[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 118 (Monday, September 13, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H8139-H8143]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     CAMPAIGN INTEGRITY ACT OF 1999

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased this evening to take this 
opportunity to address a very important subject. Tomorrow this House 
will once again consider legislation that would improve our campaign 
finance laws.
  I know that my colleagues will say well, we have been here before. In 
fact, we have been here before many, many times, because this Congress 
and previous Congresses have considered year after year various forms 
of campaign finance legislation and none of those have ever passed both 
Houses, signed by the President and actually become law. So there is a 
growing frustration and cynicism among the American public.
  I believe that this is a cause still worth fighting for, that there 
is a consensus still yet to be maintained and to be gained and I hope 
that we can do that this Congress; whether it is this vote tomorrow or 
whether it is later on.
  The bill that I am proposing is the Campaign Integrity Act of 1999, 
which we have worked hard to draft in a fair and bipartisan manner and 
will address the greatest abuses in our campaign system. I am delighted 
to have two of my colleagues joining me in this discussion tonight, the 
gentleman from Montana (Mr. Hill) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Brady). I want to hear what their views are on this and why this is 
important for us to address this subject of campaign finance reform, 
and particularly this bill that we have all cosponsored, the Campaign 
Integrity Act of 1999.
  So I want to express my appreciation to the gentleman from Montana 
(Mr. Hill), who has done such a tremendous job in showing leadership on 
an issue that I think is vital to our political process. I know he has 
been active as a State party chairman in Montana. He understands the 
political process. He understands the role of parties and candidates, 
and I am very grateful for his support, and I want to yield to him so 
he can talk about why this is needed.
  Mr. HILL of Montana. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. I yield to the gentleman from Montana.
  Mr. HILL of Montana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas 
(Mr. Hutchinson) for yielding, and let me compliment the gentleman from 
Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson) for his untiring effort at trying to help 
reform the campaign finance laws of this country.
  We started this process as freshmen in the last Congress, holding 
hearings, drafting legislation, bringing together Democrats and 
Republicans in a bipartisan bill, and it was his leadership that helped 
us accomplish that.
  It seems to me that we need to accomplish three things when we are 
going to reform the campaign finance laws. At least from my judgment, 
there are some things that are broken in the current system and we need 
to accomplish some changes.
  One of those is that we need to have more competitive campaigns. Over 
90 percent of the Members of this House who stand for reelection are 
reelected election after election after election. Even in the great 
revolutionary election of the 104th Congress in 1994, nearly 90 percent 
of the Members who stood for reelection were reelected.
  One of the reasons for that is that it is difficult for challengers 
to raise the resources necessary to have a viable election. In fact, I 
find it kind of interesting that there are some who helped sponsor 
legislation similar to this in the last Congress, when they came as 
freshmen Members who this was their first time in Congress and they had 
maybe run a challenger's race who are now incumbents, some might say 
are entrenched incumbents, who do not support campaign finance reform 
that would allow us to have competitive elections, but I appreciate the 
gentleman's untiring effort.
  The other thing we need to do is deal with the issue of soft money. 
As the gentleman knows, soft money are large corporate contributions, 
labor union contributions. It has been the tradition of this country 
for almost all of this century that large organizations, corporations 
and labor unions, should not be able to contribute unlimited sums of 
money to the political process because the view is that they would 
overwhelm the process. This bill that we are advocating would put 
restrictions on soft money to the political parties.
  The other thing that we need to accomplish when we reform finance 
laws is to maintain our commitment to the First Amendment. Some people 
would advocate changes in the campaign finance laws that would have the 
effect of stifling the competitive thought that is out there; the 
outside groups and others who want to express themselves about what we 
do here. So there are some who in closing the soft money loophole want 
to close the loophole of the First Amendment, the right for people to 
express their views, and we cannot allow that to happen, too.
  So what this bill does is it says to the political parties, the 
political parties cannot accept soft money but allows independent 
groups to be able to continue to express their views about what we do 
and how we go about doing it and in the process not chilling free 
speech.
  So those three things, this bill does. It protects our First 
Amendment freedoms, reinforces them. It eliminates the potential 
problems that soft money and the corrupting influence that that might 
have on our political parties but it also endeavors to make campaigns 
competitive again, which is so important to this country.
  So I just want to compliment the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. 
Hutchinson) for his hard work. This is a good bill. Our colleagues are 
going to have an opportunity to vote on this this week. I think this is 
the right alternative to reform our system, and I know that the 
gentleman has been a strong advocate for that, and I thank him for 
yielding to me this evening.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Well, I thank the gentleman for his remarks. He is 
exactly on point, that we do not want to harm the First Amendment and 
the freedoms we all enjoy in the political process in order to just do 
something and make a change in the law.
  So I believe that we can have a balance, that we can actually stop 
the flow of soft money into our national political parties; we can stop 
the greatest abuse; we can still have a significant and critical role 
that the parties play but still not infringe upon those groups that are 
out there expressing themselves in election.
  Imagine how counterproductive it would be if we burdened these 
outside groups and said, you cannot participate in the political or we 
are going to put so many regulations on you that your participation 
will be really rendered meaningless.
  So I do not think that is the direction we want to go. This bill is 
very balanced. It addresses the abuse in our system, but like the 
gentleman said, it makes sure that we protect our First Amendment 
freedoms.
  So I am delighted also to have my good friend, the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Brady), here, who has been so outspoken in favor of reform 
and particularly supportive of the Campaign Integrity Act. So I would 
just like to yield to him for his comments on this bill.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, first I thank the gentleman from 
Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson) for yielding, but also for his leadership on 
this issue.
  As freshmen together 2 years ago, the gentleman played the leadership 
role in working together, Republicans and Democrats, over a very 
thoughtful 5-month period, meeting with experts on constitutional law, 
citizens who felt the way we finance campaigns ought to be changed, 
people who thought the status quo was fine, listening to all opinions 
and approaches before, I

