Congressional Record, Volume 144 Issue 35 (Wednesday, March 25, 1998)

[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 35 (Wednesday, March 25, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1522-H1529]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I am here tonight to talk about the issue of
campaign finance reform. This is a topic that has been a subject of
particular importance to the freshman class, and I want to explain why.
We are going to start with the simple fact that the 1996 election was
different from other elections in the past. One of the major
differences was the amount of soft money that flowed to the national
parties that eventually found its way into ads that were run for and
against candidates around the country.

{time} 2000

Now, soft money is the unlimited money that comes from corporations,
from unions, and from very wealthy individuals, to the national
parties. This

[[Page H1523]]

chart on my right will give my colleagues some sense of how there has
been an explosion of soft money in the 1996 cycle.
As my colleagues can see, in the 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1992 cycles,
there was a certain amount of soft money flowing to the national
parties, but then in 1996, all the limits came off. It is important to
remember, as I said before, this is corporate money, this is union
money, and this is money from very wealthy individuals.
What was different about 1996? What was different in 1996 is that
both parties figured out that they could legally use soft money that
came to the national parties to run so-called ``issue advertisements.''
These were advertisements that did not say vote for or vote against a
particular candidate, but they did talk about a particular issue, and
they did frame the ad almost always in a negative way and urged the
voter to call that candidate or call the elected official to complain
about a particular position on an issue. They clearly were designed to
influence Federal elections, but because they were about issues and not
simply saying vote for or vote against a particular candidate, they
essentially passed legal muster.
So what was a small loophole became a highway for money that has been
prohibited for decades in this country.
When Theodore Roosevelt was President, 1905, the ban against
corporate giving to individual candidates to influence Federal
elections was established. In 1943, the same ban was applied to unions.
But in 1996, those limits, those bans, were effectively circumvented as
money flowed to the national parties and then went out to issue ads.
Now, why is that important? What happened in 1996, this is half of
the story, the explosion in soft money; the other half of the story
that was different is that for the first time or for, I guess I would
say, the first complete cycle, we had a lot of money coming from
outside groups, issue advertisements, individual expenditures designed
to do the same thing, to influence Federal elections, but that fell
outside the scope of the Federal election laws.
The freshmen, on a bipartisan basis, Democrats and Republicans,
formed a task force, six Members on each side. The gentleman from
Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson), a Republican, was the cochair of the
Republicans, and I, Tom Allen of Maine, was the cochair of the
Democrats on our side. Over a 5-month process we held public forums, we
debated these issues and we negotiated a bill.
That bill, H.R. 2183, the Bipartisan Campaign Integrity Act, is a
good bill. It bans soft money. It requires faster and more accurate
reporting by individual candidates. It requires further disclosure by
groups that run issue ads.
Why do I bring this up today? Because after months and months of
investigations with millions of dollars spent in this House by House
committees to investigate campaign finance abuses in 1996, and after
seeing some significant bipartisan efforts toward campaign reform in
this House, what is the result this week?
Well, this House, the Republican leadership, is now on the verge of
reporting out a so-called ``campaign finance reform bill'' that is a
sham. It is not bipartisan, it is not reform and, above all, it is not
designed to pass, because the last thing that the Republican leadership
wants on campaign reform is for a bill to pass.
Now, that bill, we expect that it might be marked up, there might be
a rule on it tonight, it might come up this week. The latest
information that I have is that that is probably not going to happen,
but I want to talk about the difference between doing this in a
bipartisan way and doing it in a partisan way.
If we approach the campaign reform issue in a bipartisan way, we have
to begin by taking the poison pills off the table. And when I say a
poison pill, I mean a provision that is designed to kill the reform. So
what we did with our freshman effort is, we sat down, we took the
poison pills off the table.
The Republicans did not want to agree to overall campaign spending
limits for individual congressional campaigns. The most common
suggested amount was $600,000. Now, some of us thought that for
$600,000, one can run a pretty good congressional campaign in this
country. They did not want it, so we took it off.
The Democrats said, look, we are not going to go after one interest
group and not another in this country, and therefore, the poison pills
that involve going after labor unions, trying to gag workers across
this country, was taken off the bill. That is what we did. We took the
poison pills out. But recently the Republican leadership, in developing
their bill, put all of the poison pills back in, all of the poison
pills, that is, that mean that Democrats could not vote for the so-
called ``reform bill.''
Mr. Speaker, let us go for a moment just to the immediate reaction
around the country toward the Republican leadership campaign reform
bill. In The New York Times today, they called it Campaign Finance
Charades, and the first line reads, ``Newt Gingrich has a plan to
snooker Americans yearning for a cleanup of their corrupt election
finance system.''
The Washington Post today, same type of editorial. The headline:
Mocking Campaign Reform.
USA Today, an editorial entitled, Big Money Buys Big Favors as
Campaign Reform Wilts.
The League of Women Voters described the Republican leadership bill
as, ``The approach is to package together several of the worst ideas on
campaign reform. This bill is a complete travesty.''
Common Cause, which has been leading the fight for campaign reform,
described this bill as, ``This bill is a hoax,'' Common Cause President
Anne McBride said. ``It is laced through with poison pill provisions,
and it not only allows the soft money system to continue in place, but
also legalizes Watergate-size contributions for the political parties.
No one should be fooled by this cynical effort.''
The fact is that we cannot do campaign reform on a partisan basis,
and yet that is exactly what the Republican leadership has been trying
to do. We have to get back to first principles, we have to get back to
having a bipartisan approach to campaign reform, and I believe that
there are others in this House on both sides that have taken an
approach, a bipartisan approach.
The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from
Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) on the Democratic side, have worked on this
issue for a number of years. There are Members on both sides of the
aisle who have worked on this issue. But the Republican leadership bill
is not designed to pass; it is not reform, it is not bipartisan, it is
a disaster.
I know that on the Democratic side, we are committed to a real
campaign reform bill. There is too much money in politics right now. We
have to make sure that the ordinary citizen does not feel
disenfranchised by this system, and the more big money that comes into
politics, the more the cost of campaigns keeps going up, the more the
ordinary citizen is going to feel disenfranchised. We have to stop the
money race, slow it down, at least, do what we can in this session to
do that. We need a different bill, a bipartisan bill on the floor of
the House when this issue comes up.

