 
what that fairness is and of understanding that a fair playing field is 
not a fair playing field that gives our side an advantage over theirs 
or vice versa.
  But something is very clearly wrong or defined in this debate when 45 
Democrats have already signed up saying we are prepared to vote for 
this reform and only four Republicans have joined that effort. We are 
now at the magic number of 49--49 Senators prepared to vote for 
campaign finance reform. And since the only votes left to get are votes 
that must come from the Republican Party, it is fair for America to ask 
the Republicans to step up to fair reform. It is fair for the 
Republican Party to be asked now to become part of this effort to 
reestablish a connection between the American voter and those of us 
elected to represent them.
  Hopefully in the course of this debate we can find that common 
ground. But let us not hide behind phony arguments about the 
Constitution, what it does or does not say about free speech. Let us 
acknowledge that the Supreme Court has already defined the difference 
between express and issue advocacy. Let us be honest about the fact 
that the Supreme Court has already said we are permitted to regulate 
campaigns; that we are permitted to regulate contributions. None of 
those things does violence to the Constitution. And let us also be fair 
in not having some artificial debate about the new protections for 
labor.

  No one in this country is suddenly going to believe that the 
Republican Party is adopting the labor movement and is going to protect 
every member of the unions and they are going to be the ones to come to 
the floor and protect them by offering some measure that somehow gives 
them new freedom. We are prepared to codify Beck, and we are prepared 
to codify the notion that people ought to be given the right to choose, 
but what we believe they will offer is something that seeks to go much 
farther than that and becomes nothing less than an effort to kill 
campaign finance reform.
  So my hope is that this opportunity will be an opportunity that the 
American people will ultimately be proud of and they will make a 
judgment that we came together in a legitimate, bona fide effort to 
find common ground.
  McCain-Feingold-Thompson and others, myself included, is not a bill 
that many people on this side feel goes far enough. There are many of 
us who have already compromised significantly in coming to the place of 
McCain-Feingold, which may be at the very edge of what may be 
permissible to get some kind of compromise. The truth is that many of 
us on this side of the aisle think anything that leaves you going out 
raising money leaves you exposed to the question: Well, who did you get 
it from? Why did they give it to you? What did you do after they gave 
it to you?
  That is the central question that is being asked in the hearings that 
we are going through right now. The fact is that is the only way you 
will ever get away from that question: Why did that person give you the 
money? And particularly if it is large amounts of money. You will 
continue to have the corrosive connection that makes people so 
apprehensive about the current system. And ultimately I personally 
believe America will come to a conclusion that the way you eliminate 
the corrosiveness is to get the special interest money out of politics, 
allow people time to debate, allow them time to take the issues, 
organize, have adequate money to run a campaign, but do not make them 
go out with their hands out always asking for money.

  That is not what we do here. We do something less than that. But the 
truth is that even if we were to pass McCain-Feingold as it is 
currently, people are going to have to go out and raise pretty large 
sums of money still and they are still going to be left with people 
asking: What did they give you? What did you do with the money? What 
did you do for them? I think we are better off if the question doesn't 
have to be asked and we do not have the suspicion hanging over our 
heads.
  In addition to that, it seems clear to me that McCain-Feingold seeks 
also to have increased enforcement. We have no enforcement today. 
People wonder why the current system is out of control. It is out of 
control because it is set up in a way that perpetuates a lack of 
control. You have an FEC that can never make a decision; they are 
unwilling to make a decision. It is divided up evenly between 
Republican and Democrat representation so there is an even number of 
votes, nobody can break a tie, and nobody wants to come in. If we can't 
have regulation of laws we put in place, of course, we are going to 
have violations.
  So all we are seeking to do in this legislation is put a little teeth 
into the concept of enforcement. The other thing we try to do is have 
some kind of limitation on the capacity of wealthy candidates to be 
able to simply walk in unfairly and pour enormous sums of money into 
the campaign. We do it in a way that is totally constitutional because 
they are still allowed to go out and do it if they want, do it under 
another structure, but it seems to me that all we do is have an 
incentive for them not to do it because obviously under the 
Constitution we cannot limit their right to spend their own money.

  I cannot imagine that most people believe this institution ought to 
be an institution exclusive to those who have enormous amounts of 
wealth. And there is a disproportionate representation already with 
respect to that relative to most of the country. And that is not, I am 
confident, what the Founding Fathers envisioned. The McCain-Feingold 
base package that has already been scaled back from the original 
McCain-Feingold is really already a significant compromise by many 
people in the effort to achieve reform, and over the course of the next 
week or so we will have an opportunity to test the constitutional 
issues, an opportunity to test whether or not anybody is left out.
  I might just comment about that. I heard my colleague from Kentucky 
talk about how people would be diminished in their ability to 
participate. Well, once again, I point to the experience of what 
happened in Massachusetts. We had a very robust debate in 
Massachusetts, Mr. President. Many people might say we had too many 
debates. We had nine 1-hour televised debates--nine of them. I think 
five or more were statewide televised, others were on C-SPAN, a couple 
of them were local. But together with the coverage of the free media, 
the press, which I think did a good job of trying to bend over backward 
to present both points of view, both sides, a side-by-side presentation 
of issues, there was no lack of dialog and no lack of debate. But what 
we did was keep the craziness out; we kept the cacophony out; we kept 
out of this wild extraordinary race for the extra dollar the group that 
distorts. We had a campaign where people could hear the issues. We had 
a campaign where people could listen to the candidates. We had a 
campaign where there was a premium for people on the ground to be 
involved organizing, street for street, community for community.

  That is what American politics is supposed to be. And I proudly say 
that the campaign we conducted in the State of Massachusetts for the 
Senate in 1996 has been written up by most critics across the country 
as one of the best Senate campaigns in years. I know that for myself I 
never ran one so-called hard negative advertisement. Every one of our 
advertisements was comparative, so to speak. And if I had my choice, we 
would have spent half what we spent on paid advertising. But I was 
unable to secure an agreement from the Governor that we would spend 
less than the amount he chose to spend.
  I spent twice what I have ever spent in any Senate campaign on media. 
My

[[Page S10017]]

belief is that ultimately it was not money that made the difference. It 
was the debate and the public dialog and the capacity of our fellow 
citizens to learn and understand where we stood on the issues, what we 
believed, what we had done or had not done and what we wanted to 
achieve on their behalf.
  And so I believe there is a better standard, and I believe there is 
something that we can do that can be regulated here, that puts both 
candidates on an even keel but does not commit our entire system to a 
perpetual money chase and to the perpetual and increasingly corrosive 
perception that this system is up for grabs for the money which hurts 
every single one of us.
  It is my hope, in the course of the next days, as we debate this, 
that we will have an opportunity to really vote on substantive 
amendments, and that we can find the common ground for compromise.
  I have just a couple of quick comments. I know the Senator from 
Missouri wants to speak.
  I understand some of the fears that colleagues have on the other 
side. As I said earlier, I think, in my judgment, if we look at this 
fairly we ought to be able to find ways to address some of those fears. 
But in the end, notwithstanding some of the constitutional arguments 
made and notwithstanding some of the opposition that is grounded in 
sort of how the politics are played, it seems to me there are some 
people who just don't want to give up the money, who like the money, 
who recognize the advantage they have because of the money and who are 
willing to place the entire relationship of our Government and our 
citizens in jeopardy as a consequence of the advantage that money gives 
them.
  I hope, over the course of the next days, the American people will 
join this debate. Americans must make it clear that they want this 
change now. It is on the floor. If they are adequately forceful in 
letting their Senators know that this is something that does matter, I 
believe it can have an impact and ultimately make a difference.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I thank you for this opportunity to 
express myself regarding a challenge which faces the United States of 
America. It is the challenge of making sure that our political system 
operates to allow the real representatives of the people, 
representatives who will express the view and the will of the people, 
to inhabit the positions of responsibility in Government.
  The American people, I think, are convinced that the current 
political system is flawed, and I believe they are right. But I do not 
believe that the answer is some sort of broad campaign finance 
legislation that restricts core political speech; or even that says we 
will penalize people who are wealthy if they want to spend their own 
money so only the people who are even more wealthy can pay both the 
penalty and finance their campaign. I believe the focus should be on 
enforcing existing laws, not creating new ones. This administration's 
concerted policy of selling access to the White House and using any and 
all means to raise money is reprehensible. As a matter of fact, I think 
it is illegal. And the answer to such law breaking is law enforcement, 
not law proliferation.
  No doubt the administration's disregard for the law has contributed 
to public discontent. But at a deeper level, I believe that the 
sentiment that the system is broken stems from the fact that elected 
representatives of the people are out of touch with the people on all 
manner of important issues. I am reminded of Federalist Paper No. 57 in 
which James Madison emphasized that legislators must be given ``a 
habitual recollection of their dependence on the people.''
  The best way to solve the problems we face, in my judgment, and to 
provide the much-needed ``recollection of [our] dependence on the 
people,'' is not through making it impossible for people to express 
themselves, not by limiting what people can say, not by calling our 
opponents special interests. It is, though, by doing something that 
Americans have found to be a workable solution all across this country, 
and they have embraced it from the very highest office in the land to 
the very lowest office in the land. It is the concept of term limits. 
Term limits will provide true reform.
  I believe that incumbency is the real problem in our system. 
Incumbency is, and always has been, the single greatest perk in 
politics. It is the single greatest obstacle to true political reform. 
It is the way in which people obscure the view of the political 
universe by inhabiting the podium themselves, and the challenger does 
not have a chance. Committee assignments translate into campaign 
contributions; bills mean big bucks; and over and over again, no matter 
how you structure it, no matter what you say about it, the incumbent 
continues to win.