[[Page H8140]]

think, developing a very reasonable, balanced, thoughtful approach that 
is real reform. It is not, as some of these measures are, hidden as a 
campaign advantage bill, which gives an edge to one party or the other.
  This bill is designed to create more of a citizen Congress, to push 
us back toward a Congress as a representative of the people that we 
have the privilege of representing, and that is why I am so glad to be 
a part of this effort.
  I think we are drifting away from a citizen Congress here in this 
Nation.

                              {time}  1945

  The average cost of a congressional campaign, a competitive, open 
seat is just a little under $1 million, and it is doubling about every 
4 years.
  Now, there are a lot of good people in my communities who would do a 
great job in the U.S. House of Representatives or in the U.S. Senate, 
but they do not have $1 million and they do not know where they would 
get a hold of it; and as a result, they are not going to raise their 
hand to run for Congress. My concern is not that the very wealthy 
cannot make the decisions, many of them can. But for a country founded 
on a representative democracy where people from all walks of life, and 
whether they have a big wad or they have made some choices in life that 
they have pursued other goals, and so that they do not have that, but 
they would be great here in Congress are not going to be able to run.
  So what this bill does is really start to push us back toward a 
citizen Congress, start to close that national loophole on soft money, 
preserves free speech for individuals, groups, even for States to 
remembering soft money the way they have very responsibly. It increases 
and indexes, which is long overdue, the individual contributions which 
again, to move people into Washington and back home where we want that 
support to come, and increases disclosure so that people who are 
watching our campaigns, who are trying to decide which person to vote 
for can quickly and electronically determine who our backers are and 
that that represents part of their decision-making in this process.
  And, as importantly, which the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Hill) and 
the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson) have stressed, we 
encourage people to get involved in the process, groups who want to do 
score cards, individuals who feel so strongly about an issue they want 
to take out ads to get involved, and we preserve and encourage that 
free speech, but we start that very important first step back toward a 
citizen Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, I think all of us believe that the first step in any 
campaign finance reform is first to enforce the laws that we have 
already on the books, because it does not make such sense to add new 
ones if we are not going to enforce them either. Secondly, we have to 
preserve free speech. But after that, the real choice tomorrow when 
Congress meets on campaign finance reform is this: do we go with the 
Shays-Meehan bill which has gotten a lot of attention, and those two 
sponsors have worked very hard on behalf of that bill. I take nothing 
at all away from them. But my concern is that Shays-Meehan will pass 
the House again, not much of a margin, but it will pass again and it 
will die exactly where it died last year, in the Senate. They have 
debated it fully, they have had a great discussion on it; it is not 
going to pass the Senate. Even if it were, it could never pass 
constitutional muster. It would be struck down and never be the law of 
the land. I guess my concern is that each year we raise campaign 
finance reform and each year it fails.
  I think we turn off another group of voters who are hoping for more 
of a citizen Congress, who want these changes. People say today, well, 
campaign finance reform does not rate very high in all of these polls 
they take by the day and the hour anymore around here. My thought is 
that I think people still want campaign finance reform. They want to 
change the way we do business in Washington. But I think they have 
given up hope that we will do it. I think they have given up belief 
that we will do something that makes life a little tougher on us, and 
it will; that gives more of a fair chance to challenges, and it will; 
that forces us out of Washington and back in our districts; more of a 
citizen Congress, and it will.

