[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 49 (Tuesday, April 28, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H2337]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 RANKING MEMBER OF COMMITTEE RESPONDS TO SPEAKER'S REMARKS ON CAMPAIGN 
                         FINANCE INVESTIGATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Waxman).
  Mr. WAXMAN. I thank the gentleman very much for yielding. I raced 
over to the House floor. I did not know the Speaker was going to raise 
the issue of the Government Reform and Oversight campaign finance 
investigation. But I did want to come to the House floor to inform him 
and my colleagues what has happened with this investigation.
  First of all, in February of last year I went to the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Burton) and said, ``Let's do a bipartisan investigation on 
campaign finance abuses.'' I wrote to the Speaker and asked that we 
have a House and Senate joint investigation so that we in the House 
would not duplicate the work being done by the Thompson Committee over 
in the Senate.
  I never received a reply from the Speaker, but the response that I 
did get from the gentleman from Indiana was that he was going to do his 
own investigation, thank you very much. Now, after a year and a half, 
we have spent over $6 million of the taxpayers' money, we have 
duplicated a great deal of what went on in the Senate committee, and we 
have nothing to show for it. We have turned up nothing that was not 
already in the Senate investigation or quite frankly that has already 
appeared in the press.
  The chairman of our committee, the gentleman from Indiana, has had 
delegated to him unprecedented authority. He had delegated to him 
powers that no chairman has ever had before. He has the power to 
unilaterally issue subpoenas.
  The gentleman from Indiana has this authority to issue subpoenas 
unilaterally. He does not have to come to the committee for a vote. He 
does not have to seek even authorization from his Republican majority. 
He can just go ahead and issue subpoenas.
  Prior to 1997, how many subpoenas were ever issued unilaterally by a 
chairman of a House committee? Zero. Now, after a year and a half, we 
have had the gentleman from Indiana issuing 600 subpoenas, all on his 
own. No one had a review of them. Those subpoenas are part of a 
thousand subpoenas and information requests issued to Democrats, or 
Democratic sources, related to Democratic campaign funding issues.
  How many has he issued with regard to Republican abuses in the 1996 
election? Fourteen. We have not had a single subpoena authorized by the 
chairman at our request, even though there are important issues to 
investigate.
  The Haley Barbour national review, national committee, whatever it 
was, that was a source of foreign funding has never been reviewed by 
our committee. Fund-raising abuses on public property by Republicans, 
we cannot get the chairman to pay any attention to that. The strange 
$50 billion tax break for the tobacco companies, the Speaker knows may 
know something about that because he and Mr. Lott were the ones who put 
that through in the middle of the night. We thought that ought to be 
investigated. None of these things have been investigated.

                              {time}  1245

  The Democrats have been closed out by an effort by the Republicans to 
do a partisan, reckless investigation. Notwithstanding that, we went 
along on the only vote where our votes count, and that is on the issue 
of immunity for witnesses at the request of the chairman once before, 
and we were all embarrassed by that. The Democrats gave our votes for 
immunity for a witness who turned out not to have given us honest and 
credible testimony and a witness who used the immunity granted to him 
to avoid possible immigration and tax crimes for which he now will 
never be prosecuted.
  Now we are being asked to give immunity to four more people, fairly 
low-level people. I do not think they have all that much to add to the 
investigation, but why should we give immunity to these witnesses?
  We have not received a proffer from them which would tell us what 
they know and what they have to say, what to add to the information 
already available. We have no written proffer from these four people. 
We have no guarantee that the chairman will conduct the investigation 
any other way than what he has done up to now.
  We wrote to the chairman after that last immunity vote and we said to 
him, ``We gave you the votes for immunity, and we regret it. We've been 
embarrassed, as should you be, having given a man immunity for possible 
offenses that none of us ever knew about. The investigation wasn't done 
adequately by the majority party staff; and, in the future, if we're 
going to give immunity to witnesses, we want certain assurances. We 
want, first of all, the assurances we are going to know what these 
witnesses are going to say, that work will be done in advance so we 
don't find giving immunity when it's improper. And, secondly, we want 
this committee to be conducted the way every other congressional 
investigation has been conducted.''
  Madam Speaker, in the Watergate investigation, in the Iran-Contra and 
any other investigations, there have always been traditional procedures 
which are not being followed in this investigation.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Pryce of Ohio). The time of the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett) has expired.
  Mr. WAXMAN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for one additional 
minute.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair will clarify for the Record that 
recognition during Morning Hour debate proceeds upon designations by 
the respective party leaders, and the Chair does not entertain 
unanimous consent requests to extend debate time.




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