  People who have been on this floor throughout the debate so far as it 
relates to the so-called campaign finance reform talked about the fact 
that sometimes incumbents are outspent, sometimes they are not. But if 
you look at the data, the data are that in 90 percent of the cases--
more than 90 percent of the cases in the Congress--incumbents win.
  The value of incumbency is as strong as ever and, in my judgment, 
after witnessing what happens when you have campaign reform, you almost 
inevitably elevate the value of incumbency.
  One of the speakers who spoke not long ago here on the floor 
indicated he wanted to limit the amount of money that would be spent in 
a campaign. He would have done so voluntarily. Well, of course. People 
who have 100 percent name recognition will always want to limit the 
amount of money that is spent. Hershey's doesn't need to advertise that 
it sells chocolate. It is the new company that needs to advertise. 
Kleenex doesn't need to advertise that it sells tissues. It is the new 
one that does. And the incumbents will always want to put limits on 
challengers. Because whenever you limit what someone can say about you, 
and you are an incumbent, you have the only access to the marketplace. 
You have the only access to the podium. It is no revelation to find 
that those who inhabit public office want to keep the expenditures 
down. They don't want competition to be able to talk about what they 
have done or how they have performed, or to compete with them for a 
position in the marketplace. They don't want the competition to be able 
to walk in and say, ``We can do a better job.''
  We have watched it over and over again. In the 1996 congressional 
elections, which were heralded as highly competitive, here is the data: 
94 percent of all Members who sought reelection were returned to 
Washington. Incumbency remains the biggest perk of all. The best way to 
get reelected is to be elected and then to stay here. And if you have a 
chance once you are here, vote for campaign reform, which makes it 
harder and harder for anyone else to challenge your message or the 
information you send out under your frank on the letter that you don't 
have to pay postage on, financed by the Government.
  What competition there was, in 1996, came as a result of voluntary 
departures, not any weakening of the power of incumbency. Term limits, 
in my judgment, are a tried and tested reform. I happen to be a person 
upon whom term limits have operated. I was the Governor of my State. 
It's an awful good job being Governor. If anybody ever offers you the 
chance to be Governor, take it. I know a number of you in the Senate 
have previously been Governors. They are such good jobs that people 
would struggle to keep those jobs.
  Sometimes jobs are so good that people will do illegal things to keep 
them. I won't cast any specific aspersions, but we saw an awful lot of 
activity in the national election in 1996, where people were apparently 
willing to have dealings with some pretty shady characters, even folks 
from overseas, even overseas governments, in an effort to keep jobs.
  It seems to me one of the things we ought to do is to say to people: 
These jobs don't belong to you. They belong to the people of this 
country. We ought to level the playing field, occasionally, and make it 
possible for people to come in. If we are really interested in offering 
the opportunity to new individuals and to people who have not 
traditionally had access to power--for example, minorities and women--
we ought to have term limits. Term limits will open the door and we 
will find out

[[Page S10018]]

something important about the American people, and it is this: The 
American people are capable.
  There is kind of a myth around here that the Senate is an exclusive 
club of 100 people; somehow 100 people who are exclusively endowed with 
the capacity to run the U.S. Senate and our country. It is the idea 
that we are the only smart ones who could get this job done. That is 
probably as close to coming to real humor as we get in this body; it is 
laughable. The American pool of talent is not shallow. It is deep. 
There are millions of people in this country--yes, there are millions 
who could do the kind of job that is necessary to run America. That is 
the virtue of a democracy. The virtue of a democracy isn't that you get 
a few people at top and you keep them there to impose their will on the 
country. The virtue of a democracy is that the will of the people is 
imposed on those who govern. We are not here to impose our will on 
them. We are here to reflect the will of the people.

  I don't think making sure we can stay here forever and retire here, 
or be carried out feet first, is what this country is all about. Let's 
try what has already happened in a number of other settings 
politically. Mr. President, 41 Governors are subject to term limits. 
Why? Because the people want a fair system. They want public officials 
who are reminded constantly of their responsibility to the people--20 
State legislatures have term limits, countless State and local 
officials nationwide; the President, since 1951, has been term limited. 
As a result, term limits are enormously popular.
  People know they work. This is not a proposed sort of reform about 
which people know nothing. This is a proposed reform with which people 
are intimately familiar. They have seen it work in 40-plus States for 
Governor. They have seen it work in their city councils, they have seen 
it work in the Presidency of the United States. They think ``give 
someone else a chance'' is a good idea, and so do I.
  In Maine, 64 percent of the public voted in favor of term limits. In 
my home State of Missouri, voters have supported every term limits 
proposal ever placed on the ballot, by majorities as high as 2 to 1. In 
California, 63 percent of the people voted for term limits. In Florida, 
term limits passed by better than a three-fourths majority. Even most 
incumbents do not win by these margins, and rightly so. Most incumbents 
don't reflect the will of the people as dramatically as term limits do. 
Term limits mean no more politics as usual.
  What do I mean by that? It is just this simple. A think tank known as 
the Cato Institute issued a study that compared the voting behavior of 
recently elected Members, those who have just come from the people, and 
compared it with long-serving Members who have been ensconced as 
incumbents. They concluded that term limits would have made an enormous 
difference. Here is what it said. The study concluded that, recently 
elected Members exercise greater fiscal restraint--were more careful 
with the public's money--and were more responsive to voters. Why am I 
not surprised? Those findings were confirmed by a study of the National 
Taxpayers' Union.
  Specifically, the Cato study found that based on the voting patterns 
of recently elected Members, a term-limited Congress would have 
defeated the tax increases of both President Bush and President 
Clinton, and would overwhelmingly have supported the balanced budget 
amendment to the Constitution. No wonder people want term limits as a 
way of restoring confidence in government, because it would do what we 
really need to have done, and that is that we need to make sure that 
the will of the people is what is reflected here.
  You know, low-cost elections are not the ultimate objective. The 
ultimate objective is that the will of the people should be the supreme 
law of this land. Above all else, term limits serve the much-need 
function of providing legislators with this awareness that they need to 
have, according to Madison in the Federalist Papers, ``a recollection 
of their dependence on the people.''
  Term limits provide a reminder that the power of legislators comes 
from the people, and that it is no hardship to return to live as one of 
the people. As a matter of fact, it would be a condition to be imposed 
on everyone, were we to embrace term limits.
  Experience has proven that we do not need a professional legislature. 
It has been a professional Congress, on the other hand, that has 
brought us such successes as the House bank, the midnight pay raises, 
and the savings and loan debacle.
  What is wrong with the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform 
proposal? I will say this, it will make matters worse by strengthening 
incumbents.
  The McCain-Feingold proposal, scaled down or not, is an incumbent 
protection proposal masquerading as reform. This should not come as a 
surprise to us, because it is certainly no surprise to the American 
people. Laws written by incumbents in Washington cannot realistically 
be expected to have any effect other than to entrench the incumbents in 
Washington.
  The McCain-Feingold proposal does nothing to address the problem of 
incumbency. Indeed, it makes it worse. The proposal would actually 
strengthen incumbents by regulating the one route by which challengers 
can hope to offset the advantages of incumbency, and that is free and 
open discussion of the issues. No matter how you slice it, McCain-
Feingold is a restriction on the ability of people to discuss public 
issues, some of which could be substantial embarrassments to 
incumbents.
  I think it is fine to restrict the politicians, but I am not in favor 
of restricting the people. Perhaps that is the difference between these 
two proposals. McCain-Feingold would restrict the people in their 
ability to speak. Term limits would restrict the politicians in their 
ability to perpetuate themselves in office.
  The trappings of office provide an incumbent with a highly visible 
lectern. You can get to the podium easily if you are in the Senate or 
the House, and you can address the voters. The incumbent's voice can be 
easily amplified from this position of power to drown out all others. 
Any proposal that limits the ability of challengers and their 
supporters to present a different vision--whenever you say that the guy 
on the outside can't speak clearly, can't speak effectively, can't 
speak loudly, can't compete with the guy on the inside--impoverishes 
the very foundation of America, which is public debate. You exacerbate 
the problems that exist within the system that we have, and that is 
that incumbents are already too strong. They should be limited.
  We limit the President. We limit Governors. We limit members of the 
houses and senates of many States. We limit city councils. We limit 
terms in the PTA. We ought to limit terms in the U.S. Congress. Let's 
put limits on the politicians, not limits on the people. Let's limit 
the perpetual service of politicians, not the political activity of our 
citizens.
  Nothing--nothing--is more threatening to an incumbent than an 
informed individual who votes on the basis of principle rather than on 
the basis of personality. What good is an incumbent's name recognition 
with voters who want to focus first and foremost on the issues? And 
what does the proposal do? This proposal would limit the ability of 
people to express themselves and spend money to talk about issues. Of 
course, if it is all just down to name recognition, I bet there are a 
lot of incumbents who would like a proposal that would just eliminate 
the ability of people to talk about issues.
  Cutting back on issue advocacy limits the ability of voters to inform 
themselves and to discuss the issues. Here we have a proposal that is 
going to cut down on the ability to form groups, to feel free about 
being involved in those groups, cut down on the ability of people to 
make contributions to those groups, cut down on the ability of those 
groups to discuss the issues.
  The McCain-Feingold proposal is not just bad policy, though; it is, 
in my judgment, unconstitutional. Proponents of campaign finance reform 
talk in terms of reforming the campaign finance system because they are 
afraid to say what they are really advocating. What they are really 
advocating is the banning of political speech. I know everybody gets 
tired of political speeches, and we all make our jokes about political 
speech, but there is nothing closer to the heart of liberty

