[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 36 (Monday, March 19, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2530-S2531]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to speak about S. 27, the so-
called McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform proposal, of which I am 
honored to be a cosponsor.
  In taking up this proposal today, the Senate is embarking on a 
historic journey. Over the next couple of weeks, we will have an 
opportunity to do something that is really quite rare around here; that 
is, to debate, consider, and ultimately vote on the essential nature of 
our political system. That vote I believe will have a significant 
effect on the vitality and, indeed, on the viability long term of our 
Democrat democracy.
  No less than our forefathers who drafted the Constitution, we will be 
asked in the days ahead to take a stand on how we believe our 
Government should work and to whom its leaders should be held 
accountable.
  These are the questions we will be considering and debating in this 
proposal:
  Do we want a government in which power comes from the people, and 
those who are privileged to exercise that power are ultimately 
accountable to the people?
  Will we uphold the ideal of our democracy so that the passion and 
force with which people articulate their views and the votes that they 
cast on election day are the means through which they influence our 
Government's direction, or do we want a system where the size of a 
person's wallet or the depth of an interest group's bank account count 
more than a person's views or votes?

  I do not believe that anyone in this body would embrace the latter 
vision of our Republic. But that is precisely, I believe, where our 
Government is headed if we do not enact the bill we are debating today. 
For too many years, we have allowed money and the never ending chase 
for it to undermine our political system, to breed cynicism among our 
citizens, and to compromise the essential principle of our democracy. 
For, after all, America is supposed to be a country where every citizen 
has an equal say in the Government's decisions, and every citizen has 
an equal ability, in the words of the Constitution, to petition the 
Government for a redress of grievances.
  As that great observer of America's Democratic genius Alexis de 
Tocqueville put it when he analyzed our Nation's political system 
during the 19th century:

       The people reign in the American political world as the 
     Deity does in the universe. They are the cause and the aim of 
     all things; everything comes from them, and everything is 
     absorbed in them.

  How far we have come. I question whether any current observer of 
American politics could repeat de Tocqueville's statement with a 
straight face.
  Look at what has become of our system. Virtually every day in this 
city an event is held where the price of admission far exceeds what the 
overwhelming majority of Americans can ever dream of giving to a 
candidate or a political party. For $1-, $5-, $10-, $50- or $100,000, 
wealthy individuals or interest groups can buy the time of candidates 
and elected officials, gaining access and thereby influence that is far 
beyond the grasp of those who have only their voice and their votes to 
offer.
  Our national political parties publicly tout the access and influence 
big donor donations can buy. One even advertises on its web site that a 
$100,000 donation will bring meetings and contacts with Congressional 
leadership throughout the year, and tells us it is ``designed 
specifically for the Washington-based corporate or PAC representative'' 
a donor group whose entry price is $15,000.
  For that amount, the party's web site tells us, donors get into a 
club whose agenda ``is simple--bringing the best of our party's 
supporters together with our congressional leadership for a continuing, 
collegial dialogue on current policy issues.''
  Needless to say, the political parties selling these tickets to 
access and influence have found buyers aplenty. In 1997, I spent the 
better part of a year participating in the Governmental Affairs 
Committee's investigation into campaign finance abuses during the 1996 
campaign. Our attention was riveted by marginal hustlers such as Johnny 
Chung who compared the White House to a subway, saying, ``You have to 
put in coins to open the gates,'' and Roger Tamraz, who told us that he 
did not even bother to register to vote because he knew that his 
donations would get him so much more.
  Appalling as these stories were, they, in the end, obscured a far 
greater scandal; that is, the far more prevalent collection of big soft 
dollar donations comes not from opportunistic hangers on but from 
mainstream corporations, unions and individuals.
  Staggering amounts have gone to both political parties. During the 
election cycle that just ended, the parties collectively raised $1.2 
billion, almost double the amount raised in 1998, and 37 percent more 
than in the last Presidential cycle.

  The bulk of those increases came in the form of soft money--the 
unlimited large dollar donations from individuals and interest groups. 
Republicans raised $244.4 million in soft money while Democrats raised 
$243 million. For Republicans, it was a 73-percent increase over the 
last cycle, and for Democrats

[[Page S2531]]

