[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 118 (Wednesday, September 9, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10084-S10090]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
                                  1999

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.


                           Amendment No. 3554

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I rise to speak on behalf of McCain-Feingold, the 
amendment offered, to thank my two colleagues for the extraordinary, 
principled, persistent, and practical leadership that they have given 
this critical effort, and to urge my colleagues to support the cloture 
motion that comes up tomorrow.
  Madam President, we have a cherished principle in this country that 
every person gets one and only one vote, that a citizen's influence on 
our government's decisions rests on the power of his or her ideas, not 
the size of his or her pocketbook. The campaign finance system we have 
on the books protects this privilege. May I repeat, the campaign 
finance system we have on our law books protects this principle. It 
imposes strict limits on the amounts individuals can contribute to 
parties and to campaigns. The law prohibits unions and corporations 
from making most contributions or expenditures in connection with 
elections to Federal office, and it requires disclosure of money spent 
in advocating the election or defeat of candidates for Federal office.
  That is what the campaign laws as they are on the books today 
require. But as we learned sadly during the 1996 campaigns and the 
various investigations that have followed, those laws appear to be 
written in invisible ink, which is to say that they have been honored, 
if one can use the term satirically, only in the breach. They have 
largely been evaded.
  It has been several months since the Governmental Affairs Committee's 
investigation into the 1996 campaigns ended, but none of us who were 
part of that investigation will forget, nor I hope will others forget, 
what we learned there or our feeling of outrage and embarrassment upon 
learning it. We learned not only of hustlers like Johnny Chung, who saw 
the White House like a subway--put some money in and the gates will 
open, he said--or of opportunists like Roger Tamraz, who used big 
dollar donations to gain access that was originally denied to him by 
policymakers at the same time he declined even to register to vote 
because he saw the vote which generations of Americans have fought and 
died to protect as a meaningless exercise, a process which would gain 
him no real power, particularly not when compared to the power that 
$300,000 would give him.
  We also learned in the Governmental Affairs hearings last year of 
something that was in its way even more disturbing because it was more 
pervasive and had a far greater effect on our elections and on our 
government. We learned that we no longer have a campaign finance 
system, that the loopholes have become so large and so many that they 
have taken over the entirety of the law, leaving us with little more 
than a free-for-all money chase in its place. We learned last year that 
it was somehow possible, for example, for wealthy donors to give 
hundreds of thousands of dollars to finance campaigns, even though the 
law was clearly intended to limit their contributions to a tiny 
fraction of those sums. That is what the

[[Page S10085]]

law on the books says. It was possible for corporations and unions to 
donate millions of dollars to the parties at the candidate's request 
despite the decades-old prohibition on those entities' involvement in 
Federal campaigns. That is clearly on the law books. It was possible 
for the two Presidential nominees to spend much of the fall shaking the 
donor trees, even though they had pledged under the law, in this case 
the Presidential campaign finance law, not to raise money for their 
campaigns after receiving $62 million each in taxpayer funds. It was 
possible for tax-exempt groups to run millions of dollars worth of 
television ads that clearly endorsed or attacked particular candidates, 
even though they were just as clearly barred by law from engaging in 
such partisan activity.

