[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 29 (Wednesday, February 24, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H860-H861]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                STOP ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Jolly) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JOLLY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about an important 
congressional reform initiative that I have introduced in this body.
  I have had the opportunity to study Congress from virtually every 
angle. I graduated from college as a young intern who drove up here 
having never been north of Tennessee. As my predecessor said and I 
shared: I never thought I would meet a Member of Congress, much less 
have the great opportunity and honor to be one.
  Through virtually every staff role over the past 15 or 20 years, I 
have had a chance to study this body. There are a few experiences now, 
as a sitting Member of Congress, that I simply cannot accept.
  One of them--the most pressing one--is the amount of time that 
Members of Congress are expected or, in some cases, directed to spend 
on raising money.
  We all know it. Every Member of Congress understands that you arrive 
with great expectations only to learn the obligation to spend time 
raising money. There is a quiet anger among many Members about that.

[[Page H861]]

  It is not comfortable to talk about, frankly. This is one of the more 
uncomfortable speeches I will ever give in the well of this House. We 
must talk about it. Because when does this become the expectation?
  This is an orientation slide for freshmen Members of Congress that 
was produced by one of the two major parties of this Congress a few 
years back, suggesting that, as a Member of Congress, your first 
responsibility is 4 hours a day not in your office, but across the 
street in a call suite asking people for money, another 1 to 2 hours a 
day networking and raising money, and only 2 hours a day doing your 
job.
  Members of Congress might have a quiet anger, but the American people 
will have a very loud anger when they understand that we are not 
accomplishing things here because we are spending too much time raising 
money. Let's turn that anger into resolve and change this body and 
change Washington forever.
  Former Members of Congress are happy to talk about this, retiring 
Members who write confessions saying they spent 4,200 hours raising 
money, former majority leaders of the other body now writing a book 
lamenting how much time they spent raising money, a colleague of ours 
leaving this House calling fundraising the main business of Congress.
  But what do they all have in common? They are all retiring or 
retired. Why don't we do something about it, as sitting Members of 
Congress? Why don't we fix this now when we have the opportunity 
instead of lamenting it when we are gone?
  This is why I have introduced what I call the Stop Act. It is very 
simple. It is 3 or 4 pages. Every Member of this body can read it 
before they vote on it. It simply prohibits direct solicitation of a 
campaign contribution by a sitting Member of Congress.
  State legislators in the State of Florida and across the country are 
often prohibited from directly soliciting. There are 30 States where 
judges are elected, and they are prohibited from directly soliciting 
contributions.
  I want to say thank you to my colleagues who have cosponsored this. 
In just over 3 weeks, we have six cosponsors: Mr. Nolan of Minnesota, 
Mr. Jones of North Carolina, Messrs. Duffy and Ribble of Wisconsin, and 
Messrs. Mica and Nugent from my State of Florida.
  The message is very simple on this. It says to Congress to get back 
to work. Let's do our job, the job we were elected to do. We will never 
solve border security and immigration reform. We will never balance the 
budget. We will never address national security and foreign policy. We 
will never address tax reform if we have a part-time Congress in a 
full-time world.
  In any other profession, if you spend 20 to 30 hours a week doing a 
job other than you are hired to do, you would be fired. But, in 
Washington, we accept this as the political culture.
  Many will say the issue is dark money, the issue is transparency. 
Fine. We can have a campaign finance debate. But that is not what this 
is about. This is about congressional reform.
  I will close with this, Mr. Speaker. Each one of us made a promise to 
roughly 700,000 people in the community from which we come and 
represent. We made a promise to do our job, not to ask them for money. 
We took an oath.
  We each took an oath, swearing to uphold and defend the Constitution 
of the United States. The last line of our oath says: ``I will well and 
faithfully discharge the duties of this office on which I am about to 
enter.''
  Friends, we are not well and faithfully discharging the duties of 
this body when we are spending 20 hours a week asking people for money 
and not doing our job.
  We are not well and faithfully discharging the duties of this office 
when fundraising is the main business, when we have Members missing 
votes to raise money, when the most important question sometimes among 
colleagues is not what legislation you are working on, but how much 
money you have raised. We are not well and faithfully executing the 
duties of this House when we are not doing our job.
  I stand here not to judge my colleagues. I stand here to try to 
change the system. Let's restore credibility to this House. Let's honor 
the greatness of this body with greatness of integrity, greatness of 
commitment, greatness of resolve.
  Let's recognize the great calling of this body and the even greater 
calling of this Nation. Let's stand together today and change 
Washington forever.
  Friends, colleagues, I urge you, while you are here and before 
retiring and lamenting the amount of time you spent raising money, 
cosponsor the Stop Act. Join me in this effort to change Washington.

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