[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 41 (Monday, March 26, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Page S2918]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HAGEL AMENDMENT NO. 146

  Mr. DODD. My colleague from Wisconsin is here, and my good friend 
from Nebraska is in the room. I oppose the Hagel amendment. I guess 
people always concern themselves. Chuck Hagel happens to be a good 
friend of mine, someone I admire immensely as a Member of this body. We 
have worked together on issues on numerous occasions. So my opposition, 
while it will come as no great surprise, is not rooted in anything 
personal at all; it is a substantive disagreement, and my admiration 
for him is in no way diminished, even though we disagree.
  I wish to focus on one aspect. Senator Feingold talked about the soft 
money aspects. My concern is that and also the raising of the hard 
money limitation. I know this gets lost on some people. There are 
distinctions between soft and hard money. To the average citizen, money 
is money, and they get confused between what is hard and what is soft 
money. But the hard money increases are troubling to me in that we 
raise it from $1,000 to $3,000 an individual.
  Let me translate that. That is really raising it from $2,000 to 
$6,000 because you contribute both to the primary and the general 
election.
  Let me get even more realistic. As a practical matter, when we call 
for contributions and there is a married couple, we usually get double 
that amount. So instead of $2,000 or $4,000, we are now talking about 
$12,000 for that couple.
  Those are the practicalities, and everybody who has ever raised money 
knows exactly what I am talking about. All of a sudden, we have gone 
from $4,000 to $12,000, plus we raise the individual total amount for a 
calendar year to $75,000, and then double that, really, because it is 
$150,000.
  Now we are getting into the bizarre world where there are 
individuals--and of course not many in the country can do it; we are 
told it is really not enough because we ought to index it according to 
the consumer price index or some other parameter, much as we do with 
Social Security recipients or people on food stamps who are having a 
hard time feeding their families. We are going to index how much you 
can give, how much more access you can have to the process for the less 
than a fraction of the top 1 percent of the American public who could 
even begin to think about writing a check for $150,000 per calendar 
year to support the candidates of their choice.
  As we look at this, just to put it in perspective, we had .08 percent 
of the population who actually gave $1,000 or more during the same 
period in 1999-2000. There were 1,128 individuals who gave $25,000 
annual aggregate maximums to candidates. So, unbelievable as it is, 
here we are debating the need to raise contribution levels to benefit 
somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200 to maybe 2,000 people in the 
country.
  How many Americans can write a check for $150,000 in hard money? 
Obviously, very few. The idea somehow we are impoverished as candidates 
and we therefore need to raise the limits so people who fall into that 
category can write checks for us--only in this bizarre world could we 
even be talking about these numbers in this context.
  My hope is Members will not be tempted to go this route. We ought to 
be looking for ways to reduce the amount of money in politics. There 
are those who disagree with me on this, but I think we are awash in it. 
It is running the risk of moving our very system of democracy into deep 
trouble. There is no issue more important than this one.
  The other issues we will have come before us are significant, but 
this goes right to the heart of who we are as a people, who can run for 
public office, who can get elected to public office. Our failure to do 
something about it places, as I said the other day, our democracy, in 
my view, in peril.

  So, reluctantly, because he is a good friend of mine, I will oppose 
the amendment of Senator Hagel. I think we can do better. There will be 
alternatives offered this week that I think will be more attractive, 
and therefore I urge the rejection of this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida is recognized for 10 
minutes.

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