  Madam President, the disappearance, if I may call it that, of our 
campaign finance laws, which is to say the evasion of the clear intent 
of those laws, has serious consequences that none of us should 
overlook. Because our current system effectively has no limits on it, 
our political class, if you will, lives in a world in which a never-
ending pursuit for money is often the only road--the only perceived 
road to survival. With each election cycle the competition for money 
gets fiercer and fiercer, the amounts needed to be spent get bigger and 
bigger, and consequently the amount of time Presidential candidates, 
national party leaders, fundraisers--all of us need to raise for our 
parties gets greater and greater.
  In the 1996 election cycle the national parties raised $262 million 
in so-called soft or unregulated money, 12 times what they raised in 
1984. And what about the current cycle, the 1997-1998 cycle? National 
party committees in the first 18 months of the 1998 election cycle have 
raised almost $116 million in soft money, more than double the $50 
million raised during a comparable period by national party committees 
in 1994, which was the last non-Presidential election cycle.
  Let none of us deceive ourselves that this unrelenting and ever-
escalating money chase has no impact on the integrity of our Government 
and the impression our constituents have of our Government and those of 
us who serve in it. That clearly is the sad story, told by the 
Governmental Affairs investigation last year, and by the host of other 
investigations, journalistic and otherwise, that have been done of that 
1996 election. Our country is focused at this moment in our history on 
the misconduct which our President acknowledged in his statement on 
August 17. The consequences of that misconduct were great, but that was 
the failure of one person. The failure that we speak of today, on the 
other hand, if we do not act to correct it, belongs to us all. It is 
systemic, and none of us should doubt that it will get worse unless we 
do something to change it.
  Senator McCain was right, the Senator from Arizona, when he said a 
while ago that probably the biggest scandal in Washington today is the 
current state of our campaign finance laws. How can any of us justify a 
system in which our elected officials repeatedly appear at events 
exclusively available only to those who can give $50,000 or $100,000 or 
more, amounts that are obviously out of reach for the average American 
and above the annual incomes, in fact, of so many of our citizens--the 
annual incomes of so many of our citizens. How can any of us justify a 
system in which we, public servants, must divert so much of our time 
from the people's business to the business of fundraising? How can we 
justify a system that has so disenchanted our constituents that, 
according to an October 1997 Gallup survey, only 37 percent of 
Americans believe that the best candidate wins elections; 59 percent 
believe elections are generally for sale; in which 77 percent of 
Americans believe that their national leaders are most influenced by 
pressure from their contributors, while only 17 percent believe we are 
influenced by what is in the best interests of our country? That is a 
searing indictment of what we are devoting our lives to--public 
service, the national interest; and it comes, I believe, directly from 
the way in which we raise money for our campaigns, certainly at the 
Presidential and national level.
  How can any of us justify not taking action, some action, to reform 
our campaign finance system this year, in this 105th session, after all 
of the time and energy and resources Members of both sides of the aisle 
have spent investigating, in effect denouncing, the conditions that 
prevail under the current system? The fact is, I respectfully suggest, 
that we cannot justify such a system and we cannot justify inaction.
  In the additional views that I was privileged to submit to the 
Government Affairs Committee report on its investigation of the 1996 
campaigns, I wrote that I came away from that year-long investigation 
with an overarching sense that our polity has fallen down a long, dark 
hole into a place that is far from the vision of values of those who 
founded our democracy. I find it hard to see how others can come away 
from that experience, or any other experience which allows them to 
examine what has become of our campaign finance laws, without reaching 
a similar conclusion. We no longer live in a system in which every 
citizen's vote counts equally, or anywhere near equally. Instead, we 
live in a system in which what seems to matter most is how much money 
we can raise.
  It is time to act to restore a sense of integrity to our campaign 
finance system, to restore the public's trust in it and us. This is not 
a radical idea. All we are really asking is to restore our system to 
what it was meant to be, to what in fact the letter of Federal law is 
today: a system where individuals can participate in our political 
system, but they are limited in their ability to use their incomes to 
influence their Government; where only individuals, not corporations 
and unions, may use their money to directly influence our elections, 
and where we all know, through disclosure, who it is that is 
contributing and the public may judge to what extent those 
contributions are influencing our actions and our votes.
  Madam President, I hope that our colleagues will do what most 
observers seem to think we will not, which is to vote for cloture 
tomorrow to take up this bill and to clear this cloud from over our 
political system.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, we have heard a good deal in this 
debate about people buying access to politicians. Indeed, there has 
been a tremendous amount of time and printer's ink and television 
signals spent on debating how you buy access to a politician. I want to 
turn this debate around, for the sake of looking at it from a different 
point of view. It may take me some time to do this because there has 
been so much expenditure in one direction, but I think the core of this 
issue requires us to look in another direction, and that is not access 
to the politician, but access to the voters.
  Let me develop this for just a minute. We live in a democracy. 
Ultimate power in a democracy lies with the voters. Madam President, 
when you and I wished to become an elected official, in order to get 
here we have to have access to the voters, and this whole political 
process is about that challenge--how does the Presiding Officer gain 
access to the voters of Maine in order to get her message across?
  How do I get access to the voters of Utah in order to convince them 
that I am a better person than others who are seeking this opportunity? 
That is the focus that has never come into this debate. It is always 
assumed that the politicians are the constant and the voters somehow 
are the variable. It is, in fact, the other way around. The voters will 
always be with us in a democracy. It is the politicians who come and go 
and who are variable, and the question of how a politician becomes an 
officeholder depends entirely on how effectively the politician can get 
his or her message across to the voters so the voters can then make a 
choice.
  What I am about to say for the next half hour to 45 minutes, will be 
focused in a whole new direction than the direction that we have been 
having in this debate.
  I begin, Madam President, by going back to a historical review of the 
whole issue of money in politics. For this, I am dependent on a number 
of sources. One is the Wilson Quarterly published in the summer of 
1997, with the cover article being entitled ``Money In Politics, The 
Oldest Connection.'' This gives us a historic point of view that will 
start us off in this direction that I think we ought to explore.

[[Page S10086]]

  In this particular article, it points out that in the beginning of 
our Republic, a politician had access to the voters because he knew 
them all. They all lived in his neighborhood. George Washington was 
personally known to the people who voted to put him in Virginia's House 
of Burgesses. Thomas Jefferson was personally known to the people who 
he would turn to for political support. He had no problem gaining 
access to the voters.
  I find it interesting, out of this Wilson Quarterly article, that 
even then, however, the subject of money did come up. If I can quote 
from the article:

       George Washington spent about 25 pounds apiece on two 
     elections for the House of Burgesses, 39 pounds on another, 
     and nearly 50 pounds on a fourth, which was many times the 
     going price for a house or a plot of land.

  Interestingly, many times the price of a house for a seat in the 
State legislature. Oh, what fun we could have with the rhetoric about 
that in this Chamber when we are saying that a seat in the House was up 
for sale.
  Quoting from the article again:

       Washington's electioneering expenses included the usual rum 
     punch, cookies and ginger cakes, money for the poll watcher 
     who recorded the votes, even one election-eve ball complete 
     with fiddler.

