[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 18 (Wednesday, February 27, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Page S1233]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, we are about to finalize and pass on to 
the President a bill on campaign finance reform. Anyone who has 
followed the proceedings during the years knows that I have been 
opposed to this since I first came into the Chamber back in 1993. I 
remember participating in an all-night filibuster against it, which 
Senator Mitchell forced us to go through. My hour, as I recall, was 
something between 1 and 2 in the morning because I didn't have enough 
seniority to have an hour that was more compatible with my sleeping 
patterns.
  I have done everything to see to it that this bill does not become 
law, for one very fundamental reason: I believe it is clearly 
unconstitutional. It violates both the spirit and the letter of the 
work of James Madison. I have quoted Madison on the floor, but I have 
been unsuccessful. It is clear to me now that the law is going to pass. 
It is, in all probability, going to be signed.
  I want to take a moment or two to outline, in the spirit of some 
prophecy, what I think is going to happen as a result of the bill. I 
have tried to be as objective as possible and set aside my deeply felt 
conviction that this bill violates what Madison was telling us in the 
tenth Federalist about appropriate government. The first thing that is 
very clear is that this bill will weaken--I won't go so far as to say 
``destroy,'' as some others have said--both political parties. Neither 
party will be able to raise the money to pay the lights, run the 
overhead, keep the operation going and, at the same time, participate 
significantly in the campaigns of its members. By banning so-called 
soft money, we guarantee that each party will have to raise hard money 
to keep its overhead going and, therefore, be unable to put as much 
money and as much muscle into individual campaigns. This means that 
special interest groups which can raise this money have raised this 
money and will continue to raise this money and will play an increasing 
role in political campaigns. That is, the vacuum created by pushing 
down the role of parties will be filled by special interest group 
money. We are already seeing this. I have seen it in my home State of 
Utah. The net effect of it will be that candidates will increasingly 
lose control of their own campaigns.

  We saw an example in Utah, where candidate X was attacked by a 
special interest group over a particular issue. Candidate Y, who 
normally would benefit from that kind of attack, in fact, was appalled 
at the attack and did everything she could to stop it because she felt, 
correctly, that it was reflecting on her. The voter could not 
differentiate between the source, whether it was from a special 
interest group or the political campaign. All the voter knew was that 
these ads were unnecessarily nasty, unnecessarily antagonistic, 
attacking candidate X. They took it out on candidate Y. They blamed her 
for the attacks, and she was powerless to do anything about it because 
special interest groups have the right to run their own campaigns.
  As a result of the passing of campaign finance reform, she would be 
even more powerless to defend herself against that kind of circumstance 
because she could not call on her national party for assistance. The 
party will be prevented from providing the kind of help that is 
currently available. So, as I say, the net effect will be to increase 
the power of special interest groups in campaigns and to decrease the 
abilities of a candidate to manage his or her own campaign.
  The next thing I see coming out of this is, of course, a plethora of 
lawsuits, because the bill is very badly written, it is badly drafted, 
and it creates a whole series of vague references to the relationship 
between the national party and the State party, Federal money, State 
money, what can be done by a State party to try to advance its 
candidates; and what happens if the State party spends money in a way 
that somehow is deemed to advance a national candidate, or Federal 
candidate? Let's have a lawsuit. Let's be in court. Let's have all 
kinds of disputes.
  Once again, by limiting the amount of money that parties can raise, 
it will drain off party money to handle legal bills. So, once again, 
the party will be less capable of defending its own candidates in the 
political arena.
  Now, at the moment, my judgment is that there are more special 
interest groups involved in issue advocacy campaigns who support 
Democrats than there are who support Republicans. I have seen one 
study--I have no idea how accurate it is--that indicates that in the 
last Presidential campaign there was about $300 million, total, spent 
on both sides. If you take the money allocated to the parties, the 
Republican Party outspent the Democratic Party. But when you add in the 
issue advocacy money spent by special interest groups, most of it was 
on the Democratic side of the ledger, so the total, according to this 
one study, suggested that you got to rough parity between the two sides 
in the election. Now, I think the initial effect will be--if it is true 
there are more special interest groups supporting Democrats--you will 
see a financial benefit for the Democrats through that special interest 
group, if indeed the money spent does benefit them. Once again, we come 
back to the example I described in Utah, where the money spent by the 
special interest group damaged the candidate it was supposed to help, 
because the candidate had no control, no input, and had lost control of 
her campaign.
  Let's assume, for the moment, that all of the money spent by the 
special interest groups on behalf of Democratic candidates is well 
spent and produces a benefit for the Democratic candidates. There will 
be an attempt--and I suspect overtime it will be successful--for 
Republicans to create special interest groups to balance that.
  We will, once again, get to the point of rough parity because money 
and politics abhor a vacuum. We will have just as much money spent on 
politics as we have now. The difference is that it will be channeled 
either through existing special interest groups, most of which, as I 
say, benefit the Democrats, or newly created special interest groups to 
counter that, created to benefit the Republicans. Once again, the total 
impact will be that candidates and parties will lose control over their 
elections.
  I hope the time does not come, but I think it is possible, where 
candidates and parties become almost insignificant in political 
campaigns; where political campaigns are fought between major special 
interest groups and candidates simply sign up with which interest group 
they are going to endorse and then sit back, watch the money get spent, 
and watch the results come in, with our historic political parties 
significantly weakened, a candidate's ability to manage his own 
campaign significantly degraded, and ultimately politics in this 
country the worst as a result of the passage of this legislation.
  I lay that down, Madam President, as my view of what is going to 
happen. The bill will be passed. If the bill is signed, then we can all 
wait and see. I hope I am wrong. I hope the reformers are right and we 
will enter a new era of magnificent good feeling about politics.
  My expectation is that, as has been the case with most reform efforts 
until now, we will see things get worse rather than better.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.

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