One of the leaders in this effort has been the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Pallone). It is good to have him here tonight willing to
talk on this subject.
I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Maine.
He really has taken the leadership on this issue, and I am pleased to
be able to join him tonight on this Special Order.
I listened to some of what the gentleman said. I was on the way over
here when the gentleman began, but it is amazing to me that here is an
issue on which the American people, I believe, have basically spoken
out and said that they would like to see real campaign finance reform.
And the reason why they want campaign finance reform is because they
think, as the gentleman mentioned, that there is too much money in
politics, and too much interest, if you will, and too much ability of
wealthy individuals to influence the political process; and that we
have gotten away from the way this country used to be and the way this
democracy used to be where politicians, and I use the term
``politician'' in a positive way, used to have to go out to their

[[Page H1524]]

constituents. And if they were going to raise some money on the
campaign, a lot of times, most of it was from their constituents, and
most of it was smaller contributions. They did not have to raise $1
million or $2 million or the kind of money that we are seeing in
campaigns today.
In addition to that, we have all of this money that is being spent
independently by the special interest groups, the so-called
``independent expenditures,'' so that if one of us were to say, I think
the gentleman used the figure of $600,000, if one of us were to say
that we are spending $600,000 on our congressional campaign, which is
probably about the average right now, what we are not taking into
account is the fact that there may be a lot of other special interest
groups out there that are spending $200- or $400,000 each on ads in the
races, as well, that we are not even counting that $600,000. But the
message that I am getting is that there is just too much money in
politics.
Now, what do we get? Well, as is often the case here with our
Republican colleagues, and maybe I should not say our Republican
colleagues, as much as our Republican leadership, because I think that
Speaker Gingrich and the Republican leadership are really the culprits
here and they are the ones that control, if you will, what comes to the
floor in this House. They know that campaign finance reform is
something that the public wants. They know that the American people
want it, but they come up with this scam, if you will, or sham, I
think, the gentleman described it as; some of the editorials are
calling it a charade, some are calling it a sham, whatever we want to
call it, to try to bring the bill up, load it down with provisions that
will make it impossible for it to pass this House, and at the same time
not achieve any reform even if it did pass. And I think the biggest
example of that, I do not know if the gentleman mentioned it, but
talking about this idea of not allowing more money in politics, the
Republican bill actually raises contributions to party committees from
$20,000 to $60,000, and it raises individual contributions from $1,000
to $2,000.
So for those of my constituents who think that there is too much
money in politics and think that a 1,000 contribution may be a little
high, now they are going to see that the contribution level is $2,000.
So what the Speaker is doing, what Gingrich is doing is saying we
should have more money in politics.
At the same time, we have this poison pill antilabor provision, if
you will, just to make sure that the bill does not pass. So either,
hopefully, they hope it will not pass, and if it does, it would not
actually accomplish campaign finance reform.
Just to mention, this poison pill or antilabor provision, from what I
understand, basically makes it more difficult for workers to organize
and for the National Labor Relations Board to stop employers from
violating labor laws.
Democrats are going to offer a substitute bill, essentially the
McCain-Feingold legislation, that provides real reform, including a ban
on soft money, which I see you have the chart up there. And the
gentleman talks about the amount of soft money and how it has increased
so much I guess, just in the last 4 years or so, from 1992 to 1996, and
our Democratic substitute, the McCain-Feingold bill, if you will,
essentially gives average working families an equal working voice, I
think, in the political system and limits the influence of wealthy
special interests on our political process.
Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to say, in my home State of New Jersey we
have a very good example, and of course there are a lot of different
ways that one could go about campaign finance reform, and we do not all
agree on the ways to go about it. But we have a very good example in
our gubernatorial race, which is also very similar to the presidential
race nationally, whereby we allow, or we require, our candidates to
raise a certain amount of money in small contributions and large
individual contributions, but that has to be matched with public funds;
and then we cap the amount of money that can be spent on the race.
That is what I would like to see. I would very much like to see
congressional races run in the way the presidential raises are run or
the way our gubernatorial races are run in New Jersey where the
candidate basically has to raise a certain amount of money, not a lot
in relative terms, and then that gets matched with public financing,
public dollars, and then there is an overall cap on the amount of money
that could be spent in a race.
I really think that the key is to limit the amount of money that is
spent, not only by ourselves, but also by these independent
organizations or independent expenditures by these special interest
groups. Because if we do not limit the amount of money, then
ultimately, it will continue to skyrocket and somebody will find a way
to spend more and look for a loophole where they can spend more money.
The bottom line is that this Republican proposal, which I guess we
are going to consider tomorrow or Friday, allows more money, more
influence by wealthy individuals; and it has just been rigged so it
cannot pass. And nothing else really is going to happen, and then
Republicans and Gingrich can just go home and say, hey, we brought this
up for a vote, we failed, we tried. Thank you. At least we let the
opportunity present itself to bring this up.