it nearly doubled what they raised during the last cycle.
  When compared to election cycles further back, the numbers become all 
the more jolting. The 1996 soft money record that was blown away by 
this cycle's fundraising was itself 242 percent higher than the 1992 
soft money fundraising in the case of Democrats and in the case of 
Republicans 178 percent higher. The roughly $262 million in party soft 
money raised in 1992, itself, dwarfed the approximately $19 million 
raised in the 1980 cycle, and the $21.6 million raised in the 1984 
cycle was also dwarfed by those numbers.
  The bottom line is that since soft money, and the loophole that 
allowed it into our political system, entered the system some 20 years 
ago, it has grown exponentially in each cycle, from barely $20 million 
in total in 1980 to nearly $500 million--a half a billion dollars--last 
year. And it is difficult to see any end in sight to this exponential 
growth of soft money except S. 27, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance 
reform proposal.
  Is it any wonder, with these numbers, that the American people--they 
who are supposed to be the true source of our Government's authority--
have been so turned off by politics that many of them no longer trust 
our Government or even bother to vote?
  This must end or our noble journey in self-government will veer 
further and further from its principled course. When the price of entry 
to our democracy's discussions starts to approach the average 
American's annual salary, something is terribly wrong. When we have a 
two-tiered system of access and influence--one for the average 
volunteer and one for the big contributor--something is terribly wrong. 
And when the big contributor's ticket is for a front-row seat, while 
the voter's is for standing room only, something is most definitely 
terribly wrong.
  Our opponents will continue, I understand, to see the situation 
differently. Money, they tell us, is just speech in another form. And 
the outlandish increases we have seen in political giving, they say, 
are actually signs of the vibrancy of our marketplace of ideas. It is a 
market place all right, but what is for sale is most certainly not 
ideas, and what is threatened most certainly is not free speech.
  Free speech is a principle we all hold dear. But free speech is about 
the inalienable right every American has to express his or her views 
without Government interference. It is about the vision the framers of 
our Constitution enshrined in that great document, a vision that 
ensures both we in Congress and those outside--every citizen--will 
never be forced to compromise our American birth right to offer 
opinions, even and particularly when those are unpopular or 
discomforting to those in power.
  That simply is not at issue in this debate, not at issue as a result 
of the McCain-Feingold proposal. Absolutely nothing in this bill will 
do anything to diminish or threaten any American's right to express his 
or her views about candidates running for office or about any problem 
or any issue in American life. Indeed, if more money in the system were 
a sign of more Americans speaking and more Americans being better 
informed, then we would have significantly more vibrant elections, 
dramatically more informative campaigns, increasingly larger voter 
turnout, and better and better public debates than we had 20 years ago 
before soft money exploded onto the scene.
  I challenge anyone in this body or outside to say that is the case. 
It most certainly is not. To the contrary, this campaign finance reform 
proposal would actually enhance our polity's free speech rights. Under 
the current system, the voice of monied interests drowns out the voice 
of average Americans, often preventing them from being truly heard in 
our public policy debates. In that sense, it is the current system, 
with its addiction to soft money and all its maleffects, that limits 
free speech, and it is this bill, the McCain-Feingold bill, that will 
restore Americans' true ability to exercise their rights of expression 
without limit and with full effect.
  In short, Mr. President, what would be threatened by this bill is not 
speech but something entirely different, the ever increasing and 
disproportionate power that those with money have in our political 
system. That is threatening a principle that I would guess all of us 
hold just as dearly--perhaps more dearly--as the principle of free 
speech, and that is the principle of democracy, that literally sacred 
ideal that shaped our Republic and still does, which promises that each 
person has one vote and that each and every one of us, to paraphrase 
the words from the Bible, from the heads of the tribes to the priests 
of the temple to the hewers of wood and the bearers of water, each of 
us has an equal right and an equal ability to influence the workings of 
our government.
  As it stands now, it is that sacred principle--I use that adjective 
intentionally--that is under attack. It is that sacred principle that 
will remain under attack until we do something to protect it. That 
something, I submit, is campaign finance reform.
  Unless we act to reform our campaign finance system, people with 
money will continue, as they give it, to have a disproportionate 
influence in our system. The American people will continue to lose 
faith in our government's institutions and their independence, and the 
genius of our Republic, that it is our citizenship, not our status, 
that gives each of us equal power to play a role in our country's 
government, will be lost.
  Before yielding the floor, I will say a couple of words about some of 
the alternative plans that have been proposed. As do Senators McCain 
and Feingold, I welcome any sincere effort at reform. None of us would 
ever presume to say that our way is the only way. What we will 
absolutely reject is any suggestion that something is reformed just 
because a person who proposes it says it is reformed.
  The problem we are dealing with, as I have said this evening, is that 
there is too much money in the system coming from sources such as 
corporations and unions that under our laws are not supposed to be 
contributing to these national elections at all and coming from 
individuals who, since the post-Watergate reforms, were supposed to 
give a limited amount, no more than $2,000 to any one campaign. Anyone 
with a proposal that does not address this critical problem, which is 
the problem of soft money and the loophole that has invited it, is not 
proposing reform. That is the essence of what this is about. It is that 
simple, ultimately.

  For example, I have heard some say that true campaign finance reform 
requires so-called paycheck protection. I oppose that principle on its 
merits. It is a bad idea under any circumstances. There are others who 
support McCain-Feingold who disagree with me and support paycheck 
protection who think it is a good idea. All of us should be able to 
agree that whatever we think of paycheck protection on its own, it is 
not campaign finance reform. It won't get a single dollar that should 
not be in our political system out of the system. It won't do a single 
thing to stop the most malignant aspect of our campaign finance system 
today, which is unlimited soft money.
  The bottom line is this: For too long we have watched as our Nation's 
greatest treasure, its commitment to democracy, has been pillaged by 
the ever escalating chase for money. It is time for this Senate to say 
that enough is enough, to remove the disproportionate power of some 
over our political system, and to restore the political influence and 
confidence to where our Nation's founding principles say it should be--
with the people, with the voters.
  Over the next couple of weeks, important weeks in the history of this 
Senate and Nation, that is what we can do. I pray that we will.
  I thank the Chair. I thank my colleagues.

                          ____________________