[[Page S10019]]

itself, there is nothing closer to the core of what it means to be free 
people than to have free, uninhibited, unbridled capacity in the 
culture and among its citizens to speak politically. Political speech 
is noble. It is the opportunity to put feet to freedom, to actually 
make a difference.
  In a world in which it costs money to reach voters, if you limit 
spending, you are going to limit the ability of people to speak. It is 
that simple. Oh, we limited spending before, and what did it do? It 
meant that the nonincumbent had a tough time, and it also meant that 
people who were very, very wealthy could find their way into the U.S. 
Senate and House of Representatives. I submit to you that we have our 
share of very, very wealthy people here. Of course, we know that there 
is no way ultimately to limit what a person spends out of his or her 
own pocket because the Constitution has been so interpreted.

  So all we do when we limit everyone else is to say we want the 
wealthy to have more and more advantage as they singularly and uniquely 
can approach the podium and be heard in a society which ought to hear 
the voice of every man and every woman based on merit rather than based 
on their own personal wealth.
  These proposed limits on speech are flatly unconstitutional. The 
Supreme Court said as much 20 years ago in Buckley versus Valeo. The 
text of the first amendment has not changed and cannot be changed in 
this Chamber.
  The scaled down version of McCain-Feingold still violates the first 
amendment, in my judgment. The only thing truly scaled down by this new 
version of the legislation is the people's right to free speech. The 
people's right is scaled down, their right to speak freely, to express 
themselves, those on the outside to challenge those of us on the 
inside. It is compressed. I sometimes wonder why I wouldn't want to 
stop people from being critical of me. But you know, I think we ought 
to be above and beyond our own personal interests here. We ought to be 
talking about the public interests, not the personal or political 
interests of incumbents.
  Specifically, the law attempts to limit the ability of groups to 
associate a candidate with his record on issues that matter most to the 
group. Now wait a second. The law attempts to limit the ability of 
groups to associate a candidate with his record. I can understand how 
there would be a lot of folks in this Chamber who would not like for 
groups of people to know what they have done or to be able to tie a 
candidate for reelection with his record.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Will the Senator yield just for a short observation on 
this very point?
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Go ahead.
  Mr. McCONNELL. In fact, the Senator from Missouri is absolutely 
correct. It would give the Federal Election Commission new powers to go 
to court to seek an injunction on the allegation of a ``substantial 
likelihood that a violation is about to occur.''
  In other words, the point the Senator from Missouri is making, the 
FEC would be going to court to get an injunction to shut people up so 
they couldn't criticize our records.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Senator for his comment. It is a chilling 
comment to think that the FEC, related to the Congress, could intervene 
to ask a court to stop someone from criticizing the Congress. It makes 
you wonder whether or not this is not a bill to transport us all to 
some regime in some other land. The soil of America would find such 
activity to be so repugnant that you would think it might cause an 
earthquake the dimensions of which have never before been understood.
  America stands for something profoundly different. America stands for 
something. And it says that when you vote for something here, you 
should have to stand and answer to the people and you shouldn't be 
protected by an election committee or some campaign finance reform 
which would keep you from being charged with having voted as you did, 
which would keep the people from holding you responsible. God forbid 
the day in America when someone is free to vote here and not be 
responsible for that vote and can call upon some part of Government to 
protect himself or herself from having to respond to the people and 
explain the vote. Such an endeavor, as pointed out by the Senator from 
Kentucky, is flatly unconstitutional, and it is a shocking outrage to 
the conscience of freedom-loving Americans.
  Incumbents enjoy the ability to trumpet the favorable aspects of 
their record through franked mail. They enjoy high name recognition. We 
get to stand on the floor of the Senate, and C-SPAN proclaims our 
message. We speak it ourselves. And so-called campaign finance reform, 
is to come in and deprive our competitors from the opportunity to speak 
their message. I can't believe that a nation based on competition would 
want to yield the potential for that competition.

  It certainly does not cure the bill's unconstitutionality that it 
restricts issue advocacy only during the weeks leading up to the 
election. Those happen to be the weeks that are relevant. The 
suggestion is that, well, we are going to allow people to do issue 
advocacy but not right before the election, so we will only forbid it 
when it really counts.
  The first amendment of the U.S. Constitution is not something to be 
taken lightly. Free speech, political speech, is not something to be 
taken lightly, not something to be tampered with, not something to say, 
``Well, we'll allow you to have free speech so long as it doesn't 
matter, but when it gets to be important, when it is time for that 
speech, you lose it.'' Well, I see the hands of time are running out 
and you all are being victimized again by another so-called short 
Senate speech which is going rather long.
  I want you to know that I do not believe this so-called campaign 
finance reform is real reform. I believe that this is the kind of thing 
that would impair our ability to have the kind of political dialog and 
debate that is fundamental and necessary, and I intend to propose as a 
substitute to this, term limits, which are a real reform. They have 
been tried and tested. They are no pig in a poke.
  Since 1961, the Presidency of the United States has been term 
limited; 41 States across America have term limits for Governors, for 
State legislators in a number of States, city councils, as I indicated, 
clubs, PTAs. People know what term limits can do. They know about the 
need to rotate fresh ideas and people close to the constituency through 
public office. Term limits provide true reform; campaign finance 
provides the illusion of reform.
  I plan to offer term limits as a substitute for the McCain-Feingold 
version of campaign finance reform. I want to force a vote on true 
political reform, not illusory reform that will be struck down by the 
courts.
  There is just one clear answer as far I am concerned. The answer is 
to limit the politicians, not to limit the citizens. Limit terms, not 
speech. A viable and vigorous political debate in this country is 
essential to the survival of this democracy. We know we can do with a 
new set of politicians in office. As a matter of fact, in many offices 
across this Nation, we have seen that when we rotate people through 
those offices, we get better service. No wonder people endorse term 
limits. We should limit politicians, not speech.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
  Mr. GRAMS. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I would like to take a few moments and discuss some of 
the points raised by my colleagues today on the subject of campaign 
finance reform.
  Proponents of campaign finance reform have expressed concern over the 
cost of Federal election campaigns. One Senator stated that the cost of 
campaigns has increased 73 percent over the last 10 to 20 years. 
However, the cost of most things in life have also increased. For 
example, the Federal Government has grown so much over the last three 
or four decades that it spreads out and touches nearly part of our 
lives. In fact, there was a study which found that the Government 
involves itself in about 60 percent of everything we do today.
  The Federal Government's intrusion in the lives of my constituents 
has led many of them to either become involved in campaigns or travel 
to Washington to have their voices heard about the role of the 
Government in their lives. Congress should not suppress the

