[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.
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