{time} 2015

They are really not allowing any opportunity. The way they are
setting up the rules, they have rigged the system and they have made
for a sham campaign finance reform bill.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) for putting
together this special order this evening.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I
thank him for all his help on this issue, and for his concise summary
of the Thomas bill, the Republican leadership bill.
Let me just mention one thing before I turn to my friend and
colleague, the gentleman from Arkansas. What we have in this Republican
leadership bill is a worker gag rule. The Center for Responsive
Politics has determined that in the last cycle businesses outspent
labor by 10 to 1, and notwithstanding that 10 to 1 differential, the
Republicans are determined to try to gag unions. Let me give a couple
of examples.
They have established a rule where essentially union members would
have to give prior consent, individual prior consent, to the use of any
portion of their union dues for political kinds of activities. That
does not mean just running ads, it means educating their own
membership, putting out material to their own membership to tell them
what issues are coming up that may affect their jobs and their lives,
their health, and all of those issues that we deal with here in this
Congress.
They say that they are trying to impose the same restrictions on
corporations as they do on unions, but it is not true. It is not
balanced and it is not fair.
With respect to unions, the burden of proof is against the union. The
member's consent is not presumed. You have to have an individual
signed, written statement prior to the use of any portion of those
union dues for that particular purpose.
On the other hand, for a corporation, the burden of proof is in favor
of the corporation. The shareholders' consent is presumed unless it is
specifically rejected. This is just one of the many ways in which this
bill is biased and is unfair.
No surprise. It is not a bill that was worked out in committee by a
bipartisan process, it is not a bill that has had bipartisan support
for any period of time. It was simply put down and put in place, and
put together at the last minute by the Republican leadership. It is not
fair, and it ought to be voted down.
Mr. PALLONE. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker,
because I know we have our colleague, the gentleman from Arkansas,
here, I just find that this poison pill, if you will, this worker gag
rule, so objectionable, because I know in my district the unions are
very active on election day. They go out, they knock on doors, they put
up signs during the campaigns. They do a lot of grass roots activity.
But the idea that individual members of a union cannot pool their
resources, if you will, and have to have this extra restriction, if you
will, have to individually sign for any contribution that they put
forward, it just flies in the face of really the whole organizing
effort, if you will, of the union.

[[Page H1525]]

