[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 14 (Tuesday, February 24, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S869-S882]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        PAYCHECK PROTECTION ACT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of S. 1663, the Paycheck Protection Act, which the 
clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1663) to protect individuals from having their 
     money involuntarily collected and used for politics by a 
     corporation or labor organization.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
  Pending:

       McCain amendment No. 1646, in the nature of a substitute.

  Mr. McCONNELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky is recognized.

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I am sorry the Democratic leader has 
left the floor. I did want to make a couple of observations.
  First, with regard to the Buckley case, it was 9 to 0 on the issue of 
spending is speech. Quoting that great conservative Thurgood Marshall:

       One of the points on which all Members on the Court agree 
     is that money is essential for effective communication in a 
     political campaign.

  This was an extraordinarily important Supreme Court decision. It 
wasn't 5 to 4 on any of the critical issues, and, as a matter of fact, 
Mr. President, the Court has had an opportunity over the last 22 years 
to revisit the Buckley case in various subcomponent parts and has 
consistently expanded the areas of permissible political speech.
  I heard the Democratic leader saying all of this spending is getting 
out of control. Bear in mind that what he is saying is that all of this 
speaking is getting out of control. What he is suggesting, and our dear 
colleagues on the other side are suggesting, is we need to get somebody 
in charge of all this speech and, of course, it is the Government that 
they want to be in charge of all this speech. The courts are not going 
to allow that. They didn't allow it in the mid-seventies, they haven't 
allowed it any time they have revisited that issue since, they are not 
going to allow it now, and they are not going to allow it ever, because 
it is not the Government's business to tell citizens how much they get 
to speak in the American political process.
  The suggestion was made that all this spending is out of control. I 
always say, how much is too much? I asked my colleague from Wisconsin 
during the debate last October, how much is too much? I could never get 
an answer. Maybe today we can get that answer. How much is too much?
  In the 1996 campaign, the discussion was intense. Spending did go up, 
the stakes were big--big indeed. It was the future of the country--a 
Presidential election, control of Congress. But we only spent about 
what the public spent on bubble gum.
  Looking at it another way, Mr. President, of all the commercials that 
were run in 1996, 1 percent of them were about politics. Speaking too 
much? By any objective standard, of course not. Of course not.
  It is naive in the extreme to assume everybody in this country has an 
equal opportunity to speak. Dan Rather gets to speak more than I do and 
more than the Senator from New Hampshire does, as do Tom Brokaw and 
Larry King and the editorial page of the Washington Post. Maybe we 
ought to equalize their speech. I am saying this, of course, tongue in 
cheek. But you can make the argument, it is the same first amendment, 
the same right applies to all of us.
  I wonder how they would feel if we said, ``OK, you are free to say 
what you want on the editorial page, but, henceforth, your circulation 
is limited to 5,000. We haven't told you what to say, but we think you 
are saying it to too many people, and so the Government has concluded 
that this is pollution.''
  I heard the Democratic leader talking about all this polluting 
speech--I am not sure that is the exact word he used --all this 
negativity, all this hostility. Most of the negativity and hostility I 
see is on the editorial page of the American newspapers. Maybe we ought 
to suggest they can't do that in the last 60 days of the election.
  There isn't a court in America that is going to uphold this bill. But 
the good news is they are not going to get it and have the chance to 
uphold it.
  The Democratic leader said we wanted to quietly kill it. We are not 
quietly killing it, we are proudly killing it. We are not apologizing 
for killing this unconstitutional bill. We are grateful for the 
opportunity to defend the first amendment. No apologies will be made, 
not now, not tomorrow, not ever. The Government should not be put in 
charge of how much American citizens as individuals or as members of 
groups or as political candidates or as political parties may speak to 
the people of this country.

  I heard the Democratic leader complain that candidates can't control 
the campaigns. Well, it is not theirs to control. Of course we don't 
like issue advocacy. Of course we don't like independent expenditures. 
But the Supreme Court has given no indication that the political 
candidates are entitled to control all of the discourse in the course 
of a campaign. I wish I could control the two major newspapers in my 
State that are always against what I am doing. It irritates me in the 
extreme, Mr. President. But I am not trying to introduce a bill around 
here to shut them up the last 60 days of an election.
  The good news is there has been a whole line of court cases on this 
question of trying to control what is called ``issue advocacy''; that 
is, groups talking about issues at any time they want to, up to and 
including proximity to an election.
  The FEC has been on a mission for the last few years to try to shut 
these folks up. They have lost virtually every single case in court. As 
a matter of fact, in the fourth circuit in a case about a year and a 
half ago, not only did the FEC lose again, but the court required that 
they pay the lawyer's fees for the group they were harassing. It was 
pretty clear, Mr. President, there is no authority to do this.
  That is really where we are in this debate. The American people are 
not expecting us to take away their right to speak in the political 
process, and the Supreme Court has made it very, very clear. Let me say 
it again. They have said, unless you have the ability to amplify your 
voice, your speech is

[[Page S870]]

not worth very much. You could go door-to-door for the rest of your 
life in California and have no impact on the process. So the Court 
wisely recognized that citizens under the first amendment had to have 
their right either as individuals or to band together as a part of a 
group to amplify their voice.
  Spending has been critical in the political process going back to the 
founding of the country. Somebody paid for those pamphlets that were 
distributed around the time of the American Revolution. Somebody paid 
for those.
  It is suggested under the most recent incarnation of McCain-Feingold, 
``Oh, we are not going to shut them up, we are just going to make them 
report their donors.'' Put another way, the price for discussing 
political issues at the end of a campaign is to disclose your donor 
list. The courts have already dealt with that issue in 1958 in an NAACP 
case in Alabama, that a group cannot be compelled to disclose its donor 
list as a condition for criticizing all of us.
  This kind of effort to quash speech, to shut up the critics of 
candidates is not only going nowhere in the Senate, it is going nowhere 
in the courts. There has been an effort around the country, financed by 
some very wealthy people. George Soros, when he is not financing a 
referenda to legalize marijuana, is also financing this effort. And 
Jerome Goldberg, one of the wealthy financiers on Wall Street, has been 
providing money to go out and try and get these kinds of referenda on 
the ballot and approved around the country.
  The good news is they are all getting struck down. Even if they are 
passed, they are getting struck down. It happened in California a 
couple weeks ago. It happened in Wisconsin. The courts understand the 
law, and the law is clear, and no effort to circumvent the first 
amendment, either in Washington in the Congress or community by 
community or State by State around the country is going to succeed, 
because the law is clear.
  We are not apologetic in defeating this bill. It richly deserves to 
be defeated. For the moment--I see that there are some colleagues here 
who wish to speak--let me just recount some of the points from the 
Buckley case as a way of beginning today's discussion.
  As I said earlier, the great conservative Thurgood Marshall said:

       One of the points on which all Members of the Court agree 
     is that money is essential for effective communication in a 
     political campaign.

  That is not Mitch McConnell or Bob Smith, that is Thurgood Marshall. 
Further excerpts from the Buckley case that we ought to be aware of, 
the Court said:

       The first amendment denies Government the power to 
     determine that spending to promote one's political views is 
     wasteful, excessive or unwise.

  The Government doesn't have the power to do that to individual 
citizens and groups.
  The Court went on:

       In the free society ordained by our Constitution, it is not 
     the Government but the people--individually as citizens and 
     candidates and collectively as associations and political 
     committees--who must retain control over the quantity--

  How much we speak--

     and range--

  What we say--

     of debate on public issues in a political campaign.

  In other words, this is beyond the province of Government to regulate 
in our democracy.
  The Court went on:

       A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can 
     spend on political communication during a campaign 
     necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting 
     the number of issues discussed, the depth of their 
     exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is 
     because virtually every means of communicating ideas in 
     today's mass society requires the expenditure of money.

  It is a statement of the obvious. It is a statement of the obvious. 
If it did not require money to communicate, why would Common Cause be 
doing direct mail finance solicitations all the time? They have to have 
money to operate. And I do not decry them that opportunity.
  The Court observed that even ``distribution of the humblest 
handbill'' costs money. Further, the Court stated that the electorate's 
increasing dependence on television and radio for news and information 
makes ``these expensive modes of communication indispensable''--Mr. 
President, this is the Supreme Court--``indispensable instruments of 
[free speech].''
  In other words, it is a statement of the obvious. In a country of 270 
million people, unless you have the ability to amplify your speech, to 
amplify your voice so you might have a chance of competing with Dan 
Rather, Tom Brokaw, and the editorial pages of your newspapers, at 
least during the last 30 days of your election, you do not have a 
chance. So we shut down all of these people, Mr. President. It is a 
power transfer to the broadcast industry and to the print industry in 
this country, which some of us think have a good deal of power as it 
stands now.
  With regard to the appearance of corruption issue, it is frequently 
said that all of this money is corrupting the process. The Court held 
there is ``nothing invidious, improper or unhealthy'' in campaign 
spending money to communicate-- nothing.
  With regard to the growth in campaign spending, I heard the 
Democratic leader projecting some astronomical figure that candidates 
were going to have to spend in the future. Let me say, there is nobody 
in the Senate spending all their time raising money. That is said all 
the time. That is not true. Eighty percent of the money raised in 
Senate races is raised in the last 2 years, it is raised in the last 2 
years by candidates who think they may have a contest.
  What is wrong with that? We do not own these seats. If we are in 
trouble, we are probably going to want to express ourselves in the 
campaign. And if you are going to express yourself in the campaign, you 
are not going to write the check for it out of your own bank account. 
You better get busy to get the resources to communicate your message or 
you are history.
  The Court said, with regard to the growth in campaign spending, ``. . 
.the mere growth in the cost of federal election campaigns in and of 
itself provides no basis''--no basis--``for governmental restrictions 
on the quantity of campaign spending. . .''--no basis.
  It is often said that we need to level the playing field. How many 
times have we heard that? The Court addressed that issue in Buckley as 
well. The Court said, with regard to leveling the playing field, ``. . 
.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.'' ``Wholly foreign to the First 
Amendment''-- brilliant and thoughtful words from the Supreme Court in 
Buckley v. Valeo.
  And the Court has never retreated from the major principles in this 
case, Mr. President. In fact, they are moving in the opposite 
direction, in the direction of more and more permissible political 
speech.
  In fact, one of the few things in the Buckley case that the reformers 
liked has created one of the biggest problems in the last 20 years. The 
reformers liked the fact that the Court did uphold a limit on how much 
one could contribute to another, the contribution limit. Well, the 
Congress has never indexed the contribution limit. Even President 
Clinton said last month that the hard money contribution should be 
indexed to inflation. And he was absolutely right. That $1,000 set back 
in the mid-1970s, at a time when a Mustang cost $2,700, is now worth 
$320. In a medium- or small-sized State, it does not produce a huge 
distortion, but it is an absolute disgrace for a candidate seeking to 
run for office in a big State where you have a huge audience, like 
California or New York or Texas, to be stuck with a $320 per person 
contribution limit.

