[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 107 (Monday, August 3, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H6883-H6884]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           OPPORTUNITY FOR MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, tonight this Chamber has the opportunity to 
vote for meaningful campaign finance reform. Tonight, Members of this 
House will cast one of the most important votes of their careers in 
this House: To help restore integrity to our democratic system of 
government. That is what this debate is about tonight, to help restore 
some integrity to our democratic process.
  Mr. Speaker, the vote we will be casting tonight is on legislation 
that was introduced by Senator McCain and Senator Feingold in the 
Senate, and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) and myself in 
the House, along with a number of other sponsors.
  The McCain-Feingold bill in the Senate had a majority of Members who 
sought to support this legislation, but were not able to break the 
filibuster because they felt that the House would never deal with this 
issue, so why should the Senate take it up. But tonight, this House has 
the opportunity to pass the McCain-Feingold legislation, the Meehan-
Shays legislation as it is referred to in the House.
  Mr. Speaker, this legislation bans soft money. It completely 
eliminates the soft money contributions, the unlimited sums from 
individuals, corporations, labor unions and other interest groups that 
go to the political parties. In recent years these contributions have 
been rerouted right back down to help the individual candidates. This 
makes a mockery of our campaign laws which, under our constitutional 
form of government, provide for limitation of campaign contributions. 
Those limits are ignored because of our failure to ban soft money to 
the political parties.
  The second thing this legislation does is it recognizes the sham 
issue ads for what they truly are: campaign ads. They are not sham 
campaign ads; they are truly campaign ads. They are sham issue ads. In 
other words, issue ads are able to circumvent the campaign law, because 
they do not say ``vote for'' or ``vote against.'' Yet they are clearly 
campaign ads.
  Under our bill any ad run 60 days to an election that names or 
pictures a federal candidate is a campaign ad and is called such. In 
addition, any ad that expresses ``unambiguous and unmistakable support 
for'' or ``opposition to'' a

[[Page H6884]]

clearly identified Federal candidate, is a campaign ad and would come 
under campaign finance laws not just 60 days to an election, but 365.
  Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is we seek to call these sham issue ads 
what they are: Campaign ads. One of the significant side effects of 
that is that by doing so, we prevent both corporate and union money 
being utilized in these advertisements. Right now, it is the law that 
corporate money and union dues money cannot be used in campaign ads.
  The third thing we seek to do is to improve the Federal Elections 
Commission's disclosure and enforcement. We provide for disclosure on 
the Internet electronically, and that within 20 days to an election, 
contributions and expenditures of $1,000 or more must be disclosed 
every 24 hours.
  We have other miscellaneous aspects to the bill. We ban ussolicited 
franked mass mail 6 months to an election, and we make sure that 
foreign money is illegal, and that fund-raising on government property 
is illegal. The reason why it has not been illegal today is that soft 
money is not viewed as campaign money and, therefore, it does not come 
under the campaign law.
  The bottom line is: we ban soft money, the unlimited sums from 
individuals, corporations, labor unions and other interest groups; we 
recognize the sham issue ads for what they truly are, campaign ads; 
and, we improve FEC disclosure and enforcement.
  We have debated this bill for a long time. This is not a new piece of 
legislation that is coming to the floor of the House. We were promised 
a vote last year, but did not receive it, in February or March. We were 
then finally promised a vote, and under what is clearly a very open and 
frankly fair process, we were allowed 60 amendments to our bill. Some 
of those were gutting amendments, and some of those were ``siren call'' 
amendments that one would want to vote for, but then it broke apart a 
coalition.
  Fortunately, we have repelled every one of these amendments. Now the 
question is will we pass Meehan-Shays legislation; will it become Queen 
of the Hill in competition of the other substitutes that will follow 
this week? Will, at the end, when it becomes and if it becomes the 
Queen of the Hill legislation, will it be sent to the Senate?
  Mr. Speaker, I hope and pray we will do our job and send this bill to 
the Senate. We can begin that process by voting for it tonight.

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