Unions are meant to organize working people. If they cannot organize
working people effectively for political action, then that takes away
an important part of their existence. It makes it that much more
difficult for them to be involved in the political process. It just
irks me so much, because this is just purely partisan.
There are Republicans in my home State in Congress who are supported
by the unions, so they are not strictly Democrat. But more often than
not they support Democrats more than Republicans, and that is the
reason this is being proposed, because the unions, certainly in the
last few years, if not historically, have been more supportive of
Democratic candidates.
That is not a reason to gag them. That is not a reason to not allow
them to exercise their right to assemble and to participate fully in
the political process. That is not what the democracy is all about.
Mr. ALLEN. In a nutshell, what the Republican leadership is trying to
do is to place restrictions on and to gag people who contribute a few
bucks a month for political activities that are not just activities
related to Federal candidates, but just their own union. At the same
time, they are tripling the limits that wealthy individuals can give to
the national parties. That is an embarrassment.
Mr. PALLONE. Is it not also true, Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will
continue to yield, I think the gentleman told me, if an individual does
not want to participate in anything but the collective bargaining
aspect of the union, they always have the option themselves of simply
contributing their dues for the collective bargaining aspect and not
for anything else. So that option is already there. It is just that
they are imposing an additional written requirement now in every case.
That is the thing that inhibits free speech and the ability to
participate.
Mr. ALLEN. The gentleman is right, the Supreme Court has ruled that
every individual union worker has an absolute right not to be forced to
contribute anything to political activities, to anything other than the
activities related to collective bargaining.
I yield to my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr.
Vic Snyder), who has been a staunch proponent of campaign reform in
this Congress. I am glad to see that the gentleman has brought along
his check.
Mr. SNYDER. The gentleman just likes my special effects.
Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to me, the discussion we are having to
have about these poison pills, and explain the minutiae of them to the
Members of Congress so they will understand why it is a poison pill.
The reality is what we should be talking about, in a bipartisan
manner, what we have been talking about for the last year, is where the
problem is. It is in the huge soft money donations.
I have this check here I made up, made out to Any Ol' Political
Party, signed by my friend, Ima Big Donor. Ima had $1 billion that she
wanted to donate. She donated it to her favorite political party. This
is completely legal, completely legal, under the current law.
The reason that the gentleman and I have engaged in a bipartisan
manner with my friend, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Asa Hutchinson)
on the freshman bill and the reason we have had other bills like the
Shays-Meehan bill, the McCain-Feingold bill, bipartisan bills, is to
address the problem of these huge, unregulated donations.
Not so long ago we would have said, well, no one will make a $1
billion donation. Then we had Ted Turner, who donated $1 billion to
international relief, and we suddenly realized that there is somebody
out there that has the ability to make a $1 billion donation. Donations
of several hundred thousand dollars are not uncommon in this day and
age. Yet, look at what the average pay scale is in Arkansas, and they
are absolutely dwarfed by those sizes of donations.

But this is what we should be concentrating on. This is what the
Speaker of the House should be looking at. When we talked and had his
promise from him a few months ago that there would be a fair debate on
the floor of this House about campaign finance reform, we all
envisioned a debate about a bipartisan bill that addresses this most
egregious problem in our system, this overwhelming big money that can
be made in any amount, and yet that is not going to occur because of
the Republican leadership.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr.
Snyder). It is interesting that the Republican leadership bill, I
should say, because I want to say this, there are some Members on the
Republican side of the aisle who have been engaged in this issue from
the beginning, but not enough. We really think it is the leadership
that has sort of shut down this exercise at this time.
Let me just talk for one moment about the so-called soft money ban in
the Republican leadership bill. The McCain-Feingold bill prevented
Federal officials and candidates and parties from raising soft money.
The freshman bill did the same thing.
Supposedly the Republican leadership bill did the same thing, but
there is a difference. Under McCain-Feingold, the McCain-Feingold bill
says that State parties cannot raise or spend soft money as well on any
activities that affect the Federal election. So the obvious problem
was, if you ban soft money at the Federal level, why will not people
just go out and raise it at the State level?
So McCain-Feingold says, no, you cannot do that. You cannot do that.
The freshman bill says, okay, we are not going to prevent State parties
from controlling their own election laws and allowing soft money to be
raised here if they want to, but we are going to prevent States from
moving money, soft money being raised from one State to another, so we
wall in each State. We have closed down that loophole.
But that provision of the freshman bill was taken completely out of
the Republican leadership bill, so it is not a real soft money ban. The
obvious loophole, there is a huge loophole in the Republican bill in
terms of a soft money ban. It does not work, it is not fair, and it is
not real reform.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.
Mr. SNYDER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to make another point. The
gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) is one of my heroes, and he has been
on my cable TV show back in Arkansas. The gentleman from Arkansas (Mr.
Asa Hutchinson), a Republican freshman colleague, is one of my heroes,
also. The two of them are the lead cosponsors of the freshman bill.
They spent a lot of time working through the problems when they made
the decisions about what would be in that particular bill, and a lot of
freshmen participated in that. What was showed was that it was a model
of bipartisanship.
We thought we had in this country sometime ago a model of
bipartisanship. This is a blowup of the famous photo when the Speaker
of the House and President Clinton shook hands when they committed
themselves to doing something about dealing with the overwhelming
presence of big money in politics.
It is interesting to me now that the President has said he will sign
a campaign finance reform bill. He is committed to it. We have leaders
on both sides of the aisle, both Republican and Democrat, that have
said they want bills on the House floor to deal in a bipartisan manner
with this problem of soft money and campaign finance. Yet, the problem
we have is with the Republican leadership.
I want to distinguish, there are clearly Members on the Republican
side that will vote for campaign finance reform and feel every bit as
strongly about it as the three of us do here tonight, but it comes down
to a question of leadership.
Unfortunately, the way our House works, if the Republican leadership
decides certain bills or certain amendments do not get on the floor of
the House, the American people are denied their will, and in fact, the
will of Congress is denied, because I am convinced there is a majority
of Members of this Congress, when we total up the votes on both sides
of the aisle, Republican and Democrat, that will vote for a ban on soft
money; a good ban, a true ban on soft money, and try to deal with some
of the other issues.
But it comes down to leadership, and the Republican leadership in
this House is blocking the will of the House, blocking the will of the
American people, and I think it is just an embarrassment to the body
that that is occurring.

