[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 14 (Tuesday, February 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H505]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    HOUSE MUST VOTE ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM DESPITE SENATE ACTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Barrett of Nebraska). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 21, 1997, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Miller) is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, if all things go according to 
plan, in several hours the Republican leadership in the United States 
Senate will succeed in killing campaign finance reform in that body. 
This will be a tragedy of enormous proportions.
  Regardless of what action the Senate takes, however, the House must 
be allowed to vote on campaign finance reform this spring. This Speaker 
has pledged that we will. Currently, it is still on the schedule.
  I hope that defeat in the Senate will not mean that that will lessen 
the appetite for our leadership to bring this to the floor. The House 
should be allowed to debate, to offer amendments and to have a free and 
open discussion of how we reform the system that finances our 
elections.
  Campaign finance reform is crucial not only to the democratic process 
in this House but it is crucial to all Americans. Because it is the 
lack of campaign finance reform that continues to allow vast amounts of 
money from industries to come into the Congress, to distort the 
outcomes of the democratic process and America's consumers to pay at 
the marketplace. They pay in higher pharmaceutical prices and drug 
prices because of campaign contributions in the extensions of patents. 
They pay higher cable rates because of campaign contributions. They see 
that the effort to reform HMOs, managed care practices in this country 
that the public finds unacceptable, are now being thwarted by a 
concerted campaign effort by the National Association of Manufacturers.
  Time and again we see that public resources are sold cheaply because 
of campaign contributions by the affected industry, by the oil and gas 
industry, by the mineral industry, by the grazing industry, by the 
broadcast industry. Time and again Americans find that their tax rates 
are increased. They find that the costs they pay in the marketplace are 
increased because of the influence of these large, large contributions 
to the politicians in the United States Congress.
  The time has come to have an open debate and to pass campaign finance 
reform. If we do not, we will find that the consumers of this country, 
the taxpayers of this country, will continue to be the losers in this 
system. But, also important, we will continue to see the erosions and 
the underpinnings of our very democratic principles and our democratic 
institutions as the vast waves of soft money overwhelm what the 
decisions of local voters are in districts, the vast waves of soft 
money that very often are anonymous and that dictate the outcome of and 
influence the outcome of these elections.
  The time has come for the Congress to be square with the American 
people. Not rig the outcome, as is being done in the Senate, but to 
have a debate where competing plans can be offered to the House.
  Two weeks ago, 100 Democrats wrote Speaker Gingrich to demand he 
honor the pledge to hold a bipartisan vote this spring. Earlier, 30 
Republicans wrote to the Speaker calling for him to schedule a vote; 
187 Democrats have signed a discharge petition calling for a fair and 
open vote on competing proposals on the House floor.
  This should not be a structured debate so we only get one 
alternative. There are many good ideas on both sides of the aisle, and 
we ought to spend time. It is not as though this Congress is working 
hard. The French have been debating whether they should vote and work 
on a 35-hour workweek. This Congress has been working on a 35-hour 
month. So there is plenty of time to have this debate, to have it open, 
to let people participate and let them vote on these competing efforts 
to bring about campaign finance reform.
  If we do not, we will go into another election where, at the end of 
that cycle, we will see a recurrence of the campaign scandals by both 
parties, by individual campaigns and by organizing committees. The 
American public deserves better than that. The time has come now to 
start to set out the parameters of that debate, and I look forward to 
statements by the Speaker and the majority leader as to how the debate 
will be handled in the coming months.

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