[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 18]
[Senate]
[Pages 25746-25775]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN ACT OF 1999--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, let me go ahead then. This will be a little 
disjointed, but I think I can accommodate all Senators.
  I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 300, S. 1692, the partial-birth 
abortion bill, and a vote occurring immediately following 80 minutes of 
debate, with 30 minutes under the control of Senator Levin, and 10 
minutes each for the following Senators: Feingold, Boxer, McCain, 
Schumer, and Santorum, all occurring without any intervening action or 
debate. I also ask unanimous consent that Senator Hatch have 5 minutes 
after the vote to speak on behalf of his colleague, Senator Leahy.
  I further ask consent that it be in order for me to ask for the yeas 
and nays.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. There are two parts to the majority leader's request. 
The first is that he move to proceed to Calendar No. 300, S. 1692, 
which is the partial-birth abortion bill. The second is the unanimous-
consent agreement involving the request by a number of Senators to be 
heard. I have no objection to Senators being heard. I question why we 
need to move to proceed to Calendar No. 300, when we simply could do so 
by a unanimous-consent request, thereby not taking off the table and 
off of consideration the campaign finance reform bill. I will, 
therefore, ask unanimous consent that we simply allow the partial-birth 
abortion bill to be taken up, thereby precluding the need to vote on 
the motion to proceed and thereby protecting the current position of 
the campaign finance reform bill.
  I personally would love to have the full debate that we were promised 
on campaign finance reform. The amendments are pending. There ought to 
be a vote on the Reid amendment. I would like to have a vote on my 
amendment. Even though we did not get cloture, we ought to have that 
debate.
  There are other Senators who have yet to be heard on this issue. We 
have not had the 5 days committed. We have not had the opportunity to 
vote on these issues.
  I ask unanimous consent that we simply take up partial-birth abortion 
so we can return to this issue once that issue has been resolved.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I object to that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. LOTT. By doing this, the campaign finance issue is put back on 
the calendar. We can have the debate that is needed on the motion to 
proceed to the partial-birth abortion bill, and Senators can be heard 
to express their concerns about the campaign finance issue, as well as 
the time Senator Hatch asked for after the vote. So I ask unanimous 
consent that it be in order for me to ask for the yeas and nays.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Object.
  Mr. KERRY. Object.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Object.
  Mr. McCAIN. Reserving the right to object.
  Mr. KERRY. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard to the request. The leader 
has the floor.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, is the motion to proceed pending?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader's motion is pending.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, is the motion debatable?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion to proceed is debatable.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader has the floor.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader is recognized.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I am very troubled by the majority 
leader's decision. There is no reason why we have to move to proceed to 
the partial-birth abortion bill. It is a bill that I will probably end 
up supporting. So this decision about whether or not we support or 
oppose partial-birth abortion, we will have a good debate about that 
and amendments will be offered. This is a question of whether or not we 
are going to keep our word, whether or not we are going to have the 
opportunity to finish the debate on campaign finance reform, whether or 
not we are going to have the opportunity to offer amendments. That is 
what this is about.
  So nobody ought to be misled. Do we finish our business? Do we follow 
through with commitments? Do we have a good debate or not? The majority 
leader said no. No, we won't have a debate on campaign finance reform. 
No, we won't keep the commitments made with regard to how long this 
bill will be debated. That is wrong. A number of us--unanimously on 
this side and some on that side--want to make sure the Record clearly 
indicates our anger, our disappointment, and our determination to come 
back to this issue.
  Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DASCHLE. I am happy to yield.
  Mrs. BOXER. I say to my Democratic leader, does he not believe this 
is part of a pattern of taking issues that are important and rejecting 
them out of hand and not giving a chance for these issues to be fully 
heard? Does he believe this is part of it?
  Mr. DASCHLE. The Senator from California raises a good point. The 
attitude appears to be: I am going to take my ball and go home anytime 
it doesn't go my way. I will just take my ball and go home. Well, I 
think that is wrong. We ought not to go home. This is too important an 
issue. We ought to be here, have the debate and the votes, and get this 
job done right. The American people expect better than this. They are 
not getting it with this decision; they are not getting it with the 
motion to proceed; they are not getting it with our denial to have a 
good vote and debate about some of these pending amendments.
  Mr. LEVIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. DASCHLE. Yes.
  Mr. LEVIN. I want to clarify what the Democratic leader has done. He 
has offered unanimous consent to go to partial-birth abortion because 
if we go to it that way, after it is disposed of and resolved, we would 
automatically then come back to campaign finance reform and resolve 
that issue; is that correct?
  Mr. DASCHLE. The Senator from Michigan is exactly right. If we would 
proceed to the partial-birth abortion bill by unanimous consent, the 
pending issue would continue to be campaign finance reform. By moving 
to proceed to the partial-birth abortion bill, we then relegate the 
campaign finance reform bill back to the calendar. That is what we want 
to avoid. That is unnecessary.
  I think the American people are trying to sort this out and figure 
why we are doing this. The reason we are doing

[[Page 25747]]

this is not because they want to take up partial-birth abortion alone; 
it is because they don't want to continue the debate on campaign 
finance reform. That is what this action actually telegraphs to the 
American people.