[[Page H1526]]

Mr. ALLEN. The gentleman from Arkansas makes a good point. If we
think back to what happened on the Senate side, we can see the same
sort of pattern over there, because the fact is that the McCain-
Feingold bill, the stripped down version of the McCain-Feingold bill
that was brought up in the Senate got 51 votes. A majority of the
Senate voted for the McCain-Feingold bill in the Senate. Yet, it is
only the Senate's rules that allow filibusters that sent that bill down
to defeat.
Here we are, over on the House side, fighting the same fight, and all
we are trying to do is get a good, bipartisan bill to the floor for a
vote. If we do that, I believe we will win. I believe we will win it.
But this is not a topic that can be done in an arbitrary way, in a
totally partisan way. It cannot be done with a bill that is designed to
fail, intended to fail, constructed to fail. That is what we have on
the other side right now.
Mr. SNYDER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, I
read a column some time ago on this issue of campaign finance reform.
The columnist had a great line, which was, does a fish know that it is
wet? Does a fish feel the wet? It lives in water all the time, and I
get in the bathtub and it feels wet to me, but does a fish feel the
wet?
I do not know what a fish feels, but could use the example in trying
to explain why the Republican leadership would be putting out this kind
of a bill that has been called a charade, a hoax, a mockery. Why would
they be putting out this kind of bill?
It may be that if you have been up here too long, you start being
like a fish that no longer feels the wet, that you swim through the
money. You swim through the money all the time, and it no longer feels
strange to you. You just assume that donations of several hundred
thousand dollars, that is just the way politics is. You assume
donations from folks that are lobbying you that very same day on
activities that come before the legislature, before Congress, that that
is just the way it is. You no longer feel the wet. You are no longer
aware of how unseemly it is to have big money dominate our politics.
Maybe that is why the freshman bill, I think, was such a prominent
part of the discussion here for the last year, because we are all new
here. We had just come through the 1996 election, and we got a hint of
how big money can just really overwhelm the local effort. We got a hint
of what it means to have thousands of dollars pour in from Washington,
D.C., and overwhelm the local effort. We still feel what it is like to
be wet. We still know what it is like when you get hit with those big
sums of money.
But I fear that the Republican leadership no longer is aware of what
it means in the American system to have the money floating through this
city all the time. I think this may be an explanation why we are seeing
this bill that has been called a hoax and a charade being presented on
the floor. They do not feel the money anymore.
Mr. ALLEN. I think the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder) has had
the best set of special effects and exhibits as anyone has come to the
floor.
Mr. SNYDER. We have pyrotechnics scheduled for later in the evening.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, if I could comment on the special effects,
I have to say the fish analogy is close to home. I represent the Jersey
shore, and I appreciate the drawings that the gentleman from Arkansas
made about the fish and the fish swimming through the money.

{time} 2030

I think that the problem here is the way the gentleman has identified
it. In other words, we have the tremendous outpouring from the American
people that we should have campaign finance reform and that we should
cut back on the amount of money that we spend in politics. But the
Republican leadership, I think the gentleman rightly said, is so used
to accumulating all of this money and basically relying on it when they
run, that they cannot conceive of a situation where we actually cut
back on the amount of money that is spent.
It is true, I think all of us have said that we know that there are
Republican colleagues that would like to see a good campaign finance
reform bill come to the floor and would probably be willing to vote for
it. But so few of them are willing to stand up to the leadership. The
leadership tells them, ``Look, we want you to support us and we want
you to vote for this sham bill,'' and not enough of them are willing to
come forward and essentially defy the leadership on this issue.
I noticed in The New York Times editorial that the gentleman from
Maine made mention of before, it actually says at the end of the
editorial, it says that ``The Speaker's trick can be defeated if the
Democrats stand firm and at least 15 Republicans join them in voting
against Mr. Gingrich's anti-reform scheme.'' And it says, ``There used
to be a tradition of enlightened moderation among northeastern
Republicans.'' These are the Republicans in my area: New Jersey, New
York, other northeastern States. ``But we will be watching to see if it
can be revived enough to offset the party's more recent tradition of
falling behind Mr. Gingrich's darkest impulses.''
That is essentially what we have here. We do not have enough.
Hopefully we will by tomorrow, but it is unlikely that we will get
enough Republicans who will stand up and say this is a mockery and that
we need to have a real campaign finance reform bill come to the floor
of the House.
I thought it was particularly interesting what the League of Women
Voters said about that. I know where I am, and I think around the
country, the League of Women Voters is pretty much a bipartisan group
that is not necessarily Democrat or Republican. In my area, there is
certainly as many Republicans that are Members of the League of Women
Voters as Democrats, and they are perhaps even more critical than
anybody in this news release where they say that the Gingrich approach
is to package together several of the worst ideas on campaign finance
reform. The bill is a complete travesty. It says the so-called Paycheck
Protection Act is completely unbalanced. It seeks to curtail wide-
ranging political activities by unions. A real ban on soft money and
closure of the sham issue advocacy loophole would apply equally to both
unions and corporations. They use very, very harsh language in
basically bringing up how fraudulent this effort is.
We know what happened. My colleague mentioned in terms of what the
Senate did. Basically, the pressure was on Speaker Gingrich to do
something a few months ago. He promised a vote 5 months later. Now we
have a vote, but he is rigging the vote. That is essentially what we
have.
Mr. SNYDER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, that is
interesting what the gentleman said about the League of Women Voters.
This morning I was reading through some of the articles and statements.
The League of Women Voters calls it a ``travesty,'' this Republican
leadership bill. Common Cause calls it a ``hoax.'' The Washington Post
calls it a ``mockery,'' and the New York Times calls it a ``charade.''
Now, those ought to be some warning signs to Members of this body. It
ought to be some warning signs to the American people when we have that
kind of criticism, very dramatic criticism of a bill and an issue that
these groups feel very strongly about on the need to do something about
our campaign finance law.
But I know for myself, I am not going to vote for this bill and I do
not want to be a part of a travesty, a hoax, mockery and a charade. I
want to be part of a bill like the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen)
offered, our freshman bill, offered along with the gentleman from
Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson), or there are other options out there. But
this one is the worst of the bills that we have seen.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I would say the ``travesty,'' ``hoax,''
``charade,'' are all appropriate words when, in the name of reform, we
have a bill which allows an individual who used to be able to give
$25,000 to an array of candidates to give $75,000 to candidates. Or
when someone used to be able to give $20,000 to the national parties,
to be able to give $60,000 to the national parties. That is not reform.
That is an explosion of money. Whereas some increase might be
appropriate to offset the loss of soft money, because we want our
political parties to still be participants in this process, we do not
want the campaigns dominated entirely by outside groups, by running