[[Page S10020]]

ability of Americans to have their voices heard.
  If we go back to the level of Government that we had in 1930, we 
would not see the need for the number of people who have to travel out 
here day after day, year after year to get their points across, to let 
the Government know how certain legislation is going to affect them, 
good or bad.
  We often hear the phrase, ``The system is broken.'' The average 
campaign today costs about $4.5 million on average and the cost should 
be debated. However, the cost of political campaigns is still less, as 
we heard many times, than we spend every year on advertising for potato 
chips, yogurt, or toothpaste.
  So are the campaigns getting out of hand in the amount of money we 
spend? No. In fact, there are those who argue that we need to have more 
Americans involved in politics to have their voices heard. That is what 
makes a great democracy. The more involved you can get in what the 
Government does, the more that Government is going to respond to your 
needs and the needs of the country.
  Mr. President, the system is broken. It is a club for millionaires or 
could become a club for millionaires. If we continue to impose new 
restrictions, that is exactly what would happen. It would only be 
millionaires who would be able to run for office. So, in other words, 
we would cut off the average American's chance of ever running or 
holding any public office, to come and bring concerns to the floor of 
the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, or even in the State 
houses.
  I have also heard people say that ``Fundraisers used to be held 
around Senate schedules. Now it's just the opposite, that the Senate 
schedules are held around fundraisers.''
  That isn't true in my office. We try to spend the vast majority of 
our time doing the work that we were sent here to do. Yes, we are going 
to face a campaign; yes, we are going to have to raise money, but we 
are sure not going to make the work that we were elected to do a lesser 
priority. I do not believe most of our colleagues have done that. But 
that is one of the charges issued today.
  If we increase the limits on the ability to raise X amount of dollars 
or we are required to accept smaller contributions, we will discourage 
many individuals who would like to campaign and serve in Congress. 
These individuals will have to spend more time trying to raise money 
than doing the job that they were elected to do. It gets to be a money 
chase, as we have heard here many times today.
  Each election, however, is like a basic ad campaign. Every candidate 
needs to communicate a message. Every candidate needs to be able to go 
out and talk to the voters to tell them what he supports, what his 
agenda will be, how he is going to vote on the important issues.
  If he does not have a chance or the opportunity to communicate his 
view to the voters, how are they going to know what this candidate 
represents? How are they going to know what to expect from him, and how 
are they going to make a decision between candidate A and candidate B?
  When you look at costs--I believe it was said earlier, too, today it 
is about $1.2 million to buy a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl. Now, 
we are not going to advertise during the Super Bowl. But if you go into 
an average television market across the country, an average spot for 30 
seconds today is going to cost you over $3,000. Now, again, that is a 
lot of money, but you are going to have to run a decent campaign again 
to deliver your message.
  We need to inform our voters. If we cannot, as candidates cannot tell 
our voters how we are going to vote, what our values are, what we are 
going to stand up for, how we are going to vote on special issues, you 
can bet somebody is going to tell them that. But they are not going to 
tell it probably the way you would like. In other words, we are going 
to have opponents out there. You are going to have special interest 
groups, independent expenditures, or, more terrifying, you are going to 
leave it up to the media, you are going to allow the media to frame 
this debate.
  I do not want a newspaper or TV station, liberal or conservative, to 
be out there telling the voters what they think my position is or to 
frame my campaign in their words. As we know, I have views about how a 
lot of these stories and editorials are written. So if we leave it up 
to the editorial pages of our newspapers, or television reports and 
other stories, I do not think they are going to get the accurate 
picture of the campaigns or the candidates involved. A truly informed 
electrorate will result from preserving the free speech of people to 
become involved in these campaigns and the right of candidates to 
communicate their agenda.
  What we are hearing today in the Senate is to put on more limits. 
``The system is broken.'' We hear that again. ``The public is 
cynical.'' I do not think they are cynical about honest campaigns. But 
they are from the headlines of those who have broken campaign laws. 
That is what you should be cynical about.
  We heard Senator Kerry here just a few minutes ago talking about his 
last campaign, spending in the neighborhood of about $12 million. That 
was a tough race. That is a lot of money. But have we heard any charges 
of illegalities involved in the race? No. So did the amount of money 
corrupt the race? Evidently not.
  So it isn't the money. But it is real chutzpah--if you know what the 
term is; that is really ``in your face''--when we have those who are 
out there calling the loudest for campaign finance reform saying that 
it could even involve a special session of Congress. I would call that 
``a good defense being a good offense.'' In other words, let us deflect 
the real problem of the issue today, and that is over the problems of 
past campaigns, those who have broken the laws but yet are calling for 
new laws to be implemented. In other words, the chutzpah is similar to 
a saying in this morning's paper, ``It's like the person who killed his 
parents and then argued for mercy from the courts because he was an 
orphan.'' ``Stop me from killing again. Do not allow me to go out and 
break these laws again. Let's have new laws on the books,'' just like 
somehow new laws are going to prevent the intent of breaking them.

  There has been discussion about independent expenditures and 
establishing new limits. But, again, we cannot muzzle everybody. We are 
going to allow the unions to continue spending and collecting millions 
of dollars. No attempts really to rein in that abuse. So in other 
words, when it comes to reforms, it is OK to reform only if it limits 
my opponents more than it would limit me. Now, that would be good 
reform, but, again, in whose eyes? If we cannot do across-the-board 
reform, then no reform is good reform.
  A good defense is a good offense, again, to divert attention from the 
problems at hand. A lot of people are looking at hearings going on in 
Congress this year, and you hear the rhetoric or the spin that this is 
all about campaign finance reform.
  This is about those who broke existing laws, who abused the laws in 
the last campaign. That is what these hearings are supposed to flush 
out and look at, not by putting new limits on what we can say, who can 
say it, when we can say it. Who is going to determine that? Who is 
going to become a new censor?
  What that would do is take away more of your rights as individuals to 
participate in any campaign, whether Democrat, Republican, independent, 
whatever it might be. New limits would only mean average Americans 
would have new constraints placed on how they could become involved in 
the political process. In this instance, groups, individuals and 
candidates would be muzzled in a free country.
  Again, who would be out there talking? Again, ``The system is 
broken.'' Their answer, ``Put more controls on free speech.'' But in 
order to do that, it means bigger Government. ``More Government is the 
answer. If we can only put a few more controls, put a few more limits, 
spend a few more dollars somewhere else, somehow that is going to fix 
the system.''
  The system may need some reforms. It may need some tinkering. It may 
need some changes. But I think overall our system is not broken. Have 
laws been broken? Has the system been abused? Yes, it has. That is 
exactly what the Thompson hearings have been trying to find out. But 
they have been blunted by those who have been accused and, yes, even 
charged with

[[Page S10021]]

breaking those very laws. They say, ``Well, if we did, we're sorry, but 
we need to push for new laws. We need new changes.''
  If there are those in Congress or any place else who would sell their 
integrity for a $2,000 contribution rather than representing the 
millions of people back home--by the way, an individual contribution is 
somewhere around the neighborhood of $25 per contribution--if there are 
individuals who would do that, they would be easily found out. If they 
are going to vote that way or betray the trust back home, they are 
going to be found out. If they are found out, they should be thrown 
out.
  But I believe nearly all, if not all, Members in this body are very 
honorable men and women who work very hard to try to serve their 
constituents back home, Republicans and Democrats, having the best 
interests of their constituents back home at heart. They try do that 
with a lot of honesty.
  But what are Americans to think if they hear day after day that 
campaigns, that Congress, is corrupt, that it is for sale to the 
highest bidder? Again, if there are such individuals, they will be 
found out and they will be thrown out. But I believe the public concern 
of campaigns in a large part is not because of the system itself but 
because of those who have abused the system, those who have broken the 
laws, and they remain unpunished.
  New laws, I do not believe, will cure the intent of those who want to 
break them. So I say, let us open the system, let us have full 
disclosure--Who contributed to the campaigns? How much did they 
contribute? --so that the public can judge who is supported by whom, 
which groups are involved, what are the issues at stake.