  So ironically, Mr. President, the only part of the Buckley case that 
the reformers applauded has produced the biggest distortion in the 
process and the biggest problem for candidates running in large States.
  So, Mr. President, let me just conclude this part of my remarks, as I 
see others here. We make no apologies for beating this terrible piece 
of legislation. It does not deserve to pass. It will not pass. The 
first amendment will be protected.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks recognition?
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.

[[Page S871]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin is recognized.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. In a moment I will yield to the Senator from Minnesota 
who I very much want to hear from on this issue.
  Just a very brief comment with regard to the comments of the Senator 
from Kentucky. The language of the McCain-Feingold bill on issue 
advocacy was not an issue in the Wisconsin case. In fact, in that 
Wisconsin case the judge specifically suggested our provision on issue 
advocacy may be a model of what might pass constitutional muster.
  The Senator made a lot of general comments on Buckley v. Valeo, but 
the one thing he didn't do is relate Buckley v. Valeo to our bill. Our 
bill was specifically crafted to be constitutional under Buckley v. 
Valeo. We have a letter from 126 constitutional scholars who say that 
our bill is in fact constitutional, especially with respect to the ban 
on soft money. It is 126 constitutional scholars against the mere 
constant repetition of the claim that our bill is unconstitutional. We 
have the weight of legal authorities on this issue on our side. Of 
course, it is our intention and belief that this would pass 
constitutional muster.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from 
Minnesota.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, it has been reported that a majority--
majority; that is, Republican party--written portion of the 
Governmental Affairs Committee draft report reaches the following 
conclusion or contains the following statement: ``In 1996, the federal 
campaign finance system collapsed.'' I would like to associate myself 
with this observation by the majority members of the Governmental 
Affairs Committee.
  Mr. President, the system did collapse. Americans witnessed a 
corruption, a tarnishing of our political system. And I say to my 
colleague from Kentucky, the Supreme Court is very clear that that in 
fact is a justification for reform. People saw in a very systematic way 
special interest money dominate the discourse. And the American people 
stayed home in record numbers.
  It is not surprising that as this system becomes more and more 
dominated by big money, and regular people feel like they are locked 
out of involvement, and that this system dominated by money does not 
respond to the concerns and circumstances of their lives, they stay 
home.
  As a matter of fact, we did not even have 50 percent of the people 
voting in the last Presidential election. That was the third lowest 
turnout in the history of our country. Some people here on the floor of 
the U.S. Senate may be comfortable with that reality. I am not. It is 
the opposite of what I live and work for. And it is the opposite, I 
would say to my colleagues, of real representative democracy.

  Mr. President, a New York Times headline: ``1996 Campaign Left 
Finance Laws in Shreds.'' I agree with the judgment of this article, 
which I quote:

       Beneath the cloudy surface of the Senate hearings, one 
     clear picture has emerged: The post-Watergate campaign 
     finance laws that were passed to restrict the influence of 
     special interests in politics have been shredded.

  Mr. President, Americans know this. Some of my colleagues may not 
want to face up to these truths, but Americans know it. They know that 
every Federal Government issue that affects their lives is damaged by 
the way big money, special interest money has taken over our politics. 
It is as if there has been a hostile takeover of elections in our 
country, a hostile takeover of Government, whether it is health care, 
insurance rates, taxes, telecommunications, banking, tobacco, 
environment, food and agriculture, trade, oil and pharmaceutical 
company subsidies. What is on the table and what is not on the table, 
what is considered reasonable and realistic, what is not considered 
reasonable and realistic, what is debated, what isn't, what is 
distorted, what issues are even dealt with in the first place--people 
in the country know that this is dominated by big money. The system has 
collapsed. The laws that are meant to regulate it have been shredded.
  What are we doing about it? We have a good bill, S. 25, the McCain-
Feingold bill. It is the pending amendment. It would, A, prohibit soft 
money to the parties. That is maybe the biggest abuse. This might be 
the most single important reform that we can undertake; and, B, it 
restricts--restricts; not prohibits--phony ``issue'' ads which are 
really election ads.
  My colleague from North Dakota, Senator Dorgan, read a piece 
yesterday on the floor of the Senate about $800,000 of so-called issue 
ads poured into one congressional race, one special election, by a 
party--$800,000 of so-called issue ads in a New York House district 
race last year to destroy a candidate there.
  The bill would also expand disclosure requirements. It would 
strengthen FEC enforcement, and it would discourage wealthy candidates 
from spending more than $50,000 of their own money on a race.
  It is a decent, worthy bill, Mr. President. I hope we can pass it. My 
two colleagues have worked extremely hard in order to assure that this 
vote could happen. And I think that the bill will receive a majority of 
the vote. But it is going to be filibustered. And I fear that most 
Members of the majority party do not want reform. They are not willing 
to allow an acceptable version of this bill to receive the 60 votes. 
Why is that?
  Mr. President, the public is fed up with the current system. 
Congressional Quarterly summarizes this aptly. ``While polls show that 
the public is fed up with the current system, the public is cynical 
about politicians' ability to fix it.''
  Mr. President, my colleague keeps talking about the first amendment. 
Nobody is saying you cannot spend money. Nobody is saying you cannot 
speak out. But what we are talking about is that we now have auctions 
rather than elections. We are talking about the way in which money has 
subverted this system, systemic corruption, when too few people have 
too much wealth, power and say, and too many people are left out.
  Mr. President, we will also be discussing the Snowe-Jeffords 
proposal. I have said to my colleague from Wisconsin that I am a bit 
skeptical about it. I am a bit skeptical about it. I am not at all sure 
that I like the idea that this amendment only gets introduced if all 45 
Democrats pledge allegiance to it, so that we can pick up two more 
Republican votes. But I know it certainly is a desirable alternative to 
the poison pill, the Paycheck Protection Act.
  But here is what I am worried about. Maybe for tactical reasons we do 
it, but maybe for substantive reasons we do not. I am a little worried 
that we now have the following argument before us: We are desperately 
afraid that we cannot enact real campaign finance reform this year 
because the public is not angry enough and because the public is not 
mobilized; therefore, we should weaken the reform bill in order to 
excite the public. I do not think that is really going to happen. And I 
think we need an aroused public behind this worthy effort.
  Again, I think it is desirable as a substitute for the poison pill 
Paycheck Protection Act, but it is also a retreat from the definitely 
superior express-advocacy and issue-ad provisions of the McCain-
Feingold bill. Let me just remind my colleagues, that those of us who 
have been the reformers, we have compromised many times over already.
  As a matter of fact, the provisions of the McCain-Feingold bill that 
would affect us most are basically out right now. We are not even 
talking about a piece of legislation that really affects the way we 
ourselves raise and spend money in Congressional races. It is an 
important effort. I am for it. I want it to pass. But I want to be 
clear, we dropped the voluntary spending limits which would have done 
the most to assure a more level playing field between incumbents and 
challengers.
  In addition, we dropped the free and discounted television time. We 
also, as a concession, have inserted codification of the Beck 
language. We have gone a long ways toward trimming this down in order 
to try and get something passed that would at least be a positive step 
in the right direction, and the majority party is still stonewalling 
this.

  Now, Mr. President, let me be clear in dealing with the provision 
that Senator Jeffords and Senator Snowe have come up with. There is 
some merit to it tactically, without any doubt. I still

[[Page S872]]

worry that it represents a retreat. I'm not sure we can excite people 
by continuing to strip this bill down to the point where it doesn't 
have teeth, and it doesn't do the job.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to place a piece by Greg 
Gordon of the Star Tribune, the largest newspaper in my home State, be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

        [From the (Minneapolis, MN) Star Tribune, Oct. 29, 1997]

            Turning Nonprofits Into Powerful Political Tools

                            (By Greg Gordon)

 (Twin Cities entrepreneur Robert Cummins gave $100,000 to a nonprofit 
that backed a dozen GOP campaigns, including Gil Gutknecht's, a Senate 
 panel has found. The trend, while legal, allows donors to circumvent 
                 federal election laws, observers say)

       Senate investigators have obtained bank records showing 
     that a Twin Cities entrepreneur donated $100,000 to a 
     nonprofit group that ran ``issue ads'' last year backing a 
     dozen Republican congressional candidates, including 
     Minnesota Rep. Gil Gutknecht.
       With his donation to the Citizens for the Republic 
     Education Fund, Robert Cummins, chairman of Eden Prairie-
     based Fargo Electronics Inc., joined in a trend by both major 
     parties to turn nonprofit groups into political weapons.
       Campaign-finance experts say the practice, although legal, 
     offers a way for donors to circumvent federal election laws 
     that require public disclosure of their names and limit the 
     amounts they can give. The loophole also enables corporations 
     that are barred from directly donating to campaigns to play 
     major roles in political races, said Democratic investigators 
     for the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.
       Gutknecht, whose reelection campaign faced an onslaught of 
     attack ads sponsored by labor unions, says that early last 
     year he gave the names of several potential Minnesota donors 
     to Triad Management Service, the Virginia company that ran 
     the Citizens for the Republic Fund. The First District 
     congressman declined last week to say whether Cummins, who 
     with his wife had each already donated the maximum $2,000 to 
     Gutknecht's campaign, was among them. Cummins, a politically 
     active conservative, did not respond to phone calls seeking 
     his comment.
       Gutknecht said he has never heard of the Citizens for the 
     Republic Education Fund, which spent at least $3,000 boosting 
     his campaign in the Rochester, Minn., media market, and that 
     he never knew about the ad.
       The organization is one of three conservative-backed 
     nonprofits that were dormant in the summer of 1996 but sprang 
     to life shortly before the election as donations poured into 
     their accounts, people familiar with the investigation said.
       Together, Citizens for the Republic Education Fund, 
     Citizens for Reform, which also was managed by Triad, and the 
     Coalition for Our Children's Future spent nearly $4 million 
     in October and November 1996 on ads that gave GOP candidates 
     a late boost in at least 34 close House and Senate races, 
     Senate investigators have found. The Coalition for Our 
     Children's Future also send Republican-leaning postcards to 
     tens of thousands of voters in at least nine Minnesota 
     legislative districts.
       Nonprofit groups are barred from expressly advocating the 
     election or defeat of a candidate. But so-called ``issue 
     ads,'' which stop just short of doing so, have provided 
     political consultants with an effective alternative.
       The three tax-exempt groups have refused to identify their 
     donors. Democratic investigators said they used subpoenaed 
     bank records to trace the identities of Cummins and several 
     other contributors to Citizens for the Republic Education 
     Fund and Citizens for Reform.
       Other donations to the three groups were made through 
     secret trusts represented by Gen. Ginsberg, a former general 
     counsel to the Republican National Committee (RNC), according 
     to Senate investigators and a former employee of one of the 
     groups. Ginsberg failed to return phone calls seeking his 
     comment.
       Senate investigators suspect one of these trusts is 
     shielding the identities of Charles and David Koch, brothers 
     who run oil industry giant Koch Industries, which operates a 
     large refinery in Rosemount, a Democratic committee aide 
     said. Jay Rosser, a spokesman for Wichita, Kan.-based Koch, 
     declined to comment on whether the Kochs or their money were 
     involved. Democrats on the committee sent Charles Koch a 
     letter this month asking to speak with him about their 
     inquiry, but he failed to respond, according to 
     investigators.
       Thomas Mann, a campaign-finance expert who is director of 
     governmental studies for the Brookings Institution, called 
     the financing of politically active nonprofits ``an utter 
     corruption of the system.''
       ``There is just no question that this is an effort to 
     circumvent the rules limiting the sources and amounts of 
     contributions to federal campaigns,'' he said. Mann said the 
     effort is proof that ``the whole regulatory regime for 
     campaign finance collapsed in 1996'' amid ``gaming'' by both 
     parties.
       The Senate committee has previously disclosed that aides to 
     President Clinton and officials at the RNC referred large 
     donors to nonprofit groups so they could avoid the publicity 
     that often accompanies big donations to the parties. The New 
     York Times reported last week that Twin Cities businessman 
     Vance Opperman donated $100,000 to Vote Now '96, a nonprofit 
     organization to which Clinton campaign and White House aides 
     referred a number of large donors. The organization, which 
     promoted voter turnout, apparently did not finance ``issue 
     ads.''
       Both conservative and liberal nonprofit groups have 
     resisted committee inquiries, and the competing Republican 
     and Democratic investigations have led to deep disagreements. 
     Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, and other Democratic members 
     complain that the panel's chairman, Sen. Fred Thompson, R-
     Tenn., has refused to sign subpoenas that would enable them 
     to fully trace the funding of the conservative groups or 
     to allow the Democrats to hold hearings where they could 
     confront officials of Triad and the nonprofits. A 
     Republican spokesman contended that the Democratic inquiry 
     has been overly broad and burdensome for the nonprofit 
     groups.