[[Page H1527]]

issue ads still. That is ridiculous. That does not make any sense.
The gentleman from Arkansas was just saying there are other good
bills out there, and I want to spend just a few minutes on what is
called McCain-Feingold 2, because that is a bill that I think really
ought to come up for a vote in this House. It is very close, with just
a couple of adjustments it is almost the same bill that passed in the
Senate, got 51 votes in the Senate, was not allowed to pass, but it got
51 votes in the Senate. Let me say a few words about that.
The McCain-Feingold 2, which is really the Shays-Meehan bill here in
the House, eliminates Federal soft money as well as State soft money
that influences the Federal election. It has a real soft money ban.
Second, it reforms this whole area of issue advocacy. It basically
applies to those broadcast communications that refer to a clearly
identified Federal candidate within 60 days of a general election. And
it restricts what can be done. It says that any of those kinds of ads
or express advocacy, they need to be funded the way regular candidate
expenditures are funded.
Third, the bill requires FEC reports to be electronically filed and
it provides for Internet posting of disclosure data.
Fourth, it strengthens the campaign finance law by providing for
expedited and more effective FEC procedures.
Five, it bans fund-raising on government property.
The Pendleton Act, which is over 100 years old, has prohibited in
some very vague and sometimes confusing ways the raising of money on
Federal property, but it is not very clear, and it is certainly not
clear how it applies in the cases of telephone solicitation.
Well, this bill, the McCain-Feingold bill, fixes that particular
problem. And those are some of the highlights, but it is a good bill
and ought to come to the floor.
I think that the Democrats want to make sure this bill comes to the
floor and want to give it an airing. But here is a bill with a
bipartisan history; it was put together by Republicans and Democrats,
it got 51 votes in the Senate. The least that could happen is that that
bill should be allowed to come to the floor of this House for a vote
before this body.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I could not agree with the gentleman more.
My understanding is that we will have the opportunity to do this as a
motion to recommit or some procedural way that we will have hopefully
an opportunity to vote on McCain-Feingold as a substitute. I guess we
are not sure, but we are hoping that we will have that opportunity
sometime this week when this campaign finance reform sham bill comes to
the floor.
But I just wanted to add a little bit to a couple of things that the
gentleman from Maine mentioned, because I think they were significant.
When we talk about these issue advocacy ads, I think the average person
has no idea the distinction between those and a regular campaign ad. I
mean, basically these are the ads, these issue advocacy ads are ads
where a particular interest group that has a particular subject that
they are interested in, for whatever reason, basically puts on an ad
and talks directly, usually in a negative fashion, about one of the
candidates accusing them of doing something, oftentimes which is not
even true. This is paid for by that special interest group that is
interested in the particular issue attacking the candidate, and this is
totally outside the regular campaign financing system so that it is not
reported as part of the candidate's expenditure. It is not clear that
it is reported anywhere at all for that matter, certainly anyplace that
we can find it there is no real disclosure, and oftentimes in the
campaigns these kinds of ads can be two or three times the budget that
is spent on a campaign. That can be 60, 70, 80 percent of the budget,
and it is all outside the reporting system that we actually have now
for campaign financing.
So what we are doing with McCain-Feingold is basically saying that if
these ads mention an individual candidate within a certain number of
days before an election, then they have to be treated in the same way
as a regular expenditure. There has to be proper disclosure. We have to
know who is doing it and it seems to me that is only fair.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, that, as I
mentioned at the outset, is the second problem. In addition to the soft
money problem, that really arose or became dominant in the 1996
election cycle, and I think it is important to understand that this is
political speech. This is free speech. We have got a first amendment.
So it is not possible to say with respect to outside issue groups that
