[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 45 (Wednesday, April 22, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3423-S3426]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, in late February the Senate considered 
campaign finance reform on the floor of the Senate for the second time 
in this Congress. Once again, we did not resolve the issue. Although a 
clear majority of this body now supports the McCain-Feingold bill, a 
determined minority once again prevented it from being adopted.
  Mr. President, I would like to take a few minutes today to try to put 
our debate in some perspective. This is a particularly good time to 
revisit the issue because of what has been happening just in the past 
few days in the other body, in the House of Representatives. In fact, 
the latest development on the other side of the Capitol has made it 
very clear that the defenders of the current system are on the run, and 
campaign finance reform is very much alive.
  Last fall, the Speaker of the House promised an open debate on 
campaign finance reform by the end of March. The other body, of course, 
is supposed to be the place where the majority can work its will. There 
is no filibuster rule in the House of Representatives--in effect, no 
requirement that you have to get a three-fifths majority to pass 
legislation, as has long been the case in the Senate.
  At the end of March, when a bipartisan majority began to clearly 
coalesce behind the McCain-Feingold bill, or the Shays-Meehan bill as 
it is called in the other body, the House leadership and other 
opponents of reform began looking for a way out. The House leadership 
decided to bring up campaign finance reform under suspension of the 
rules. That is a procedure that is usually used to allow 
noncontroversial bills to pass quickly. It was used here for a very 
different purpose. It allows very limited debate and no amendments, and 
it requires a two-thirds vote for passage.
  So the leadership of the other body brought up its own campaign 
finance bill under the suspension procedure that would guarantee, in 
effect, the defeat of its own bill. In the end, this bill of the 
leadership of the House got only 74 votes, and 337 Members of the House 
voted no.
  Let's think about that. The major campaign finance bill offered by 
the chairman of the committee of jurisdiction received only 74 votes in 
the House of Representatives. The Democrats in the House were not even 
allowed to offer a substitute, which is customary in the other body. 
And here is the kicker. The main bipartisan reform bill which, by all 
accounts, actually had majority support in the House, did not even get 
a vote. The leadership of the House did everything in its power to make 
sure that the McCain-Feingold bill would not pass, and they succeeded, 
but only temporarily.
  Supporters of reform in the House were understandably outraged. Just 
as the opponents of reform in this body relied on a filibuster and on 
parliamentary tactics such as filling the amendment tree to prevent a 
bipartisan majority from passing McCain-Feingold, opponents of reform 
in the House, the body that is supposed to reflect the will of 
majority, in effect rigged the procedure to make sure that reformers 
did not even get a vote on their bill.
  Tactics of this kind can work for a while, but they cannot work 
forever. The American people are tired of tricks and tactics. They are 
tired of a partisan minority stopping the bipartisan majority from 
enacting reform. And now there are clear signs that public outrage over 
these kinds of tactics is having an effect. In the other body, 
reformers gathered 205 signatures on a discharge petition that would 
require the other body to consider campaign finance reform under a fair 
and open procedure. They needed just 13 more Members of the House to 
sign the discharge petition to force the issue to the House floor 
despite the opposition of the leadership. This would have been almost 
unprecedented.
  It is clear that Members of the Congress are feeling the heat. Five 
Members agreed to sign the petition over the recess after they heard 
from their constituents how important it is to have a real vote on 
reform in the House this year, and four more announced in the last 2 
days they will sign the petition.
  Mr. President, what we found out today is that the leadership in the 
House reconsidered its hard line position because a meltdown was 
occurring. I was informed just a little bit earlier that there has been 
an announcement that the leadership of the other body will now bring 
campaign finance reform back to the House floor by May 15, and this 
time there at least supposedly is going to be an open rule and a 
bipartisan bill will get a vote.
  This is very good news, and I congratulate the bipartisan reformers 
in the House for their persistence and effectiveness. They have shown 
that the will of the people can prevail if only we in the Congress have 
the courage to fight for it. If the House passes a bipartisan bill in 
the next few weeks, fortunately, the spotlight will come back here 
again.

