[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.

                          ____________________