                           investment adviser

       At the center of the controversy is Triad, whose officers 
     have declined to answer investigators' questions.
       Mark Braden, a Washington lawyer for Triad, says the 
     company served as ``an investment adviser'' that assisted 
     clients in deciding ``where to make political, charitable and 
     issue-related donations.'' Senate investigators say Triad 
     helped clients who had already donated the legal maximum to a 
     candidate find other ways to help.
       Triad was formed in 1995 by Carolyn Malenick, a former 
     political fund-raiser for Oliver North, the ex-Marine who was 
     a central figure in the Iran-contra affair and then ran 
     unsuccessful for a Virginia Senate seat.
       In the spring of 1996, investigators found, Malenick met 
     with Pennsylvania businessman Robert Cone, the former owner 
     of children's products manufacturer Graco Inc., and Sen. Don 
     Nickles, R-Okla. Cone soon sent the firm $600,000 in seed 
     money and later gave substantially more, the investigators 
     said.
       In a promotional film in which Nickles endorses the group, 
     Malenick talked about Republicans developing a way to quickly 
     infuse $100,000 into a congressional race, countering labor 
     unions' ability to provide ``rapid fire'' to Democratic 
     candidates.
       Braden said Malenick's firm sent consultants to do 
     ``political audits'' with about 250 GOP campaigns nationwide 
     to identify races where donors could support candidates who 
     shared their ideological views and had ``a viable campaign.''
       Braden said Triad launched the ``issue ad'' campaign 
     through the nonprofits only to respond to the AFL-CIO's $20 
     million advertising blitz in the districts of vulnerable 
     Republicans such as Gutknecht.
       ``The father of these ads is [AFL-CIO President] John 
     Sweeney,'' Braden said. ``If there had been no AFL-CIO 
     campaign, there would have been no Citizens for the 
     Republican Education Fund issue campaign.''
       Braden denied that any of the donations facilitated by 
     Triad were illegally ``earmarked'' to specific candidates.
       Another large donor was California farmer Dan Garawan, who 
     has said publicly that he gave $100,000 to Citizens for 
     Reform, which spent heavily on issues ads that attacked Rep. 
     Calvin Dooley, D-Calif.
       Among donors yet to be identified is a trust that donated a 
     total of $1.3 million to citizens for the Republican 
     Education Fund and to Citizens for Reform. Also still a 
     mystery is the source of a $700,000 check to the Coalition 
     for Our Children's Future, a group unrelated to Triad. 
     Barry Bennett, the coalition's former executive director, 
     says that the donation was arranged in September 1996 by a 
     Houston political consultant and that Ginsberg drew up 
     confidentiality documents.
       The investigators have information ``that very strongly 
     suggests the Koch family and Koch Industries were a major 
     funding source for the Triad subsidiaries and the Coalition 
     for Our Children's Future,'' one Democratic committee aide 
     said. Koch made one direct donation to Triad of $2,000, 
     investigators found. Triad booster Nickles, a member of the 
     Governmental Affairs Committee, has been a major Senate ally 
     of Koch.
       Federal Election Commission records show that the Koch 
     brothers and KochPAC donated to more than a dozen of the 
     candidates supported by the three nonprofits, most of them 
     located in Kansas, Oklahoma and other states where Koch has 
     facilities.


                          Boost for Gutknecht

       Cummino sent a $100,000 check to the Citizens for the 
     Republic Fund on Oct. 3, 1996, a week after Triad signed a 
     consulting agreement with the nonprofit, investigators found.
       Meredith O'Rourke, a former Triad employee, told the 
     committee in a recent deposition that Triad officials has 
     discussed key issues in Gutknecht's reelection race with 
     Gutknecht or his campaign, people familiar with the inquiry 
     said. Gutknecht acknowledged that he met with a Triad 
     official early in his campaign, but said he only recalls 
     discussing the ``issues they [Triad representatives] were 
     advancing,'' not his own.
       The Citizens for the Republic Fund ``issue ad'' that fall 
     mentioned Gutknecht's name five times, without identifying 
     his Democratic challenger, Mary Rieder, and accused

[[Page S873]]

     ``big labor bosses in Washington'' of distorting Gutknecht's 
     record on education.
       Gutknecht dismissed disclosures about the nonprofit groups' 
     political role as ``a joke'' and ``a desperate'' attempt by 
     Democrats to distract public attention from Clinton's 
     embarrassing campaign activities, such as inviting major 
     donors to stay overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom.
       ``As far as I know,'' he said, ``any businesspeople who 
     participated with Triad did not get a night in the Lincoln 
     Bedroom. They didn't get any preferential treatment on Asian 
     pipelines, they didn't want to block an Indian casino in 
     Hudson, Wisconsin. All were American citizens. None were 
     Buddhist monks.''
       In the spring of 1996, three Washington-based nonprofit 
     groups had no offices, no staffs and were inactive. By that 
     fall, the groups had raised nearly $4 million in donations 
     and were pouring much of the money into ``issue ads'' 
     supporting conservative House and Senate candidates.


                          Citizens for Reform

       Founded by conservative activist Peter Flaherty, the 
     nonprofit group was incorporated in May 1996 and is now run 
     by Triad Management Services, a political consulting firm in 
     Manassas, Va. Senate investigators say the group spent $1.4 
     million in October 1996 on ads in 21 House and Senate 
     districts, including one that attacked Democratic 
     congressional candidate Bill Yellowtail of Montana for 
     striking his wife.


                Citizens for the Republic Education Fund

       Incorporated in June 1996, the fund later obtained tax-
     exempt status as a political group. Also run by Triad, it is 
     headed by former Reagan White House aide Lyn Nofziger. In 
     October 1996, investigators say, the fund spent almost $1.5 
     million on ``issue ads'' in 13 House and Senate races, 
     helping secure victories for Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn., and 
     Republican Senate candidates Sam Brownback of Kansas and Tim 
     Hutchinson of Arkansas.


                  Coalition for OUr Children's Future

       Formed in late 1995 to air ads supporting the Balanced 
     Budget Act, the coalition was only a shell in the fall of 
     1996, operating in offices at the Virginia political fund-
     raising firm of Odell, Roper and Simms. Then a secret trust 
     reportedly contributed $700,000 to the coalition, which ran 
     ``issue ads'' in Arkansas and Louisiana Senate races and 
     three House races and blitzed voters in at least nine 
     Minnesota legislative districts with postcards favoring GOP 
     candidates.

  Mr. WELLSTONE. He talks about turning nonprofits into powerful 
political tools. I'm worried about all of the ways, to quote Thomas 
Mann from the article, that this new practice has ``become an utter 
corruption of the system.'' I don't want to retreat from clear 
standards here.
  Mr. President, since I have less than 2 minutes, I hope the McCain-
Feingold bill will pass intact. I hope we will vote for it today. I 
hope that colleagues will not be able to block it. I hope we will be 
wary of ``deform'' measures, not reform measures. We have to pass 
something real. We have to pass something significant. I hope we get a 
positive vote for this piece of legislation today, and I ask people in 
the country, please be vigilant, please hold all of us accountable. 
Don't let the majority party block a reform that would restore your 
voice and some real democracy in this country. Don't let the U.S. 
Senate pass a piece of legislation which would have that made-for-
Congress look, a great acronym, but will not have the enforcement teeth 
and would not do the job and really wouldn't get some of the big money 
out of politics.
  The McCain-Feingold effort is not all I desire--I proposed the clean 
money, clean elections approach which has passed in Maine and that was 
also passed in Vermont--but it is a worthy piece of legislation and it 
ought to pass the U.S. Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Roberts). The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I understand we are under a controlled time situation 
without designating a controller, so I ask unanimous consent I control 
the time on this side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I yield to the distinguished Senator from Washington 
such time as he may consume.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, the first amendment to the Constitution of 
the United States reads in relative part ``Congress shall make no law 
abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.''
  Today, once again, we are engaged in a debate in which the proponents 
propose to limit the freedom of speech, and most particularly, to limit 
freedom of speech in political debate about the policy and political 
future of the United States.
  At the time of an identical debate last fall, George Will wrote, and 
I wish to quote him in full:

       Nothing in American history--not the left's recent campus 
     ``speech codes,'' nor the right's depredations during 1950s 
     McCarthyism, or the 1920s ``red scare,'' not the Alien and 
     Sedition Acts of the 1790s--matches the menace to the First 
     Amendment posed by campaign ``reforms'' advancing under the 
     protective coloration of political hygiene.

  Mr. Will concludes by saying:

       As Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, and 
     others filibuster to block enlargement of the Federal speech-
     rationing machinery, theirs is arguably the most important 
     filibuster in American history.

  Mr. President, the Senator from Minnesota has just said that fewer 
people vote because of cynicism about the 1996 campaign and the blatant 
violations of the present law that took place during the course of that 
campaign.
  Mr. President, the cure for the blatant violations of present 
campaign laws is not a new set of laws. It is the simple enforcement of 
the laws we already have. Laws, incidentally, that were passed in 1974 
with arguments identical to those that are being made here today; laws 
that themselves seem to have been accompanied by a drop-off in the 
number of people who are voting.
  If we simply look at our history and desire to have more people 
voting, we would presumably repeal all of those laws and go back to a 
pre-1974 situation in which at least we had a greater participation in 
our election process.
  So what do the proponents today ask us? They ask us to limit severely 
the right of political parties to raise money and to use that money in 
order to express the ideas that motivate those political parties. In 
other words, they ask us to limit the ability to communicate the 
freedom of speech of those organized parties that have spanned most of 
the history of the United States, parties that most academics studying 
our political system say are too weak, not too strong. Most academics 
in this field feel that party discipline ought to be stronger rather 
than weaker. Yet the heart of McCain-Feingold is the philosophy that 
parties should not be able to communicate their ideas to people during 
election campaigns in any significant fashion whatever.

