[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 14 (Tuesday, February 24, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S867-S869]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I want to thank those who have 
participated thus far in this debate about campaign reform. I am sure 
that many of those who view C-SPAN with any regularity are experiencing 
a sense of deja vu about this debate, wondering whether or not we 
haven't already had debate very similar to this and whether we are not 
stuck in the same spot, whether we are ever going to stop talking about 
it and actually start moving toward some resolution. Today we are about 
to find out. This will give us the opportunity for the first time to 
vote this afternoon at 4 o'clock to indicate to the American people 
that, indeed, we have resolved to deal with the extraordinary problems 
that we have in campaign finance today. This is probably going to be 
our best chance in a generation for meaningful campaign reform, and a 
clear-cut vote is something that will allow us to move to that next 
step toward resolution. We do not need any procedural excuses, no 
amendment trees, no obfuscation. This will be clearly an up-or-down 
vote on the McCain-Feingold bill, through a tabling motion, that we 
have sought now for some time.
  The vote on Senator McCain's amendment answers the question, are you 
for reform or not? A vote against McCain-Feingold is a vote, in my 
view, to end reform, at least for this Congress, once again. I am very 
proud of the fact that each one of the members of the Democratic caucus 
will stand up and be counted. And my hope is that a number of 
Republicans will join us in this effort. The only question is how many 
Republicans and Democrats will come together in the middle to make this 
a reality this afternoon.
  I believe the fate of campaign reform rests in the hands of those who 
have not yet publicly taken their positions with regard to campaign 
reform. It has been a generation since the last time we passed any 
meaningful legislation having to do with campaigns. In 1971 and in 
1974, Congress enacted major reforms that first limited the amount of 
money in politics and, second, required candidates for the first time 
to disclose how they got their money. Today those laws are outdated and 
virtually useless, and some have been circumvented by new decisions 
and, as a result of those decisions, loopholes that have been created 
in the campaign finance law.
  Other aspects of that reform effort in 1971 and 1974 today are 
unenforced or completely unenforceable because of the systematic 
defunding of the FEC, the Federal Election Commission. Still others 
have been overturned by narrow and, many believe, incorrect court 
decisions. Many reforms were thrown out by the Supreme Court in 1974 in 
the 5-to-4 ruling, a very controversial ruling, in Buckley v. Valeo.
  So, for the last 23 years now, Democrats have tried to overcome 
obstacles put in place by the Buckley ruling and to pass a campaign 
finance reform modification, a realization that what happened in 1974, 
and what was addressed in that Court decision, needs to be addressed 
with clarification in statute.
  So, consider the record of a decade, beginning in 1988. At the 
opening of the 100th Congress, then majority leader Robert Byrd 
introduced a bill to limit spending and reduce special interest 
influence. We had a record-setting eight cloture votes when that 
happened. Democratic sponsors modified the bill to meet objections, but 
the fact is that it was killed in a Republican filibuster.
  In the Democratic-led 101st Congress, the House and the Senate passed 
campaign finance bills. President Bush threatened to veto the bill, 
effectively killing it, because it contained voluntary spending limits.
  In the 102d Congress, also a Democratically-led Congress, again the 
House and Senate passed campaign finance reform bills and President 
Bush vetoed the bill with the backing of all of his Republican 
filibuster.

  In the Democratic-led 101st Congress, the House and the Senate passed 
campaign finance bills. President Bush threatened to veto the bill, 
effectively killing it, because it contained voluntary spending limits.
  In the 102d Congress, also a Democratically-led Congress, again the 
House and Senate passed campaign finance reform bills and President 
Bush vetoed the bill with the backing of all of his Republican 
colleagues.
  In the 103d Congress, again under Democratic control, we passed a 
campaign finance reform bill with 95 percent of the Democrats in the 
Senate and 91 percent of the Democrats in the House voting for reform. 
Again, Republicans filibustered the move to take the bill to 
conference.
  That brings us, then, to the 104th Congress, supposedly the reform 
Congress. Senators McCain and Feingold introduced their bipartisan 
reform plan, and reform at that point, for the first time in almost 2 
decades, actually seemed to be within reach. Republicans, again, in the 
Senate, filibustered the measure, while Republicans in the House 
introduced a bill to allow more spending--a family of four would have 
been able to contribute $12.4 million in Federal election. The 
legislation again failed to produce results of any kind. As a result of 
that impasse, nothing was done for the remaining months of the 104th 
Congress, which now brings us to this Congress and last year.
  In his State of the Union Message in January of 1997, President 
Clinton called on Congress to pass campaign finance reform by July 4, 
1997. In the House, Republicans have voted time and again against 
bringing campaign finance reform to the floor. Speaker Gingrich has 
promised consideration this year, but also shook hands with the 
President on a campaign reform commission that really never came to 
pass. Here in the Senate, we have traveled a tough road to get here 
today. We forced our way to the floor and refused to yield; poison 
pills, amendment trees and cloture votes were all tactics used, and 
this is probably the last opportunity we have to do something 
meaningful in the 105th Congress.
  The problem is really one that can be described in one word: money. 
The amount of money, after two decades of delay, has skyrocketed. That 
is the fundamental problem. We hear talk in this debate about hard 
money and soft money, this money and that money. They are not the core 
of the problem. The core of the problem is that there is just too much 
money in politics, period. Total congressional campaign