  An interesting footnote about that appears in the article later 
relating to one of Washington's fellow State members, James Madison. 
Quoting again from the article:

       James Madison considered ``the corrupting influence of 
     spiritous liquors and other treats . . . inconsistent with 
     the purity of moral and republican principles.'' But 
     Virginians, the future president discovered, did not want ``a 
     more chaste mode of conducting elections.'' Putting him down 
     as prideful and cheap, the voters rejected his candidacy for 
     the Virginia House of Delegates in 1777. Leaders were 
     supposed to be generous gentlemen.

  Madison decided to enforce his own form of campaign finance reform, 
refused to treat the voters in Virginia, and they responded by refusing 
to send him to Virginia's House of Delegates.
  As the country grew, obviously the circumstances changed. We got to 
the point where no longer could a candidate announce for office and 
assume he would be known to all the voters. Even if he bought some rum 
punch or ginger cakes, he still could not sway voters' opinion and, as 
the article says, quoting again:

       Leadership was no longer just a matter of gentlemen 
     persuading one another; now, politicians had to sway the 
     crowd.

  As the article goes on to point out:

       In fact, the more democratic, the more inclusive the 
     campaign, the more it cost.

  In that one sentence, we have a summary of the challenge of a 
politician gaining access to the voters. I will repeat it:

       . . . the more democratic, the more inclusive the campaign, 
     the more it cost.

  Stop and think of the challenge today in that context where the 
Senator from New York has to reach millions, tens of millions, the 
Senator from California even more millions than that, in campaigns this 
fall. And the more democratic and more inclusive those campaigns are, 
the more they will cost.
  Cost to do what? To gain access to the voters; to get your message 
across to the voters. The cost is directly connected with how 
democratic, how inclusive, and in the case of the larger States, how 
big the electorate is going to be.
  We come into the present century, and we find things are getting 
worse in terms of the high cost of reaching the voters. One of the 
things, paradoxically, that has driven the cost of campaigns through 
the roof has been the cause of campaign finance reform. The reforms 
themselves have added to the burden of cost on a candidate who is 
seeking to have access to the voters.
  Again from the article:

       Some reforms, such as the push for nomination of 
     presidential and other candidates by primaries, made 
     campaigning even more expensive. Ultimately, the reformers' 
     decades-long efforts to improve the American political system 
     did at least as much harm as good. They weakened the role of 
     parties, lessened faith in popular politics, and hastened the 
     decline of voter participation.

  I find that very interesting. A historical analysis of America's 
politics written in an outstanding academic journal says that it has 
been the reformers' efforts that have ``weakened the role of parties, 
lessened faith in popular politics and hastened the decline of voter 
participation.'' We heard on this floor this morning the statement that 
voter participation is going down, and the reason is because we do not 
have campaign finance reform; indeed, that the more money we put into 
politics, the less people vote and the lower the level of participation 
and that there is a direct correlation between the money chase and the 
voters being turned off.
  We were told that in the State of Arizona, they just had a primary 
that set an all-time low for voter participation in this era when we 
have an all-time high in spending.
  Madam President, I offer the case of my own State and what happens 
with respect to voter participation and money. If I can go back in my 
own political career, the one career I know better than any other, I 
can tell the Members of the Senate that the highest voter participation 
in history in a primary in the State of Utah occurred in 1992 when I 
was running for the Senate.
  We had an open seat for the Senate, and originally five candidates on 
the Republican side and two on the Democratic side. We had an open seat 
for Governor, and originally there were five candidates for Governor on 
the Republican side, and I believe three on the Democratic side, plus 
an independent thrown in who ran on a third party ticket.
  By virtue of the Congressman in the Second District in Utah 
challenging for the Senate seat, we had an open seat in Salt Lake City, 
the media center of the State. So even though it was not a statewide 
office, it nonetheless called for purchase of statewide media.
  We had the largest spending amount of money in the history of the 
State as we went through that primary.
  In the Senate primary alone--there were only two candidates, I say, 
because under Utah's law a convention eliminates all but two--we had 
the highest expenditures in the State's history. My opponent spent $6.2 
million in the primary in the State of Utah, setting an all-time record 
for money spent per vote. I struggled by with second place in spending 
with $2 million, which would have beaten the previous high if it had 
not been for the amount of money my opponent was spending. So that is 
over $8 million spent on a Senate primary in the State of Utah that has 
fewer than 1 million voters.
  At the same time, we had a heated race for Governor with primaries in 
both parties. Fortunately, the gubernatorial candidates did not spend 
in the millions that the senatorial candidates did, but they spent a 
lot of money for a primary. And we had spending in the House race in 
the Second Congressional District.
  If we believe what we were told on the Senate floor this morning, 
that should translate into the lowest voter turnout in history, people 
turned off by the money chase. But in fact it produced, as I said, the 
largest voter turnout in the history of the State.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. BENNETT. I am happy to yield to my friend from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Following the astute observations of the Senator from 
the State of Utah, in fact that is where the correlation is, is it not? 
Year after year after year, we see that there is a direct correlation 
between spending and turnout, a fact that makes good sense. If there is 
a contested election, with two well-financed candidates, the turnout 
goes up. If very little money is spent, very little interest is 
generated and turnout goes down.
  So I ask my friend from Utah if the Utah experience that he related 
to us is not almost always the case?
  Mr. BENNETT. It is my understanding that it is, Madam President. And 
I would like to underscore that point by going to the primary in 1998. 
In 1998, there were no Senate candidates on the primary ballot from 
either party, I having eliminated my challenger within the party within 
the convention, and my Democratic opponent having had no challenger in 
his convention. We did not have a gubernatorial race. There was no 
challenge in the Second Congressional District, which is in the large 
media market.
  But there was a primary in the Third Congressional District, where 
the incumbent Congressman was challenged by a gentleman who made it 
very clear that he not only would not accept PAC

