[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 132 (Monday, September 29, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H8118-H8119]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Doggett] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, let me begin by commending our colleague, 
the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Hutchinson], for the remarks that he 
just made. I think that he made some very good points about the need 
for us to address this whole issue of soft money, and I fully support 
the initiative that he and our colleague, the gentleman from Maine, Mr. 
Tom Allen, and other freshmen Members, against considerable resistance, 
have maintained in offering the Bipartisan Campaign Integrity Act.
  Madam Speaker, indeed, I was the Member who stood here on the floor 
last Friday and asked Speaker Gingrich personally when he was in the 
Chair to grant us consent to take up and consider that bill last week. 
It seemed to me appropriate that we should be considering campaign 
finance reform on the same day that our colleagues across the hall in 
the United States Senate were considering that issue last Friday, but 
instead, we were denied that opportunity.
  It seems to me that the kind of bipartisanship that the gentleman 
from Arkansas has just demonstrated in working, both Democrats and 
Republicans together, to address this issue is the very kind of 
bipartisanship that has existed in the Senate, with the leadership of 
Senator McCain joining with Senator Feingold to propose realistic ways 
in which we can address this problem of the money chase that affects 
people of all political philosophies in both parties, devoting in many 
cases more time to finding the funds to maintain themselves in office 
or to achieve office than to attend to the public's business.
  So I would say, first, I come tonight to agree with my Republican 
colleague, and I will say secondly that I agree with comments that many 
of our Republican colleagues have made on this floor recently 
concerning the need to enforce existing campaign finance laws.
  I read with alarm the reports in the New York Times and otherwise 
about three campaign aides to the Teamster chief making guilty pleas 
about illegal money and reelection of the Teamsters tied to a scheme 
including Democrats. There are already three people that have pled 
guilty. I want to see that fully and thoroughly investigated, fully and 
thoroughly prosecuted, along with any other violation by anyone on 
either side of the political aisle, the political philosophy, of our 
existing laws.
  The problem that brings us here tonight, because we are not an 
enforcement body of existing laws, is not those existing laws and such 
violations as may or may not have occurred. To me the problem is that 
what is legal is not right.
  What is legal under existing campaign finance laws is the ability of 
special interests to pour in millions and millions of dollars that 
influences what happens in this Congress every day and every evening. 
What is legal is not right, by the view of the American people, who 
watch their Congress coming increasingly under the control of special 
interests who can afford to dump more and more money, soft money, to 
soften up the political process.
  What I find indeed amazing were the comments this weekend of 
colleagues, both Speaker Gingrich here in the House and various Members 
of the other body, saying that they had a solution to the problem of 
campaign finance reform. What is their solution? They do not think we 
have enough money in the system. They think that all of the existing 
reforms in terms of campaign finance limitation, they want to have 
campaign finance reform by repealing the existing laws and by allowing 
anyone to pay whatever it costs to buy whatever it is they need in the 
political process.
  I do not believe that people who have studied our system, the 
ordinary person who is out there working, trying to make ends meet, 
that they begin to believe the nonsense of those who perhaps have spent 
too much time focused on how to raise the money for the next campaign 
instead of how to make ends meet out in the real world; that anyone out 
there with good sense, looking at this system, thinks that we can make 
it better if we allow the big boys to pour in even more money than they 
are funneling into the system already; money that distorts the 
legislative priorities, that results in a tobacco company being able to 
come in here and give more soft money to the Republican Party than any 
other special interest in the first 6 months of this year, and then 
come along in month 7 and they get a $50 billion tax break tucked into 
page 300-and something of

[[Page H8119]]

the balanced budget bill; to have another contributor who was an 
individual family contributor who contributed about $1 million in the 
spring of this year, and then come along in month 7, and they got a 
pretty good tax break buried in that balanced budget bill, also.

                              {time}  1930

  That is the way this system has worked, and that is what is wrong 
with the system. Too much time is focused on fund-raising and not 
enough time on good public policy. We can change that by bringing 
campaign finance system reform to this floor for full and open debate.

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