  Mr. LEVIN. If I may further ask the Democratic leader, even though 
many of us oppose the bill relative to partial-birth abortion, we have 
nonetheless agreed that we would go to it by unanimous consent because, 
after it was then disposed of, however it was disposed of, we could 
then come back to this critical issue of campaign finance reform; is 
that correct?
  Mr. DASCHLE. The Senator from Michigan is exactly right. We are not 
passing judgment on the issue of partial-birth abortion; there will be 
people on either side of it. But what we are united about, regardless 
of how one feels on partial-birth abortion--at least on this side of 
the aisle--is that every single Democrat believes we ought to stay on 
this bill. Every single Democrat wants to assure that we don't violate 
the understanding that the Senate had about how long we would be on 
this legislation, and whether or not we would be able to proceed with 
amendments and have a good debate. So you are absolutely right. There 
is no question, by going to unanimous consent, we preclude the need to 
move off of this bill and put the bill back on the calendar. We don't 
want that to happen.
  Mr. LEVIN. My final question is this: Is that not the reason why this 
upcoming vote--when it comes--on the motion to proceed then becomes the 
defining vote as to whether or not we want to take up campaign finance 
reform? Because if we move to proceed to partial-birth abortion, if 
that motion is adopted, then campaign finance reform goes back on the 
calendar. So this upcoming vote--whenever it occurs--on the question of 
moving to proceed to partial-birth abortion then becomes the defining 
vote ahead of us on the question of campaign finance reform.
  Mr. DASCHLE. The Senator from Michigan is exactly right. The vote on 
the motion to proceed will be a vote to take away our opportunity to 
continue to debate campaign finance reform. If you vote for the motion 
to proceed, you are voting against campaign reform; you are voting 
against maintaining our rights to stay on that bill and resolve it this 
afternoon, tomorrow, or the next day.
  Mr. LEVIN. Or after partial-birth abortion.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Right. This is more than procedure; this vote is whether 
or not you want to stay on campaign finance reform and finish it. This 
is whether or not you are for campaign finance reform. That is what 
this vote is all about.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, first of all, I may be in some 
disagreement with the distinguished Democratic leader about an upcoming 
motion to proceed because some feel very strongly about the issue of 
partial-birth abortion and whether that vote might be interpreted as a 
vote in favor or against it.
  Let me assure the distinguished Democratic leader--and I will 
elaborate on this in a second--we have not been treated fairly in this 
process by either side. So, therefore, Senator Feingold and I feel no 
obligation except our obligation to campaign finance reform, and that 
is to do whatever is necessary, at whatever time, to make sure this 
issue is voted on, as were the terms of the original unanimous consent 
agreement that was agreed to by the majority leader.
  I think it is fair to say that neither I nor the Senator from 
Wisconsin began this debate with the expectation that we were close to 
achieving 60 votes for campaign finance reform, although we have to be 
encouraged by the fact that three new Republican votes were cast in 
favor of campaign finance reform in this last vote. We did, however, 
believe that we had a chance to build a supermajority in support of 
some reform. We hoped that by dropping those provisions from the bill 
that drew the loudest opposition last year, and by allowing Senators to 
improve the legislation through an open amendment process, we might 
begin to approach consensus.
  It appears we were mistaken. The opponents of comprehensive reform 
oppose even the most elemental reform. Those opponents abide on both 
sides of the aisle--if not in equal numbers, then in sufficient 
numbers--to render any attempt to clean up the system a very difficult 
challenge, indeed.
  I suspect the opponents were concerned that were we ever allowed a 
truly clean vote on a soft money ban, we might come close to 60 votes. 
I believe that explains the extraordinary efforts from both Democrats 
and Republicans to prevent that clean vote from occurring.
  I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle that I have argued 
with my Republican colleagues in the last two Congresses that reform 
supporters deserve a decent chance, through an open amendment process, 
to break a filibuster. I can hardly complain to them now that the other 
side has apparently decided it could not risk such a process, fearing 
that we might achieve what Democrats have long argued we should have--
reform.
  The Senator from New Jersey, Senator Torricelli, claims that the 
right wing of my party forced me to change our legislation. That will 
be news to them. I have noticed no reduction in the intensity of their 
opposition to a soft money ban now that it no longer is accompanied by 
restrictions on issue advocacy. All I have noticed is that the Senator 
from New Jersey has now become as passionately opposed to reform as are 
the critics of reform in my party.
  Although I cannot criticize Republican Senators for reneging on a 
commitment to an open amendment process, I must observe that we were 
promised 5 full days of debate. That promise has not been honored. 
Moreover, the leadership decided to deny us even the opportunity to 
appeal to our colleagues before this vote, a rare and unusual occasion 
around here.
  We were not allowed to continue our debate between the vote last 
night and the votes we have just taken. Whether this was done to treat 
us unfairly or to respond to the tactics of the minority matters little 
to me. In the end, we are denied a fair chance to pass our reforms, as 
we have been denied in the past. And although I am not all that 
surprised by the tactics employed by both sides, I am, of course, a 
little discouraged.