[[Page s10087]]

money, he would not accept party contributions, he would not accept 
individual contributions. He said, ``I will take my message directly to 
the people without accepting any money''--as he put it, in biblical 
terms--``gold and silver, from anyone.'' And the result of that primary 
was the lowest turnout that anyone can recall.
  His opponent did not spend any money. I talked to his opponent, the 
incumbent Congressman. I said, ``Aren't you going to spend anything?'' 
He said, ``I'm nervous it will look like overkill if I do.'' He did 
spend a little money on a get-out-the-vote campaign, but he did not buy 
any ads. There were no television broadsides and no radio ads. Most of 
the people in the district, by virtue of the lower spending, did not 
know an election was going on, and you had the lowest turnout in Utah 
history in that district.
  So I submit, Madam President, that at least on the basis of the 
anecdote with which I am the most familiar, the more participation that 
you want, the more money you had better be prepared to spend. And if 
you are in fact decrying the low level of turnout and the low level of 
participation and you want to do something about that, then you defeat 
this amendment, because this amendment would take us down the road to 
further lowering the ability of candidates to access the voters and 
thereby let the voters know that an election is going on.
  If I may go back to the historic pattern that I was outlining as to 
what has happened in this century, I would refer once again, Madam 
President, to the quote that I gave from the article in the Wilson 
Quarterly that ``the reformers' * * * efforts to improve the American 
political system did at least as much harm as good * * * and hastened 
the decline of voter participation.''
  The article goes on to say:

       Twentieth-century politicking would prove to be far more 
     expensive than 19th-century . . . politics . . . And as the 
     century went on, politicians increasingly had to struggle to 
     be heard above the din from competing forms of entertainment 
     . . .

  That is a very interesting way of putting it, Madam President. 
Politicians had to compete with the din of competing forms of 
entertainment. If you read the history books, there was a time when 
politics was the leading form of entertainment in this country. If you 
were going to have a rally, a bonfire, something to do, you went out 
and got involved in politics. As other forms of communication and 
entertainment came along, it became increasingly difficult.
  I have a personal experience I can share on this which is perhaps not 
political but which makes the point. I served as a missionary for the 
church to which I belong in the early 1950s. And I served in the 
British Isles, where one of the great traditions of the British Isles 
is what is known as a street meeting. You stand on a street corner, you 
talk as loud as you can, and you hope somebody stops and listens to 
you.
  On a good evening in the summertime, when the weather is fine, you 
could almost always draw a crowd. I would go down to the city square in 
Edinburgh, and the Salvation Army would be on that corner, and the 
Church of Scotland would be on that corner, and the Scottish 
nationalists would be over here, and I and my companions would be here.
  The square would be filled with people, and you would compete with 
each other to see who could draw the biggest crowd and then who could 
hold the crowd as the other orators were speaking on their issues--the 
Scottish nationalists demanding that Scotland separate itself from the 
British tyranny, the Salvation Army putting forth--they were unfair in 
my book because they had a band. We did not have a band, we just had 
our own voices to carry it on. It was a great British tradition and 
still, presumably, goes on in some parts of Hyde Park in London, but I 
think only rarely now.
  What happened to dry up the crowds that would show up and listen to 
the orators on politics and religion and everything else? Television. 
As soon they could stay home and watch television, they were not 
interested in coming down to the city square in Edinburgh to listen to 
a tall bald kid from America. However entertaining that may have been 
in an earlier time, all of a sudden there was competition. Politicians 
used to be at that square. Politicians have discovered, in the words of 
the article, that they have to ``struggle to be heard above the din 
from competing forms of entertainment.''
  And how are they heard? They buy an ad. They go on television 
themselves. They go on radio themselves. How are they going to get 
access to the voters? They are going to have to compete in the same 
places where the voters are. It makes you feel wonderful to stand on a 
street corner and give an absolutely brilliant speech, if there is 
anybody listening.
  But I can tell you from real experience, it makes you feel quite 
foolish to stand on a street corner and give an absolutely brilliant 
speech to a group of pigeons that keep flying in and out. If you are 
going to get access to the voters, you have to go where the voters are, 
and the voters are by their radio sets and in front of their television 
sets, and that is where you have to be, however much you might not like 
it.
  Back to the article:

       By letting politicians appeal directly and ``personally'' 
     to masses of voters, television made money, not manpower, the 
     key to political success. Campaigns became 
     ``professionalized,'' with ``consultants'' and elaborate 
     ``ad-buys,'' and that added to the cost. So did the fact that 
     as party loyalties diminished, candidates had to build their 
     own individual organizations and ``images.''