  Let us not put the Federal Government in control. Isn't public 
involvement better than having censorship by the Federal Government? 
You know, most people have a real concern today about big Government. A 
lot of people say they do not think a bloated bureaucracy can provide 
the best service today. They have sent many of us here to Washington 
with the charge of streamlining and downsizing the Federal Government 
that they believe is out of hand, unwieldy, spending too much money.
  Is the way to fix the campaign finance system by putting more control 
of the system into the hands of the Federal Government, to give them 
more control, more power, and, yes, even censorship on what you can 
say, when you can say it? Is it negative? Is it positive? Who is going 
to decide all of that?
  I believe Americans as a whole want the ability to participate and to 
participate in the elections as they choose.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCONNELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Let me thank my colleague from Minnesota for a fine 
contribution to this very important debate and assure him I agree with 
his views virtually 100 percent. An outstanding contribution.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. TORRICELLI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grams). The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. TORRICELLI. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, at the outset for my participation in this debate I 
congratulate Senator Feingold and Senator McCain for their months of 
effort in constructing a comprehensive program to deal with the problem 
of campaign finance and for bringing the Nation and the Senate to this 
moment of debate, but also Senator Daschle, whose tireless efforts have 
also brought us to this moment of judgment, and Senator Lott for 
scheduling this debate.
  I, also, in listening to this morning's discussion, want to 
compliment Senator McConnell. For, while I do not share his ultimate 
judgments on the McCain-Feingold bill, he reminds us of an important 
principle in the debate. And that is, there may be problems in how we 
finance our campaigns, the problems of money in American politics, but 
Senator McConnell reminds us there are real constitutional limitations 
in how we approach this issue and that ultimately the Nation does not 
suffer from too much political discussion or too much debate among 
candidates but too little. So while I differ with his ultimate 
judgment, I think the Senate is well served by his limitations in how 
we approach this question.
  Mr. President, for my own part, I enter this debate with a reminder 
to all of my colleagues that there is nothing short of the credibility 
of our entire form of Government that is at issue. The world's oldest 
constitutional democracy, founded on the principle of majority rule, is 
now threatened by the fact that only a minority of Americans 
participate. It is therefore a question of our entire credibility of 
governance. The United States has experienced for more than a 
generation the continuing relentless decline in voter participation.
  In the last elections in 1996, 49 percent of the American people 
participated in choosing the leadership of the Federal Government. It 
is, Mr. President, a serious issue. For a long time the leaders of the 
U.S. Government have found reasons to excuse the fact that most 
Americans do not participate in this form of Government, that the 
United States alone among the great democracies may now be governed by 
the judgments of a minority of our people alone.
  I have heard all of these debates. First, we convinced ourselves that 
it was not convenient for most Americans to participate in our 
elections. So we enacted postcard registration to make it simpler. But 
still the American people did not come.

  Then we convinced ourselves it was because people were not aware of 
the timing of elections. So through public service announcements and 
then the hiring of campaign workers, we filled the airwaves, we called 
people on the phone, we visited their homes to remind them, and still 
they did not come.
  On more than a few occasions we appealed to people's patriotism to 
participate in the electoral system. And after all these efforts, most 
Americans are still not participating.
  Perhaps, Mr. President, there is another reason, painful to admit, 
but unmistakable: The majority of Americans who are not participating 
in Federal elections did not forget to vote, it wasn't inconvenient to 
vote; but by their failure to participate they were expressing 
themselves. Not participating in an American election is a means of 
expression. It is a vote of no confidence, not simply in the candidates 
or the political parties, but in the process itself.
  In truth, there are myriad reasons. The sterility of the debate, 
perhaps because people perceive no real choices, no relevancy of the 
political discussion to their own lives. Perhaps it is because the 
decline in the quality of journalism itself, where character 
assassinations become a substitute for discussion of real issues. Or 
perhaps most important, most insidious, it is how we are financing our 
campaigns. The sense of most Americans that voting is not a determinant 
of a decision, where money has become the principal determinant of the 
outcome of struggles for political power.
  There is perhaps no better witness for this argument than one Roger 
Tamraz, who appeared before the Governmental Affairs Committee only 
last week. By his own words he had come to the conclusion that though 
an American citizen, he did not vote in Federal elections because 
contributing $300,000 was a better and more effective means of 
participating than ever casting a vote for a candidate of his choice.
  Mr. President, I will admit that I rise on the floor of the Senate 
today as an advocate of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill by a 
circuitous route. Like many of my colleagues, I have feared campaign 
finance reform because of the threat of Government regulation of 
political speech. I have believed that free, fair and open competition 
among the political parties was the best means to assure that all 
parties were heard and that the American people ultimately ruled by 
majority will.

  I can no longer, after the expense of the 1996 election and my own 
involvement in the U.S. Senate campaign in my own State of New Jersey, 
remain with that conclusion. The campaign reform bills of 1974 and 
their revision in subsequent years are no longer working. There is no 
governing electoral authority in the Federal statutes.

[[Page S10022]]

  Through a series of decisions by the Federal courts, the practical 
expense of the political parties, the governing statutes are being 
evaded, violated, or are simply irrelevant. There is no governing 
authority in this country today for the financing of Federal campaigns. 
While this Congress has addressed the issue innumerable times, we have 
made no progress. In a decade, this Senator has voted on 113 occasions 
to reform campaign finance and come to no conclusions. The Senate has 
considered 321 pieces of financial reform legislation, heard 3,361 
speeches, and filled 6,742 pages of the Congressional Record with 
debate. It cannot go on. We are at a genuine critical point in the 
political history of this country.
  Some would argue that there are some modifications that can be 
enacted without fundamental reform, and we will meet our responsibility 
to improve the process, declare success and simply move on to another 
Federal election in 1998. I am of a decidedly different view. I believe 
it would be worse to deal with this problem in the margins and declare 
that we have done much than to deal with this properly and fail and at 
least be honest with the American people that the problem exists. That 
is the choice because many, I will predict a majority, of the U.S. 
Senate, will decide that we can ban the use of soft money in the 
political process, do nothing about independent expenditures, express 
advocacy, the cost of television time, overall campaign spending, and 
still declare success.

  To me, Mr. President, that will be the worst outcome because this 
problem is not only serious, it is complex, and goes to every aspect of 
the campaign finance system.
  First is the problem of controlling express advocacy groups. There is 
a real threat that the national political system is evolving into a 
debate where special interest groups will argue over the heads of the 
American people in multimillion-dollar campaigns in which neither 
candidates nor political parties are able to participate. Single-issue 
advocacy groups with virtually unlimited funding, distorting the 
issues, steering the campaigns, with candidates who are unable or 
without the resources to even participate. An American political system 
with campaigns by surrogates.
  The McCain-Feingold bill, by at least attempting to limit the ability 
of these organizations to distort candidate's positions or enter into 
the debates as their surrogates, addresses this issue. But without this 
provision, the overall legislation would be meaningless, and indeed in 
my judgment, counterproductive.
  There is, of course, the issue of foreign money where not only must 
the law be clear, but the penalties high, where people who seek to 
participate in our system but do not share our nationality. There is 
the obvious problem of soft money, unregulated, undeclared, unknown 
participants in the financing of Federal campaigns who opened a door 
which has now become a monstrous window through which millions of 
dollars flow, distorting the very purpose of campaign finance 
disclosure or control.

  There is the effort at the prompt disclosure of campaign 
contributions so that every American makes their own judgment about who 
is contributing, how much, what they represent, and whether they can 
then identify with a candidate receiving those contributions. They are 
all a part of the McCain-Feingold legislation, each critical, but each 
an integral part that if eliminated from the legislation weakens the 
whole effort at reform.
  But then finally there is one aspect of the McCain-Feingold bill that 
has not survived to this debate on the floor of the Senate, but in my 
judgment must be added before genuine reform has been achieved and this 
Senate concludes this debate. It is the issue of reducing the cost of 
television advertising. Behind the spiral of rising campaign costs is 
the issue of the cost of television advertising. There is no increased 
cost in American campaigning without the cost of television 
advertising. They are one and the same--inescapable in the conclusion. 
The cost of campaigns have increased 72 percent in the last 6 years 
alone. That is overwhelmingly driven by network television. In my own 
campaign for the U.S. Senate last year, 84 percent of all the money 
raised went to television advertising.
  An amendment will be offered to this legislation, appropriately 
called the challengers' amendment, because largely incumbents will 
always raise the funds necessary to feed the television networks but 
challengers cannot. Unless and until we reduce the cost of television 
advertising, this becomes a process open to incumbents or 
multimillionaires only. The average American will never be able to 
participate in this process and will be excluded at the Senate door.