  However, Mr. President, neither Senator Feingold nor I are so 
discouraged that we intend to abandon our efforts to test Senate 
support for a ban on single source contributions that total in the 
hundreds of thousands, even million of dollars. We will persevere. And 
we believe we are no longer bound by any commitment to refrain from 
revisiting this issue in the remainder of this session of Congress. I 
know there is not a lot of time left before adjournment, but if the 
opportunity exists to force an up or down vote on taking the hundred-
thousand-dollar check out of politics, we will do so, Mr. President.
  Some Senators may wonder why would we persist in these efforts when 
it is clear that the enemies of reform are numerous, resourceful, and 
bipartisan. Are we just tilting at windmills? I don't believe so Mr. 
President. I believe that some day, the American people are going to 
become so incensed by the amount of money that is now washing around 
our political system that they will hold Senators accountable for their 
votes on this issue. Then, I suspect, we will achieve some consensus on 
reform. Until then, it is our intention to do all we can to make sure 
the public has a clear record of support or opposition to reform upon 
which to judge us. Yesterday's cynical vote for a ban on soft money 
indicates to me just how fearful of a straight, up or down vote the 
opponents are.
  Mr. President, I want to respond again to the criticism that my 
stated belief that our campaign finance system is corrupting is untrue 
and demeaning to Senators. Let me read a few lines from the 1996 
Republican Party platform.

       Congress had been an institution steeped in corruption and 
     contemptuous of reform.

[[Page 25748]]

       Scandals in government are not limited to possible criminal 
     violations. The public trust is violated when taxpayers' 
     money is treated as a slush fund for special interest groups 
     who oppose urgently needed reforms.
       It is time to restore honor and integrity to government.

  I repeat again. I am quoting from the Republican Party platform of 
1996.
  Mr. President, I'm not saying anything more than what is, after all, 
the official position of the Republican Party. Or is it my Republican 
colleagues' view that only Democratic-controlled congresses are 
``Steeped in corruption and contemptuous of reform''?
  As I said last week, Mr. President, something doesn't have to be 
illegal to be corrupting. Webster's defines corruption as an 
``impairment of our integrity.'' I am not accusing any Member of 
violating Federal bribery Statutes. But we are all tainted by a system 
that the public believes--rightly--results in greater representation to 
monied interests than to average citizens. No, Mr. President, there is 
no law to prevent the exploitation of a soft money loophole to get 
around Federal campaign contribution limits. There is no law, but there 
ought to be. That's why we're here.
  Does anyone really believe that our current system has not impaired 
Congress' integrity or the President's for that matter? When special 
interests give huge amounts of cash to us, and then receive tax breaks 
and appropriations at twice or five times or ten times the value of 
their soft money donations. What is it these interests expect for their 
generosity? Good government? No, they expect a financial return to 
their stockholders, and they get it, often at the expense of average 
Americans. Would they keep giving us millions of dollars if they 
weren't getting that return? Of course not.
  Cannot we all agree to this very simple, very obvious truth: that 
campaign contributions from a single source that run to the hundreds of 
thousands or millions of dollars are not healthy to a democracy? Is 
that not evident to every single one of us? A child could see it, Mr. 
President.
  The Senator from Kentucky said the other day that there is no 
evidence, no polling data, no indication at all that the people's 
estrangement from Congress would be repaired by campaign finance 
reform. He is correct, there is no such evidence.
  But I have a hunch, Mr. President, that should the public see that we 
no longer lavish attention on major donors, should they see that their 
concerns are afforded just as much attention as the concerns of special 
interests, should they see some evidence that their elected 
representatives place a higher value on the national interest than we 
do on our own re-elections, should they no longer see tax bills, 
appropriations bills, deregulation bills that are front-loaded with 
breaks for the people who write hundred-thousand-dollar checks to us 
while tax relief or urgent assistance or real competition, or anything 
that could immediately benefit the average American is delayed until 
later years, if ever, should they see that, Mr. President, I have a 
hunch, just a hunch, that the people we serve might begin to think a 
little better of us.
  Mr. President, no matter what parliamentary tactics are used to 
prevent reform, no matter how fierce the opposition, no matter how 
personal, no matter how cynical this debate remains, the Senator from 
Wisconsin and I will persevere. We will not give up. We will not give 
up in the Senate. And we will take our case to the people, and 
eventually, eventually, we will prevail.
  I ask my colleagues, why must we appear to be forced into doing the 
right thing? Why can't we take the initiative, and show the people that 
it matters to us what they think of us?
  Mr. President, despite our protestations to the contrary, the 
American people believe we are corrupted by these huge donations. And 
their contempt for us--even were it not deserved--is itself a stain 
upon our honor. Don't allow this corrupt--and I use that term 
advisedly--this corrupt system to endure one day longer than it must. 
We have it in our power to end it. We must take the chance. Our 
reputations and the reputations of the institution in which we are 
privileged to serve depend on it.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, we have just completed the 20th cloture 
vote on this subject since 1987. Since my party took over the majority 
in the Senate, the 52-48 vote was the highest watermark actually during 
that period, and going all the way back over the 20 years I have been 
involved in this issue.