  I go back to the question of, Why did the party loyalties diminish? 
Because the reformers showed up and said, ``Parties are evil.'' It was 
the reform movement that diminished the power of parties, so that it 
did not make enough difference for an individual to win his party's 
nomination, he had to have his own organization, his own campaign 
consultants, and his own ad-buys.
  Again, if I can give a personal anecdote to demonstrate this, my 
first experience with politics was in 1950 when my father ran for the 
U.S. Senate. Who managed his campaign that first year? It was the 
Republican State Party chairman who showed up when dad won the 
nomination and said, ``OK, we have a party organization in place and we 
are going to run your campaign.'' When my father ran for his last term 
in the U.S. Senate in 1968, I am not sure I remember who the Republican 
State chairman was, because by that time we had created our own 
organization--Volunteers for Bennett, Neighbors for Bennett, our own 
door-to-door system of handing out information. We had our own 
advertising budget and our own advertising program. We had to take it 
all over ourselves if we were going to get access to the voters in a 
meaningful way. And all of that costs money. It was the cost of the 
politicians gaining access to the voters that was going up and that was 
what was driving the fundraising challenge.
  Then we got to what is considered the great watershed in American 
campaign finance problems, Watergate. The article addresses that, as 
well. If I might quote once again:

       Yet for all the pious hopes, the goal of the Watergate era 
     reforms--to remove the influence of money from presidential 
     elections--was hard and inescapable fact, ridiculous. Very 
     few areas of American life are insulated from the power of 
     money. Politics, which is, after all, about power, had 
     limited potential to be turned into a platonic refuge from 
     the influence of mammon. The new Puritanism of the post-
     Watergate era often backfired . . . Tinkering with the 
     political system in many cases just made it worse.

  I can offer anecdotes about that, as well. Let me give one. We heard 
in the hearings to which the Senator from Connecticut referred in the 
Thompson committee with respect to campaign finance reform, we heard 
there about a campaign that many can argue changed the course of 
American history. It was the McCarthy campaign in New Hampshire in 
1968. Eugene McCarthy, a distinguished member of this body, decided 
against all political wisdom that he was going to challenge an 
incumbent President within his own party over an issue he considered to 
be a moral issue, the Vietnam war. Conventional wisdom said a sitting 
Senator does not do that to an incumbent President. The sitting Senator 
does not take on an incumbent President of his own party. But Eugene 
McCarthy did. He went to New Hampshire. He did not win, but he came 
close enough to scare Lyndon Johnson and his advisers so badly that 
within a relatively short period of time after the McCarthy challenge, 
Lyndon Johnson announced that

[[Page S10088]]

he would not run for reelection as President of the United States.
  Now, we heard in the Thompson committee this bit about the McCarthy 
campaign. He went to five individuals, individuals of wealth, and said, 
``I want to challenge Lyndon Johnson on the basis of principle; will 
you support me?'' And each one of those five said yes. Each one gave 
him $100,000. So he went to New Hampshire with a war chest of half a 
million dollars--which at the time was sufficient for him to gain 
access to the voters.
  Again, the theme that I am trying to lay down here, the whole issue 
is not access to the politician; the issue is access to the voters. 
Eugene McCarthy could not have had access to the voters without that 
$500,000. We would, perhaps, not have had history changed the way it 
was as a result of the McCarthy campaign if those five men had not put 
up $100,000 apiece.
  Now, someone connected with the McCarthy campaign testified before 
our committee and he gave this very interesting comment. He said those 
who signed the Declaration of Independence were so concerned about 
their Government that they were willing to pledge, in the words of that 
declaration, ``their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.'' 
Then he said, in today's world it would say, ``your lives, your 
fortunes and your sacred honor, just as long as it does not exceed 
$1,000 per cycle.''
  Now, I think the McCarthy campaign and the result of that 
demonstrates how the reforms of the Watergate era have backfired, how 
they have made it impossible for many people who would otherwise have a 
message worth hearing, to gain access to the voters.
  Let me give an example out of the last campaign. One of the more 
energetic of America's politicians is a former Member of the House, 
former member of the Cabinet named Jack Kemp. He brings to politics the 
same enthusiasm that he used to display on the football field. 
Sometimes he has the same suicidal motives that he seemed to have on 
the football field, but he plays the game with that kind of zest. Jack 
Kemp dearly wanted to run for President in 1996. He had run once before 
and he still had it in his blood and he was ready to go. I talked to 
Jack Kemp and said, ``Are you going to do it?'' And he said, ``No.'' I 
said, ``Why not?'' He said, ``I can't bring myself to go through the 
agony of raising the money.''
  This is not cowardice on his part. If there is anything Jack Kemp is 
not, it is a coward. This is not lack of enthusiasm on Jack Kemp's 
part. It was a recognition of the fact that the so-called reforms out 
of Watergate meant that he could not do what Eugene McCarthy did. He 
could not go to five individuals and say, ``Give me $100,000 a piece to 
get me started.'' He had to do it $1,000 at a time. He said to me, 
``Bob, I would have to hold 200 fundraisers between now and the end of 
the year to do it, and I simply cannot eat that much chicken.''
  Mr. McCONNELL. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. BENNETT. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Mr. McCONNELL. The Senator's point, I gather, is that the last reform 
of the mid-1970s has, in fact, secured the Presidential system to favor 
either the well-off, for example, Steve Forbes; or the well-known with 
a nationwide organization, for example, Bob Dole, to the detriment of 
every other dark horse who might have a regional base or some dramatic 
issue that they cared about, like Eugene McCarthy.
  In fact, is the Senator's point that regional candidates or 
candidates with a cause are now out of luck as a result of the last 
reform?
  (Mr. GORTON assumed the chair.)
  Mr. BENNETT. The Senator is entirely correct. That is my point. If, 
indeed, we want to increase the amount of public confidence in the 
system and candidate participation in the system, we should remove the 
restrictions that now make it virtually impossible for anybody other 
than the well-known or the well-funded.
  I used Jack Kemp as an example. The Senator from Kentucky has 
mentioned Steve Forbes. It is widely assumed--I have not discussed it 
with him directly, but I think it is probably accurate--that Steve 
Forbes would have backed Jack Kemp in the last election if Kemp had 
been able to run. It is widely assumed --and I think it is correct--
that if Jack Kemp, pre-Watergate reforms, had gone to Steve Forbes and 
said, ``Steve, give me $1 million,'' Steve Forbes would have done it. 
But because he can't do it under the Watergate reforms, Steve Forbes 
ends up getting in the race himself because the only way he can make 
his money available to his causes is to spend it on himself.
  The reforms we have make it impossible for him to spend it supporting 
anybody else, unless, of course, he does it in the terrible, dreaded 
form of soft money. And I will talk about that in a minute. But right 
now I want to focus again on the historic fact that, in the name of 
campaign finance reform, we have restricted rather than expanded the 
opportunities of politicians to get their message across. We have made 
it more difficult for a politician to gain access to the voters than it 
used to be before we had all of these reforms.