  But make no mistake, the vote for campaign finance reform is not a 
vote for the McCain-Feingold financial legislation. It is a vote for 
the challengers' amendment. Consider a process where as in the State of 
New Jersey the average cost of a television advertisement is $50,000. 
Some single 30-second ads can cost $100,000. What is it that is being 
purchased? The television networks control this time by a public 
license. The air time belongs to the American people. It is granted to 
the television networks by license, for free. They then return to 
candidates for public office who seek to debate public policy issues, 
to communicate with the American people who own this air time and 
charge millions upon millions of dollars.
  Now here I agree with the Senator from Kentucky. The answer is not to 
reduce the amount of time that candidates have on the air to discuss 
their issues. It is not to regulate what those candidates communicate 
to the American people.
  The Senator from Kentucky said less than 1 percent of all the 
advertising last year in the most expensive political race in American 
history was political advertising. In the midst of deciding about the 
American future debating these important critical national questions, 
American people were still hearing more about the sneakers of choice, 
the best and worst toothpaste, or how it is they should feed their cats 
and dogs. There is not too much political discussion, but it is too 
expensive. It is wrong.
  In a proper process, the great corporations that own the television 
networks as a means of political responsibility should have come 
forward and offered this time for candidates to debate or reduce the 
cost of advertising to discuss their respective issues, but they have 
not. They were challenged and they failed. Now it is up to the 
Congress.

  Some would say it is unconstitutional. It is the taking of property 
of the television networks. But indeed we crossed that threshold a long 
time ago in reducing only marginally the cost of advertising for 
charities and political debates. The problem is we reduced it only 
marginally, leaving the cost far, far too high. There is no right of a 
corporation to own a license. It is a license for air time that belongs 
to the public. It is granted and it is responsible that costs should be 
reduced.
  Sometimes it is almost unbearable as a Member of the Senate to hear 
the television networks with their anchors on the evening news berating 
the political system, challenging the candidates for public office, the 
President and the Members of the Senate to do something about campaign 
finance reform, reduce its cost, reform the process. The problem is the 
cost being charged by the television networks themselves. What are all 
these fundraisers? What is it we are doing running around the country 
raising money endlessly, from interests where we should never be 
seeking money, spending time that should be spent with citizens 
debating issues? It is to feed the networks that are demanding this 
money. When the challengers amendment we will have a chance to do 
something about it, to reduce the costs.

  Mr. President, that comes to a final objective in McCain-Feingold and 
the whole system of reform. Every American knows that there is a 
problem of too much money. I have made clear my own belief that there 
is also a problem of too much cost in advertising. But there is one 
other element that drives this reform effort. If most of the problems 
of the American people were represented by those who had money, this 
reform legislation would be much less important because there is more 
than enough contact between candidates for the U.S. Senate and the 
House of Representatives and people who are able to donate and attend 
fundraisers. We see

[[Page S10023]]

thousands of Americans at hundreds of fundraisers. There is no lack of 
communication or discussion of public policy issues. The problem is 
that most of the American people who have the most serious problems in 
their own lives don't have the money to attend these events. And since 
they cannot attend these events, they are not being heard and their 
problems are not getting addressed. They are outside the process.
  What is driving the need for campaign finance reform, in my judgment, 
is to free the candidates to once again discuss issues, to campaign on 
the streets of America with people who have no money but do have real 
concerns.

  Mr. President, this is a debate that it would be difficult to 
overestimate in its importance. The McCain-Feingold legislation is 
about campaign finance reform, but it is also about something much more 
fundamental. We are debating the integrity of the U.S. Government, 
whether or not the American people, a majority of whom no longer 
participate in this electoral process, can once again identify with the 
national political debate and at some point in the future return to 
participating in this system of government.
  I do not know how long, if we fail to reform this process, levels of 
participation will continue to decline while the Nation maintains 
political stability and a belief in this system of government. But I 
know it cannot go on forever. We may or may not succeed with the 
McCain-Feingold legislation. Perhaps some will succeed in passing a 
lesser measure dealing in the margins of reform and leaving the larger 
problem unanswered. If they do so, they do a disservice to the Senate 
and to the country.
  Mr. President, before this debate has concluded in the coming days 
and weeks, I will return again. But I am grateful for this chance to 
share a few opening thoughts on what is a critical moment in the life 
of the Senate.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, before the Senator from New Jersey 
leaves, if I might just impose upon him for a few moments. I was 
listening to his comments and his enthusiasm for the portions of the 
McCain-Feingold bill that seek to make it more difficult for citizens 
to engage in issue advocacy and to change the rules with regard to 
independent expenditures.

  I make reference to a letter I received from the American Civil 
Liberties Union earlier this year discussing those two types of citizen 
expression. Quoting from the letter:

       Two basic truths have emerged with crystal clarity after 20 
     years of campaign finance decisions.

  That is after a whole string of cases, beginning with Buckley.

       First, independent expenditures for ``express electoral 
     advocacy'' by citizens groups about political candidates lie 
     at the very core of the meaning and purpose of the first 
     amendment.
       Second, issue advocacy by citizen groups lies totally 
     outside the permissible area of Government regulation.

  I say to my friend from New Jersey, on what basis does he reach the 
conclusion that there is any chance whatsoever that these portions of 
the McCain-Feingold, since there is no hint that the courts are ever 
going to tamper with express advocacy--there is a whole line of cases, 
the most recent one about 3 months ago--does my friend from New Jersey 
think there is going to be some revelation in the courts? Are they 
going to rethink 20 years of decisions in this area? Or does he think 
we ought to just pass, blatantly, unconstitutional legislation 
regardless of what the Supreme Court says?
  Mr. TORRICELLI. In response to the Senator from Kentucky--though it 
is not the thrust of his question--I will return to the major inquiry. 
I will share publicly what I discussed with the Senator previously 
privately; that is, my concern that if he is correct that the Federal 
courts will not allow McCain-Feingold, as currently written, to deal 
with express advocacy or independent expenditures, then we face 
a fundamental problem in that express advocacy and independent 
expenditures would be unregulated while we would be reducing the 
ability of the political parties or candidates to express themselves. 
We would, therefore, be dealing with campaigns by surrogates over the 
heads of the political parties and the candidates.

  In my judgment, that does not constitute reform, and it raises the 
question, as I expressed to the Senator privately, whether there should 
be a severability clause at all in this legislation because, in my 
judgment, if you cannot constitutionally deal with express advocacy and 
independent expenditures, I, speaking only for myself, do not believe 
that we can regulate the candidates in the political parties as 
envisioned by this legislation. That issue remains before the Federal 
courts.
  Now, finally, dealing with the Senator's question, it is my own 
belief that the Constitution can be satisfied, and I hope we can gain 
the Federal Court's approval, by allowing express advocacy of issues by 
people who do not name candidates or a campaign in their express 
advocacy and, hopefully, channel people's interest and finances to the 
political parties and the candidates separately. Therefore, every 
citizen has two routes of involvement--the political parties and a 
candidate of their choice or express advocacy without advocating an 
individual candidate independently. But I will concede to the Senator 
from Kentucky, I believe it is an open constitutional question. There 
is an invitation here to the Federal courts. I simply hope we can get 
an affirmative reaction from the courts. But I do not disagree with the 
Senator from Kentucky; it is an open issue.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, if I may regain my time. The Senator 
from Washington has been waiting to speak. Mr. President, it is not an 
open constitutional question; it is a closed constitutional question. 
There is no chance that the courts are going to allow these kinds of 
restrictions on independent expenditures and issue advocacy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington is recognized.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, many of the constitutional questions that 
are debated here today in the context of the validity of this bill have 
already been debated this year in a more open and more refreshing 
manner. When those who propose to limit free speech on political issues 
had the courage to propose an amendment that would restrict the first 
amendment right of free speech on political issues, while they were, in 
my view, entirely wrong, while they proposed a disaster to the most 
fundamental basis of free government, they at least had the 
intellectual integrity and consistency to recognize that what they 
wanted to do was inconsistent with the first amendment as it has 
existed from the time of the first Congress until this day.
  Now they produce a bill with two fundamental flaws. In most 
respects--many at least--it is clearly unconstitutional and, in every 
other respect, it is bad policy. I think I would like to make a few 
remarks about the way in which political debates are conducted in this 
country surrounding election campaigns. I will try to deal a little bit 
about the way the McCain-Feingold bill treats these various 
communications. And perhaps I will elicit a few additional remarks from 
my friend from Kentucky in doing so.
  In 1974, when the present campaign finance law was passed--with the 
support, I may say, of just those people and organizations and 
newspapers that now find how great a failure that 1974 law was and, 
like the drunk waking up the morning after with a hangover, prescribed 
the hair of the dog that bit them--their focus was on candidates, on 
the source of money for candidates to express their ideas through the 
mass media. In that focus, they prohibited a wide range of sources of 
money and greatly limited other sources of money, so that a candidate 
may not take more than $1,000 per election from an individual, or more 
than $5,000 from a political action committee, an organization that was 
created, in effect, by that 1974 law. So they placed severe limits on 
the one kind of political debate for which each candidate is totally 
responsible. No candidate can avoid responsibility for what he or she 
says in public, in print, or on television. This forum of advocacy is 
now subject to severe limits as a result of the 1974 law.
  Now, it is interesting to note that much of the support for the kind 
of bill or the kind of ideas that are reflected in McCain-Feingold, the 
kind of ideas