  So I thank the 48 Senators--regretfully, all of them were 
Republican--who resisted the temptation to support a measure that would 
have quieted the voices of American citizens and destroyed the 
effectiveness of our national political parties.
  Then, on the second vote, which was narrowed to only affect the two 
great political parties, there were 47 votes against that proposal, 
which is more than we had gotten on a much broader measure back in the 
first Congress after my party took over the Senate.
  So I think it is safe to say there is no momentum whatsoever for this 
kind of measure which seeks to put the Government in charge of what 
people may say, when they may say it, and attempts to take the two 
great American political parties out of the process.
  I thank the Senator from Arizona for retracting his statements on his 
web site which were highly offensive to the Senator from Utah and the 
Senator from Washington State. We took a look at the web site. Those 
have been deleted and we thank the Senator from Arizona for doing that.
  Turning to the sequence of events over the last week, we began the 
debate on Wednesday, October 13. Admittedly, it was later in the day 
than the majority leader had intended. That was the day of the vote on 
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but those who were on the floor were 
ready to go and suggested we begin Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. and get 
started on the bill. There seemed to be not a whole lot of desire on 
either side to begin at that time of the night.
  On Thursday, Republicans offered Senator McCain and Democrats an 
overall agreement providing for a vote on the Daschle-Shays-Meehan 
amendment, and providing that all other amendments must be offered by 
5:30 on Monday. Consequently, this agreement would have outlined an 
orderly fashion for debate and final disposition of the campaign 
finance reform bill. That agreement was objected to by Senator McCain 
and our Democratic colleagues.
  On Friday, Republicans offered Senator McCain and the Democrats an 
agreement that would provide for a time limit for debate on the 
Daschle-Shays-Meehan amendment and a vote in relation to that 
amendment. That agreement was also objected to by our Democratic 
colleagues.
  Also on Friday, several efforts were made on behalf of the 
Republicans to proceed with amendments to the pending campaign finance 
reform bill. The minority leader and the assistant minority leader then 
offered first and second-degree amendments, thereby filling up the 
amendment tree. The first-degree amendment offered was the Shays-Meehan 
bill and the second degree was the McCain-Feingold bill. Cloture was 
then filed on each amendment in the order stated. Those cloture votes, 
of course, have just occurred.
  Again, on Friday, numerous unanimous consent agreements were offered, 
largely by this Senator, in an effort to lay aside the pending 
Democratic amendments in order to proceed with the amending process. 
Those consent agreements were objected to by the Democrats and thus the 
Senate was put in a holding pattern awaiting today's cloture votes.
  Yesterday, the Senate debated throughout the day the pending two 
amendments, and the Senator from Arizona made a motion to table the 
Reid second-degree amendment and the motion to table vote occurred at 
5:45 yesterday and was defeated by a vote of 92-1.
  The consent was offered to debate between 9:30 and 12:30 on Tuesday--
today--calling for the cloture votes at 2 p.m. on Tuesday. That was 
objected

[[Page 25749]]

to. Therefore, the Senate had no alternative than to convene at 1:15 
today and use the cloture rule to have the cloture votes occur at 2:15.
  For the benefit of those who may not have followed this debate quite 
as closely as the Senator from Kentucky, I wanted to lay out the 
sequence of events since last Wednesday when we went to the bill and 
the numerous efforts were made to have an open amending process so we 
could have a chance to improve a bill that obviously is fatally flawed.
  As is the case in all measures of any controversy in the Senate, I 
think it is important to remember every controversial measure has to 
achieve a 60-vote threshold. That is not unusual. That is the norm. It 
should not be surprising that this highly controversial measure, which 
many people on my side believe is not bipartisan and not properly 
crafted, would be subjected to the same 60 votes as other controversial 
measures.
  The majority leader and the Republicans lived up to their end of the 
agreement. We are disappointed the Democrats refuse to abide by it. I 
am equally disappointed to hear the Senator from Arizona and the 
Senator from Wisconsin have announced they now refuse to honor that 
agreement.
  Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. McCONNELL. No. I am about to yield the floor and you can say 
whatever is desired.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have enjoyed working with the Senator from 
Kentucky on this issue. He is certainly an expert at what is going on 
in the Senate. But I do say respectfully, he has over the years decided 
that the best defense is a good offense. Certainly, that is what he has 
done. One of the biggest targets he has talked about during the last 
few days is the Democrats having stopped the Republicans from offering 
amendments to this bill. It is simply not true, as indicated by the 
fact the Senator from Minnesota offered an amendment yesterday. There 
was still room to offer three or four amendments.
  It was chosen as a matter of tactics not to offer amendments and then 
talk about the fact they were not able to offer amendments. In fact, 
the majority could have offered all the amendments they wanted. They 
say, if cloture was invoked, the amendments would fail, well, that is 
the way it always works around here.
  We simply wanted a vote on the two issues before this body: The House 
passed Shays-Meehan bill; and the so-called ``McCain-Feingold lite''--
that is, to ban soft money.
  That is what the debate has been about, an effort to avoid an up-or-
down vote on those two very important issues that the American public 
deserve to have heard.
  There was no holding pattern; the holding pattern was generated by 
the majority themselves, as indicated by the actions taken by the 
majority.