  The predecessors of those who make these arguments today successfully 
limited the ability of political candidates for Congress to raise and 
to spend money and now criticize the very condition that they caused by 
saying that candidates spend too much time in raising money. It is a 
paradoxical set of arguments to say that the very cause that we 
espoused has caused candidates to spend too much time campaigning or 
raising money for campaigning and therefore we ought to have more laws 
of exactly the same type.
  Mr. President, whatever the constitutionality of limiting the right 
of people to contribute to political parties and the right of political 
parties to solicit contributions, it can hardly be proposed with a 
straight face that we can limit the right of third parties, of 
independent organizations, to express their ideas on matters of 
politics and on candidates and on incumbents at any time, much less in 
the 30 or 60 days preceding an election. There is simply no indication 
in any decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that such 
limitations are appropriate. There is also no indication that such 
limitations are a good idea.
  I wonder what the editorial page of the New York Times would say if 
the proposal before the Senate today said that newspapers would be 
limited to one or two editorials about election-year politics and none 
at all in the 30 days before an election. Yet, Mr. President, unless 
you can say in order to make elections fair, in order to give each 
citizen an equal right to participate, we can and should tell the New 
York Times, and every other daily newspaper in the country, all 
television networks and television stations, that they should shut up 
in the 30 days before an election takes place and let the election work 
its way out on the basis of whatever individual candidates say--
unamplified, of course, by any mass media--and that even outside of 
that period of time they should be strictly limited in the number of 
statements that they ought to make about politics because, after all, 
they have a much larger voice than does an individual citizen.

[[Page S874]]

  We know exactly what they would say. They would say that is a blatant 
violation of the first amendment of the Constitution. They would go to 
court and they would get any such statute immediately thrown out. But 
if the New York Times and NBC and an individual television station are 
free to communicate their ideas about politics and about political 
candidates without restraint, how, then, can an organization, whether 
it is the Christian Coalition, the American Civil Liberties Union, a 
liberal or a conservative organization, be so limited? And why, if an 
organization of that nature can't be limited, should a political party 
be limited in what it can say and how it raises money in order to make 
any such statement?
  Mr. President, all we have done is to make political speech less 
responsible rather than more responsible. We limited the amount of 
money candidates can get, and candidates, of course, can be called to 
account for any misstatement they make in a political campaign or for 
any unfair tactics. We now propose to limit the parties to which those 
candidates belong, so we force those who are interested in the 
political system whose lives are affected by the political system to 
operate entirely independently of parties or of candidates and to make 
whatever statements they wish for which those candidates and parties 
will, of course, bear any responsibility whatever.
  Finally, I find it extraordinarily curious that the proponents of 
this bill--most recently the Senator from Minnesota--will say that the 
original proposal before the Senate by the majority leader, Senator 
Lott, is a poison pill. Now, what is that poison pill? It is the 
totally constitutional and totally valid requirement that a labor 
organization to which people in given bargaining units must belong and 
to which they must contribute can only use the dues and the payments of 
their members for political purposes with permission. Now, this is the 
one area which is not only obviously constitutional but obviously 
desirable. Why should any American, why should any American have his or 
her money used by an organization to which he or she is required to 
belong to promote an idea and candidates with which whom he or she 
disagrees?

  I do have in this connection, Mr. President, one advantage over, I 
believe, every other Member in this body, except for my own colleague 
from the State of Washington. In 1992, at a time in which Bill Clinton 
won the State of Washington in his Presidential campaign, the people of 
my State passed Initiative No. 134 by a 73-27 percent margin.
  Initiative 134 simply said that neither an employer nor a labor 
organization could withhold a portion of a worker's wages or salary for 
political contributions without receiving written permission from that 
worker each and every year--the so-called ``poison pill,'' which is 
anathema to Members on the other side. Seventy-three percent of the 
citizens of the State of Washington voted for that proposition, Mr. 
President.
  Now, what happened? Let's take one such organization, the Washington 
Education Association. Immediately after the passage of that 
initiative, fewer than 20 percent of the members of the Washington 
Education Association gave that association permission to use their 
money for its political purposes. Where it had 45,000 members who were 
constrained to contribute to its political action committee previously, 
the figure, after the election was over, was 8,000. Well, that is why 
45 members on the other side of the aisle feel the Lott bill to be a 
``poison pill,'' because it deprives one of their principal supporters 
of the right to force people to contribute to their campaigns. That is 
a ``poison pill,'' Mr. President. It is a ``poison pill'' to restrict 
political parties the right to speak and the right to effectively 
participate in politics, or even to restrict certain other 
organizations.
  Mr. President, I understand--and perhaps the Senator from Kentucky 
will enlighten me on this--that the United Kingdom had similar 
restrictions to those proposed here with respect to issue advocacy. If 
my understanding is correct, the court of the European Community has 
just determined that those restrictions were a violation of human 
rights; is that correct? I ask the Senator from Kentucky that question.
  Mr. McCONNELL. The Senator from Washington is entirely correct. Just 
last Thursday, February 19, the European Court of Human Rights ruled 
that laws banning ordinary citizens from spending money to promote or 
denigrate candidates in an election campaign was a breach of human 
rights. That was in response to a group in England that brought the 
suit with the argument that their voices were essentially quieted, 
eliminated, by British law that prohibited them from speaking, in 
effect, in proximity to the election. So the Europeans are heading in 
the direction of issue advocacy, which is something, I say to my friend 
from Washington--and I see my friend and colleague from Utah on his 
feet as well--that the Supreme Court anticipated in the Buckley case.
  Mr. GORTON. I was simply going to ask that question of the Senator 
from Kentucky. Does the Supreme Court in Buckley versus Valeo not deal 
with this question of issue advocacy?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Absolutely. The Senator is correct. Our friends on the 
other side of the aisle act as if issue advocacy is a recent invention 
that has been sort of conjured up and not previously thought of. The 
Court said in the Buckley case, in laying out the terms for express 
advocacy, which is the category directly in support of a candidate, 
which is in the category of FEC money, so-called hard money--they were 
defining express advocacy, and by definition pointing out that ``it 
would naively underestimate the ingenuity and the resourcefulness of 
persons and groups to believe that they would have much difficulty 
devising expenditures that skirted the restrictions on express advocacy 
of election or defeat, but nevertheless benefited the candidate's 
campaign.''
  Just one other quote from that same Buckley case: ``The distinction 
between discussion of issues and candidates and advocacy of election or 
defeat of candidates may often dissolve in practical application.'' 
That was the Supreme Court 22 years ago. ``Candidates, especially 
incumbents, are intimately tied to public issues involving legislative 
proposals and governmental actions. Not only do candidates campaign on 
the basis of their positions on various public issues, but campaigns 
themselves generate issues of public interest.''
  What is the Court saying? They are saying, in effect, that there is 
this whole category of discussion in this country that, under the first 
amendment, citizens are entitled to engage in, whether candidates like 
it or not. I mean, the whole assumption of the argument on the other 
side is that somehow the candidates have a right to control the 
election, control the discourse, in this selected period right before 
the election. Well, the Court anticipated that. They have already dealt 
with it. You clearly can't do it. We don't own these elections. 
Besides, as my friend from Washington pointed out, nobody is suggesting 
that the newspapers shut up during that period of time. Obviously, this 
would enhance their power dramatically.

  Now, I will stipulate and concede that all of us candidates don't 
like all of this discourse that we don't control. Sometimes there are 
people coming in trying to help us and we think they are botching the 
job. Sometimes people are trying to hurt us, and that is particularly 
offensive. But it is absolutely clear that we cannot, by statute, shut 
all these people up, cleanse the process of all of this discussion, and 
control the campaign.
  Mr. GORTON. If I may conclude, I thank the Senator from Kentucky for 
those comments. In reflecting back on the article from which I read 
excerpts by George Will, if we had detailed Congressional Records of 
what was said in Congress in 1797 and 1798, at the time of the Alien 
and Sedition Act, I think we would see a philosophy quite similar to 
the philosophy that is being expressed by the proponents of McCain-
Feingold: People aren't smart enough to know what ought to be said or 
not said or to sort out the quality of what is being said and not said, 
unless we here in Congress tell them who can say it, when they can say 
it, and how much of it they can say. This bill, under those 
circumstances, Mr. President, does have distinguished antecedents, the 
most significant of which is the Alien and Sedition Act.

[[Page S875]]