  The distinguished majority leader of our body was asked on Monday, 
what will he do if the House passes McCain-Feingold? His answer? 
``Nothing.'' And everyone laughed. I don't think they are laughing 
today, because the reformers in the House have succeeded in their 
effort to force a fair vote. We will see if the American people will 
stand for this kind of obstructionism if a bill comes back from the 
House. I do not think they will. I think the Senate will have to deal 
with this issue again this year and soon.
  So I can say to the American people today as I have before, this 
fight is not over. The opponents of reform may be winning these 
parliamentary battles, but they are losing the legislative war. The 
American people know that our current system must be changed. A 
majority of this Senate, and now of the House, knows that our current 
system must be changed. Sooner or later, we will prevail. I am 
absolutely certain of that.
  I have spent a great deal of time reviewing the debate on campaign 
finance reform from both this past February and last fall. As most 
people who watched the debate know, there was a lot of argument on this 
floor about whether the first amendment to the Constitution would be 
violated by the provisions of our bill in the Snowe-Jeffords amendment 
dealing with so-called issue advocacy by outside groups. I think these 
arguments based on the Constitution were grossly exaggerated and they 
will be shown to be inaccurate over time in the context of the actual 
state of constitutional law.
  But there were a lot of other things said about our bill, a lot of 
other justifications offered for killing reform, and today I want to 
concentrate on what I call the three worst excuses for voting against 
the bipartisan McCain-Feingold bill. These arguments simply do not hold 
water. And since we will be back sooner or later--and I suspect 
sooner--to discuss these matters, let me say a bit about them today.
  Here is the first poor excuse for voting against our bill. We heard 
time and time again, both last fall and last February, that we do not 
need changes in the law, we just have to enforce the current law. Now, 
that gave the opponents the opportunity to excoriate the Clinton 
administration for its fundraising excesses in 1996 and to try to dodge

[[Page S3424]]