[[Page S868]]

spending in 1975 was $115 million; in 1985, $450 million; in 1995, $765 
million. We are expected, for the first time in this cycle, to exceed 
$1 billion in election year spending, shattering every other record we 
have ever seen in politics in 220 years. A 73 percent increase over the 
previous Presidential cycle is anticipated in the year 2000. In other 
words, what we spend in 2000 on Presidential politics will exceed by 73 
percent what we spent in 1996 on Presidential politics. To put that in 
perspective, wages rose 13 percent, college tuition rose 17 percent--
politics has increased in spending 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 approximately $14,000 
a week every week for 6 years. Given the current political rate of 
inflation, by the year 2023, in just 25 years, it will cost $145 
million to run for the U.S. Senate.
  We have pages on the right and left, Republican and Democratic pages. 
I talk to them; I look at them; I encourage them to run for public 
office. But how can I tell them that I want them to run if in their 
lifetime they will be asking the question: How do I raise $145 million 
to have the position you have today, Senator Daschle? I can't answer 
that. I don't know the answer to that. And I am troubled by that. What 
happens if the U.S. Senate is only made up of those who have $145 
million to spend? Is it a truly democratic legislative body if we lose 
the opportunity to bring in families who pay their bills and confront 
all of the many, many challenges that an American family faces today 
and has a real appreciation of the enormity of those challenges? If 
that vacuum, that void, is demonstrated cycle after cycle, year after 
year here in the Senate, what kind of decisions will this body actually 
make affecting those working families? If we don't have the broad 
representation anticipated by our Founding Fathers, do we then have the 
kind of democracy so anticipated? Mr. President, I don't think we do.
  So, indeed, it is not a question of soft money or hard money; it's 
really a question of money. Do we tell our pages, we want you to be 
women and men in the U.S. Senate in your lifetime, but we also expect 
that sometime, if you choose to do so, in order to be successful you 
will have to raise $145 million? I hope not.