  None of those are easy tasks, but it is the right thing to do, and 
rather than pass a bill forward that I sincerely know will die, and it 
will die again next year and it will die again the year after, I think 
the Hutchinson bill is a substantial, significant reform measure that 
can pass the Senate, that we know, we know can pass constitutional 
muster and can become the will of the land to start to restore that 
faith in what Washington is doing.
  Mr. Speaker, I think it is a good measure, and I would say to the 
gentleman that I am here tonight mainly to tell him that with his 
integrity that was shown throughout the impeachment proceedings, the 
integrity shown throughout his service here in Congress and before in 
Arkansas, the gentleman has shown he is not afraid to take on the tough 
issues. I know that this is a balanced bill, it does not give an edge 
to our party, and I love being a Republican, but I am glad this does 
not give us an edge necessarily.
  I do not think we ought to take one for the Democrats either. It 
ought to be balanced. The gentleman has worked hard to do that. I think 
this is a great, solid, significant step for people who still have hope 
that Washington will change, bring a little more moderation and balance 
into how we finance our campaigns. I appreciate the gentleman's 
leadership.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks 
and his leadership on this important issue. In addition to my friend 
from Montana and my friend from Texas, we have had the gentleman from 
Kansas (Mr. Moran) who has been extraordinarily instrumental this year 
in moving this legislation forward, as well as the gentleman from 
Missouri (Mr. Hulshof) who is former president of the class, who has 
really pushed this legislation and has been a real leader on this 
effort.
  The gentleman mentioned how we got here and where we started with 
this as a freshman class, when I think back about the process and the 
history as to how we got here. When we look back, whenever we first 
came here as freshmen, we were still warm from the campaign trail; we 
understood that there needed to be some changes, we understood what 
people were telling us to get up here and make a difference and work 
with our colleagues from the other side of the aisle. So I will never 
forget our first term whenever we had six Democrats from the freshman 
class and six Republicans from the freshman class that were assigned 
together to work out and hammer out together in a bipartisan fashion 
this legislation. So we met together. The gentleman from Maine (Mr. 
Allen) led the Democrat side, and I chaired the Republican side; and we 
met over a period of five months.
  This is not something that happened quickly. As the gentleman 
mentioned, we heard from constitutional experts; we heard from the 
political party leaders, we heard from the ACLU and the National Right 
to Life. We heard from candidates. And through that process, we reached 
some conclusions as to what we needed to do to get this passed.
  First of all, we said, if we are going to pass legislation, we have 
to avoid the extremes. That is what has killed reform in the past, is 
that everybody moved to their perfect bill, to their perfect idea which 
was usually sort of an extreme position over here and said, this is 
what is going to work, and we find out there was not anyone else who 
supported that position, or there was not a majority that did. So if we 
are going to pass something, we have to avoid the extremes in 
legislation. That is what we propose to do.
  The second thing we have to do is we said we have to be realistic. We 
have to figure out what can pass this body, what can pass the Senate, 
and what can be signed into law. And as my friend, the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Brady) said, we have to follow the Constitution. We cannot 
just fight against the Supreme Court; we cannot just move in that 
direction and say we are going to ignore the First Amendment, we are 
going to hope that they change their position. We have to follow the 
Constitution, and that was the guideline that we had.

