[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 12, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H235]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 23, 2002, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, not surprisingly in this political city the 
debate over campaign finance reform has taken the shape of people 
talking about which party would be advantaged, but there is a more 
profound issue, more profound even than the kind of subtle corruption 
that campaign money takes. It goes to the nature of democracy.
  We have two systems in this country. We have an economic system, 
capitalism, which is based on inequality. It is inequality which drives 
that system which has been so productive of wealth and which is so 
broadly supported. If people are not unequally rewarded for their 
labor, if people are not unequally rewarded for the wisdom of their 
investment decisions, if people are not unequally rewarded because they 
respond to consumer demand, capitalism does not work. So inequality, 
some of us want to keep it from getting excessive, but it is at the 
heart of that system.
  We also have a political system, and the heart of that political 
system is equality. That was the genius of the American Constitution, 
not fully realized at the time, a goal that we have been striving 
towards with some success ever since. What we have in our public policy 
is a tension between an economic system built on inequality where 
people are unequally rewarded and unequally powerful and a political 
system in which people are supposed to be equal, in which people's 
preferences are supposed to count each equally one for one.
  What we have in America today is a corruption of that system in the 
broadest sense. As money has become more and more influential in 
politics, the inequality of the economic system has damaged the ability 
of the political system to function in a way that carries out equality. 
We cannot allow the inequality that is a necessary element of our 
capitalism to swamp the equality that is supposed to be the element of 
our political system.
  That is why the Shays-Meehan bill is so important. It reduces the 
role of money. Soft money is a way that the unequal part of our system 
gains undue influence over the place where it is supposed to be equal, 
and that, Mr. Speaker, is the profound philosophical reason why 
campaign finance reform ought to reduce the role of money, ought to 
reduce the extent to which inequality undermines formal equality.
  Interestingly, some of those opposed to the bill have implicitly 
acknowledged this. I have heard people say, on the Republican side 
mostly, we cannot go ahead with that kind of a forum; if we get rid of 
soft money, the next thing we know, labor and environmentalists and all 
those people will dominate the election. We have, in fact, had people 
almost explicitly say that the danger in campaign finance reform is 
that the people will have too much to say.
  Well, that is the way it is supposed to be in the political part of 
the system. The financial, the economic system has inequality, but in 
the political system people are supposed to have equality. That is also 
the answer to those who say that somehow this violates freedom of 
expression in the first amendment.
  I should note, Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat interested to see Members 
that I have served with for a very long time who for the first time in 
their careers have become champions of free speech. That is, there are 
Members who have supported virtually every restriction on free speech, 
including censorship on the Internet and other rules that the Supreme 
Court has thrown out, and they have voted for them cheerfully, but when 
it comes to the power of money to swamp the equal part of our political 
system, suddenly they become advocates of free speech. Indeed, it seems 
that many of them are for free speech as long as it is not free. They 
are for free speech when it costs money, when they can buy it.
  In fact, if we look at the purpose of our Constitution and our 
political system, if we look at the role that equality is supposed to 
play, we understand, because we do not just interpret the Constitution 
in the abstract, we interpret it in its context, our political system 
is meant to be one in which people are equal, and what we are doing 
with campaign finance reform is restricting the ability of money to 
swamp that equal sector.
  It does not impinge on free speech as we have ever understood it. 
Everyone in this country will be as free as they ever want to say what 
they want to say, to speak out. We do say that they cannot use money, 
they cannot use the inequality that has accrued to them through the 
capital system to undermine the electoral system.
  So, for that reason, precisely because the very heart of the 
democratic political system is at stake, I hope that we will pass the 
campaign finance reform bill in an appropriate form, in a form that can 
go right to the President's desk, because it is essential that we 
vindicate the equality principle against those who are the 
beneficiaries of inequality who are seeking to erode it.

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