  This is just the culmination of a number of things that we have 
around here. When the going gets tough, we go off the issue. The going 
was just getting tough on this issue. My friend from Kentucky can spin 
things; he is very good at that. Of course, everyone knows the Senator 
from Wisconsin and Senator McCain have picked up eight Republicans we 
never had before. When the first votes took place on this issue, 
Senator Byrd was majority leader, we tried to invoke cloture seven 
times. The Democrats voted to invoke cloture on campaign finance 
reform, but we didn't have the support of Republicans, generally 
speaking--certainly not eight. We now have that.
  I say to my friend from Kentucky, he can spin it however he sees 
proper, but the numbers don't lie. We are picking up Republican 
Senators every time we have a vote on this issue. We have eight now. 
That is a victory for campaign finance reform.
  This debate should go forward, not be stopped now. As our Democratic 
leader further announced earlier today, there are issues we need to be 
talking about. We should be talking about the Patients' Bill of 
Rights--a real Patients' Bill of Rights, not the ``Patient Bill of 
Wrongs'' passed out of this body. We should pass a Patients' Bill of 
Rights as the House of Representatives did.
  Minimum wage. Minimum wage is not for teenagers flipping hamburgers 
at McDonald's. People earn their living with minimum wage. Mr. 
President, 65 percent of the people drawing minimum wage are women; for 
40 percent of those women, that is the only money they get for their 
families. Minimum wage is an issue we should be out speaking on today, 
now.
  Juvenile justice: We have been waiting for 5 months for that 
conference to be completed. It is not close to being done.
  Medicare: We talked about Medicare. We go home and we know the 
problems with Medicare. We did some things with the balanced budget 
amendment that we need to correct. We should be working on that right 
now.
  Any time we have something important that is a little difficult, we 
walk away from it, just as we walked away from one of the most 
important treaty's to come before the Senate, the Nuclear Test-Ban 
Treaty. We had 24 Republicans that signed a letter saying they thought 
the treaty should not be acted on at this time, however, when the vote 
came, they all walked away. The fact of the matter is if they didn't 
like it in its present form, shouldn't we have had a debate on the 
Senate floor and maybe make some changes to it--just not vote it down. 
We were prevented from doing that.
  So I believe we should go forward on this most important issue. This 
is the fourth time during this debate I have had the duty of managing, 
on the minority side, this bill, this most important campaign finance 
reform. This is the fourth time I have said this, and if I have the 
opportunity I will say it four more times.
  The State of Nevada has less than 2 million people. In the campaign 
between Harry Reid and John Ensign almost a year ago, we don't know how 
much money was spent, but we know between the State party and Reid and 
Ensign campaigns we spent over $20 million. That does not count the 
independent expenditures. We do not know how much they were. John 
Ensign and I estimate it was probably about $3 million in ads run for 
and against us. If you use no other example in America than the Reid-
Ensign race of last year, that is a reason to take a real, strong, 
close look at campaign finance reform.
  Maybe after the two measures see the light of day and amendments are 
offered and we have a full debate, maybe they would be voted down. But 
should not we at least have that opportunity? I think after what 
happened in Nevada, if in no other place in America, we deserve a full 
airing of campaign finance reform. How in the world can you justify 
spending, in the State of Nevada, the money that was spent in that 
race? John Ensign and Harry Reid have said to each other, and said 
publicly: We never had a chance to campaign against each other for 
ourselves. We were buried by all this outside soft money.
  Campaign finance reform, Patients' Bill of Rights, minimum wage, 
juvenile justice, Medicare--there are a lot of other things we should 
be debating. But right now--today, this week--in the Senate, we should 
be spending more time on campaign finance reform.
  I say, as I have said on a number of occasions, I greatly appreciate 
the efforts of my friend from Wisconsin. Here is a person who put his 
career on the line for a matter of principle. He was the original 
sponsor of McCain-Feingold. In the election that occurred last year, he 
almost lost the election because he was buried by soft money. As a 
matter of principle, Russ Feingold refused to allow anyone to use soft 
money in the State of Wisconsin for his benefit. He offended people by 
saying: I know you are trying to help me, but I will not allow you to 
bring soft money in the State of Wisconsin as a matter of principle. He 
is still here. I have great admiration for him. I think what he has 
done for the people of the State of Wisconsin and this country is 
commendable.
  If for no other reason, I believe he deserves a full debate in this. 
Of course he is joined with the Senator from Arizona.
  We need to go forward on this issue. Personally, as has been 
indicated, I

[[Page 25750]]

have supported the next measure the majority leader wants to bring up. 
But if I have an opportunity to vote on whether or not we are going to 
proceed to partial-birth abortion, I will vote no, even though I am a 
supporter of that legislation.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gorton). The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I thank the assistant minority leader 
for his very kind remarks and his very strong remarks on the need to 
stay on this bill. I also thank the leader, Senator Daschle, for his 
strong remarks in support of reform in the presence of so many 
Democratic colleagues on the floor at that time right after the vote 
was taken. Of course my gratitude goes to the Senator from Arizona for 
continuing to fight.