  Finally, we said we have to seek common ground. If we are going to 
work, Democrats and Republicans together,

[[Page H8141]]

 we seek the common ground, and those are the principles that we 
followed. The result was that we gave up some things that we wanted, 
but we came up with a bill that we genuinely believed in our hearts 
could pass this body, could pass the Supreme Court, could be signed 
into law and really change our society in terms of our campaigns.
  So we did that, and we introduced the bill the last Congress, and we 
fought an enormous battle against our leadership many times. Our 
leadership was not excited about this. We said this is important for 
the people and so we have to stay engaged in this.
  Finally, we moved this forward with other reformers and we had a huge 
debate on the floor of this House. We advocated for our bill, the 
freshman bill of the last Congress. There were our good friends, the 
gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan), who said well, ours is a better bill, and 
they worked very hard on their bill. It was what we considered not 
seeking the common ground, but going for that ideal, some of the 
extreme positions, and they said, give us a shot at this comprehensive 
reform. It will pass the Senate. We said, there is not the votes over 
in the Senate. They said give us a shot, give us a shot. So we sent 
that bill over to the Senate, and as was predicted, it could not break 
filibuster; it could not get the votes necessary and it died.
  Once again, that increases the cynicism of the American people. It 
says, Congress cannot deal with this issue. So it tears our hearts out. 
We come back to this Congress, and I do not know about my friends, but 
I really see a change in America. I see that they are more interested 
in reform now than ever before. I would just like to yield to my 
colleagues to comment about what they are hearing in their town 
meetings, what the American people are telling them. That is the sense 
I get, is that they are more excited, but there is a real malaise in 
this Congress about it.
  Could my friend from Montana comment?
  Mr. HILL of Montana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  One of the things that I believe is that oftentimes people do not say 
that they want campaign finance reform as high on their list of reforms 
more because I think they believe that Congress is incapable of 
reforming campaigns as opposed to what they really want. There is no 
doubt in the minds of the people that when I talk to that, they believe 
that there is something pretty wrong with the system the way it is now.
  The gentleman was commenting earlier, the gentleman from Texas's 
comments that we have to follow the Constitution. I do not feel 
following the Constitution is an obligation; I think it is a privilege 
to follow the Constitution. There are some who have the arrogance to 
say that the Constitution gets in the way of how we would reform 
campaign finance laws. Some of my colleagues have proposed an amendment 
that would allow us to put restrictions on people's freedom of speech 
in order to change how we finance political campaigns.
  The fact of the matter is, the tradition, the history of this country 
is that individuals and individual groups have a right to speak out 
about the political leadership in this country before we ever had the 
Constitution. The fact is that that is not only part of the 
Constitution, but a part of the tradition.
  I just want to comment on one thing. Because what people are saying 
to me as much as anything, they are concerned about the abuse of soft 
money because they read about it in the paper; but they also know that 
today, elections are not competitive. They know that incumbents get 
reelected and the power of incumbency and the ability of the resources 
to gain reelection has created a tremendous advantage for incumbents. 
Many of the other reform measures, particularly the Shays-Meehan 
measure, my greatest objection to that bill is the fact that it does 
not do anything to help with competitive elections.
  In fact, I met last week with one of the public interest groups that 
have been strong advocates for campaign finance reform, and I raised 
this objection to them. I said, but the problem with Shays-Meehan is 
that it does not do anything to get us back to competitive elections, 
and their comment to me was, so what? That is the way the system is 
now.
  Well, if we are going to reform this system, one of the things that 
we should try to accomplish is to restore the idea that people can 
compete for elections. Now, there are two thoughts about that. One is 
public financing of elections. I do not happen to support that. The 
other is to allow people to get the resources from the party that they 
are affiliated with. That is what this bill does. This bill says there 
is no limit to how much your party can support you to help you get the 
resources to your campaign, but it has to be hard money; it has to be 
appropriate money.

  Now, what the Shays-Meehan bill does and what the greatest flaw in it 
is it creates an environment where the parties are going to be 
competing with candidates for money. So what we are going to have is, 
parties will raise money and incumbents will raise money, but 
challengers are not going to be able to raise money. We know that is 
how the system will work.
  Our bill fixes that by saying there will be a separate limit. Parties 
can raise a limit that they can use to support candidates, and 
candidates have a separate limit; and there is no money going back and 
forth between those. So it eliminates that competition. And by lifting 
the limits of support that parties can give to challenger races, it 
means we can have a competitive race in every district in America. That 
is what the goal of our bill ought to be.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, if I understand the point the gentleman 
is making, if you have an incumbent, a United States Congressman who 
has $1 million in his war chest, and he is very, very difficult to 
compete with financially and you have a challenger, he can raise money 
individually, but that the party can put more money into his campaign 
to make that race more competitive. Is that what you see in this bill?
  Mr. HILL of Montana. Mr. Speaker, that is exactly right. As the 
gentleman knows, the Shays-Meehan bill perpetuates a situation where 
the parties cannot do that. So what happens around here, and you know 
that, is incumbents build these huge war chests and that discourages a 
challenger from ever entering the race because they know that they 
could never compete. One of the interesting things, if we study 
campaigns, is that challengers actually win with less money than 
incumbents do, but there is a certain minimum threshold that they have 
to get across. What most incumbents do is they try to keep their 
challenger from crossing that threshold.
  Under this bill, under the bipartisan Campaign Integrity Act, every, 
every challenger out there would be assured of the opportunity to cross 
that threshold because their party could help them get over that 
threshold and we could have competitive elections again.