responsibility as Senators to try to clean up the system.
  But I have a number of responses. First, we have to remember that the 
McCain-Feingold bill actually had a whole lot of provisions that were 
designed to specifically deal with the alleged lawbreaking of the last 
election. Our bill makes it perfectly clear that fundraising for 
Federal campaigns cannot take place on Federal property. In other 
words, no more ``no controlling legal authority,'' no more debate about 
whether dialing for dollars from your office is OK if you are asking 
for soft money rather than hard money. Under our bill, you cannot use 
your office, which is paid for by the taxpayers to raise money. Period.
  In the McCain-Feingold bill, we also ban all foreign money from U.S. 
elections first by banning all soft money contributions to political 
parties. The legislation would prohibit any source, foreign or 
domestic, from contributing these unlimited and unregulated amounts of 
money to the national political party. But our bill also makes clear 
that foreign nationals are prohibited from making any sort of campaign 
expenditure--coordinated with a candidate or party or an independent 
expenditure--in connection with any Federal, State, or local election.
  So while we will not put people in jail with this legislation or 
force prosecution of lawbreakers, we can make absolutely sure that the 
loopholes, or alleged loopholes, in the law that those accused of 
wrongdoing have fallen back on will, in fact, be permanently closed.
  But beyond that, we reject the notion that the scandals we saw in 
1996 were just due to lawbreaking. They were due to problems with the 
law itself. The biggest scandal stems not from what is illegal today 
but from what is perfectly legal--soft money.
  Let me put it this way. Why was the White House charging $100,000 a 
night for a night in the Lincoln bedroom? Why did coffee with the 
President or dinners with key leaders of the Congress cost people some 
$50,000? Because it is legal to contribute $50,000 or $100,000 or even 
more to a political party in this country. Unless we change that law, 
the ever-increasing demand for money will lead our party leaders to 
stretch the bounds of propriety. We have to take responsibility. We 
have to do our part as lawmakers.
  What about the huge amounts of money spent by groups on so-called 
issue ads that looked just like campaign ads but fell just outside the 
boundaries of the Federal election law? That is not a problem with 
illegal activities. It is a problem with the law, and we need to 
address it.
  Mr. President, poor excuse No. 2 for opposing bipartisan reform. I 
heard a lot of people who oppose McCain-Feingold say that what we 
really need to do to solve the campaign finance issue is to have full 
and instantaneous disclosure of contributions and spending. My first 
response to that argument is that McCain-Feingold includes the most 
extensive disclosure provisions of any campaign finance legislation 
introduced in the Senate in this Congress. But not a single Senator who 
argued against this bill and said that disclosure is what we really 
need would even acknowledge the important disclosure provisions in our 
bill.
  What does it do? We require all candidates to file their disclosure 
reports electronically and require the FEC to post this information on 
the Internet within 24 hours of its receipt.
  We prohibit campaigns from depositing campaign contributions of over 
$200 into their treasuries until all required disclosure information 
has been collected. We step up the reporting of independent 
expenditures in the closing days of the campaign. We even lower the 
reporting threshold for campaign contributions from $200 to $50, and we 
require political advertisements to carry a tag line identifying who is 
responsible for the content of the advertising.
  These provisions are very important and they are helpful and they do 
a great job, but they are not enough in themselves to restore the 
public's faith in our system and in us. We already know that $262 
million in soft money was contributed to the national political parties 
in 1996. We already know that Philip Morris gave over $3 million in 
soft money in the 1996 cycle, and that RJR Nabisco, Joseph Seagram & 
Sons, Atlantic Richfield, and AT&T all gave over $1 million. Federal 
Express gave almost a million.
  It is still a scandal that the tobacco companies did contribute 
millions of dollars to our political parties while the Congress is 
considering extraordinarily important legislation that will decide the 
fate of that industry and of the children that its product kills, even 
if those contributions are disclosed. It is interesting that some of 
the same Senators who proclaim the miracle benefits of disclosure are 
unwilling to bring under the Federal election laws the activities of 
secretive groups funded by wealthy donors that run ads attacking 
candidates in the last weeks of the campaign.
  So disclosure is not the answer. It is an answer, but it is not the 
answer.
  How can we really expect a lot of hard-working Americans, many of 
whom do not even have a computer, to spend their free time examining 
FEC reports to make sure that we are not under the influence of special 
interest contributions? Who are we kidding with this idea that full 
disclosure alone will solve all our problems? Most people do not know 
who the richest people in America are and who they work for. Most 
people do not know what legislative agenda is pursued by the PACs that 
fund our campaigns. Most people will not be able to recognize a 
potentially corrupting contribution from just some name on a report.
  So we still need reasonable limits on contributions. We still need a 
ban on soft money. We still need to outlaw fundraising on Federal 
property. We still need to address the phony issue ads of unknown 
origin that attack candidates in the last day of a campaign and simply 
avoid the Federal election laws. Disclosure is a great thing and I am 
proud that our bill includes some tough new provisions, but disclosure 
alone is not the answer.
  One very interesting thing about our debate last fall was that very 
few of the opponents of our bill ever wanted to discuss the central 
feature of our bill--a ban on soft money. I do not blame the opponents 
of our bill for not wanting to discuss it. Soft money is an 
embarrassment to the American political system. It should shame the 
defenders of the status quo. Soft money was at the very heart of the 
scandals of 1996. But a few hearty souls have ventured out onto the 
floor to defend soft money. I want to take my remaining time to address 
their arguments. They have given the absolute worst excuse for opposing 
our bill--that the soft money ban is either unconstitutional or a bad 
idea.