  We are making progress. The story has not yet been told on this floor 
of what just happened on this vote. Certainly I do not share the 
interesting account of the Senator from Kentucky, who seems elated that 
three Republicans who have stuck with him all the way did not vote with 
him this time. That is what just happened. That is what nobody is 
pointing out.
  Day after day after day in this effort I am asked: What other 
Republicans are you going to get to support you, Russ? I am never sure 
because, obviously, each Senator makes his or her own decision. They 
often do not make their decisions until the last minute because these 
issues are often tough calls. But we finally had a vote where we found 
out we have a lot more support than some people thought. This is why 
games have been played in the last couple of days. This is why we had 
the Senator from Kentucky voting not to table a soft money ban last 
night. I don't think he has changed his mind. But he urged every one of 
his Republican colleagues last night to, in effect, vote to ban soft 
money after they just stood out here for 2 or 3 days and argued against 
a ban.
  Why? Why would they do that? Why did we not meet this morning? Why 
didn't the Senate do anything this morning? Here we are, near the end 
of one of the most difficult floor periods in a Congress, with 
appropriations bills and many other matters before us, with the 
leadership telling us over and over again we need to get all this work 
done, but we did not meet this morning. I will tell you why. Because 
the Senator from Kentucky knows his support is slipping. He may have 
even known we would pick up the support--and I say this to members of 
the press and others who always ask me this: Who is going to support 
you? This time we had Senators from Delaware and Arkansas and Kansas 
vote with us, including Senators who have never voted with us before.
  I recognize there are still some tough issues to resolve for some of 
the Senators who voted with us. But this is an exciting development. 
Last year the big deal was we had not gotten a majority. Then we got a 
majority. The natural question is, How do you get to 60 votes? My 
answer is, one at a time. But today we took three steps in that 
direction. I think that tells you what is going on. They want to move 
off this bill because we are moving in the right direction. We are not 
there yet but, boy, we are getting closer.
  What will bring us to the end of this process, a fair end of this 
process? First of all, the understanding we had is that we would have 5 
real days of debate and amendment. You cannot count starting at 7:30 at 
night on a Wednesday when Senators had left the Capitol as a day. So we 
are entitled, under this understanding, to come back in here the rest 
of today and tomorrow and debate this issue. We had three full days on 
this bill--Thursday, Friday, and Monday. On two of those days we had no 
real votes. Then today, the fourth day, we didn't come in until 1:15 
pm. That is not the five days of debate that we were promised.
  I know there are other Senators on the Republican side who want to 
join us, who want to add to the 55. But they want something every 
Senator has a right to want. They want a chance to offer amendments. 
They have some ideas they would like to add to this soft money ban that 
I think could be acceptable, and they could finally help us break down 
this absurd roadblock to banning this form of corruption that is 
affecting the Senate.
  Make no mistake, three new Senators have voted with us. They do not 
represent an ideological group from the left or the right. They are 
just different Senators who, I believe, have finally had it with this 
soft money system. This is why the Senator from Arizona and I used the 
strategy of simplifying this bill, of saying let's at least have an up-
or-down vote on soft money. That is what we just had. I find what these 
Senators did very encouraging. I thank them because it takes guts. It 
is tough to stand up to your leadership on this. They did it. I am 
grateful for this vote. It is very significant.
  So we should not leave the issue now. This is the time to let those 
Senators, and other Senators who have indicated an interest in banning 
soft money, come to the floor, offer their amendments, and see if we 
can fashion a compromise that could cause the Senate to be proud and to 
join the House in trying to actually do something about this problem.
  I thank all the Senators who will assist us in preventing this matter 
from coming off the floor. It belongs on the floor. It is the most 
important issue before this country, and we need to continue to work on 
it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. I ask unanimous consent my comments not count under the 
two-speech rule.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, first of all, I thank Senator McCain and 
Senator Feingold for their efforts, though I must say I take exception 
to the comment of Senator McCain which he made earlier. He is my very 
close friend. I have worked with him very closely on a lot of issues. 
But when he suggests there is a bipartisan opposition to reform, I 
think he is not paying tribute to the fact that no Democrat voted 
against cloture. No Democrat voted against proceeding to the full 
measure of germane amendments that would precede the bill. So even 
though the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Torricelli, may feel very 
strongly about not just dealing with soft money, he was prepared to 
accept the verdict of the Senate in a normal process of amendment. This 
is not bipartisan in opposition. There is only one group of people who 
voted against proceeding to campaign finance reform, only one group, 
and I regret it is entirely on the other side of the aisle, the 
Republicans, because, obviously, we are not trying to make this 
partisan.
  We were very grateful for those courageous Republicans who decided 
the time has come to vote for campaign finance reform. Obviously, we 
want them. We desperately need more Republicans who are willing to 
embrace campaign finance reform.
  But the fact remains that on the critical votes of whether or not the 
Senate was prepared to eliminate the extraneous amendments, have 
cloture, and proceed to the process of debating this bill, not one 
Democrat said no to that. It was only Republicans who have stopped the 
Senate in its tracks.
  Where do we find ourselves? What did the Senator from Kentucky say? 