  I yield the floor.
  Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, perhaps we have reached a new low in the 
debate on the McCain-Feingold bill, which has been characterized as a 
``human rights violation'' and the ``Alien and Sedition Act.''
  Perhaps the Senator from Maine can bring us back to the real 
discussion here. I yield her such time as she requires.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine is recognized.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, the time has come to strike an important 
blow for our democracy by making some limited, but urgently needed, 
repairs to our campaign finance laws.
  Mr. President, the legislation currently pending before this body is 
dramatically different from the original McCain-Feingold bill, which I 
cosponsored and supported. It does not seek to radically alter how we 
finance our campaigns. Indeed, I submit that it does not alter at all 
the basic framework that Congress established more than two decades 
ago.
  Nevertheless, Mr. President, the bill before us today is vitally 
important.
  Before us today is a bill designed to close election law loopholes 
that undermine the protections the American people were promised in the 
aftermath of Watergate. Unlike the prior version of the bill, it will 
not make new reforms to our campaign finance system. Rather, it will 
merely restore prior reforms.
  Let me be more specific, Mr. President. Gone from S. 25 are the 
provisions intended to create a different system for financing 
campaigns. Gone are the voluntary limits on campaign spending. Gone is 
the free TV time. Gone is the discounted TV time. Gone is the reduction 
in PAC limits.
  Most of these reforms continue to be very important, and they are 
reforms to which I remain personally committed. But in the interest of 
securing action on the major abuses in the current system, we, the 
proponents of the McCain-Feingold proposal, have agreed to significant 
compromises.
  What, then, is left? The principal purpose of today's bill is to 
close two immense loopholes that have recently been exploited to evade 
the restrictions and the requirements of current law. I refer, of 
course, to soft-money contributions and bogus issue ads.
  It is fair to ask whether these are, in fact, loopholes or whether 
they are practices that were contemplated when our election laws were 
enacted in the 1970s. To be more specific, when Congress put a $1,000 
limit on campaign contributions, was it intended that individuals could 
make unlimited contributions to political parties that, often following 
a circuitous route, would wind up financing ads clearly designed to 
help or to harm particular candidates? Clearly, Mr. President, the 
answer is no. Similarly, when Congress established political action 
committees as a legitimate and needed mechanism for unions, 
corporations, and other groups to contribute to campaigns, did it 
intend that these entities could nevertheless also make unlimited 
expenditures for political attack ads as long as certain words were 
avoided and some reference, however flimsy, was made to an issue? 
Again, the answer to this question is obviously no, and history bears 
out this conclusion.
  Go back to the early 1980s when soft money was used only for party 
overhead and organization expenses, and you will find that 
contributions totaled only a few million dollars. By contrast, in the 
last election cycle, when soft money took on its current role, these 
contributions exceeded $250 million.
  Bogus issue ads were such a small element in the past, that it is 
impossible to find reliable estimates on the amounts expended on them. 
Unfortunately, that is no longer the case, and these expenditures have 
now become worthy of study. The most prominent of these studies 
estimates that as much as $150 million was spent on bogus issue ads in 
1995 and 1996.
  Mr. President, simple logic also shows that soft money, as it is 
currently used, and bogus issue ads could not have been intended by 
those who drafted our election laws. There would have been little 
purpose in limiting contributions to candidates if unlimited money 
could be given to parties to run ads effectively promoting those 
candidates. There would have been little purpose in placing monetary 
limits on contributions to and by PACs, as well as subjecting them to 
reporting requirements, if the entities for which they were designed 
could avoid all of that by simply running issue ads.
  Mr. President, some may still ask whether any of this matters. Why 
should we be concerned if the campaign contribution limits have been 
rendered a sham by unlimited soft-money donations? Why should we care 
if the PAC safeguards have been eviscerated by bogus issue ads?
  Starting with soft money, one need only consider the situation of the 
Hudson Band of Chippewa Indians, an impoverished tribe in the State of 
Wisconsin. Mr. President, this tribe has every reason to believe and 
every reason to suspect that the denial of their casino application was 
driven by the expectation of large soft-money donations by the wealthy 
tribes who opposed them.
  Allowing such unlimited contributions subverts the proper operation 
of government or at least creates the appearance that it has been 
subverted. It is a sign of how extensive the corrupting effect has 
become that even Native Americans believe they must play the soft money 
to participate in our democracy.
  The situation with bogus issue ads is not better. That practice 
undermines the two major objectives of our election laws, namely, 
placing limits on contributions and disclosing the identity of those 
making the contributions. Without such disclosure, we lose 
accountability. A recent study found that as accountability in 
political communications declines, levels of misinformation and deceit 
rise. Thus, it is no surprise that bogus issue ads almost always carry 
a negative message, something which all in this body purport to decry. 
The question is--are we willing to do something about it?
  In my view, it is imperative that we do something real about these 
problems. Mr. President, I spent much of my first year as a Member of 
this body listening to endless hours of testimony before the 
Governmental Affairs Committee about the campaign finance practices in 
the 1996 elections. While reasonable people can disagree on the 
solutions, those hearings demonstrated beyond any doubt that the 
current system is in shambles precisely as a result of the loopholes I 
have described.
  Mr. President, let me briefly comment on the argument that S. 25 
would violate the first amendment. I personally do not believe that to 
be the case, but more important, there are scores of constitutional 
scholars who support that conclusion. But the reality is that we can 
play the game of dueling law professors forever, and it will not 
resolve the issue.
  We are dealing with an area of great uncertainty. Indeed, in the 
seminal case of Buckley v. Valeo, a majority of the Supreme Court 
Justices could not agree on a single opinion. On the subject of what 
constitutes issue advocacy, Federal Courts of Appeals have handed down 
conflicting decisions. Thus, no member of this body can say with 
certainty how the Supreme Court will decide the issue. Our role is to 
craft election laws that strengthen our democracy, knowing that the 
Supreme Court and the Supreme Court alone will ultimately determine the 
constitutionality of our actions.
  It is also essential to eliminate two myths about this bill. It will 
not stop any American, whether acting as an individual or as part of a 
group, from running ads advocating for or against a position on any 
issue. It will also not stop any American, whether acting as an 
individual or as part of a group, from advocating for or against the 
election of a candidate, as long as the contribution limits and 
reporting requirements of our election laws are satisfied. Statements 
to the contrary are false, and their constant repetition does not make 
them true.
  Let me close, Mr. President, by returning to my original point. When 
I ran for a seat in this body, I advocated a major overhaul in our 
campaign finance laws. Regrettably, that goal must await another day. 
The challenge before us today is far more modest. Are we prepared to 
close loopholes that subvert the intent of the election laws that we 
enacted more than two decades ago? Are we willing to restore to the

[[Page S876]]

American people the campaign finance system that rightfully belongs to 
them?
  I sincerely hope, Mr. President, that at the end of this debate, the 
answer will be yes and that the Senate will take an initial step on the 
road to restoring public trust in government.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky is recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the distinguished 
Senator from Utah.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Kentucky and I 
thank my colleagues for this debate. Let me make a personal point at 
the beginning of my comments. While I disagree quite heartily with the 
position taken on behalf of those who support McCain-Feingold, I do not 
challenge their integrity or their motives. I believe that they are 
acting on the basis of the highest motives, that they honestly believe 
that this legislation would, in fact, be good for our political system 
and be good for the Republic as a whole. I disagree most heartily with 
that position and I do my best to try to convince them that the course 
they are on, however well meaning and well motivated, is, in fact, 
dangerous and threatening of our first amendment rights.
  I learned today on the floor that in Europe it has been determined 
that if we went down this road we would be violating basic human 
rights, according to the European court. I am delighted to know that 
the Europeans have that much common sense. Clearly, the United States 
Supreme Court has made that clear and we in this body should not shirk 
our constitutional responsibility.
  I was somewhat distressed to hear the comment that the Supreme Court 
and only the Supreme Court can determine what the Constitution has to 
say about this. I think we have a responsibility to pay attention to 
the Constitution in this body itself and not burden the Supreme Court 
with laws that are clearly unconstitutional. There is always the chance 
one of them might slip through. A court might not be appropriately 
attentive when a case comes before them, and we get unconstitutional 
legislation. We are the first line of defense as far as the first 
amendment in the Constitution is concerned, and we should take that 
responsibility very seriously and not say, ``Oh, well, let's pass a law 
because it sounds good, let's pass a law because the New York Times 
will give us a good editorial, and the Supreme Court will bail us out 
by declaring it unconstitutional.'' That is a very dangerous position 
to take and I want to do my best to see to it that the first line of 
defense of the first amendment is drawn here in this body and 
maintained here so that the Supreme Court can pay attention to other 
issues.
  I want to address the two points that my friend from Maine talked 
about, soft money contributions and bogus issue ads. Let me reverse the 
order and talk about the first one, the bogus issue ads. She suggests, 
and I'm sure sincerely and honestly she believes, that bogus issue ads 
have come as a result of an attempt to get around the Watergate 
reforms. In fact, bogus issue ads have been with us since the beginning 
of the Republic and they are a free exercise of first amendment rights 
by Americans pre-Watergate, post-Watergate, and frankly post McCain-
Feingold. Americans will find a way around that even if the Supreme 
Court were to allow McCain-Feingold to stand, should we pass it.
  One of the most vivid memories I have in politics is, as a 17-year-
old high school student, watching my father, who was running for his 
first term in this body, standing in the living room of my grandmother, 
his mother, holding a newspaper and saying, ``I can handle my enemies 
but, Lord, protect me from my friends''--a newspaper attacking the 
incumbent Senator from Utah, Elbert Thomas, as a Communist. And my 
father, trying to run his own campaign on other issues, was terribly 
distressed by this four-page attack on his opponent. There are those 
who wrote about that election after it was over who blamed my father 
for that rag. One of the professors from whom I took classes at the 
University of Utah, in the political science department, wrote an 
extensive article in the Western Political Quarterly in which he called 
the 1950 Senate race the dirtiest in Utah history, and blamed my father 
for calling his opponent a Communist and smearing him. My father had 
absolutely nothing to do with that particular publication and had no 
control over it. Mr. President, 1950 was clearly pre-Watergate. It was 
clearly pre- the reforms that the Senator from Maine hopes to 
reestablish here.
  However distasteful it was, however reprehensible it may have been, 
it was well within the rights of the first amendment guaranteed to the 
people who put up the money, published the paper, and distributed it. 
As the Senator from Kentucky indicated, we don't like independent 
expenditure ads. We want to control them. They make us mad--many times 
from our friends, many times from our opponents. But they are part of 
the price we pay for a free press and free speech in this country and 
I, for one, am not willing, in the name of shutting down that kind of 
an ad, to damage the first amendment right that everyone has, including 
the first amendment right to be stupid, the first amendment right to be 
outrageous, the first amendment right to say inflammatory kinds of 
things. I think that right is precious and the line to protect it must 
be drawn here in the Senate and not let us wait until we get to the 
Supreme Court.

  Now, the second issue, the issue of soft money contributions. Like 
the Senator from Maine, I sat on the Governmental Affairs Committee. I 
heard the testimony. Maybe I heard some different testimony than that 
which she heard, but one of the things that struck me most clearly was 
testimony from someone not of my party, not of my political persuasion, 
someone on the liberal end of the spectrum, who made this point 
historically. When Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States 
and prosecuting the war in Vietnam in a way that outraged huge numbers 
of our citizens to the point of protests in the streets, he was 
challenged in the electoral process within his own party by one brave 
Member of this body, Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy went to New Hampshire 
and took on an incumbent President within his own party, an unheard of 
kind of thing. He didn't win that primary but he came close. He came a 
close enough second that he shook LBJ to the point that LBJ 
subsequently left the race. How was the McCarthy campaign financed? It 
was financed with five wealthy individuals, each one of whom put up 
$100,000 apiece. And in 1968, $100,000 went a lot farther than it does 
in 1998.
  In a way, he brought the Government down, not because he had $500,000 
to spend but because he had a message that the people of New Hampshire 
responded to. Without the $500,000, however, the message could not have 
been heard. He and the others who were involved with him, who testified 
before our committee, said, ``If we had been limited to $1,000 apiece, 
McCarthy would never have been able to challenge Lyndon Johnson. If we 
had been limited to that kind of restriction, history would have been 
changed.'' And he quoted, I believe it was Senator McCarthy, who said, 
``The Founding Fathers did not say: To this we pledge our lives, our 
fortunes up to $1,000, and our sacred honor.'' They went the whole way 
and the Constitution gives them the opportunity to go the whole way.
  We have put limitations on. I happen to think that is a mistake, and 
I have talked about that. But we have allowed political parties to 
flourish by unlimited contributions to those parties. That is the 
terrible, awful, debilitating, corrosive soft money that we are talking 
about: The ability to challenge an incumbent President, the ability to 
expand political discourse at a time of great national concern over the 
direction in which an administration is going.
  I ask unanimous consent I be allowed to continue for another 2 
minutes.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I yield 2 more minutes to the Senator 
from Utah.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized. The 
Senate will suspend until we get order in the Senate.
  The Senator is recognized.
  Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Chair.

