[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 25 (Wednesday, March 11, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1722-S1723]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, all of our hopes for 
campaign finance reform in this session of the Congress were once again 
frustrated. A year of investigations, legislative proposals, and public 
debate were met with a filibuster led by the Republican leadership. 
Perhaps it really should not have come as much of a surprise to any of 
us. In the last decade, this Senate has considered 321 different pieces 
of legislation for campaign finance reform, which filled 6,742 pages of 
the Congressional Record--and all of this with no change.
  So now, for the 117th time in 10 years, the Senate has voted on an 
element of campaign finance reform to absolutely no avail. It is a 
problem of near-crisis proportions, not simply because of the burden it 
places on candidates for public office, not simply because of the 
compromises it seems to make in public policy. There is a problem far 
more fundamental. As evidenced in the confidence of our own people in 
their system of Government, the United States remains perhaps the only 
developed democracy in the world where its leadership is chosen by a 
minority of its citizens. Americans are expressing themselves in our 
system of Government not with their voices but with their feet, because 
they choose not to walk into a voting booth.
  If it was bad enough that this Congress would not act, now this 
frustration with reform is in an entirely different form. President 
Clinton has challenged the FCC to institute at least one element of 
reform--in my judgment, perhaps the most important element of reform--
by mandating a reduction in the cost of television advertising, on the 
simple theory that if the cost of advertising is less, candidates will 
be raising less. If the cost of advertising is less, candidates without 
great financial resources will still seek public office and not find a 
barrier to expression. It is not a perfect answer, but it is at least a 
contribution. This was the President's challenge. The FCC has before it 
that question.
  But it was not enough to have a filibuster to defeat the McCain-
Feingold reform legislation. Now an effort is being made to include in 
the President's supplemental funding request in the appropriations 
process a prohibition on the FCC actually ordering a reduction in 
rates. The scale of the problem the FCC would deal with is enormous. 
Since 1977, the cost of congressional campaigns has risen over 700 
percent. The central element of this rising spiral of costs is 
television advertising. In 1996, candidates spent over $400 million to 
purchase television advertising on federally licensed, public airwaves. 
Hundreds of candidates were traveling to virtually every State, 
thousands of communities, to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to 
buy time on federally licensed airwaves that belong to the American 
people. It is almost incredible to believe.
  There has been, since 1988, a 76 percent increase in this financial 
burden on public candidates for television advertising. Political 
advertising on the public airwaves dominates all other forms of 
campaign spending. President Clinton and Senator Dole spent nearly two-
thirds of all their financial resources to buy television time. One 
half of all the money raised by U.S. Senate candidates was similarly 
spent on television advertising. In the larger industrial States for 
the principal media markets, the numbers are far greater--in Los 
Angeles, Chicago, New York, Miami, or Boston. In my own State of New 
Jersey, in the Senate race in 1996, fully 80 percent of all financial 
resources went to buy television advertising. Some 30 seconds of access 
to the voting population on television could cost in excess of $50,000.

  Can it be any wonder that candidates are spending all of their time 
raising money rather than discussing issues? Can there be any question 
why candidates without great financial resources, simply possessing a 
desire to serve and a creativity for dealing with public policy, do not 
feel they can enter the electoral process? The principal barrier is the 
public airwaves themselves--something the people of the United States 
already own. Yet, it's being denied to our own people to discuss issues 
about our country's own future.
  Congress has had a chance to deal with this problem, and it has not. 
The original version of the McCain-Feingold reform legislation 
contained reductions in television advertising. It was removed. A 
challengers' amendment was offered to the McCain-Feingold reform bill 
that would have provided for a reduction. It was not adopted. I 
introduced an amendment that would have allowed for a 75 percent 
reduction. My amendment could not be offered. These are the reasons why 
I believe President Clinton challenged the FCC to act. To this 
Congress, our responsibility should be clear. Since the Congress failed 
to enact campaign finance reform, at least get out of the way so that 
the FCC can act responsibly and institute at least one element of 
reform. The Congress has had a decade, hundreds of opportunities, and 
did nothing. At least now remain silent so that others who will act 
responsibly can do something to deal with this mounting national 
problem.
  It is not as if we do not have in the FCC the legal ability to 
require the television networks to reduce the cost of advertising. And 
it is not as though this request is without precedence. In 1952, the 
FCC set aside 12 percent of all television channeling time for 
education purposes, for noncommercial use. In 1967, President Johnson 
set aside part of the spectrum for public broadcasting. For the FCC now 
to require a reduction in rates has not only precedence but 
overwhelming precedence. Candidates for public office now pay a reduced 
rate, albeit insufficiently reduced. Perhaps even greater, however, is 
that the FCC is providing up to $20 billion worth of free licenses to 
broadcasters for digital television, a part of the spectrum on a 
digital basis, requiring the broadcasters to pay nothing, and probably 
the greatest grant to private industry since the opening of Federal 
lands to the railroads. The broadcasters were provided this license on 
a single basis, on a single request that they fulfill a public 
obligation to the people of this country.
  I can think of no greater opportunity to fulfill that public 
obligation in meeting a more serious national problem than the FCC 
now--after the granting of these digital television licenses to 
broadcasters, asking them to provide reduced rates or free television 
time. The scale of the burden is so minimal.
  Last year, television networks billed, for commercial and other 
advertising, $42 billion. Of this total advertising expenditure, 1.2 
percent was for political advertising. The cost of reducing the rates 
for political advertising, that 1.2 percent, would still allow for a 
growth in the overall advertising revenue of the networks next year. So 
if the FCC acted on any reasonable basis, it would not result in less 
broadcaster revenues next year and, in year-to-year terms, it would be 
simply a small reduction in the rate of growth. This we would hesitate 
to ask after providing $20 billion worth of free new licenses to the 
networks that are already operating on publicly owned airwaves of the 
people of the United States?
  Perhaps it isn't that the burden isn't too great; perhaps it isn't a 
legal problem at all; perhaps it is that there are Members of this 
institution of the Congress that like the idea that there is a 
threshold price for entry to public office in the United States. The 
price of entering public office in the United States is not an academic 
degree; it is not a command of the issues; it is not a given level of 
commitment to public service; it is the ability to buy television time 
to communicate views. Increasingly, that means people of great personal 
wealth use their own resources. If it is not their own resources, it is 
the ability to use those resources of great financial interests in the 
United States that command all of the candidate's time and attention. 
Perhaps it is that people like this threshold price of entry and what 
it means for certain interests in the Senate, partisan or otherwise.
  Well, it leaves us with this simple situation: The Congress had its 
chance

[[Page S1723]]

for campaign finance reform and, after a decade of effort, it has 
failed. President Clinton has made a request for the FCC to consider 
reductions in television advertising rates. That issue is now before 
Chairman Kennard. The Commissioners of the FCC and its new chairman, 
Mr. Kennard, have a historic opportunity--an opportunity that goes to 
the very issue of confidence in this Government, the ability for people 
to feel they identify with these institutions, with their futures and 
the welfare of their families. They have an extraordinary opportunity 
to institute reform.
  I hope the FCC will act, and I hope this Congress, having failed to 
be responsible in dealing with this problem, at least has the good 
grace to remain silent, to not amend the supplemental appropriations 
legislation so that others can meet a responsibility that was not met 
on the floor of this Senate.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). Without objection, it is 
so ordered.

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