  Soft money is the mother of all loopholes. It is the most ingenious 
money laundering scheme in American history. Corporations and labor 
unions are prohibited from giving money directly to candidates. It has 
been that way for most of the century. Instead, what they do is they 
give the money to the candidate's party. That means, instead of having 
to use a PAC, the corporation can reach into its shareholders' moneys 
and a union can reach into its members' dues.
  The sky is truly the limit for these contributions. You can give 
$5,000, you can give $50,000, you can give $500,000. There is no reason 
under this loophole why you could not give the party $5 million by 
yourself. There are no limits on soft money--none at all.
  This laundering scheme allows the parties to dump tens of millions of 
unregulated dollars into congressional elections and into Presidential 
elections. Just last fall the Republican Party ran an unprecedented 
issue ad campaign in the special congressional election for the seat 
vacated by former Representative Susan Molinari of New York. The party 
reportedly spent $800,000 on ads attacking the Democratic candidate for 
that office. Much of that money was soft money, money that is supposed 
to be illegal in Federal elections.
  In the 1996 cycle, the two political parties raised and spent over 
$262 million in soft money. That is $262 million that was raised and 
spent completely outside of the scope of Federal election law.
  The trend with respect to soft money is frightening. In 1992, the two 
parties raised and spent a combined $86 million in soft money. In just 
4 years, that has gone from $86 million to $262 million. It tripled in 
just 4 years. And this year, even with the scandals and the very sharp 
attention to the issue, the money

[[Page S3425]]