[[Page S877]]

  Mr. President, I am not a lawyer. Sometimes that is an advantage, 
sometimes it is a disadvantage. But I happen to have devoted a good 
portion of my life to trying to understand the Constitution and 
understand the intentions of the Founding Fathers.
  I don't know what was fully intended by the passing of the Watergate 
reforms, because, frankly, that was a period of time when I was leaving 
Washington instead of paying attention to what was going on here. But I 
do know what was intended in the passing of the first amendment. I do 
know what was intended in the creation of the Constitution.
  I believe that McCain-Feingold falls on two overwhelmingly 
significant points: No. 1, and most important, it is clearly 
unconstitutional; and No. 2, equally crippling, it is totally 
unworkable. On those two bases, I am happy and proud to be part of the 
group that is opposing it here today.
  Mr. McCONNELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky is recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. How much time do I have remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 12 minutes and 20 seconds.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, if I may, I want to follow up on some 
observations by my friend from Utah. The underlying bill seeks to 
abolish what is pejoratively referred to as ``soft money.'' In fact, as 
the Senator from Utah and I know, soft money should not be a pejorative 
term. It is, in fact, everything that isn't hard money. Our two great 
political parties, of course, are interested in who gets to be Governor 
in Utah; occasionally, they are interested in who gets to be mayor of 
Salt Lake City. They are, in fact, Federal parties.
  So, in the aftermath of McCain-Feingold, you would have a complete 
federalization of the American political process, I guess putting the 
FEC in charge of the city council races in Salt Lake City.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, if I might interrupt.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I yield for a question.
  Mr. BENNETT. Salt Lake City has nonpartisan races. There are no 
limits on contributions and there are no limits on spending, and 
somehow we have managed to maintain the pattern of decent mayors 
through that whole situation.
  Mr. McCONNELL. A good point, I say to my friend from Utah.
  It has been suggested by some around here that party soft money could 
simply be abolished, and that is what this underlying bill seeks to do. 
I doubt that, Mr. President.
  A law professor at Capital University in Columbus, OH, who is an 
expert in this field, in a recent article in a Notre Dame Law School 
Journal of Legislation was pointing out with regard to the prospects of 
eliminating non-Federal money for the parties by Federal legislative 
action and said, in referring to the Colorado case in 1996:

       The precedent makes clear that political parties have the 
     rights to engage in issue advocacy--

  Which is funded by the so-called ``soft money''--

     as other entities. In Colorado Republican Party v. FEC, the 
     Republican Party ran a series of advertisements critical of 
     the Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat from Colorado. 
     At the time the ads ran, the Republican nominee had not been 
     determined, and the three candidates were actively seeking 
     that nomination.

  That was the fact situation in that case.

       The Court rejected the FEC's position that a political 
     party could not make expenditures independently of a 
     candidate's campaign.

  Independent expenditures are hard money; issue advocacy is soft 
money. So let's get them divided.

       The Court held that the facts quite clearly showed that the 
     defendant Republican Party expenditures in the race were 
     independent of any candidate's campaign and so could not be 
     limited as contributions to the candidate's campaign 
     directly. If a political party can conduct express advocacy--
     that is independent and hard money--if a political party can 
     conduct express advocacy campaigns independently of its 
     candidates, surely it can conduct an issue ad campaign 
     independently of its candidates. The Colorado Republican 
     Federal Campaign Committee held that political parties' 
     rights under the first amendment are equal to--equal to--
     those of other groups and entities: ``The independent 
     expression of a political party's views is `core' First 
     Amendment activity no less than is the independent 
     expression of individuals, candidates or other political 
     committees.'' In reaching this conclusion, the Court was 
     not breaking new ground, but again merely following 
     established law granting parties the right to speak on 
     political issues.

  I cite that, Mr. President, just to make a point in discussion with 
my friend from Utah that there is virtually no chance the courts would 
say that the Congress, by legislation, can prevent the parties from 
engaging in issue advocacy. We already know they can engage in 
independent expenditures which are financed by so-called ``hard 
money,'' Federal money. Everybody else in America can engage in issue 
advocacy. The Senator from Utah can do it by himself. He can do it as 
part of a group. There is no change. The courts are going to say 
parties can engage in issue advocacy.
  I commend my friend from Utah for his statement. He is absolutely 
correct, there is no chance that this bill, were it to be passed, which 
it will not be passed, but if it were to be passed, would be held 
constitutional. In fact, the courts are going in the opposite 
direction, in the direction of more and more political speech, more and 
more discourse, more and more discussion.
  We do not have a problem in this country because we have too little 
political discussion. That is not a problem. Even though, as the 
Senator from Utah wisely pointed out, we frequently do not like the 
content, the tone of the campaign, it is not ours to control. Nobody 
said we had ownership rights over the campaign. Lots of people are 
entitled to have their say.
  I thank my friend from Utah for his fine statement. I yield the 
floor.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from 
Connecticut.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut is recognized.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair, and I thank my colleague from 
Wisconsin.
  Mr. President, I have spent so much time on this subject in the last 
year that I think I can just clear my throat in 5 minutes. But I will 
try to do more than that, and I hope to have additional opportunities 
to comment as the debate goes on.
  I want to speak against the underlying proposal, the so-called 
Paycheck Protection Act, and in favor of the substitute McCain-Feingold 
proposal that is before us. The Paycheck Protection Act, very briefly, 
is a very disappointing response to the many problems the Senate 
Governmental Affairs Committee uncovered in its recently concluded 
investigation. In fact, I was very surprised to see my dear friend, the 
majority leader, say yesterday, ``I have laid down a bill that embodies 
the most important campaign finance reform of all, paycheck 
protection.''
  Frankly, there is not a single problem, with all respect, looked at 
during our investigation in the Governmental Affairs Committee that 
would have been solved with the Paycheck Protection Act. ``Paycheck 
Protection'' doesn't touch foreign money, it doesn't touch the use of 
public buildings for fundraising, it doesn't touch the problem of 
unregulated and undisclosed attack ads, and it doesn't touch the abuse 
of tax-exempt status by tax-exempt organizations.
  In fact, the underlying bill, the Paycheck Protection Act, is a 
response to a problem that doesn't exist. No one is forced to join a 
union, and under the Beck decision, nonunion members already have an 
absolute right to ask for a refund of the amount they paid the union in 
agency fees that went to political activities of which they do not 
approve. Union members, for their part, voluntarily join an 
organization, and they express a desire to have their leadership 
represent them, both with management and more generally. If they 
disagree with the way in which the leadership of the union is spending 
that money for political or legislative purposes, they have the same 
right that shareholders have who are disgruntled with the activities of 
the leadership of a corporation. Shareholders can launch a proxy fight. 
Disgruntled union members can try to change the leadership of the 
union. There is a democratic process dramatically, intensely supervised 
by the Federal Government itself.

  In fact, I suggest that the Paycheck Protection Act as before us is 
not only

[[Page S878]]

a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, it is itself a problem 
because it is of doubtful constitutionality. This bill says to a union 
that before it can involve itself in political activities, before it 
can spend its own general treasury funds, contributed by dues-paying 
members, not just on political campaigns but, by definition in the 
underlying bill, in attempting to influence legislation, the union 
leadership needs the separate prior written voluntary authorization of 
each one of their members.
  To me, that comes close to being a prior restraint on the exercise by 
a labor union of the rights it receives under the First Amendment to 
petition our Government to attempt to influence legislation and to free 
association. If that is not the case, it certainly raises questions of 
equal protection, because there is no similar restriction put on any 
other organization that I know of, including particularly corporations. 
True, there is language in the paycheck protection bill that deals with 
corporations, but by not even trying to cover shareholders, it is 
plainly not at all equivalent to the restriction on the expenditure of 
union dues.
  On the other side, McCain-Feingold, with appreciation to its two 
cosponsors--a great example of the kind of bipartisanship that should 
exist around here--is a practical response to the problems that came 
before the Governmental Affairs Committee. The arguments against it, 
with all respect, are premised on this strange twist of principle that 
money is speech.
  I think it was my friend, the junior Senator from Georgia, who said 
last year, if money is speech under the Constitution, that must mean 
that the more money you have, the greater is your right to free speech. 
Is that what the Framers of the Constitution meant when they said that 
all of us are created equal, we have an equal right, unfettered, to 
petition our Government? I don't think so. Against that specious 
principle, money is speech, they have undercut the sacred principle of 
equality of access to our Government.
  So I say the soft money ban and the other limits in the McCain-
Feingold proposal are constitutional. In the Buckley decision, the 
Court made it clear that it is constitutional to limit contributions to 
campaigns, and this ban on soft money is just another way to do that.
  The fact is, as Chairman Thompson of the Governmental Affairs 
Committee said during our proceedings, effectively, there is no 
campaign finance law anymore in the United States of America, and the 
reason why the limits on individual contributions, the prohibitions on 
corporate and union money that are in the law are no longer effective 
is mostly because of soft money.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time requested by the Senator has expired.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair for the very gracious way in which 
he conveyed that message, which is very typical of the occupant of the 
Chair. I yield the floor.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut 
very much for his remarks. I note the emergence of a new argument that 
is in effect that the Supreme Court of the United States is 
incompetent, that they will not be able to recognize the constitutional 
problems in any bill and, therefore, we have to make sure that every 
piece of our bill raises absolutely no constitutional questions. I 
think that is a somewhat absurd proposition.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished 
senior Senator from Massachusetts.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I, too, join in commending Senator 
Feingold, Senator McCain, Senator Lieberman and the others for their 
persistence and perseverance in advancing sensible and responsible 
campaign finance reform to the U.S. Congress, and, hopefully, we will 
address it in a serious way as they have addressed this issue and do so 
in the next few days.
  I will speak for a few moments about the underlying bill that is 
being proposed, and I suggest that this bill really is a sham in terms 
of proposing to protect the interests of American workers.
  The average American worker earns $12.51 an hour, just over $26,000 a 
year. These workers want a good retirement, a decent education for 
their children, safe neighborhoods and quality health care. But how can 
they compete on these issues in the political process when the fat cats 
spend far more in one political fundraiser or in one 30-second 
political ad than the average worker earns in a year?
  We must return election campaigns to the people, in which all voters 
are equal, no matter what their income, what job they hold or where 
they live.
  The current system is a scandal, and Democrats are ready to reform it 
right now. Every Democratic Senator--every single one--supports the 
McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill. The burden now rests squarely 
with the Republican Party. It is up to Republicans to decide whether 
Congress will reform the broken campaign finance laws or continue the 
unseemly influence of special interests in American politics.
  So far, all the Republican leadership in Congress proposes is more 
money in politics, not less. They want more money from their special 
interest friends. They want to silence working families and the labor 
unions for speaking up on issues they care about. That is what the 
Republican leadership calls campaign finance reform.
  The Republican proposal purports to help working families by 
regulating how labor unions pay for their participation in the 
political process. But for working families, this proposal is grossly 
unfair. It is the centerpiece of an agenda by big corporations and the 
right wing of the Republican Party to silence working families, not 
help them.
  The Republican leadership proposal is not reform but revenge--revenge 
for the role of the labor movement in the 1996 campaign. It imposes a 
gag rule on American workers, and it should be defeated.
  The bill is a sham. It does not protect the workers. It is designed 
to advance an antiworker, antilabor, antiunion agenda. It does not 
protect individual rights, as its sponsor claims. It singles out 
unions, but does nothing for corporate shareholders or members of other 
organizations.