  Back to the article for just a moment. A summary of this point, and 
one other aspect of it:

       In an age of growing moral relativism, reformers raised 
     standards in the political realm to new and often unrealistic 
     legal heights. Failure to fill out forms properly became 
     illegal. This growing criminalization of politics, combined 
     with the media scandal-mongering, did not purify politics, 
     but only further undermined faith in politicians and 
     government.

  We are all familiar with that, Mr. President. Failure to fill out 
forms properly--oh boy, what a terrible sin that is, and how dearly we 
pay for it. I have remained silent on my own experience with the 
Federal Election Commission, but I suppose the time has come now for me 
to confess my sins. My campaign in 1992, staffed primarily by 
volunteers, failed to fill out some forms properly--indeed, they failed 
to fill some of them out on the proper timeframe. They filled them out 
properly, they just didn't submit them in the proper timeframe. And for 
that, after spending about $50,000 in legal fees to convince the 
Federal Election Commission that I was not some kind of an ax murderer, 
we finally achieved an out-of-court settlement that cost me another 
$55,000.
  In the negotiations between my campaign and the Federal Election 
Commission, my attorney made it very clear. He said, ``You will settle 
at the amount they know is below what it would cost you to litigate 
this issue.'' It has nothing to do with what constitutes an 
illegitimate penalty; it has to do with how much they know they can get 
from you because you would rather spend money to have this thing over 
than you would spend it for legal fees. As I say, I spent about $50,000 
in legal fees. The settlement figure was $55,000. It is clear that it 
would have gotten to more than $55,000 if I had to go to litigation, 
and so financially I made the decision to settle. That is another one 
of the fruits of reforms.
  In the words of the article, ``Criminalization of politics, combined 
with media scandal-mongering, did not purify politics, but only further 
undermined faith in politicians and government.''
  All right. I started this by saying the focus of this is on access to 
the voters. All of the debate we have had has been on how we must 
somehow deal with access to the politicians. Let's talk about access to 
the politicians for just a minute before we come back to the main 
theme. We are told again and again that the only reason people give any 
money, the only reason people make any contribution is because they 
want access. I will again refer to the article, but I will have other 
references out of a more current publication:

       Wealthy people who purchase status with payoffs to museums 
     are admirable philanthropists. When they plunge into public 
     service, they risk being called ``fat cats'' who want 
     something more in return for their generosity than 
     advancement of their notion of the public good and something 
     more sinister than status by association. Donors are 
     ``angels'' if they champion the right candidate or the right 
     cause, but ``devils'' if they bankroll an opponent.

  In this week's issue of Fortune Magazine, Mr. President, there is an 
article on money and politics that brings up to date that observation 
from the article I have been quoting. It talks about fundraisers for 
campaigns and makes this point in concert with the point that was just 
made:

       Conspiracy theorists will be disappointed to learn that the 
     majority of money raisers don't seek quid pro quos. Most have 
     made

[[Page S10089]]

     their fortunes and dabble in politics because they are 
     partisans and get a kick out of it.

  That has been my experience. The people who give really big money--
Rich DeVos of Amway, for example, for the Republicans, and a gentleman 
I believe named DeMont, who gave over $2 million to George McGovern and 
the Democrats, were not expecting an ambassadorship and not expecting 
to be appointed to the Cabinet. They made their fortunes; they are 
partisans and they get a kick out of it.

       What they really crave is status and minor celebrity in the 
     Nation's Capitol. The nastiest battles between fundraisers 
     are often over who gets to sit next to the President or 
     Presidential ``wannabes.'' It may seem absurd to the 
     uninitiated, but among fundraisers, top pols are the rock 
     stars of the beltway. In some ways, the real scandal of the 
     White House coffees and overnights that got President Clinton 
     in such pre-Monica trouble is that many sophisticated people 
     were willing to raise or give so much to be little more than 
     Washington groupies.