He recited a few days of histrionics, a few days of sort of 
maneuvering. We had a whole morning, this morning, as the Senator from 
Wisconsin was saying, where we could have debated this. Why didn't we 
debate this morning? The Senate did not even convene until 1 hour prior 
to having the votes, and that was because under the consent order 
previously entered into, with the two cloture votes, those votes were 
going to take place 1 hour after the Senate convened.
  So what could be more convenient? Convene the Senate as late as 
possible so that you have no time to debate and then proceed to have 
two votes. Why? Because you cannot turn up the heat on the issue; 
because the television cameras will not be on; because the galleries 
are not open; because the American people will not be sharing in

[[Page 25751]]

a real debate about the impact--the corrosive impact--of money on the 
American political system.
  And our 47 and 48 colleagues on the other side of the aisle who stand 
there and close down the process ought to take a sampling of the people 
who are in the galleries. I know we are not allowed to do that, but I 
bet if you asked every single one of them, as they leave this Chamber, 
``Do you think there is too much money in American politics? Do you 
think the money gains access to the system? Do you think the money 
distorts the process? Do you think the money somehow does favor for 
certain issues over the general interests?'' Every single one of those 
people, or at least 85, 90 percent would tell you, yes, there is too 
much money in American politics, and it separates the average citizen 
from the people they elected to represent them. Overwhelmingly, 
Americans believe that. And, overwhelmingly, Americans understand there 
is a connection between what happens in Washington and what does not 
happen in Washington and all of the contributions.
  This is the fight that some of us came to have: The fight over 
whether or not we are going to have a fair political system.
  I understand a lot of our friends on the other side of the aisle do 
not want to change the system. Politics has a certain amount of self-
interest in it; and the self-interest of getting reelected is a 
powerful one. A lot of our colleagues over on the other side of the 
aisle have a lot more money available to them than Democrats.
  I was outspent in every election I ran in until the last election 
when a Republican agreed with me to do something different. We had a 
fair playing field. He was a sitting Governor. I was a sitting Senator. 
So you know what we did. We both banned soft money--no soft money in 
our campaigns; we banned independent expenditures--no independent 
expenditures; and we actually reached an agreement that we would both 
limit ourselves to how much money we would spend in our race.
  Then we did something else different. We had nine 1-hour televised 
debates so the people in our State could share in a good, healthy 
exchange about the issues that matter to them.
  So you can do it differently. You can do it differently. But if a lot 
of incumbents sit here and say: Boy, I like that money; it's so much 
easier for me to go down to the Hyatt Hotel or the Hilton Hotel or the 
Sheraton and have an event; and there are a whole lot of people who can 
afford the flight, the air ticket to Washington, and then can, after 
the air ticket, afford to bring a big check to me, come and meet me for 
a little while, and I can collect a whole lot of money--that way, I can 
fund a campaign--that is pretty easy. Most challengers in this country 
cannot do that.
  The end effect of that is literally to strip away the vibrancy of our 
own democracy because what happens is the money is very well 
represented. But the points of view that do not have the money are not 
as well represented. And no one here can deny that. No one here can 
deny that.
  We have heard a lot of talk in the last few days about corruption. We 
have heard about the way money corrupts politics, about how it corrupts 
the system. I express my admiration to the chairman of the Commerce 
Committee, my friend who is on the floor of the Senate. I think he has 
a lot of guts. He has a lot of courage to come to the floor of the 
Senate and tell a lot of people the truth. And a lot of people do not 
like to hear it.
  So it got very personal last Friday--very personal--as we got led off 
into a tangential debate where one Senator was challenging Senator 
McCain, was challenging him to name names, lay out for us a list of 
those in the Senate who have been corrupted.
  I say to my colleague who was asking that question: Where does that 
line of questioning take us? Where does that line of questioning take 
us? No Member of the Senate that I know of runs around impugning the 
character or the integrity of another colleague. That is not what the 
Senator from Arizona was doing.
  What the Senator from Arizona was doing was having the courage to 
point out that we are all prisoners--something he knows something 
about. But in this case, we are also the jail keepers because we have 
the key. We have the ability to release every single one of us from 
this prison--where we have to go out and raise these extraordinary 
amounts of money, where we allow ourselves to be proselytized by groups 
of people who spend $100 million a month in this city, either to get us 
to do something or to stop us from doing something. Think about it.
  Then go out and ask how many of the average Americans are 
contributing to that $100 million. Ask the folks working two or three 
jobs, ask the folks who pay their taxes and struggle to send their kids 
to a good school, and who know their kids need technology and child 
care and health care and a whole lot of other things if they feel well 
represented by that $100 million.
  How many of them are lined up outside the Commerce Committee or the 
Banking Committee or the Ag Committee, or any other committee, when we 
have a markup around here?
  How many of them can afford to send a young messenger to wait in 
line, from the early hours of the morning, so they are assured of 
having a seat where the action is taking place?
  I think we ought to get away from the side arguments and the side 
diversions and understand what the Senator from Arizona, the Senator 
from Wisconsin, the Senator from Minnesota, and a whole lot of other 
Senators, a majority of the Senate, think about that, a majority.
  This is not some wild-eyed, crazy fringe, tiny group of Senators who 
are somehow trying to stop the Senate from doing business. This is a 
majority of the Senate who believes the time has come to have campaign 
finance reform. Oh, sure, we all know the rules say it takes 60 votes. 