  In fact, in the 1996 election, corporations outspent labor unions 11 
to 1. Under the Republican proposal, big tobacco can still use 
corporate treasury funds to oppose using cigarette tax revenues to 
promote children's health, even if shareholders object. And the 
National Rifle Association can oppose a ban on cop-killer bullets even 
if NRA members object. But before labor unions can use union funds to 
speak up for working families, they would have to obtain written 
approval from every union member first.
  But it does not stop there. The antiworker Republican proposal before 
us today is only part of a larger, big business, right wing campaign 
conspiracy to deny working families a voice in their own Government. 
Already, proposals virtually identical to this one have been introduced 
in 19 States as ballot initiatives or as State legislation. The same 
people who fought the minimum wage and want to abolish labor unions--
the same people who lead the charge in the Republican party for tax 
breaks for the rich--are also part of this coordinated nationwide 
campaign to block workers and their unions at every turn in Washington 
and State capitals everywhere.
  A recent editorial in a Nevada paper says it clearly as anyone. 
Nevada is one of the States where the right wing is pushing these 
initiatives. And the Reno Gazette journal spoke out against the 
proposal, saying:

       Beware of GOP Foxes in Labor's House. . . . Its main 
     purpose is not to help workers but to weaken Democrats. . . . 
     This petition is not intended to benefit the common man 
     nearly as much as it is intended to benefit one specific 
     class of politicians. . . . So when someone asks you to sign 
     this Republican petition outside your favorite supermarket or 
     elsewhere, think about what is really going on here. The 
     scent of special interest fills the air like a convention of 
     skunks in the hollow.

  This language applies equally to the Paycheck Protection Act that my 
Republican friends are advocating in the U.S. Senate. The Republican 
proposal is phony reform, and it should be opposed. Far from protecting 
the American worker, it is a prescription for disaster for millions of 
Americans and their families. I oppose it. My colleagues on this side 
of the aisle oppose it. I urge every Senator to oppose it.

[[Page S879]]

  Senator McCain and Senator Feingold have proposed sensible reforms to 
ban soft money and to crack down on campaign adds by outside interest 
groups that are nothing more than thinly veiled appeals to defeat 
particular candidates. These are responsible reforms. And I urge my 
colleagues to support them.
  I thank the Senator for yielding me time.
  Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts 
for his statement, and I strongly agree with his description of what 
this Paycheck Protection Act is all about. It is a poison pill directed 
at only one group in this country, which I think is clearly unfair.
  Mr. President, I now yield 5 minutes to the distinguished Senator 
from Illinois, Mr. Durbin.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding to me.
  Mr. President, when I try to understand the logic of those who oppose 
this bipartisan campaign finance reform and try to understand their 
thinking, which concludes that both the rich and the poor in America 
should have the right to purchase millions of dollars in television 
time, my mind is drawn to a movie, the movie ``Titanic.''
  What is the link between the opposition to McCain-Feingold and the 
fate of the Titanic? On the Titanic, only 5 percent of the first-class 
women passengers drowned; more than 50 percent of all the women in the 
lowest class cabin drowned.

  Now, in the eyes of those who oppose McCain-Feingold, everyone on the 
Titanic had the right to a lifeboat. Unfortunately, they would have to 
conclude, I guess, that those passengers in first-class cabins were 
just better swimmers. In fact, on the Titanic, they locked the doors of 
the cabin class until all the lifeboats had been opened for first-class 
passengers.
  It reminds me too of their logic that the rich need to have their 
opportunity to exercise free speech. It reminds me of the old case in 
law school or the old story in law school that said the law, in its 
infinite wisdom, makes it a crime for the wealthy as well as the 
homeless to sleep under bridges. That gives us an insight, I think, 
into the thought processes that guide those who oppose this bipartisan 
campaign finance reform.
  We have to understand what the result of the current campaign 
financing system is. It is a system without rules and without any moral 
grounding. It is a system heavily weighted in favor of the insiders, 
the grifters and those middle-age crazy millionaires who just cannot 
get the melody of ``Hail to the Chief'' out of their minds. The flaw in 
their thinking in supporting the current campaign system is their 
conclusion that campaign spending limitations restrain speech.
  I know the Supreme Court reached that decision over 20 years ago. And 
I guess there is some value that the Supreme Court Justices by and 
large have never been political candidates. They have not been sullied 
by this nasty process. But that decision and their conclusion lacked 
any grounding in the real world of campaigns.
  The campaign system we have today, where wealth buys speech, creates 
in fact, if not in law, a restraint on speech more insidious than any 
frontal assault on the first amendment. We give the candidates of 
modest means a throat lozenge and a soap box and give the wealthiest 
candidates the magic lantern of television and all its proven power of 
persuasion. The opponents to McCain-Feingold are blind to this obvious 
disparity and its consequences.
  Now in this debate over changing our campaign system, if you stay 
tuned today, and perhaps later in the week, do not be surprised that 
the ``haves'' in politics are unwilling to concede any ground to the 
``have-nots.''
  If Machiavelli did not write this axiom, he should have: ``No party 
in power will ever willingly surrender the means by which they came to 
power.''
  The Republican party is and always has been more adept at 
fundraising. They seldom lose for lack of money, only for lack of 
talent or ideas. And now we have a situation where eight Republicans 
have stood up and said that they are for campaign finance reform. They 
deserve our praise. It took courage for them to do it.
  John McCain, who has joined Senator Russ Feingold, deserves that 
recognition, as well as Senators Chafee, Susan Collins, Tim Hutchinson, 
Jim Jeffords, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter and Fred Thompson. But I 
hope we can rally some more Republican support to join the 45 Democrats 
who are on the record for real reform.
  Step back for a minute and ask yourself this question: Is the current 
campaign system serving America? Not whether it is good for Democrat or 
Republican incumbents or challengers. Is it serving America?
  Let me show you two charts to take a look at. This is an interesting 
chart because it shows on this red line the percentage of eligible 
voters who are actually registered.
  Back in 1964, 64 percent of eligible voters actually registered. By 
1996, the number was up to 74.4 percent. That is good news, isn't it? 
More Americans are signing up to vote. We certainly want to encourage 
that. But look down here at the bottom line. Look at the turnout of 
voters for Presidential elections. The high number--61.92 percent over 
here in 1964--look how high it was in comparison to those eligible to 
vote who actually registered, and then look what happens in 1996, 49.08 
percent actually turned out to vote for President.

  So, 74.4 percent eligible, 49 percent turned out, the lowest 
percentage turnout of eligible voters since 1924. In 1924, the first 
year when women were allowed to vote, it was a year when it was an 
extraordinary count. There were more eligible women than actually 
voted. You have to go back to 1830 to find this low a turnout.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I yield to the Senator from Illinois such time as he 
requires.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized.
  Mr. DURBIN. Thank you.
  This chart really brings home the issue what we are faced with. In 
1960, the total amount of money spent in the United States of America 
on all Federal, State and local campaigns--$175 million. Watch it grow. 
Watch it grow dynamically until we get to $4 billion, the estimate of 
the amount spent in 1996 on all political campaigns.
  But look what is happening to the voters. When we are spending $175 
million, 63 percent of the voters turned out. As we get up to $4 
billion in spending, we are down to 49% of the voters showing up for 
the Presidential election year.
  If you were running a company and you said to your marketing 
division, ``I want you to double the advertising budget and sell more 
of our product,'' and they come back in the next quarter and said, ``We 
doubled the advertising budget and we're selling fewer products,'' you 
would have to reach one of two conclusions: something was wrong with 
your advertising organization or something is wrong with your product. 
In politics there is something wrong with both.
  People are sick of our advertising. It is too negative. It is too 
nasty. These drive-by shooting ads that we have, 30-second ads by issue 
groups you never heard of, at the last minute of a campaign, and 
candidates, myself included, spending a lot of time groveling and 
begging for money, that does not help the process. It does not help our 
image. It does not encourage people to get involved.
  What McCain-Feingold is about is not just changing the law but 
changing the attitude of the public toward the political campaigns. And 
unless and until that happens, we face a very serious problem in this 
country. What McCain-Feingold goes after in eliminating soft money is 
something that has to happen. Soft money is what is left after all of 
the restrictions on hard money have been applied.
  For those who are not well versed in the language of politics and 
campaigns, ``soft money'' can be corporate money, it can be money that 
is given by a person that exceeds any kind of limitation. It can be 
money that is used indirectly to help a campaign. And that sort of 
expenditure has just mushroomed.
  I am glad that the legislation of Senator Feingold and Senator McCain 
is going to ban soft money. I also think it is critically important 
they do something about these issues ads. For goodness sakes, as a 
candidate for the U.S.

[[Page S880]]