  Obviously, this legislation is not going to solve that problem 
entirely, but it is going to give us an opportunity to deal with it 
more effectively. At the very least, what we ought to do is recognize 
that if we do not solve this problem, we are never going to be able to 
encourage effectively people getting into public life, people expecting 
to serve in public office.
  The antipathy, the skepticism, is reflected in the polls taken of the 
American people these days. They understand the circumstances. They 
understand that it is not just a question of a Senator or a Congressman 
spending inordinate amounts of time and effort raising money. They 
understand that there is a problem that goes beyond whether or not a 
young person today, contemplating public office, can come up with $145 
million. What they understand is that just the sheer effect of money is 
as important as the amount of money.
  In the eyes of most Americans, the current system makes Congress 
appear to be for sale to the highest bidder. The recent Harris poll 
shows it very clearly. Mr. President, 85 percent of people think 
special interests have more influence than voters; 85 percent, almost 9 
out of 10 Americans today, said if you put a special interest and a 
voter side by side, there is more likelihood that a Senator is going to 
listen to the special interest than he is to the voter. Three-quarters 
of voters think Congress is largely owned by special interests. Voter 
turnout has plummeted, public confidence in this institution has 
eroded, and democracy simply can't survive with the cynical atmosphere 
that exists today.
  It is just amazing to me as I talk to world leaders who come from all 
parts of the world, who have not experienced democracy until just 
recently--they are from countries where they have not had a chance to 
vote; they are from countries where totalitarian regimes are the order 
of the day, where their whole lives were dictated by government in 
large measure that had everything to do with every facet of their 
lives. Now they have this new-found freedom, and, in an explosion of 
interest in democracy and the joy of participation, we are seeing 
record numbers of turnout, 80, 90 percent at the polls. They come from 
Eastern Europe, they come from Africa, they come from Asia, all 
expressing to us this profound joy that they now have democracy. But do 
you know what they say to us? They say, what is amazing to us is that 
when we look at your country, you have more freedom than we even have 
today and yet your participation in that freedom is the lowest of any 
country in the world. How is it that you can be so free and yet so 
callous towards that freedom, so unwilling to commit to prolonging that 
freedom, that democracy? And they worry out loud about how long our 
freedom can last if no one cares; how long will it be before we lose 
part or all of it because we don't care.
  Mr. President, it is so critical that we restore trust and confidence 
in our democracy, that we recognize we are dealing here with a very, 
very fragile institution that will rise or fall based in large measure 
on whether or not we care enough to make participation in democracy a 
real aspect of this country's future.
  So that is, in part, what this is about. Do we care enough? Are we 
prepared to take the responsibilities seriously that we hold as U.S. 
Senators to bring back participation, to allow the voters more 
confidence that we are listening to them and not the special interests, 
and to deal with the reality--the reality that I can't ask a young 
person today to come up with $145 million when he or she is my age and 
wants to run for the U.S. Senate?
  We also have a serious problem with regard to the ads themselves and 
all that comes from spending this money. It is the amount of money, the 
perception of to whom we are indebted, but now we also have a problem 
with the virulent advertising that comes from it. I believe that 
negative advertising is the crack cocaine of politics. We are hooked on 
it because it works. We are hooked on it because we win elections using 
it. There is no accountability, no reporting; it is publicly not tied 
to any candidates. And I expect that in 1998 we are going to see a 
meltdown of the process, because we are going to see more virulent ads 
than we have ever seen in our lifetimes. The crack cocaine of politics 
will be at work again.
  Negative ads from anonymous sources push candidates to the margins. 
Candidates become bit players in their own races. How many times have I 
heard candidates actually say, ``I couldn't keep track of who was on my 
side. I'd watch television and I'd hear my name used pro and con, and I 
didn't have anything to do with those ads. I am sitting like a man at a 
tennis match, watching both sides play it out.'' And the debate now is 
defined by who has the most money; that is how it is defined.
  The solution to all of this is not going to be achieved today. There 
are those who look at all of this and contend that nothing is wrong. 
Some have argued that the system is not broken, that we actually need 
more money in politics. We believe the system is badly broken, and so 
do the American people.
  They don't want to be subjected to this barrage of negative 
advertising that we know we are going to see again. They don't want to 
see the dumbing down of politics year after year, in spite of the fact 
that we see the creeping up of costs, the explosion in increases in 
costs.
  So it brings us really to the issue of the day: McCain-Feingold. It 
does not cover all the critical components of reform, overall spending 
limits, but it lets us at least get off dead center. If it doesn't 
address the central problem, it does address several problems, 
including banning one very, very difficult aspect of campaign finance 
today--soft money; setting restrictions on independent expenditures; 
better disclosures so people have an idea of who is giving how much to 
which candidate and why; and it limits the ability of the superrich to 
buy political office.
  So we are here and all 45 Democrats stand ready to pass it. We have 
made a lot of changes to pick up Republican support. We have dropped 
spending limits, we have dropped reduced TV rate, we have dropped PAC 
restrictions, we codified the so-called Beck decision having to do with 
labor contributions.

[[Page S869]]

  There is no more we can do, particularly since McCain-Feingold is the 
least we should do. We want to do more. If we were in the majority, we 
would fight to cap spending. The Valeo decision, as I said, was 5 to 4. 
Mr. President, 126 scholars have said spending limits are 
constitutional. But we simply can't let the perfect be the enemy of the 
good. We are confronted with a systemic problem, and we need a systemic 
solution. We have a chance to make some changes we plainly know are 
needed to restore some dignity and sanity to this process.
  So much time and money in this Congress has been spent already to 
investigate perceived abuses in the 1996 election. There are cries of 
outrage, cries of shock and indignation. The American people are 
cynical because they don't think Congress is going to do anything about 
it. They believe that the politicians' self-interest will again 
override the public good. If, after all the hearings, all the press 
releases, all the statements, all the reports, all the votes, we do 
nothing, then frankly, Mr. President, that cynicism will be justified.
  The American people get it. They know the system is broken. They know 
we have an opportunity to fix it, but they don't think we will. We 
should surprise them. We need sincere bipartisan efforts to clean up 
our own house. We need Republicans to join with Democrats to make that 
happen this afternoon.
  People who think they can quietly kill this effort are wrong. One 
day, hopefully today, but one day we will succeed. We will not give up. 
But this is the time to do it. If we squander this opportunity, it will 
not go unnoticed. If we seize this moment, we can make history and do 
the right thing for those people who want to be a part of the process, 
for all Americans, for people who want once more to participate in our 
Federal elections system. This is our opportunity. Let's do it right. 
Let's do it this afternoon. I yield the floor.

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