[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 61 (Thursday, May 14, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H3307-H3309]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from California (Mr. Doolittle) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Speaker, we constantly hear these days from 
reformers who support a bigger Federal Government that campaigns cost 
too much and that government must step in and further regulate campaign 
spending. But I ask my colleagues, is spending on political advertising 
really out of control?
  Consider this: Tonight Americans will watch the final episode of 
Seinfeld and a 30-second ad purchased tonight during that final episode 
will cost $1.5 million for 30 seconds. By contrast, the cost of a 
typical congressional race is about $0.5 million or one-third the 30-
second ad tonight on Seinfeld.
  By restricting a candidate's ability to spend campaign dollars, we 
will restrict his ability to speak to potential voters through 
television, radio, mail and personal appearances. This is the very type 
of speech the Founders sought to protect through the first amendment to 
the United States Constitution.
  When we support spending limits, we must feel that there is too much 
speech in political campaigns and that candidates communicate too much 
with voters. How is it that spending a few billion dollars exercising 
our most precious rights as Americans is deemed to be excessive while 
the tens of billions of dollars spent on disposable consumer products 
is not? Free political discourse and plenty of it is infinitely more 
valuable to the protection of our liberties than any beer or car 
commercial can ever be.
  In 1996, spending on all campaigns, Federal and State, totaled just 
$4 billion, yet Americans spend roughly five times that much, or $20 
billion per year, on laundry and dry cleaning. In comparison, total 
advertising in a year, that year, 1996, was around $150 billion versus 
the $4 billion spent on campaigns at all levels of government.
  Total campaign spending viewed another way, per eligible voter, 
averages just $3.89, really the cost, approximately, of a McDonald's 
value meal. Is that amount too much? Even at a much higher price, 
liberty would be a much better value.
  Total campaign spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product 
is not increasing, as is stated by some and implied by others, but 
rather it has remained fairly constant since 1980, fluctuating between 
.04 percent and .06 percent of the gross domestic product.
  Voters have minds of their own. They are not helpless to make their 
own decisions in the face of political advertising. Money spent on 
advertising does not buy votes, it enhances a candidate's ability to 
communicate his message to voters.
  I urge my colleagues to oppose any measure that would ration our 
constitutional rights, and I would remind people that the first 
amendment is quite clear on this subject. It states: Congress shall 
make no law, shall make no law, abridging the freedom of speech.
  Next week the House of Representatives will engage in a historic 
debate about campaign reform and what needs to be done to address the 
problems that confront us. Before we can embark upon a course of 
reform, we had better have a clear understanding of what those problems 
are. Once we know what they are, we should then consider how to address 
them.
  I would submit that the problem of campaign reform is much like the 
case of the sick patient who has been diagnosed and treated by the same 
physician for a long period of time. If the diagnosis is wrong, then 
the treatment prescribed is not going to help the patient. In this 
case, we see that the patient is ill and the same doctor is treating 
him and the same prescription is being offered, only more of it. And 
the more that is given, the sicker the patient gets.
  We hear a great deal of talk today about the evils of soft money. 
Most Americans, I would venture, really have no idea even what soft 
money is. We hear the terms ``hard money'' in contrast to ``soft 
money.'' We hear discussions of issue advocacy or we will hear the term 
``independent expenditure.'' I would just observe that these were terms 
that really came into being the first time the Dr. Regulator made his 
prescription for the patient when, in 1974, the Democrats ran through a 
partisan law that took partisan advantage and skewed the whole Federal 
law in favor of their party and against Republicans.
  Now, after this law was passed, we began to understand a new term, 
the term of ``PAC.'' I remember 2 or 3 years ago when our big 
government reformers were trying to outlaw PACs, or political action 
committees; it is funny that we do not hear much about that anymore. 
PACs have not changed, it is just that now all the focus is on 
something else, soft money. But let me just remind all my colleagues 
that basically the terms of ``PACs'' and ``soft money'' came into being 
as a result of the present Federal law, rammed through Congress by 
liberal Democrats taking advantage of the reaction against the 
Republicans and Richard Nixon. And they put that law through, and ever 
since we have seen the ill effects of that law.

