[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 117 (Friday, August 1, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Page S10898]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



  (At the request of Mr. Daschle, the following statement was ordered 
to be printed in the Record.)

                    OUR DEMOCRACY, OUR AIRWAVES ACT

 Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues, 
Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold, in introducing S. 1497, the Our 
Democracy, Our Airwaves Act of 2003. This legislation complements the 
reforms accomplished through the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 
by addressing an essential element omitted from the law: the demand 
side of fundraising.
  As I emphasized during the Senate debate two years ago, simply 
dealing with the supply side of political campaigns--the sources of 
campaign contributions--misses the point. If we truly want to reform 
political campaigns in America, we must address the role of television. 
Television was once a tiny part of political campaigns, but it has 
grown exponentially.
  Spending on television in political campaigns has skyrocketed. The $1 
billion spent in 2002 by candidates, parties, and issue groups for 
political spots set a record for any campaign year and doubled the 
amount spent in the 1998 midterm election. It represented a four-fold 
increase in what was spent in 1982, even adjusting for inflation. What 
we are witnessing is ever more intensive efforts by candidates of both 
political parties to raise money for television and radio stations to 
deliver their messages to the American people.
  What is often overlooked in this discussion is that the airwaves 
belong to the American people. Broadcasting stations are trustees of 
the lucrative electromagnetic spectrum. Broadcasters pay nothing for 
their exclusive licenses and are allowed to use the publicly-owned 
airwaves on one condition: that they serve the public interest.
  Since 1971, Federal law has required that in the 45 days preceding a 
primary election and the 60 days prior to a general election, 
candidates are entitled to the lowest unit charge for broadcast media 
rates for the same class and amount of time for the same period. But 
for all practical purposes, this mandate has been meaningless. In order 
to secure their preferred time slots and guarantee that their ads are 
not bumped to a less desirable time, many candidates in competitive 
races end up paying premium prices instead of the lowest unit charge.
  Television stations have taken this law, intended to benefit public 
discourse and to ensure that candidates are not penalized prior to an 
election, and have turned it upside down. Candidates end up paying 
dramatically more than the lowest unit rate. And as the costs to 
campaigns balloon, candidates, incumbents and challengers alike, must 
scramble for funds so they can give them right back to the television 
stations.
  A $200,000 media program buys a few 30-second slivers of time to 
deliver ideas and views on the public airwaves. It takes just a moment 
to broadcast it, and if a viewer-voter gets up to get a sandwich in the 
kitchen when it airs, they miss it. But raising the funds to pay for 
the ill-fated spot still requires asking 4,000 people to make a $50 
campaign contribution. As former Senator Bill Bradley observed several 
years ago: Today's political campaigns are collection agencies for 
broadcasters. You simply transfer money from contributors to television 
stations.
  And as time ticks down to election day and the demand for television 
ads goes up, the stations raise their rates dramatically. Not only are 
rate costs for political ads inflated, stations are not covering the 
campaigns in their news segments in any significant way. Last week, 
findings from two instructive studies were published, which amplify 
these problems and underscore why enacting the Our Democracy, Our 
Airwaves Act is so important.
  A study published by the Alliance for Better Campaigns based on a 
survey of more than 37,000 political ads on 39 local television 
stations in 19 states found that the average price of a candidate ad 
rose by 53 percent from the end of August through the end of October of 
last year. According to findings in another nationwide survey released 
last week by the Lear Center Local News Archive, a collaboration 
between the University of Southern California Annenberg School's Norman 
Lear Center and the Wisconsin NewsLab at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison, viewers looking for campaign news during the height of the 
election season last year were four times more likely, while watching 
their top rated local newscast, to see a political ad rather than a 
political story. At the same time, those stations took in record-
breaking amounts of political advertising revenue.

  The Our Democracy, Our Airwaves Act addresses these concerns in three 
ways. First, it requires that television and radio stations, as part of 
the public interest obligation they incur when they receive a free 
broadcast license, air at least two hours a week of candidate-centered 
or issue-centered programming during the period before elections. 
Second, it enables qualifying federal candidates and national parties 
to earn limited ad time by raising funds in small donations. Up to $750 
million worth of broadcast vouchers would be made available to be used 
to place political advertisements on television and radio stations in 
each two-year election cycle. As conceived in our bill, this system 
will be financed by a spectrum use fee of not more than one percent of 
the gross annual revenues of broadcast license holders. And third, it 
closes loopholes in the ``lowest unit rate'' statute in order to ensure 
that candidates receive non-preemptible time at the same advertising 
rates that stations give to their high-volume, year-round advertisers.
  Until we get to the heart of what is driving up the cost of political 
campaigns, we cannot achieve real campaign finance reform. And at the 
heart of skyrocketing campaign costs is the cost of television. Our 
legislation will help reduce the amount of money in politics by making 
the public airwaves more accessible for political speech. The airwaves 
belong to America and to the taxpayers, and the network stations simply 
must give time back to challengers and incumbents across the United 
States if we're going to succeed in putting a stop to the money chase 
and the millions of dollars being spent on campaigns.
  Only by providing candidates an opportunity to purchase time at 
affordable rates and imposing a modest and reasonable obligation on 
broadcasters to air at least two hours per week of candidate or issue-
centered programming in the weeks before election day can we hope to 
return Our Democracy, Our Airwaves to the American people.

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