[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 21415-21416]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ballenger). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 19, 1999, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Doggett) is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, today the business of this House will focus 
on the question of campaign finance reform. It is indeed an important 
debate because the agenda of this Congress is being set by the special 
interest contributors that increasingly dominate our elections.
  It is the American people who have to foot the bill for those special 
interests, and they foot it in many ways. Without a vote for genuine 
campaign finance reform, and that is the Shays-Meehan bipartisan 
campaign finance bill, which represents the only true reform, if it can 
be approved today without amendments. Without a vote for genuine 
campaign finance reform, pharmaceutical companies, who contribute to 
campaigns will determine whether our seniors ever get access to 
affordable prescription drugs.
  Without a vote for genuine campaign finance reform, insurance 
companies will determine whether folks in managed care ever get their 
rights in a true, meaningful patients' bill of rights to hold the 
insurance companies accountable for their misconduct.
  Without a vote for true and effective campaign finance reform, it 
will be the tobacco companies, who through their contributions 
determine whether we ever do anything to address the increase in 
nicotine addiction among our children.
  Without an effective campaign finance reform embodied in the Shays- 
Meehan bill without amendments, it will be the gun manufacturers 
through their contributions, who will determine whether we ever address 
the question of gun violence in our society.
  And certainly, as we have seen in this abominable, huge trillion-
dollar tax cut proposed by the Republican leadership, unless we get 
effective campaign finance reform, it will be the special interests 
here in Washington, who continue to write loopholes for themselves in 
our Tax Code, designing it as a more and more complex code where the 
ordinary, hard-working American family has to pick up most of the cost 
of Government and the special interests manage to avoid paying their 
fair share.
  The debate in this Congress today on this bill will determine on 
whether or not we really require complete disclosure by the so-called 
independent campaigns when they are really campaigning with 
unregulated, undisclosed money for a handful of special interest 
candidates.
  Secondly, it will eliminate the soft money contributions, the 
unreported, unregulated, unlimited contributions

[[Page 21416]]

that these same special interests, the pharmaceutical companies, the 
insurance companies, the tobacco lobbyists dump into these campaigns to 
tie up the Congress and to control its agenda.
  I believe that what we need to do is not just some slight 
housekeeping amendments, as have been proposed, to thwart the Shays-
Meehan bill, but we need a clean sweep of the system.
  If the Shays-Meehan bipartisan campaign finance reform has any 
defect, the defect is that it does too little, not that it does too 
much. But it does represent an important first step on a bipartisan 
basis to overcome the deficiencies in our current system, which permit 
a stranglehold through special interest contributions on the operations 
of this Congress.
  Doris Haddocks, a woman from New England, who has referred to herself 
as ``Granny D,'' is 89 years old. She began a walk out in California. I 
believe she has about reached the Mississippi River, walking by herself 
across America, as an 89-year-old great grandmother, to speak out and 
draw attention to the need for reforming our campaign finance system 
and getting so much of this special interest money out of our system.
  I would say to my colleagues that she has a better chance, a much 
better chance, of completing her walk step by step across the wide 
expanse of America, ``from sea to shining sea;'' she has a much better 
chance to accomplish that objective than this Congress does to ever 
escape special interest domination unless we reform our campaign 
finance system.
  We need true, genuine reform. Without that reform, this Congress and 
its entire agenda will continue to be set largely on the basis of who 
gave how much to whom.
  I believe that campaign finance reform, certainly the modest steps we 
propose today in the Shays-Meehan bipartisan campaign finance reform, 
will not correct every wrong in this Congress. But without real, 
meaningful, comprehensive reform, the American people will continue to 
be wronged by the special interests that dominate this Congress.
  Let us approve bipartisan reform today.

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