[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 166 (Monday, November 17, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14966-S14967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. FEINGOLD (for himself and Mr. McCain):
  S. 1874. A bill to require Senate candidates to file designations, 
statements, and reports in electronic form; to the Committee on Rules 
and Administration.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, today I will introduce with the Senator 
from Arizona, Mr. McCain, a bill to bring Senate campaigns into the 
21st century by requiring that Senate candidates file their campaign 
finance disclosure reports electronically and that those reports be 
promptly made available to the public. This step is long overdue, and I 
hope the Senate will act quickly on this legislation.
  A recent report by the Campaign Finance Institute highlighted the 
anomaly in the election laws that makes it nearly impossible for the 
public to get access to Senate campaign finance reports while most 
other reports are available on the Internet within 24 hours of their 
filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The Campaign Finance 
Institute report opened with a rhetorical question: ``What makes the 
Senate so special that it exempts itself from a key requirement of 
campaign finance disclosure that applies to everyone else, including 
candidates for the House of Representatives and Political Action 
Committees?''
  The answer, of course, is nothing. The United States Senate is 
special in many ways. I am proud to serve here. But there is no 
justification for not making our campaign finance information as 
readily accessible to the public as the information filed by House 
candidates or others.
  My bill amends the section of the election laws dealing with 
electronic filing to require reports filed with the Secretary of the 
Senate to be filed electronically and forwarded to the FEC within 24 
hours. The FEC is required to make available on the Internet within 24 
hours any filing it receives electronically. So if this bill is 
enacted, electronic versions of Senate reports should be available to 
the public within 48 hours of their filing. That will be a vast 
improvement over the current situation, which, according to CFI, 
requires journalists and interested members of the public to review 
computer images of paper-filed copies of reports, and involves a 
completely wasteful expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars to 
re-enter information into databases that almost every campaign has 
available in electronic format.
  The current filing system also means that the detailed coding that 
the FEC does, which allows for more sophisticated searches and 
analysis, is completed over a week later for Senate reports than for 
House reports. This means that the final disclosure reports covering 
the first 2 weeks of October are not susceptible to detailed scrutiny 
before the election.
  It is time for the Senate to relinquish its Luddite attitude toward 
campaign finance disclosure. I urge the enactment of this simple bill 
that will make our reports subject to the same prompt, public scrutiny 
as those filed by PACs and candidates for the other body.
  I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the 
Record.

[[Page S14967]]

  There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                S. 1874

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Senate Campaign Disclosure 
     Parity Act''.

     SEC. 2. SENATE CANDIDATES REQUIRED TO FILE ELECTION REPORTS 
                   IN ELECTRONIC FORM.

       (a) In General.--Section 304(a)(11)(D) of the Federal 
     Election Campaign Act of 1971 (2 U.S.C. 434(a)(11)(D)) is 
     amended to read as follows:
       ``(D) As used in this paragraph, the terms `designation', 
     `statement', or `report' mean a designation, statement or 
     report, respectively, which--
       ``(i) is required by this Act to be filed with the 
     Commission, or
       ``(ii) is required under section 302(g) to be filed with 
     the Secretary of the Senate and forwarded by the Secretary to 
     the Commission.''
       (b) Conforming Amendments.--
       (1) Section 302(g)(2) of such Act (2 U.S.C. 432(g)(2)) is 
     amended by inserting ``or 1 working day in the case of a 
     designation, statement, or report filed electronically'' 
     after ``2 working days''.
       (2) Section 304(a)(11)(B) of such Act (2 U.S.C. 
     434(a)(11)(B)) is amended by inserting ``or filed with the 
     Secretary of the Senate under section 302(g)(1) and forwarded 
     to the Commission'' after ``Act''.
       (c) Effective Date.--The amendments made by this section 
     shall apply to any designation, statement, or report required 
     to be filed after the date of enactment of this Act.

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I am proud to join Senator Russ Feingold 
as a co-sponsor of legislation that will require Senate candidates to 
file campaign finance reports in electronic form. This bill will 
finally remove the exemption the Senate has given itself from an 
important requirement of campaign finance disclosure laws that apply to 
everyone else, including candidates for the U.S. House of 
Representatives and Political Action Committees, PACs.
  Political committees active in federal elections must submit their 
quarterly financial reports for disclosure by the Federal Election 
Commission, FEC. Anyone interested can nearly instantaneously download 
the reports from the FEC website and conduct computer searches to learn 
about the contributions and expenditures of individual candidates for 
the House, non-Senate national party committees and PACs. The current 
problem is that they cannot do the same for Senate candidates and 
parties because of the Senate's insistence on paper rather than 
electronic filing. The FEC must do more processing of Senate paper 
reports than of House electronic ones. This involves printing or 
copying the Senate reports, up to 10,000 pages a day at times, hand-
coding transactions that cannot be automatically processed, and 
keypunching the data into the electronic database. House electronic 
reports do not need the same treatment. The end result is that in 
contrast to the House, information from the Senate paper reports are 
often available well after the election has occurred.
  Due to this problem, voters are not well-informed about the campaign 
finance information of their Senators and Senate candidates. For voters 
who want to consider the nature of the campaign finance support 
received by a Senate candidate and its relationship to Senate 
legislative votes as a factor in deciding for whom they will cast a 
vote, they clearly cannot.
  To address this problem, our legislation requires Senate candidates 
to file their campaign finance reports electronically with the 
Secretary of the Senate. Within 24 hours of receipt of those reports, 
the Secretary is required to forward those reports to the FEC. The FEC, 
in turn is required to make those reports available on the Internet 
within 24 hours as they do other reports. Therefore, electronic 
versions of Senate reports will be available to the public within 48 
hours of their filing.
  Electronic reports are not only transmitted instantly but are more 
accurate than paper submissions because software can easily correct 
mistakes. On the other hand, hand entering of data is always prone to 
error. Furthermore, the data in electronic reports can be rapidly 
searched via the Internet for answers to specific questions. Voters 
will no longer have to go through the time consuming process of reading 
pages and pages filed by Senate candidates or Senate party committees 
to figure out the major donors and their employers, and the major 
recipients of campaign spending. Instead, they can download a filed 
report from the FEC website onto their personal computers and quickly 
locate the information they need. This creates effective public 
disclosure.
  The Senate's current failure to provide its constituents with 
electronically disclosed, timely information is unconscionable. Senate 
filings should follow the same criteria as other campaign finance 
reports. There must not be a separate standard for the Senate. 
Ironically, while they do not currently file electronically, Senators 
and Senate candidates already use electronic software in compiling 
their paper reports. If Senators and Senate candidates can use 
technology to run their offices and websites, why can't they use it to 
better inform their own constituents about how their campaigns are 
funded? Their constituents have earned a right to that information. The 
public interest will be better served and voters' faith in their 
elected leaders will be restored.

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