                              {time}  1615

  And now when the body politic is deemed to be even sicker, Dr. 
Regulator is back again with the same old prescription; more 
regulation. The answer is always the same; more regulation.
  Now, what is the question? It is very interesting how over the years 
this has never changed. We always have to have a new law, a new 
regulation proposed to fix something. In this case, they are trying to 
fix our campaign system. Let me suggest that the cause of the patient's 
illness is the regulation itself. That is the cause. If we wanted to 
deal with the underlying problem and heal that patient, remove the 
regulation.
  Now, there is a truly radical idea; remove the regulation, do not 
have more of it, as virtually everyone on the other side proposes and 
some of our own Republicans are proposing. Reconsider what is causing 
the sickness. Get a proper diagnosis. Then we will be able to proceed.
  I would submit that the various ideas being advanced by the left and 
by some of us here on our side of the aisle are flat-out wrong and they 
will not solve the problem. I believe them to be highly undesirable, 
unconstitutional. But even setting aside those two things, actually 
they are quite unworkable. If regulation worked, we would not have the 
mess that we have today in our Federal campaign system; we would not 
have a presidential system that takes our taxpayer dollars and spends 
it on candidates that we oppose as taxpayers. That system needs to be 
repealed. That system is hurting us. That is denying the parties their 
most vibrant candidate.
  Think for a minute to the 1996 campaign and what happened on the 
Republican side and think ahead to what is likely to happen this time 
around. The candidate who was nominated, the candidate who is going to 
be nominated is the one who has the highest name ID amongst the voters 
no matter what his ideas or record happens to be. There is very little 
information available to the voter about this person, and there will 
continue to be little information because we have such strict spending 
limits set in law that it is not possible for the candidates at the 
presidential level to communicate their ideas.
  We saw that fully played out in the Republican side of it. Senator 
Dole, by the time he was able to win enough delegate votes to cinch up 
the nomination, was unable to continue spending between that point and 
the Republican Convention in midsummer because of the Federal campaign 
law. How on Earth can this be good policy? How can this be consistent 
with the precious first amendment, which says so clearly that Congress 
shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech?
  Let me just observe, before this disastrous 1974 law rammed through 
Congress, bipartisan liberal Democrats twisting the law to their own 
advantage, the law that we live under today, our campaigns were 
relatively unregulated and it worked relatively well. It was not 
perfect, but we will never achieve perfection as long as mortal human 
beings are upon the face of the Earth governing themselves. So let us 
not look for perfection; let us look for

[[Page H3308]]

the best that we can get and something that works.
  I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that the system we have today is worse 
than what we had. We have tried to correct abuses and created far worse 
problems. The problems we have today are violations of the first 
amendment. We do not have free speech in this country anymore when it 
comes to campaigning.
  I find in my district voters are hungry for reliable information 
about the candidates. They want to hear directly from the candidate and 
it is getting harder and harder to do that. People should be offended 
that under the present law an individual can, or, rather, a political 
action committee can contribute five times what an individual can 
contribute to a candidate's campaign. Why is that just or right or fair 
that there is a 5-1 advantage?
  After all, the first amendment says Congress shall make no law 
abridging the freedom of speech. So how did it get abridged? By a 
statute enacted into law by the Congress and the President.
  Well, this was tested in the famous Buckley v. Valeo case, and almost 
all of that tremendous law passed in 1994 was thrown out, except for 
just a couple of parts, the parts that remain with us today and that 
still negatively afflict the campaign system and really the body 
politic. And the Supreme Court did uphold the right by Congress to 
place limits on what amounts could be contributed to campaigns, limits 
that skewed it in favor of PACs and against individuals.
  However, as time has gone on, the value of these limits has been 
eroded; whereas at the time, an amount that could be contributed to an 
individual was $1,000 or by an individual to a candidate was $1,000 and 
by a PAC to a candidate was $5,000. And while those limits are in 
effect right now under present law, which has never been changed, let 
me just observe we will have extraordinarily high inflation in the 
intervening years. So that today, the $1,000 and the $5,000 have been 
reduced by two-thirds.
  Now, earlier I told my colleagues that the cost of a Seinfeld ad for 
30 seconds was $1\1/2\ million. Those are today's prices in 1998. But 
we still live by a campaign law that was written in 1974, when the 
equivalent 30-second add was dramatically less. The fact of the matter 
is, political advertising of all kinds has gone up with inflation and 
probably above inflation, and yet campaigns are still restricted to the 
old limits that are the present limits.
  Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Solomon) understands 
these issues very well and has been valiant in fighting to protect our 
First Amendment rights. And we hope and pray that others will be 
similarly valiant in the upcoming debate and series of votes that will 
be commencing next week.
  Let me just observe that ``hard money,'' the term that we apply to 
that, is contributed from individuals or PACs or parties to the 
campaign of the candidates. Those are hard dollars, strictly regulated 
by Federal law, very unfair, very burdensome, very biased Federal law 
that was passed over 20 years ago.
  As I indicated before, the inflation has been dramatic, it has eroded 
the real purchasing value of the limitation by two-thirds, and we live 
with that today. As the cost of advertising has shot up over the years, 
campaign spending has followed the course of least resistance.
  It so happens that it is possible to engage in a form of spending 
using soft money. Soft money is money that is not covered by the 
Federal law and it is money that cannot go directly to campaigns but it 
must be used for voter registration, get-out-the-vote effort, voter 
identification, those kinds of things. That is soft money.
  That was felt to be very desirable at one point by our elected 
officials. And in fact, after the 1976 campaign Ford v. Carter, both 
parties felt that we should strengthen the ability of parties and we 
should strengthen it by allowing them to make greater use of the so-
called ``soft money,'' that in order to have healthy, vibrant political 
parties, they needed to be able to engage in this kind of campaign 
spending.
  In fact, since that time, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held 
that we cannot proscribe spending by political parties in the soft 
money area. In fact, very recently in the Supreme Court case involving 
the Republican Party of Colorado, they explicitly held that this was 
clearly protected by the first amendment to the United States 
Constitution.