Senate, I have to disclose every penny raised and every penny spent. 
And when I put an ad on the air, I have to put an allocation at the 
bottom of each ad as to who paid for it and a little mug shot of myself 
so they can see my face.
  But these groups that appear out of nowhere come in, in the closing 
days of a campaign, and absolutely blister candidates in the name of 
issue advocacy groups that do not disclose one single item of fact 
about how they raise their money and how they spent it. Don't believe 
for a minute that there is some group called the ``Campaign for Term 
Limits'' that is running around shopping centers with kettles and bells 
collecting money. This is a special interest group, spending literally 
millions of dollars in our political process to defeat candidates in 
the name of an issue, and you do not know a thing about them. You do 
not know if they are funded by the tobacco companies, you do not know 
if they are funded by foreign money, you do not have a clue. That is 
not fair.
  What we have in the McCain-Feingold bill is an effort to finally--
finally--bring some reality to this process and some sensibility to it. 
And it is long overdue. We have to make sure that we have a bustling, 
free marketplace of ideas. But the evidence is compelling that 
political megamergers of special interest groups like the NRA, Right to 
Life, Americans for Tax Reform, Chamber of Commerce, and even the AFL-
CIO, which has clearly supported more Democrats than Republicans, all 
of these things are driving individuals with limited means and middle-
range incomes out of the political process.
  To argue passionately as we have in America for ``one man, one vote'' 
as a pillar of democracy and ignore the gross disparity of resources 
available to pursue that vote is elitist myopia.
  I rise in support of this bill. And I hope that those who do support 
real campaign finance reform will not fall for proposals and poison 
pill amendments which will basically scuttle this effort. We have a 
rare opportunity to win back the American people and their confidence 
in our process. Defeating McCain-Feingold by procedural tricks and any 
other mechanism that they dream up is really not serving the future of 
this country and the future of our Republic. So I stand in strong 
support of McCain-Feingold, and thank my colleague from Wisconsin for 
yielding this time.
  Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I thank the Senator from Illinois for all his 
tremendous help on this issue, and now yield to the Senator from North 
Dakota such time as he requires.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 9 minutes 40 seconds.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senator from Illinois said much of 
what I would like to say. I appreciate very much the leadership of the 
Senator from Wisconsin, Senator Feingold, and the Senator from Arizona, 
Senator McCain, on this issue.
  We had a lot of hearings last year about campaign finance reform: 31 
days of hearings, 240 depositions, about 50 public witnesses, $3.5 
million, 87 staff people. We learned about all kinds of abuses with 
soft money and attack ads thinly disguised as issue advertising.
  Well, here we have on the floor of the Senate today a piece of 
legislation that says, ``Let us reform the system we have for financing 
campaigns.''
  One of the important pieces of this reform, the centerpole for the 
tent, in my judgment, is the ban on soft money. Now, what is soft 
money? People who are not involved in political campaigns may not know 
what this term soft money means. It is the political equivalent of a 
Swiss bank account. Soft money is like a Swiss bank account. It is 
where somebody takes money that is often secret, from an undisclosed 
source, with nobody knowing where it comes from, how much is there, how 
it got there, and it is used over here in some other device, ostensibly 
to help the political system and not to be involved in Federal 
elections. But what we now know from the range of campaigns that have 
gone on in recent years is soft money is a legalized form of cheating 
that has been used to affect Federal campaigns all across this country.
  The total amount of soft money raised is on the rise. In the first 6 
months of the 1993-1994 political cycle, $13 million; the first 6 
months of the 1997-1998 cycle, $35 million. It is going up, up, way up.
  Some say there is not a problem of campaign finance and we don't need 
a reform. Take a look at this political inflation index. At a time when 
wages have risen 13 percent in 4 years, education spending rose 17 
percent, the spending on politics in this country rose 73 percent. 
There is too much money in politics.
  Some say money is speech and we like free speech. That is the 
political golden rule. I guess those who have the gold make the rules.
  I suppose if I was part of a group that had a lot more money than 
anybody else I suppose there would be an instinct deep inside to try to 
persuade you to say this situation is great. We not only have more 
money but we have access to more money than anyone else in the history 
of civilization. Why would we want to change the rules? We ought to 
change the rules because this system is broken and everybody in this 
country knows it and understands it.
  Let me go through some examples to describe what is happening in this 
system. And both political parties have had problems in these areas, 
both parties. Let me give one example. In 1996, $4.6 million of soft 
money went from the Republican National Committee to an organization 
called Americans for Tax Reform, $4.6 million. This soft money, then, 
comes from contributors whose identities are often unknown--they often 
do not need to be disclosed--contributing money in amounts that would 
be prohibited under our federal election laws, to influence a Federal 
election. $4.6 million from a major political party to this 
organization, Americans for Tax Reform. That was four times the total 
budget of this organization in the previous year.
  How was the money spent, this soft money raised in large undisclosed 
chunks from sources in many cases prohibited from trying to spend money 
to influence Federal elections? How was it used? To influence Federal 
elections, 150 of them, to be precise--17 million pieces of mail to 150 
congressional districts.
  You say the system isn't broken? Mr. President, $4.6 million? This is 
the equivalent of a political Swiss bank account. Large chunks of 
money, blowing into the system to a group that never has to disclose 
what it does with it.
  And what about the issue ads which Senator Durbin mentioned as well? 
These issue ads--are they ads that contribute to this political 
process? Eighty-one percent of them are negative. They represent the 
slash, burn and tear faction of the political system. Get money, get it 
in large chunks from secret sources and put some issue ads on someplace 
and try to tear somebody down.
  Let's discuss one group, and one ad in particular. Look at this 
scenario.
  The Citizens for Republic Education Fund is a tax-exempt organization 
incorporated June 20, 1996, that raised more than $2 million between 
June and the end of the year in this election year--$1.8 million of 
which was raised between October 1 and November 15. They spent $1.7 
million after October 11 and before the election in a matter of a 
couple of weeks. Remember, these funds are not intended to influence 
Federal elections, but here's all this money being spent in just three 
weeks before the election.

  You be the judge. Consider the following, and then you tell me 
whether these were intended to influence a Federal election. The vast 
majority of the money was spent after October 11 in an election year. 
The group didn't come into existence until June of the election year. 
The group never had any committees or programs, had no offices, no 
staff, no chairs, no desks and no telephones. All it had was millions 
of dollars to pump into attack ads.
  The ads did not advocate on behalf of any one set of issues. Instead, 
the ads were almost universally tailored to a particular unfavored 
candidate's perceived flaws, just like any campaign attack ad would be. 
In fact, you could ask whether they advocate any issues at all.
  Let me turn to a so-called issue ad.

       Senate [Candidate X] budget as Attorney General increased 
     71 percent. [Candidate X] has taken taxpayer funded junkets 
     to the

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     Virgin Islands, Alaska and Arizona, and spent about $100,000 
     on new furniture. Unfortunately, as the State's top law 
     enforcement official, he's never opposed the parole of a 
     convicted criminal, even rapists and murders. And almost 
     4,000 prisoners have been sent back to prison for crimes 
     committed while they were out on parole. [Candidate X]: 
     Government waste, political junkets, soft on crime. Call 
     [Candidate X] and tell him to give the money back.

  A political ad, paid for with soft money from a political Swiss bank 
account. It's like a Swiss bank account because it is from a secret 
source, designed to be used to create attack ads, to be used at 
election time to influence Federal elections, something that, frankly, 
is supposed to be prohibited by law. But this has now become the 
legalized form of cheating. In fact, we are not even sure it is legal, 
but it is being done all across this country and it is being done with 
big chunks of secret money.
  In fact, one secret donor put up, I'm told, $700,000 to spend on so-
called issue ads to influence federal campaigns. We don't even know for 
certain the identity of that person. And that soft money, that big 
chunk of money prohibited from ever affecting Federal races was used in 
this kind of advertising to directly try and influence Federal 
campaigns.
  Now, I just ask the question, is there anyone here who will stand in 
the Senate with a straight face and say that this isn't cheating? 
Anyone here who will stand with a straight face and say this isn't 
designed to affect a Federal election? Anybody think this is fine? Go 
to a friend someplace that has $40 million and say, will you lend us $1 
million, we have these two folks we don't like--one in one State up 
north and one in a State down south. We want to put half a million into 
each State and defeat them because they happen to be of a political 
persuasion we don't like, and we don't want them serving in the U.S. 
Senate. If you give us $1 million we will package it in two parts, half 
a million into each State. Your name will never be used. No one will 
know you did it. We will package up these kind of 30-second slash, tear 
and burn political ads and claim they are issue ads and they can be 
paid for with soft money.
  Does anybody in this body believe this is a process that the American 
people ought to respect? That this is a process the American people 
think makes sense? Do we really believe that money is equal to speech 
and that anything that we would do to change the amount and kind of 
money spent in the pursuit of any campaign is somehow inhibiting the 
political process?
  I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Is that off of your time?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sessions). The presumption would be we 
would recess at 12:32.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I believe I have 7 minutes, and I do want to reserve 
my 7 minutes.
  Mr. DORGAN. I do want to make a couple of final points here. We can 
decide to do one of two things in this Senate on this day or this week. 
We can decide that campaign finance system in this country is just 
fine, that nothing is wrong with it, that we like the way it works. We 
can say that we think it has the respect of the American people, that 
we think this sort of nonsense that goes on is just fine and perfectly 
within the rules, that we think that the growth of soft money, the 
growth of spending in campaigns in this country is wonderful. We can 
say we think this explosion in political money reflects the American 
people's determination to acquire more and more speech, and that we 
think the American people believe, as some would say, that this system 
works just fine.

  Or we can decide that something smells in campaign finance, that 
something is wrong with campaign financing in this country, that we see 
the costs of political campaigns are skyrocketing up, up, way up 
because we have people who believe they can take secret money and now 
use it to buy elections. We can decide something is horribly wrong with 
that, and we can decide that we know the American people know there is 
something horribly wrong with that. We can decide that it is in our 
province to do something about it, now, today, this week, this month. 
We in Congress can do something about this. We can do something about 
it without hurting free expression anywhere in this country, and 
anywhere in our political system. No one who supports reform wants to 
restrict free speech in this country, nor should we do that. But we can 
decide that this system is out of control, that this system disserves 
our democratic process, and that we must pursue a better way.
  Senator McCain and Senator Feingold have proposed a piece of 
legislation. Is it perfect? No, it is not. But it is a good piece of 
legislation. I am a cosponsor. I want this Congress to pass that piece 
of legislation this week, have the House pass it, get to conference and 
pass a piece of campaign finance reform that will make the American 
people proud.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky has 7 minutes.
  Mr. McCONNELL. After I use 7 minutes, we go into recess for policy 
luncheons?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Maybe a good place to wrap up the morning discussion, 
which I think has been a good one, is to call to the attention of 
Members of the Senate an NPR morning edition commentary by a woman 
named Wendy Kaminer who is a professor at Radcliffe College--not 
exactly a bastion of conservatism. This was NPR's morning edition, 
December 3, 1997, on the subject we are debating here today.
  Professor Kaminer said in her commentary that morning:
       Protecting the act of spending money as we protect the act 
     of speaking means standing up for the rights of the rich, 
     something not many self-identified progressives are eager to 
     do.
       But the realization that money controls the exercise of 
     rights is hardly new. Money translates into abortion rights, 
     for example, as well as speech. Indeed, liberals demand 
     Medicaid funding for abortions precisely because they 
     recognize that money insures reproductive choice. Money also 
     insures the right to run for office. Liberal support for 
     reforms that provide minimum public subsidies to candidates 
     is based on an implicit recognition that exercising political 
     speech requires spending money.
       So proposed public financing schemes are based on the fact 
     that reformers like to deny--the fact that sometimes money 
     effectively equals speech. Reformers who support public 
     financing argue persuasively that candidates with no money 
     have virtually no chance to be heard in the political 
     marketplace. They want to provide more candidates with a 
     financial floor, in order to insure more political speech. It 
     is simply illogical for them to deny that a financial 
     celing--caps on contributions and expenditures--is a ceiling 
     on political speech.
  It is absurd to deny that that is a cap on political speech. 
Professor Kaminer went on:

       We need campaign finance reform that respects speech and 
     the democratic process; it would subsidize needy candidates 
     and impose no spending or contribution limits on anyone.

  She says:

       I'm not denying that money sometimes corrupts. It corrupts 
     everything, from politics to religion. But if some clergymen 
     spend the hard-earned money of their followers on fast women 
     and fancy cars, there are others who raise money in order to 
     spend it on the poor. While some politicians seek office for 
     personal gain, others seek to implement ideas, however 
     flawed. Money only corrupts people who are already 
     corruptible. It is terribly naive and misleading for 
     reformers to label their proposals ``clean election laws.'' 
     Dirty politicians who sell access and lie to voters in 
     campaign ads will not suddenly become clean politicians when 
     confronted with limits on contributions and spending.
       Reformers are guilty of false advertising when they market 
     campaign finance reform as a substitute for integrity. 
     Politicians are corrupted by money when they are 
     unprincipled. Limiting the flow of money to them will not 
     increase their supply of principles. And, in the end, money 
     may be less corrupting than a desire for power, which can 
     engender a willingness to pander rather than lead.

  Finally, she says:

       If I wanted to influence Bill Clinton, I would not write 
     him a check, I'd show him a poll.

  So, Mr. President, it is the denial of the obvious to conclude that 
the limitation on the financing of campaigns or restrictions on the 
ability of individuals or groups to amplify their message is anything 
other than a degrading, a quantification, a limitation of their ability 
to express themselves in our democracy. And the bill that we have 
before us essentially seeks to weaken the

[[Page S882]]

parties and make it impossible for outside groups to criticize us in 
proximity to an election.
  There is no chance the courts would uphold this, but fortunately we 
are not going to give them a chance to rule on this because we are not 
going to pass this ill-advised legislation.
  Mr. President, how much time is left?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
  I believe the Senator from Illinois wants to speak on a separate 
subject. The Senator would need to make a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________