[[Page S10024]]

that have just been presented by the Senator from New Jersey, stem from 
the fact that mass campaigning costs money, the money has to be raised 
by individual candidates, and the candidates don't like to spend the 
time raising money that the 1974 law requires. So we are told that the 
candidates ought to be supported by a subsidy from the Federal 
Government or a subsidy from the private sector in the form of 
noncompetitive prices for television advertising.

  Mr. President, I can certainly sympathize with the views of those who 
do not like raising money for their own candidacy. I couldn't possibly 
claim that I do myself. But to exactly the extent that it takes 
candidates too long to do so is a direct result of the reforms of 1974. 
And this reform in McCain-Feingold will make that situation far worse 
because the limitation on sources for candidates are tightened. So 
candidates, in order to get their own message out, will have to spend 
more time raising money.
  As an incidental, I think it is not at all unhealthy that we who have 
this rather exalted status as U.S. Senators should be forced to go hat 
in hand to our constituents and to others interested in the political 
process and show a little bit of humility and ask for that support. 
Many of the supporters of reform feel that that is somehow demeaning, 
and that the Government ought to come up with the money that they use 
to engage in their candidacies. Personally, Mr. President, I think they 
might just as well advocate lifetime terms for Senators. Certainly no 
one would be subject to pressures from campaign contributors under 
those circumstances. But the very mention of that process simply shows 
that an attempt to avoid responsibility is an attempt to avoid 
responsibility, whether it is called lifetime terms and avoiding 
democracy entirely, or whether it simply comes in the guise of saying 
that the Government ought to pay for these campaigns.
  In any event, Mr. President, the first defect, though perhaps not an 
unconstitutional defect, of this bill is that it takes the very set of 
rules that have created the demand for more rules for indirect spending 
and makes them worse. It takes the very criticism of the time 
candidates spend raising money and requires them to spend more time 
making money, and does it in the one area in which the candidate can be 
called to order, can be held responsible by his or her constituents: 
that is to say, spending directly by a candidate on his or her own 
campaign.

  The immediate result of a restriction of this first form of free 
speech--that on the part of candidates--was to push those who are 
vitally interested in the decisions that we and other candidates across 
the country make with respect to public policy away from supporting 
candidates into supporting political parties.
  Most academics over the course of the last 30 or 40 years have 
decried the decline of political party discipline and accountability, 
and have said that one of the shortcomings of American democracy is 
that parties don't mean very much; that they have very little political 
influence even over the candidates who are elected using the party 
name, and have called for methods of creating a greater degree of 
cohesion and party responsibility. Yet, when the two major political 
parties have discovered a method of raising money and are advocating 
directly or indirectly the election of candidates carrying their name, 
that very system is now considered by the reformers to be such a 
terrible tragedy as to cause the introduction of a bill that will make 
it practically impossible for either major political party to raise 
sufficient amounts of money, either to call for a certain degree of 
responsibility on the part of its candidates, or to get its message 
across to the American people.
  I think I do agree, I say, Mr. President, to my friend from Kentucky, 
that that portion of constitutional opinion of the 126 scholars, or 
whatever the number was that he mentioned, with respect to limiting 
contributions to political parties, is probably correct. I seriously 
doubt a form of contribution can be prohibited. But on the basis that 
contributions to candidates can be limited, contributions to the 
parties can probably be limited. It doesn't make it a desirable course 
of action. It makes it a highly undesirable course of action.

  Mr. McCONNELL. Will the Senator yield at this point?
  Mr. GORTON. I will.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I think the Senator from Washington is correct. There 
are simply no cases on the issue of whether the Congress could in 
effect federalize the two national parties; what McCain-Feingold seeks 
to do. Soft money by definition means non-Federal money. Our two great 
national parties get involved in Governors' races, county 
commissioners' races, legislators' races, and so on.
  This bill seeks to basically turn them into Federal parties, and take 
away their ability to participate outside the Federal system.
  The Senator from Washington is entirely correct. There simply aren't 
any cases on that point because nobody has ever thought that was a good 
idea before.
  So I think my colleague is correct. Even if maybe some court would 
rule that you could do it, it is not a desirable result.
  Mr. GORTON. The answer to that from my perspective, as the 
perspective from the Senator from Kentucky is, of course, it is not. Of 
course, it is highly undesirable. It will atomize the political system. 
It will make Members far more free than they have been even in the past 
from any loyalty as a party, and thus reduce the ability of a Congress 
or of any other body to reach coherent decisions, but, more importantly 
than that, will reduce the ability to communicate a coherent set of 
political ideas to the people of the United States in connection with 
election campaigns. That is why it is so tremendously undesirable. Even 
if I am correct that it is constitutional to create such limits, they 
certainly violate the spirit of the first amendment which is designed 
to create a field in which the widest range of political ideas can be 
communicated in the broadest possible fashion.

  However, when we get to the third way in which money can be spent to 
communicate political ideas, I find myself in total agreement with the 
Senator from Kentucky. That has to do with direct expenditures on 
advocating the election or the defeat of candidates by persons 
unconnected with political parties.
  Before I get to that, we started with the fact that money that is 
given to and spent by candidates certainly carries with it a huge 
responsibility. Candidates cannot avoid responsibility for what their 
political ideas are that they express with their moneys they spend on 
their own campaigns. They get a degree of protection from their own 
political party when it spends money. They can say ``No, that really 
wasn't quite right. I didn't really believe in that attack on my 
opponent.'' It is hard to shed that responsibility completely because 
each candidate has chosen a political party, and its political party's 
name appears beside his or her name on the ballot. But the 
responsibility of a candidate is only indirect.
  In other words, the party's advertisements, the party's 
communications bluntly can be less responsible than the candidate's own 
expressions. The candidate has a certain degree of invulnerability from 
any such irresponsibility.

  But, by definition, when another group, or another wealthy 
individual, decides that the election, or the defeat of a candidate, is 
important enough to want to spend a significant amount of money on it 
and engages in that activity without consulting the candidate or the 
party, that communication beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt is 
protected by the first amendment--beyond the slightest shadow of a 
doubt.
  This complex and Byzantine form of regulation in the present law, 
which would be made more complex and more Byzantine by the passage of 
McCain-Feingold, raises this question of whether or not expenditures 
are actually independent, and creates a bonanza for lawyers and for 
accusations. But it doesn't need to exist in an intelligent system. But 
clearly when those expenditures are independent, they can advocate the 
election, or the defeat of a candidate, with entire impunity. They are 
protected by the first amendment. They ought to be protected by the 
first amendment. They will continue to be protected until we repeal, or 
modify, that first amendment, and decide that we ought to choke off 
free speech on political ideas.

[[Page S10025]]

  Well, obviously, the candidate who benefits from these independent 
expenditures has absolutely no responsibility for them whatsoever. 
However scurrilous or inaccurate they may be, they are not the 
candidate's fault. They are independent of the candidate. The 
organization of the individual who was presenting them or paying for 
them and does not appear on the ballot can't effectively be held 
responsible in a political sense for that form of communication.
  So, first, in 1974 we forced expenditures from the most responsible 
use to a less responsible use. Now, if we pass McCain-Feingold, we 
force them into an entirely irresponsible channel, even when we are 
dealing directly with the election or the defeat of candidates. But, 
Mr. President, the real point is we cannot stop the money from being 
spent.