  Buying access? It is not automatically the motive on the part of 
those who give. They give because they believe that this is good for 
the country. They believe in the cause. In this same article in 
Fortune, there is a specific example of one of these gentlemen--Arnold 
Hiatt. He is highlighted in the article. Mr. Hiatt believes in many 
things in which I do not believe. He is of the opposite political 
persuasion than I, and the article reports that:

       In 1996, Arnold S. Hiatt, 71, was the second-largest 
     individual contributor to the Democratic Party. His $500,000 
     gift was second only to the $600,000 given by Loral's Bernard 
     Schwartz, who is now better known for his Chinese missile 
     connections.

  According to the article, Mr. Hiatt has decided not to give any more 
money to the Democrats. He gave $500,000 a month before the November 
1996 election, specifically to help unseat 23 vulnerable House 
Republicans and return the House to Democratic control. Quoting the 
article:

       It was the failure of his money to produce that result--not 
     just a fit of conscience--that spawned Hiatt's change of 
     heart. Asked why he decided to stop contributing to 
     politicians so soon after giving so much, he admits that it 
     was because his Democrats didn't win.

  He gave the money for what he believes is a public-spirited reason, 
and he stopped giving to the parties because he didn't get the result 
that he wanted. Being a good businessman--he is the former CEO of 
Stride Rite, the company that makes Keds--he discovered he wasn't 
getting a return on his investment--not a return in corruption, not a 
return in access--I am sure he still has access to all the Democrats he 
wants--but a return on his ideological investment. He wanted the 
Democrats to control the House. He gave money to the Democratic 
National Committee. The Democrats didn't control the House so he 
decided to do something else.
  What is he going to do? He is going to give his money directly to 
special interest groups. Now, according to the article, he doesn't 
believe that the groups to which he gives money are special interest 
groups; it is the groups he opposed that are the special interest 
groups.
  The article says:

       Hiatt then having gotten religion, has changed tactics. 
     Rather than relying on the Democrats to press his agenda, he 
     is now giving heavily to organizations like the Washington 
     based public campaign which lobbied for publicly financed 
     elections. Since the business interests that Hiatt so 
     dislikes tend to have more money than the green groups he 
     backs, Hiatt believes taxpayer funded elections would curtail 
     the clout of the bad guys. Both the House and Senate would be 
     controlled by the voters and less by special interests, Hiatt 
     insists. But what he means is that Congress would be 
     controlled by the people he agrees with.

  Once again, Mr. President, the issue is access to the voters. Mr. 
Hiatt thought he could help get his agenda if he gave money to the 
Democrats. It didn't work. So he is seeking access to the voters 
through special interest groups. He has decided that the parties are 
not able to help him advance his agenda, and he is going to fund other 
groups to help advance his agenda. He has every right to do that. I 
applaud his willingness to get engaged and involved in American 
politics. But, if we pass the amendment that is before us, he will be 
curtailed, and the groups to which he contributes will be curtailed in 
their effort to gain access to the voters.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. BENNETT. Yes. Certainly.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, over the last decade, the Senator from 
Kentucky asked numerous witnesses at hearings on campaign finance to 
define what a special interest is. I say to my friend from Utah that I 
have not yet gotten a good answer. So I have concluded--and I ask the 
Senator from Utah if he thinks this is a good definition of a special 
interest--I say to my good friend from Utah that I have concluded that 
a special interest is a group that is against what I am trying to do. 
Does the Senator from Utah think that probably is as good a definition 
of special interest as he has heard?
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Kentucky that 
is what I have heard referred to as a good working definition.
  I might add to that a comment that came out of the Thompson committee 
hearings from my friend from Georgia, Senator Cleland, when he talked 
about tainted money and the definition of tainted money in Georgia. He 
said, ``Taint enough; taint mine.''
  Yes. Every man's special interest is the other man's noble cause.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, in fact, I ask the Senator from Utah, 
was it not envisioned by the framers of our Constitution and the 
founders of this country that America would, in fact, be a seething 
caldron of interest groups, all of which would enjoy the first 
amendment right to petition the Congress; that is, to lobby, to involve 
themselves in political campaigns, and to try to influence, in the best 
sense of the word, the Government? And in today's America where the 
Government takes $1.7 trillion a year out of the economy, I ask my 
friend from Utah, is it not an enduring and important principle that 
the citizens should be able to have some influence on the political 
process and the government that may affect their lives?
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, the Senator from Kentucky is now getting 
into grounds that I love but that some others have sometimes scorned in 
this debate; that is, the basis of the free speech position of the 
Constitution of the United States.
  If I may respond to the Senator from Kentucky by quoting from James 
Madison and the Federalist Papers that support exactly what he said, 
they didn't use the term ``special interest'' back in Madison's 
century. The term of art then was ``faction.''
  This is what James Madison had to say:

       By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether 
     amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are 
     united and actuated by some common impulse of passion or of 
     interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens.

  That sounds like the definition of a special interest group to me.
  Madison goes on to say:

       There are . . . two methods of removing the causes of 
     faction: The one, by destroying the liberty which is 
     essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every 
     citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same 
     interests.
       It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy 
     that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction 
     what air is to fire.