  I remain amazed, despite these clear pronouncements of the Court time 
and time again, Buckley v. Valeo has been cited by the Court over 100 
times in subsequent opinions. That was rendered in 1976. So, for 22 
years, this case has been repeatedly cited and yet we are constantly 
finding bills introduced that fly right in the face of the U.S. 
Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court.
  In fact, there is now a special project made up of law professors all 
over the country, I understand, to figure out ways to bring court 
challenges to get Buckley v. Valeo overturned. Because as long as that 
court opinion stands, none of these laws being proposed that abridge 
our first amendment rights is ever going to be able to stand the court 
test.
  To commend a colleague who is a liberal Democrat, and with whom I 
disagree completely on this issue because I will commend him for his 
honesty, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) recognizes that to 
do what he and the Democrats want to do cannot be done by statute; it 
can only be done by amending the Constitution of the United States. And 
indeed, that is what he has proposed to do, actually amend the 
Constitution, modify the first amendment, and basically make it 
possible so that Congress can legitimately abridge a citizen's first 
amendment rights and do so to accomplish the greater good of campaign 
reform, greater good in his mind, not in my mind and, I would submit, 
not in the minds of most Americans. But at least there is honesty in 
attempting to go about it the right way; because we cannot do the 
things that many of my colleagues seek to do and be consistent with our 
great U.S. Constitution until and unless we deregulate this campaign 
system and follow the Constitution, which clearly says that Congress is 
supposed to stay out of it.
  And by the way, of all the types of speech, guess what the most 
vital, most important form of speech was in the minds of the framers? 
It was not the ability to go out and advertise automobiles or beer or 
something like that. It was political discourse, the very thing the 
British Government tried to abridge when it was in power. We tried to 
prevent that from ever happening again by having the first amendment to 
the United States Constitution, which I think is unique amongst the 
nations of the world. Our adherence to that is better than any other 
country. We have a very, very clear standard.

                              {time}  1630

  The government should not be able to regulate in this area. The 
government must not regulate in this area, and, indeed, the government 
cannot effectively regulate in this area. Because as long as we have 
any shred of a Constitution left, you are going to have the ability of 
individuals acting independently or of groups acting independently to 
contribute whatever amount of money they would like to political 
campaigns.
  You see, today we are seeing increasingly the ability of the average 
person to run be depreciated. Look how with increasing frequency, 
individuals of personal wealth are running for these offices. Why? 
Because there is a great exception to the Federal campaign law, one the 
drafters of it did not wish to allow, but one the Supreme Court carved, 
and they carved it legitimately and correctly; that is, you have the 
unlimited right to spend whatever you wish on your campaign.
  So an individual that is going to spend his own millions can do so 
for as much as he would like or she would like. Yet, that same 
individual who may have $1 billion can only give $1,000 to some other 
candidate, to a candidate of average means, to someone who works for a 
living and who supports his or her family, but who believes that he or 
she can make a difference in our public affairs.
  But this person is not a millionaire or a billionaire. This person, 
therefore, cannot contribute his own personal wealth, because he does 
not have personal wealth. All he or she can do is go out and live by 
the limits imposed by

[[Page H3309]]

