[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 66 (Monday, May 10, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4951-S4952]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                  THE CLEAN MONEY/CLEAN ELECTIONS ACT

 Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to speak before you today 
about a critical challenge before this Senate--the challenge of 
reforming the way in which elections are conducted in the United 
States; the challenge of ending the ``moneyocracy'' that has turned our 
elections into auctions where public office is sold to the highest 
bidder. I want to implore the Congress to take meaningful steps this 
year to ban soft money, strengthen the Federal Election Commission, 
provide candidates the opportunity to pay for their campaigns with 
clean money, end the growing trend of dangerous sham issue ads, and 
meet the ultimate goal of restoring the rights of average Americans to 
have a stake in their democracy. Today I am proud to join with my 
colleague from Minnesota, Paul Wellstone, to introduce the ``Clean 
Money'' bill which I believe will help all of us entrusted to shape 
public policy to arrive at a point where we can truly say we are 
rebuilding Americans' faith in our democracy.
  For the last 10 years, I have stood before you to push for 
comprehensive campaign reform. We have made nips and tucks at the edges 
of the system, but we have always found excuses to hold us back from 
making the system work. It's long past time that we act--in a 
comprehensive way--to curtail the way in which soft money and the big 
special interest dollars are crowding ordinary citizens out of this 
political system.
  Today the political system is being corrupted because there is too 
much unregulated, misused money circulating in an environment where 
candidates will do anything to get elected and where, too often, the 
special interests set the tone of debate more than the political 
leaders or the American people. Just consider the facts for a moment. 
The rising cost of seeking political office is outrageous. In 1996, 
House and Senate candidates spent more than $765 million, a 76% 
increase since 1990 and a six fold increase since 1976. Since 1976, the 
average cost for a winning Senate race went from $600,000 to $3.3 
million, and in the arms race for campaign dollars in 1996 many of us 
were forced to spend significantly more than that. In constant dollars, 
we have seen an increase of over 100 percent in the money spent for 
Senatorial races from 1980 to 1994. Today Senators often spend more 
time on the phone ``dialing for dollars'' than on the Senate floor. The 
average Senator must raise $12,000 a week for six years to pay for his 
or her re-election campaign.
  But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The use of soft money has 
exploded. In 1988, Democrats and Republicans raised a combined $45 
million in soft money. In 1992 that number doubled to reach $90 million 
and in 1995-96 that number tripled to $262 million. This trend 
continues in this cycle. What's the impact of all that soft money? It 
means that the special interests are being heard. They're the ones with 
the influence. But ordinary citizens can't compete. Fewer than one 
third of one percent of eligible voters donated more than $250 in the 
electoral cycle of 1996. They're on the sidelines in what is becoming a 
coin-operated political system.
  The American people want us to act today to forge a better system. An 
NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 77% of the public believes that 
campaign finance reform is needed ``because there is too much money 
being spent on political campaigns, which leads to excessive influence 
by special interests and wealthy individuals at the expense of average 
people.'' Last spring a New York Times found that an astonishing 91% of 
the public favor a fundamental transformation of this system.
  Cynics say that the American people don't care about campaign 
finance. It's not true. Citizens just don't believe we'll have the 
courage to act--they're fed up with our defense of the status quo. 
They're disturbed by our fear of moving away from this status quo which 
is destroying our democracy. Soft money, political experts tell us, is 
good for incumbents, good for those of us within the system already. 
Well, nothing can be good for any elected official that hurts our 
democracy, that drives citizens out of the process, and which keeps 
politicians glued to the phone raising money when they ought to be 
doing the people's business. Let's put aside the status quo, and let's 
act today to restore our democracy, to make it once more all that the 
founders promised it could be.
  Let us pass the Clean Money Bill to restore faith in our government 
in this age when it has been so badly eroded.
  Let us recognize that the faith in government and in our political 
process which leads Americans to go to town hall meetings, or to attend 
local caucuses, or even to vote--that faith which makes political 
expression worthwhile for ordinary working Americans--is being 
threatened by a political system that appears to reward the special 
interests that can play the game and the politicians who can game the 
system.
  Each time we have debated campaign finance reform in this Senate, too 
many of our colleagues have safeguarded the status quo under the guise 
of protecting the political speech of the Fortune 500. But today we 
must pass campaign finance reform to protect the political voice of the 
250 million ordinary, working Americans without a fortune. It is their 
dwindling faith in our political system that must be restored.
  Twenty five years ago, I sat before the Foreign Relations Committee, 
a young veteran having returned from Vietnam. Behind me sat hundreds of 
veterans committed to ending the war the Vietnam War. Even then we 
questioned whether ordinary Americans, battle scarred veterans, could 
have a voice in a political system where the costs of campaigns, the 
price of elected office seemed prohibitive. Young men who had put their 
life on the front lines for their country were worried that the wall of 
special interests between the people and their government might have 
been too thick even then for our voices to be heard in the corridors of 
power in Washington, D.C.
  But we had a reserve of faith left, some belief in the promise and 
the influence of political expression for all Americans. That sliver of 
faith saved lives. Ordinary citizens stopped a war that had taken 
59,000 American lives.

[[Page S4952]]

  Every time in the history of this republic when we have faced a moral 
challenge, there has been enough faith in our democracy to stir the 
passions of ordinary Americans to act--to write to their Members of 
Congress; to come to Washington and speak with us one on one; to walk 
door to door on behalf of issues and candidates; and to vote on 
election day for people they believe will fight for them in Washington.
  It's the activism of citizens in our democracy that has made the 
American experiment a success. Ordinary citizens--at the most critical 
moments in our history--were filled with a sense of efficacy. They 
believed they had influence in their government.
  Today those same citizens are turning away from our political system. 
They believe the only kind of influence left in American politics is 
the kind you wield with a checkbook. The senior citizen living on a 
social security check knows her influence is inconsequential compared 
to the interest group that can saturate a media market with a million 
dollars in ads that play fast and loose with the facts. The mother 
struggling to find decent health care for her children knows her 
influence is trivial compared to the special interests on K Street that 
can deliver contributions to incumbent politicians struggling to stay 
in office.
  But I would remind you that whenever our country faces a challenge, 
it is not the special interests, but rather the average citizen, who 
holds the responsibility to protect our nation. The next time our 
nation faces a crisis and the people's voice needs to be heard to turn 
the tide of history, will the average American believe enough in the 
process to give words to the feelings beyond the beltway, the currents 
of public opinion that run beneath the surface of our political 
dialogue?
  In times of real challenge for our country in the years to come, will 
the young people speak up once again? Not if we continue to hand over 
control of our political system to the special interests who can infuse 
the system with soft money and with phony television ads that make a 
mockery of the issues.
  The children of the generation that fought to lower the voting age to 
18 are abandoning the voting booth themselves. Polls reveal they 
believe it is more likely that they'll be abducted by aliens than it is 
that their vote will make a real difference. For America's young people 
the MTV Voter Participation Challenge ``Choose or Lose'' has become a 
cynical joke. In their minds, the choice has already been lost--lost to 
the special interests. That is a loss this Senate should take very 
seriously. That is tremendous damage done to our democracy, damage we 
have a responsibility in this Senate to repair. Mr. President, with 
this legislation we are introducing today, we can begin that effort--we 
can repair and revitalize our political process, and we can guarantee 
``clean elections'' funded by ``clean money,'' elections where our 
citizens are the ones who make the difference.

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