  Certainly we do not want to eliminate air that we cannot breathe in 
the name of stopping a fire that might occur, and we do not want to 
eliminate liberty.
  So Madison makes that point.
  Referring to the second, giving everyone the same opinions, passions, 
and interests, Madison says:

       The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would 
     be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, 
     and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will 
     be formed.

  Absolutely the Founding Fathers created the Constitution for the sole 
purpose of protecting the rights of every one to have his own special 
interest, belong to his own faction, and hold his own opinion. An 
attempt on the part of the Senate of the United States to destroy that 
right is clearly going to be held unconstitutional as it has been again 
and again, as my friend from Kentucky has pointed out so often on the 
floor.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask my friend further is it not the 
case that the underlying amendment which we have been debating seeks to 
make it impossible for groups of citizens to criticize the politician 
by name within

[[Page S10090]]

60 days of the election? Is that the understanding of the Senator from 
Utah?
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, it is my understanding that is the way 
the bill is written. I think James Madison would be turning over in his 
grave, although I think he would take comfort from the fact that the 
institution he helped create--the Supreme Court--would clearly strike 
it down.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I say to my friend, so if you have the situation that 
on September 3rd of a given year a group of citizens could go out 
without registering with the Federal Election Commission, without 
subjecting themselves to that arm of the Federal Government, and 
criticize a politician by name, but then on September 4th, I ask my 
friend from Utah, that would become illegal. Is that correct?
  Mr. BENNETT. It is my understanding that the bill would make that 
illegal and improper.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, will the Senator from Utah yield for a 
question?
  Mr. BENNETT. Yes.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Does the Senator realize that under the Snowe-Jeffords 
amendment, which is included in the version of McCain-Feingold that is 
before the Senate, at this time there is no restriction on individuals 
such as Mr. Hiatt? Are you aware that was the rule by a majority vote 
of this body?
  Mr. BENNETT. I was unaware that Mr. Hiatt would be allowed to spend 
his soft money for a faction. I think it is still true that he would 
not be able to spend his soft money for a party. Is that not the case, 
I ask my friend?
  Mr. FEINGOLD. As I understand it, he would still be able to do it for 
the types of ads the Senator was indicating. The question that I would 
ask is, if you have a concern with regard to the bill at this point 
concerning individuals and groups that are not corporations or unions, 
the whole purpose of the Snowe-Jeffords amendment was to make it clear. 
And in the spirit of compromise that it would not affect what the 
individuals have been able to do in the past in that area, I just 
wanted to make sure the record is clear, because much of the comments 
of the Senator from Utah have to do with individuals who are not 
restricted in the way that the Senator has suggested.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I would suggest that individuals are 
seriously restricted under this bill because they cannot exercise their 
constitutional privilege of giving the money to a political party. Mr. 
Hiatt has made the choice not to give the money to the political party, 
if the article is to be believed solely on the basis that it didn't 
work, not because he was motivated by some other higher spirit. He 
decided to give the money directly to a faction because he thought it 
would be more effective.
  If this bill passes, as I understand it, Mr. Hiatt would be 
prohibited from changing that decision. That is, if he were to decide 
that, ``Gee, I could make things better if I gave it directly to the 
political party, I want to go back to what I was doing before,'' he 
would be prohibited from doing that on the grounds that this is soft 
money, and he is forced by the law to give his money to a special 
interest group rather than to a political party or to a political 
candidate.
  This puts us in the position of paradoxically strengthening the hands 
of special interest groups at the expense of political parties and 
political candidates. This puts us in the position of saying that 
eventually political discourse in this country will go the way that it 
is going in California. I lived in California for long enough to know 
that the California pattern of putting issues directly on the ballot 
with no spending limitation whatsoever eclipses elections for 
candidates. The amount of spending that went on in the last California 
election on the various referenda vastly outstripped and eclipsed the 
amount that any candidate was able to spend. And if we get to the point 
where political candidates are squeezed out of access to the voters by 
groups funded by people like Mr. Hiatt who have unlimited amounts to 
spend, we are going to be in great difficulty.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I have a question about that very point. 
Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah. Many of his remarks were 
devoted to the proposition that Mr. Hiatt couldn't give to various 
groups; independent groups.
  Mr. BENNETT. I didn't say he couldn't give to various groups.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I believe I heard several comments to the effect that 
he would be prevented from doing that. I just want the record clear 
that the only concern the Senator from Utah has at this point in light 
of the effect of the Snowe-Jeffords amendment is the amendment's effect 
on what he can give to parties.
  Mr. BENNETT. Exactly.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I want that clear for the record.
  Mr. BENNETT. Sure.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Because I was not certain in light of your remarks.
  Mr. BENNETT. That is not the only effect. If I can repeat once again, 
this bill, in light of the Snowe-Jeffords amendment, would hasten the 
day when people would abandon candidates and abandon parties and give 
their money directly to special interest groups, as Mr. Hiatt has 
voluntarily decided to do in this situation, and I think that would be 
tremendously deleterious to the cause of worthwhile political discourse 
in this country.
  I pause at this example. Let us suppose that in the State of Utah the 
Sierra Club were to decide that their No. 1 goal was to drain Lake 
Powell. Indeed, they have announced many places that that is soon to be 
their No. 1 goal.

                          ____________________