Federal law and get these contributions in the amounts that I told you, 
$1,000 or $5,000.
  In case anybody is wondering, you know, you hear these reports that 
Members of Congress have these fund-raisers, and representatives of 
PACs come and tender the check. I will check my own campaign reports 
recently but, over time, I think I only have, out of about the half 
million dollars or so that I, as one representative, am able to raise 
in campaign dollars over a 2-year period, I will bet you I do not have 
more than two or at most three political action committees donate the 
maximum $5,000 contribution. It just is not that common.
  The only reason I share that with you is to indicate that when you 
have to raise, as a challenger, by the way, you see, I am an incumbent 
now; if I really wanted to feather my own nest as an incumbent, I would 
climb on board and vote tomorrow for McCain-Feingold or Shays-Meehan, 
because I will make it infinitely more difficult for someone to try and 
challenge me. It will be infinitely more difficult as an incumbent and 
it will be infinitely more difficult for any challenger to be able to 
successfully challenge an incumbent.
  Why? Because the incumbent has the advantages of office. Let us start 
with name identification in the mind of the voter. That is number one. 
Most people have heard of me in the Fourth Congressional District of 
California, because I am an incumbent and have run before.
  By virtue of that fact, it is much easier for me to go out and hold a 
fund-raiser and have a number of individuals come in and contribute to 
me in relatively small amounts, because I am known, than it is for a 
challenger who is virtually unknown to go out and hold a fund-raiser.
  Almost no one will show up, figuratively speaking, because nobody 
knows the individual. They have never even heard of his name. So why 
would they show up at some event? Why would they write a check to him? 
They do not really know him. So name ID and incumbency are tremendous 
advantages.
  Most studies show that the challenger has to outspend the incumbent 
in order to win the seat. You will make it infinitely more difficult 
for that challenger in order to prevail if you go with the big 
government types of campaign reform that impose further limits and 
further restrictions and get the heavy hand of government even further 
into the process.
  Sometimes when I see what happens to groups that legitimately 
participate and have the FEC decide to go after them or some 
congressional committee decide to hold a hearing, when you look at the 
months of negative publicity involved, when you look at the hundreds of 
thousands of dollars in attorney's fees that have to be spent in order 
for these individuals or groups to defend themselves in the exercise of 
their legitimate constitutional rights, I mean, I ask myself, I think 
why on Earth would anybody ever put themselves through this?
  The effect of all of this Federal regulation is to chill free speech. 
It is to make people think twice before they participate in the 
process. That is basically its effect. I believe, frankly, its intended 
effect is to drive people out in a way, and it is just better off not 
to get involved.
  I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that that is the wrong way to go in our 
body politic. Free speech is precious. People should be able to engage 
in free speech without the fear of the government coming down on them. 
People should be encouraged to run for office, not discouraged.
  It is very discouraging to a person of average means who may have 
good ideas, great ideas, who seeks to run a campaign, and find that he 
has got to raise that half million dollars by holding numerous fund-
raisers, and being on the phone and raising money all the time, 
whereas, his wealthy opponent simply writes himself a check. He is on 
the air and in the mail and can sit back and let all the professionals 
do it. It is just not right.
  This Republic was founded upon the idea that all men are created 
equal. Obviously by men, they meant men and women, but obviously not 
equal in result, but equal in the opportunity to work and to fight for 
the things that we believe in.
  That opportunity is constrained today by the heavy hand of 
government. It is going it be made worse by the big government 
reformers who want to come in and sell you on some snake oil formula to 
give away your first amendment rights in exchange for the nirvana of 
campaign reform.
  Mr. Speaker, I for one intend to be vigorously involved in this 
debate and to stand up for our fundamental freedoms. This is really the 
right to self-governance of the American people. It is not just 
politicians fighting amongst themselves over how much advantage they 
can get. I know that it seems that way to our American people.
  I hope through these debates they will realize it is really their 
rights that we are protecting, their rights to freedom of speech, their 
rights to participate in the political process, their rights to dictate 
to their government, rather than to have their government controlling 
them and dictating to them.
  After all, let us not forget the words of George Washington: 
Government does not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force. Like 
fire, it is a dangerous servant and a troublesome master.
  Jefferson referred to it as a necessary evil. But let us remember 
that it is not a positive good as President Clinton and company would 
have you think, and therefore the more of it, the better. If some 
government is good, more is better. That is completely contrary to the 
founders who said that it is a necessary evil, that it could be a 
fearful master and a troublesome servant.
  These are concepts, I think, that are almost lost today upon our 
students in the school, and their concepts we are going to have to 
revive here in the halls of freedom, in the halls of the United States 
Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, I have appreciated the opportunity to engage in this 
special order, to get out some of my thoughts about what we need to do 
relative to the topic of campaign reform. Let me just close by, I 
guess, citing an ancient but well-founded concept, the hypocritic oath 
to physicians, which is first do no harm.
  Mr. Speaker, it is my sincere hope and prayer that as we embark next 
week upon this important topic of the Constitution, first amendment 
rights and campaign reform, that we will, indeed, do no harm.

                          ____________________