machine just keeps churning away. The FEC just announced that the 
parties raised $74 million in 1997, the most money ever raised in an 
off-election year, and more than twice as much as they raised in 1993, 
the year after the 1992 Presidential election.
  Those are just the overall amounts of soft money, and the numbers are 
truly staggering. But what is most troubling about the soft money 
system is the shameless solicitation of these multi-hundred-thousand 
dollar contributions from corporations, labor unions, and wealthy 
individuals.
  Both political parties are offering big contributors special access 
to high-ranking Government officials in exchange for a $100,000, 
$250,000, or a $500,000 contribution. Maybe you get to sit at the head 
table with the President. Maybe you get to have a special meeting with 
a congressional committee chairman. Maybe you get to participate in a 
trade mission to a foreign land.
  But let's not pretend that someone is making a $500,000 contribution 
purely in the interest of good government and good democracy. Just this 
past year Philip Morris, facing the growing challenge of lawsuits 
around the country and possible congressional action on tobacco 
legislation, gave another $450,000 to the Republican Party and $60,000 
to the Democrats. What is that all about? I think we know what it is 
all about.
  Remember Roger Tamraz, one of the most colorful characters to appear 
before Senator Thompson's investigation last year? When asked if he 
felt he got his money's worth for his $300,000 contribution, Tamraz 
told the Government Affairs Committee that next time he would give 
$600,000. When asked if one of the reasons he made the contribution was 
to get special access, Tamraz responded by saying it wasn't one of the 
reasons, it was the only reason.
  Mr. President, there is massive public support for a ban on soft 
money. Three former Presidents, over 200 former Members of Congress, 
countless editorial boards across the country, and even many people in 
the business community want to end this disgrace. Therefore, I am not 
surprised that virtually no one who is opposed to our legislation has 
stepped forward to offer a defense of this shameful system.
  How can anyone defend a system that rewards the Roger Tamraz's of the 
world? How can anyone defend the $500,000 contributions flowing into 
Federal elections and the auctioning off of special access to high-
ranking Government officials?
  What do the few supporters of this corrupt and corrupting system say? 
Well, a number of Senators complained that banning soft money would 
``federalize all elections.'' One even argued that the Supreme Court in 
Buckley had actually permitted the use of soft money by the political 
parties, and somehow enhanced its legitimacy in the Colorado case.
  Actually, the Colorado case concerned hard money expenditures made by 
the parties, supposedly independent of its candidates. The Court did 
mention soft money, but assumed that it may not be used to influence 
Federal elections. The whole reason we need to ban soft money is that 
it is abundantly clear that it is being used to influence Federal 
elections. That is why 126 legal scholars wrote us to say that it would 
clearly be constitutional to ban soft money.
  As for federalizing all elections, that argument is like the one made 
by a Senator who is worried that banning soft money will hurt State 
parties. He complained that State parties will have to use hard money 
for voter registration and things like bumper stickers and buttons. The 
soft money provision in McCain-Feingold does allow the State parties to 
continue to raise money from corporations and unions if their States 
allow it, but not for Federal election activities. They can use soft 
money for voter registration up to 4 months before a Federal election.
  They can use soft money, non-Federal money to support State 
candidates. They just can't use it to run these ads that mention 
Federal candidates.
  That is not ``federalizing all elections.'' That is just making sure 
that money that would be illegal, if given to candidates, cannot be 
used to benefit their elections by doing an end run around the Federal 
election laws. What use is prohibiting the national parties from 
raising and spending this illegal money if it can simply be diverted to 
State parties to turn around and do exactly the same thing with it?
  Mr. President, there were a few opponents of McCain-Feingold who had 
the candor last fall to admit that, of course, Congress can 
constitutionally ban soft money. The Senator from Washington, Senator 
Gorton, and the Senator from New Mexico, Senator Domenici, both fine 
lawyers, indicated that that was their position. But they argued that 
we shouldn't do it because it would hurt the political parties and 
create an ``imbalance'' in the system. They fear that without soft 
money, parties would be ineffective, and the most irresponsible ads, 
the ones run by independent groups, would be encouraged.
  That is a pretty interesting argument. These Senators appear 
unwilling to address the evasion of the election laws by outside 
organizations, unwilling even to try to craft a provision dealing with 
the phony issue ads and let the Supreme Court finally address the issue 
advocacy versus express advocacy problem by letting the Court know what 
the Congress thinks the law should be and then, because they don't like 
these unaccountable ads, which they themselves refuse to do anything 
about, they want to leave open the biggest and most objectionable 
loophole of all in our Federal election law today--soft money.
  Our great political parties and, indeed, our political system are 
soiled by this soft money system. We ought to be racing to get rid of 
it. We ought to be trying to clean up our reputation. We ought to try 
to redeem ourselves in the eyes of the American people.
  Are we really going to take the position, as we head into the 1998 
elections, that our political parties, with their rich and important 
histories in this country, cannot thrive, cannot survive, without soft 
money? Are the parties so divorced from what real people want that they 
have to rely for their financial support on huge contributions from 
corporations and wealthy individuals who seek special access to pursue 
their own special interests?
  I, Mr. President, am one who believes that the parties can survive 
without soft money. They did it up until the late 1980s. Remember, the 
law permits the parties to raise up to $20,000 per year in hard money 
from each contributor. But the parties have gotten lazy. They don't 
like having to raise money piece by piece, $20,000 by $20,000, voter by 
voter. They would rather hold dinners at big Washington hotels, send 
out invitations to lobbyists promising special access and then just sit 
back and collect a few big soft money checks. They are addicted to 
these huge sums of money and the nasty attack ads they can buy if the 
party lawyers are clever enough in how they spend the money.
  That is right, Mr. President, I don't think our political parties are 
worth supporting anymore if they don't have anything to offer except 
fancy fundraisers for corporate lobbyists. If they can no longer appeal 
to the people of this country to fund their legitimate activity, maybe 
their time has come and gone. That is why protecting the political 
parties' ability to raise soft money is the very worst excuse for 
opposing the McCain-Feingold bill. It simply admits that our political 
system has utterly failed; that our parties are bankrupt morally and 
intellectually, even if they have full bank accounts; that our 
representative democracy has become a corporation democracy, where the 
amount of power you have depends on how much money you have.
  I refuse to accept the judgment that we are doomed to have this kind 
of campaign finance system in America, the greatest democracy on Earth. 
That is why I am still fighting for campaign finance reform in this 
Congress. If the opportunity presents itself, if it looks like more of 
my colleagues are ready to reject the excuses--and I suspect there will 
be more--I will be ready to bring the McCain-Feingold bill, or any 
portion of it, before this Senate again.
  I think the American people should know where this Senate stands on 
the issue of soft money. I think the people who sent us here deserve to 
know whether we think it is right that our

[[Page S3426]]

elections are dominated by this unlimited, unregulated money or not. 
Because we know that they don't think it is right, the time has come to 
act.
  Most of the pundits say we lost in February, but I think we won a 
battle. We won because we showed that a bipartisan majority of the 
Senate wants reform, and a bipartisan majority of the Senate will stick 
together and fight for reform. The battle for reform on both sides of 
Capitol Hill is proceeding, and it will go forward until the American 
people win the war and get their Government back.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allard). The Senator from Georgia.

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