  The decisions made by the Congress are vitally important to people's 
lives, and the people whose lives are affected by them are going to try 
to affect elections for membership in this body and in the House of 
Representatives. Obviously, they have to have that right in a free 
society.
  Well, then we move on to the fourth method of communicating ideas. 
That goes to the benefit of this debate under the title of ``issue 
advocacy.'' Again, any individual, any group, has a total complete 
protected right to communicate ideas or views about political ideas. 
Again, these reforms create this totally artificial lawyer-enriching 
distinction between an independent expenditure on behalf of a candidate 
and issue advocacy, an issue different but a distinction in the real 
world, but one that suddenly becomes very important when you want to 
get Government involved in all of these ideas.
  Were the advertisements by the AFL-CIO all through the last election 
campaign that said, ``Tell Congressman X to stop destroying Medicare'' 
issue advocacy? That is what the AFL-CIO claims. In fact, of course, 
they were designed to defeat candidate X in the next election.
  Mr. President, let us be absolutely certain that the AFL-CIO and 
every other organization has a perfectly totally protected 
constitutional right to engage in that activity, and to engage in 
independent expenditures directly at the same time.
  That is a separate question as to whether or not we ought to require 
a labor union, or any other voluntary organization organized primarily 
for one purpose, to not spend the money of its members on an entirely 
different political purpose without their consent. Clearly, we can 
require that consent in any reasonable way which we propose, but once 
that consent is granted, the constitutional right is absolute.

  Then, fifth, Mr. President--and the Senator from Kentucky outlined 
this question I thought with great simplicity and clarity and elegance 
a couple of hours ago--fifth, of course, we have the newspapers and the 
television and radio stations, the forms of mass communication in this 
society which enter into this struggle gleefully, at great length, 
continuously and totally protected by the first amendment.
  We on this side of the aisle can complain about the fact that most of 
the major metropolitan newspapers, editorial writers and their 
reporters are biased to the left, but none of us for a moment claim the 
right to control their speech or to say that they can't write 
editorials or that we have the right to say their news stories are 
biased and keep them out of the newspapers or out of television 
stations.
  I must say, and I trust that the Senator from Kentucky will agree 
with me, when we use this pejorative ``special interest,'' these 
newspaper editorial writers do have a special interest in restricting 
all other forms of free speech about politics so that they can occupy 
the field alone or almost alone and greatly increase their influence 
over the actions of the voting public.
  Mr. McCONNELL. If I could ask my friend from Washington, I listened 
carefully to his observations about independent expenditures, which are 
so-called hard money, federally regulated within the FEC jurisdiction, 
and his observations about non-Federal money, soft money, which is 
outside the Federal jurisdiction, both of which there are whole lines 
of cases--I have counted 13 here just in the few moments I 
was listening to Senator from Washington--making it abundantly clear 
there is nothing we can do here in the Congress to restrict either.

  My question to my friend from Washington is, if a Member of Congress 
were sort of cynically approaching this issue and his real goal was to 
weaken, for example, the Republican National Committee, would he not be 
pretty safe to advocate some kind of new restrictions on independent 
expenditures and issue advocacy since there is literally no chance the 
courts would uphold it and take the gamble that a court might, never 
having ruled in a whole area of party soft money, weaken the parties 
with a ruling saying it is possible to federalize the two parties; 
organized labor would then, as the biggest force engaging in issue 
advocacy, still be totally unrestricted, as you and I think they should 
be. And since the Republican National Committee responds to those issue 
advocacy campaigns with its soft money, would not such an approach 
benefit substantially, it could be argued, our dear colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle for whom the AFL-CIO issue advocacy is almost 
100 percent favorable?
  Mr. GORTON. There is little question but that that would be the 
result. In fact with my own views on where the constitutional line is 
likely to be drawn, it seems to me that would be almost the inevitable 
result of the passage of McCain-Feingold. Its restrictions on money to 
political parties might well be upheld, probably would be upheld at 
least in part. It is possible that they would be upheld in their 
entirety. Their other restrictions will inevitably be found to be 
unconstitutional.
  So we have now restricted the candidate's ability to communicate his 
or her ideas. We have restricted the political party's ability to 
reflect their ideas and the ideas of their candidates, the Democratic 
Party as much as the Republican Party. But because, at least as 
politics are constituted today, those additional interests, especially 
organized labor, are primarily on the Democratic side, we have enhanced 
their ability to communicate, or we have increased their competitive 
ability to communicate. Let's put it in that fashion. More of the 
airwaves, more of the mass media will reflect their views. For that 
reason, because of the general bias of most newspapers and their 
reporters and their editorial writers and television commentators, 
Republican candidates historically depend far more on their own ability 
to raise money and the ability of their party to raise money than have 
candidates on the other side.

  But there is a risk. The law of unintended consequences could easily 
result in a few years in a reversal of that situation, and the benefits 
of the spending might very well end up on this side of the aisle. 
Certainly the unintended consequences of 1974 are exactly what we are 
dealing with here today.
  My focus, however, is on the fact of responsibility. It is 
appropriate for voters to hold candidates responsible for the ideas 
that they communicate. It is reasonably appropriate for them to hold 
political parties responsible. But they cannot hold candidates 
responsible for a form of communication over which the candidates have 
absolutely no control. So negative campaigning, it seems to me, will 
increase rather than decrease with the passage of this bill. 
Irresponsible charges, unprovable charges, false charges will increase 
rather than decrease if we should pass this proposal.
  But the fundamental point is the amount of money in the political 
system will not decrease at all because those who feel vitally affected 
by what happens in politically elected bodies will find a way to spend 
that money, will be protected by the Constitution in their spending of 
that money, and will just do it in less responsible channels than they 
do today.

  That, it seems to me, is the policy argument against this proposal. 
In fact, if we want to make campaigns more candidate oriented and more 
issue oriented, we would at the very least raise the limitation on 
contributions to candidates to the level at which they were in 1974 by 
reflecting the ravages of inflation since then, and we would encourage 
contributions to political parties. What we would do--I am certain that 
the Senator from Kentucky agrees with me--is we would see to it the

[[Page S10026]]

source of those funds is reported contemporaneously and prominently. 
The immense amount of time and effort and money that is being spent on 
investigating the Democratic National Committee and the Presidential 
election of 1996 would, I am certain, have been absolutely unnecessary 
had all of these contributions and all of their sources and all of 
these activities been public knowledge at the time at which they were 
given, the time at which those actions were taken. Why? Because it 
would not have happened that way.
  Mr. McCONNELL. If my friend will yield, in fact the Democratic 
National Committee had the option to report in October, chose not to, 
for the very reason we all know now, that it would have been horrible 
publicity. So the act of rather contemporaneously disclosing, as my 
friend is pointing out, would have created at least a decision on their 
part, Are we going to take the money and take the heat or are we going 
to forgo the money? Disclosure would have been the best disinfectant.
  Mr. GORTON. As it was they could take the money and avoid the heat.
  I thank the Senator from Kentucky for his courage in this matter and 
the clarity with which he speaks on it. We simply cannot, consistently 
with the Constitution of the United States, limit political speech. We 
can only limit responsible political speech. We can only force money 
from responsible challenges into less responsible ones. We can only 
increase the power of the press, the very group that is most anxious to 
limit speech by others than its own members, and/or do what some 
proposed to do just a few months ago, say the first amendment doesn't 
work anymore and we better change it. As I said at the beginning of my 
remarks, that may have been, as it was, terrible policy, but it was at 
least intellectually honest. To present us with an unconstitutional 
bill is neither.
  Mr. McCONNELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I thank my good friend from Washington for his really 
quite straight observations about this debate. They are right on point. 
He has articulately pointed out that in a country where the Government 
is $1.6 trillion a year, it is not unreasonable to assume that people 
would want to influence in whatever way they could the decisions that 
are made that affect their lives so greatly. The Court has made it 
perfectly clear that the ability to speak and to influence the course 
of events in any way that is constitutionally permissible is going to 
be protected, and the only really honest debate, as the Senator from 
Washington pointed out, was from those who stood up and said we ought 
to amend the first amendment for the first time in 200 years to give 
the Government the power to control political discourse. The good news 
is, Mr. President, only 38 Members of the Senate voted to amend the 
first amendment for the first time in 200 years. The first amendment is 
going to be secure today and it is still going to be secure when the 
debate on McCain-Feingold is over.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum, Mr. President,
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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