                              {time}  2000

  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to just go through the 
basic revisions of the bill and then yield to the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Brady) for some additional comments.
  But so that my colleagues will understand, the Bipartisan Campaign 
Integrity Act does the most important thing, it addresses the enormous 
abuse in our system, which is to ban soft money to our national 
parties. This is where our Federal candidates, our Federal officers are 
going out and raising enormous sums of money usually in the chunks of 
$100,000, $200,000, sometimes $500,000 for the parties, and then it 
flows into the different campaigns through ads.
  This has been the abuse in the 1996 election. It continues to be an 
enormous problem for our political system. So we ban that soft money to 
the national parties.
  Then these people raise the objection that, well, how about if the 
State parties raise the soft money? We do not prohibit that. Well, the 
State parties try to do get out the vote efforts, some basic things 
that build the party structure, that help our candidates locally, but 
it has not been a problem.
  But to make sure that it does not become a problem, we say that there 
cannot be any transfer of soft money from the State party that is using 
it for a get out the vote effort might have some excess cash and will 
transfer it from the national party. Well, they cannot do that. The 
national party

[[Page H8142]]

cannot take any soft money from the State parties or from anyone. It is 
prohibited. So we address that.
  The second thing that we do is that we assist the parties. If we take 
this soft money away, we have to help the parties. So we help them to 
raise the hard money, we call it the honest money, the regulated money. 
So it increases the individual contributor limits to all candidates, 
PACs going to the parties from $25,000 per election to $25,000 per 
year. The contribution limits to the parties is raised.
  As the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Hill) said, we remove the party 
candidate coordination limit. So we strengthen the parties, but it is 
all hard dollars. It is all the honest money.
  Then we help the candidates out there. They have to raise the money. 
We finally help the individual by indexing the contribution limits for 
individuals to inflation. So as inflation goes up, it will not just 
erode that contribution limit, but we strengthen the role of individual 
by indexing it to inflation.
  Then we increase disclosure. We are simply trying to provide the 
American public more information as to what the candidates are spending 
so that they are required to report more regularly, monthly, and more 
timely, and more information.
  Then to the third party or the issue advocacy groups, they are 
required to disclose information as to who they are and how much money 
they are spending.
  So we are providing information to individual voters out there to 
strengthen them in that way. We are reducing the influence of special 
interests by banning soft money to the national parties. Then we are 
strengthening the parties by allowing them to be able to raise the hard 
money, the honest dollars, according to the law much easier.
  So I think that this is a good bill, is balanced, and this is the 
main provisions that we try to address.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady).
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas 
(Mr. Hutchinson) for pointing out the key parts of this bill, because 
it is very reasonable. As he says, it puts a premium on hard money, 
which sounds like a hard phrase, but the principal of hard money is so 
sound for America.
  What it says is that we think a contribution ought to come from a 
person, from their pocketbook, from what they have earned, what their 
family has decided to contribute to another person, to a party, to a 
cause that they believe strongly in. I want everything to be hard 
money. I want it to come from a person directly to a party, principle, 
a cause that they believe in.
  I watch our Republican women's clubs in parties. Each year, they will 
host a fundraising, barbecue, or catfish fry, or silent auction that 
one will go to. They will work for 2, 3 months ahead of time. They will 
get a local business person to donate the food. They decorate the 
tables. There are silent auction items, quilts that they have made, 
local restaurants donate a dinner. They have got American prints. Flags 
have been flown over the Capitols, just good solid American products.
  People are out there, and they get their neighbors to come to bid on 
these. Together, they might, they might net maybe $2,000, maybe $800 
that they will net, they will make off one of these events after 2 or 3 
months of hard work to give to their local candidates in their State 
and the people that they support.