they cannot run ads, they can never run ads. All that we are saying,
all that McCain-Feingold says, is that if within 60 days of an
election, when they mention the name or show the likeness of a
candidate for Federal office, then it is brought into the reporting
scheme that applies to Federal elections. Because at that point, it is
pretty clear they are trying to influence the outcome of a Federal
election, and that kind of regulation has been upheld.
It seems pretty clear that that should be a constitutional way of
improving the information that flows to the public, because the bottom
line is, I believe, that we believe that the American public is
entitled to know who is running ads out there. And if there is a group
that is running an ad and calls itself the Coalition for Real Change or
the Better Government Group, I mean who are these people? I think the
American public needs to be well informed to know who those folks are
and, in the best of all possible worlds, to know where the money is
coming from. But that is one of the kinds of changes that we need.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, the problem is that if we do not do that,
if we do not do what is being proposed with McCain-Feingold, then this
whole system of campaign laws that were basically put in place as a
reform to the Watergate years and the way campaigns were financed prior
to Watergate, we might as well throw out the window, because what is
happening increasingly, the actual money that comes in under the
traditional laws is becoming less and less of what is spent on a
campaign, and all of these other expenditures that are outside the law
do not come under the FEC and the FEC does not have authority to
enforce or investigate are now the norm.
The other thing that the gentleman mentioned in McCain-Feingold is
the effort to beef up the FEC. The bottom line is that the Federal
Election Commission now is like a toothless tiger. They do not have the
money, the investigators, or the power to go after or look at a lot of
these expenditures, because they do not come under the law that they
have jurisdiction over. So we have got to change it. Otherwise, we have
no system. We just have a free-for-all out there.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, we have got to change it, and I think I agree
with the gentleman from Arkansas. If we spend as a body, if this
Congress spends 2 years and millions and millions of dollars
investigating what happened in 1996 and we do nothing, no reform bill,
no change, it will be an embarrassment. And we are here tonight because
we do not want this House to be embarrassed. We do not want the
American people to be embarrassed. We want this Congress to deal with
an important, pressing issue that in our view has to be dealt with on a
bipartisan basis, but under this Republican leadership bill is not
being dealt with in that manner.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.
Mr. SNYDER. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting, the irony of having spent
so much money on these investigations, and then to choose to
deliberately put up a bill that is meant to fail. I guess that brings
out our cynicism. But that is what is going on. It is all right to talk
about all of this stuff about campaign finance laws, but we do not
really want to do anything, is the message we are hearing from the
Republican leadership.
Mr. Speaker, as I was listening to the two of my colleagues discuss
in I thought great clarity and in good detail some of the various
nuances of the campaign finance reform bills, I am sure that we have
some folks that are saying, wait a minute; why are these folks not
talking about these issues when the House is in session? Why are we
having to do it at this time of night when most of the Members have
gone home?
I want to take a moment and point out the Rules of the House. We talk

[[Page H1528]]

about the Committee on Rules, and it is not legal for us to bring up
amendments on the floor of the House any time we want. It is not legal
for us to bring up any bill we want, the Allen-Hutchinson bill any time
we want.
Any bill, before it comes out on the floor of this House, has to go
before the House Committee on Rules and they make the decision can a
bill come out, and they also make the decision what amendments can come
out. They make a decision about how much time is allotted. And if they
make a decision that no other bill can be considered or other amendment
be considered, that is the ruling of that committee and that sets the
tone for the debate, and we will not get to discuss other options.