  To me, I put so much more value on that $800 or that $2,000 that has 
come in hard money from real people than a check written that same day 
for $200,000 from some company, some industry, some group that goes in 
soft money to one of the parties or some other direction. Because I 
really think for the future of democracy, for the citizen Congress, 
that hard money is so valuable long-term, getting people involved, 
keeping us close to the people that we represent.
  Let me destroy two myths for my colleagues if people out there have 
bought into this at all that we hear quite a bit. One is that the 
Republicans and Congress do not support campaign finance reform. 
Everyone knows historically that the party that is in majority up here 
has tended to resist some of the reform because, frankly, they used the 
current system, they fought hard, played by the rules to get to that 
majority. So human nature says they are a bit resistant.
  Since we had campaign finance reform under Richard Nixon, the 
Democrats held the House for more than two decades and resisted 
campaign finance reform for all that period, or most that period 
themselves. So, historically, whoever is in the majority tends to 
resist a bit, and those that are in the minority use it as campaign 
tools. So that is what has happened again. Do not believe this. We have 
found so many good solid Republicans who want to change the way 
business is done.
  It is really to Speaker Hastert's credit that he has scheduled a very 
reasonable timetable this year. Rather than rush into it, rather than 
just let one bill be anointed, Speaker Hastert set a September 
timetable which was very fair. He said first things first, let us 
tackle our budget. Let us be the first Congress since 1974 to get our 
budget done in time. Let us focus on rebuilding our defense, on quality 
education, on local control, on tax relief. Let us make first things go 
first and schedule a good time for campaign finance reform.
  Let us go through the committee process so that all the good ideas, 
and there are a lot of them, on campaign finance reform can be heard, 
which was done. Then the four major bills are set for debate tomorrow. 
I think that is a very fair timetable. We are already in the election 
process. If we made a change today in haste, we would only be giving 
the advantage to one person or another in these campaigns.
  Rather than to rush through this, let us do it right. It is so 
important that we do it right, that we have a full and open debate. We 
are getting that. That is to Speaker Hastert's credit. I am very proud 
that he has given us this opportunity.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, I will make a few closing remarks here 
to my colleagues. Tomorrow's debate I believe is critically important 
for the Nation. I would like to think as a result of this debate we are 
going to pass out of this House a legislative proposal that will go to 
the Senate, that will garner the support necessary there, and be passed 
by the Senate, get over the filibuster, and be sent to the President.
  But I am a realest here in this Congress, and I understand the battle 
we are up against. I know the temptation is, well, we passed Shays-
Meehan out of the last Congress. Let us come back in and just cast the 
same vote. We had about 150 votes for our bill here, but the Shays-
Meehan got the majority, and it went to the Senate, and it failed over 
there.
  I would just make a comment here that I think is instructive that we 
can learn from it. I actually used this quote in the last debate in the 
last Congress. This was from RollCall, a publication here on Capitol 
Hill. It is dated August 6, 1998, a year ago, when we were engaged in 
this debate. It says, ``One leadership source said that the Republican 
leaders favored the Shays-Meehan bill going to the Senate because the 
Senate already voted on it, and it has no chance of passing. While the 
freshman bill would pose a slightly greater threat in the Senate 
because, when you offer something new, and streamline, it becomes a new 
fight.''
  I just yearn for a new fight. I think that we ought to learn from our 
past mistakes. We gave the best shot for Shays-Meehan. It has been 
voted on in the Senate once. It has been voted twice. It has never 
broken the magic number in order to get it passed. So we do not know 
what would happen over there. But we do know what would happen if we 
repeat the same actions of the last Congress.
  So I would just urge my colleagues to support reasonable, realistic, 
common-sense reform that addresses the greatest abuse in our campaign 
system. I believe the Campaign Integrity Act, the old freshman bill, is 
much wiser now since we are upper classmen. We have been here, but we 
are not frustrated. We are not cynical. We believe that we can do this 
for the American people.
  If, perhaps, that we send this over to the Senate, we repeat the same 
action of the last Congress, we send Shays-Meehan over there once 
again, and they do not break filibuster, then that is three times. 
Perhaps then we can

[[Page H8143]]

take the ideas of this bill, we can work together in a common way, 
Democrats and Republicans, and we can move forward a bill and actually 
get it passed this Congress. It is still my goal. It is still my 
desire. It is my yearning, and I believe it is the yearning of the 
American public.

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