{time} 2045

As happens in legislative bodies, that committee is set up; it has
overwhelming Republican members and they take their cues from the
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrich) and the Republican leadership.
That is as it should be. The Committee on Rules is dominated by the
party in power. But that is why we are left with having to discuss this
late at night when most Members have gone home, discuss it with
ourselves and with the American people, to let them know that this is a
travesty that is going on.
This should be the kind of discussion that happens at 1:00 in the
afternoon and 2:00 in the afternoon and 3:00 in the afternoon with 435
Members either in this room or back in their offices watching the
debate on C-SPAN in their offices, hearing from their constituents
about what they want. But it is because the leadership directive told
the House Committee on Rules that they do not want anything to come out
on the floor of this House other than a bad bill that will go down to
defeat.
I think that is an embarrassment and a travesty, given the amount of
investigation that has gone on and the amount of money that has been
spent and committed. The American people want to do something different
about how we elect people. So I really appreciate my colleagues being
such leaders in this effort.
Mr. ALLEN. I appreciate the help of my colleague and the support and
leadership on this issue. I want to make a couple of comments.
People who have been around this place for a long period of time or
who write about what goes on here will often say, well, the American
people do not care. Well, in my district in Maine they care. I hear
about this issue every time I go home, ``When are we going to get some
campaign finance reform? When are we going to change the way we fund
elections?'' I hear it all the time.
But it is also true that this is a different kind of issue. People
care about it, but it is not the same. They do not worry about it in
the way they may worry about what happens to an elderly parent who may
have to go in a nursing home. They do not worry about it in the way we
have to worry about, how are we going to get our kids through college.
They do not worry about it in the way, what happens to me if I lose my
job, what effect will that have on my family? They do not worry about
it in the way they may be concerned if somebody in their family is ill
or has an extraordinary health care problem that has to be dealt with.
And they do not worry about it in the same way they worry about the
education of their kids.
But it is our job here to provide the leadership on an issue that is
fundamental to whether or not the American people, the ordinary
American people, can participate in the system in a way that is healthy
and strong and viable. And the more big money comes to dominate our
politics, the more the average person in this country has a diminished
role.
And I hear about it because people do understand that. They know
that. And they may pick education as the most important problem that we
have to deal with, and they do that in poll after poll, and I agree
with them; but there are these underlying problems, underlying
structural issues, that we have a responsibility to deal with, that
they care about very much and they want us to do something about it.
But they also have become very cynical that we are capable of dealing
with it.
The only point I would make is this: 51 votes in the Senate for
McCain-Feingold II, 51 votes, the majority of the Senate.
And in this House, give us a chance. Give us a chance. Let McCain-
Feingold II go to the floor of this House and see what happens. I think
we would find there are many Members who would say, this is a right
kind of reform, it is bipartisan reform, it is serious reform. It is
not the complete answer, but it is a step in the right direction.
I believe that we are entitled to have that kind of vote on a
bipartisan bill on the floor of this House, and we should not be
stymied by the Republican leadership.
Mr. SNYDER. I have to wonder what our Speaker is afraid of. I mean,
what is the fear of having an open debate on the floor of this House
about this very important issue, which is how America elects its
leaders? Maybe he has counted votes. Maybe he knows that there is a
majority of people in this body that would definitely vote for other
alternatives, and the only way he can prevent that from happening is
not to let them come to the floor of the House.
But I think, unfortunately, his actions and the actions of the other
Republican leaders contribute to the cynicism of the American people.
They want to know, ``What is this? Why do we not get to see a vote on a
clean bill,'' those people back home.
So, once again, I appreciate the efforts of my colleague.
Mr. PALLONE. I want to say again, I thank both my colleagues for
doing this special order tonight because I think this is a very
important issue. Our constituents do care about it.
It is a tragedy that we are not going to be allowed to actually vote
on true campaign finance reform at the end of this week, because people
are crying out for it. And I see people voting less and less, the
percentages of people that vote, and that cynicism really bothers me.
This is my tenth year in the House, and I can see less people
interested, less people coming to the polls, less people participating
in every way; and that is the real tragedy that we have to turn around.
Mr. ALLEN. I want to thank both the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr.
Snyder) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) for their
participation in this special order tonight on campaign reform. I know
you have all worked hard and others have worked hard to see that we do
get a vote on campaign reform.
I guess I would just close by saying that we are at an extraordinary
time in American politics. The Cold War is over. The budget is balanced
for the first time in 30 years. The number of civilians in the Federal
Government is at the lowest level in 30 years. Unemployment is down.
The economy is moving along very well.
We are at a time when we really could focus on the issues that matter
most to working families: improving education, dealing with health care
issues, reforming Social Security so it is there for our children and
our grandchildren, and making sure that we leave no child behind, that
we build the kind of society in the 21st century that can make this
country and make the people here to have all the opportunities or
greater opportunities than people have had anywhere on the face of the
globe at any time in our history.
To do that, we need a healthy political system, we need a system
where people want to participate, want to be engaged in the great
issues of our time. I believe to do that we have to have a system which
does not run on money, which allows the ordinary citizen a chance and a
sense, the confidence that his or her voice can really make a
difference. And that is why this issue is so important. It underlies
everything else that we do.

If we are going to get to hear all the voices of America come into
this Chamber, if we are going to make good decisions, we need to
diminish the role of money in politics. We are not going to eliminate
it entirely. We simply have got to try to control a system that is now
out of control, try to shut down a loophole that has become a highway
for soft money, control issue ads and make sure that the voice of the
American people can be heard in all of its diversity and all of its
power.
So I thank both of my colleagues for being here tonight, and I thank
all of those who have worked so hard on this issue. And I extend a last
request of the

[[Page H1529]]

Republican leadership to give us a fighting chance to vote on a fair
campaign finance reform bill.

____________________