That is a supermajority. We all understand that. But on the great 
fights of the Senate, people were willing to stay and fight. It took 6 
weeks, I think, of filibuster for the Civil Rights Act to pass. We can 
go back in history through a lot of other great debates of the Senate. 
It took a long time, with serious work, serious meetings, serious 
efforts to try to reach agreement.
  Let me give Senators a critical fact concerning the perception among 
the American people today. I don't think anybody can disagree with 
this. Some people want to avoid it, but I don't think an honest, 
intellectual assessment would allow them to disagree with it. Every 
poll shows it; every conversation anybody might have, even with the top 
corporate chieftains of this country. I have talked to some of the top 
CEOs of some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies in the country about 
how they feel about fundraising--from a Democrat or from a Republican. 
Those are the people who are increasingly turning off the current 
system. They are scared. They don't voluntarily get out of it.
  There are a few who have. The committee of businessmen that has come 
together with a new plan has had the courage to say: We are not going 
to give to Republicans, and we are not going to give to Democrats, 
either. I have heard so many of these CEOs say: I know it is bad; I 
know it is corrupting. I don't like it; I don't want to be part of it. 
But if I unilaterally stop doing it, my competitor will be at the 
table, and I won't be at the table.
  That is what happens. So they don't do it. The fact is, the majority 
of Americans believe the amount of money spent on campaigns gains a 
special access to the political system for those who are most capable 
of contributing, whatever side they are on, whatever side of the issue.
  Let's assume, for the sake of argument, no Senator is affected by the 
money that is given. Take the word ``corruption'' off the table, as it 
applies to any specific act of any legislator. Ask yourself, by fairer 
judgment, if the group that wants to achieve goal A can go out and 
raise tens of millions of dollars and have the ability to then load 
that money into campaigns for people who will vote for what goal A is, 
and the people in goal B are all pretty poor

[[Page 25752]]

or don't have access to money or aren't organized and don't have the 
ability to contribute the same way, but their goal may be equally 
worthy or, in fact, more worthy, is there a fairness in the system? Is 
there a form of corruption of the political process, not of the people 
but of the political process, that denies the kind of fair playing 
field I think is at the heart of the kind of democracy this country 
wants to provide its citizenry and for which it really stands?
  I think the perception of that unweighted playing field, the 
perception of that unfairness ought to concern every Member of the 
Senate.
  We can sit back and point to our own personal integrity. We can say 
we don't make decisions on public policy based on campaign 
contributions. The truth is, we are extraordinarily exposed to the 
general awareness and perception and belief and cynicism that is now 
attached to the system which says that the money speaks and that it 
makes a huge difference.
  I think such a significant portion of Americans are affected by this 
that, in point of fact, the standard set up by the Supreme Court with 
respect to the perception of corruption is met.
  When the Senator from Kentucky--I will talk about this a little 
later--talks about the first amendment, there is a sufficient test 
under first amendment standards that would allow the Court to make a 
decision in favor of some restraints. They have already done that. They 
did it in 1972, in 1974. We certainly have the right to do it now.
  I ask my colleagues, every year 20,000 Americans are poisoned with 
the E. coli bacteria when they eat contaminated food. They have found 
tuberculosis in beef, and two-thirds of chickens contain the 
potentially deadly campylocbacter bacteria. That is not a finding of 
politicians. That is what scientists tell us. But in spite of the rapid 
spread of food-borne illnesses, we haven't responded. We haven't done 
anything. Walk into a room of 50 ordinary Americans and tell them we 
haven't done anything to promote public health needs on this issue, 
that every single bill that has come before us on food-borne illnesses 
has been killed, and then tell them the food industry has made $41 
million in campaign contributions to congressional candidates over the 
last 10 years. Almost every person who hears that will say: I bet you 
there is some kind of connection there.
  Seventeen thousand people were killed by drunk drivers last year. 
Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the National Safety Council, and 
hundreds of other organizations formed a coalition to pass stricter 
standards on drunk driving, in order to keep drunk drivers off the road 
and get tougher on them when we catch them. Almost everyone agrees this 
would save lives. But the regulations didn't pass. Surprise.
  Ask the average person on the street if they think our inaction on 
something as obvious as that has any connection to the over $100,000 
spent by Alcohol Wholesalers, by the National Restaurant Association, 
Wine and Spirits Wholesalers, other alcoholic beverage organizations, 
that gave to both sides, Democrats and Republicans alike. Ask them if 
they think there is a connection.
  Last year, we tried to do something to respond to the fact that every 
day 3,000 kids become smokers. We know, because the doctors and 
scientists tell us, that half of those children will wind up dying 
early and costing us enormous sums of money in our medical care system 
until they ultimately die from their addiction. Ask the average 
American if they believe all our legislative efforts on tobacco fell 
apart, or at least in any part was it connected to the fact that Philip 
Morris and all the other big tobacco companies spent millions of 
dollars over every year for several years in contributions to both 
parties to hundreds of candidates for the House and the Senate. Was 
that a spending in the general public interest? Was that a spending in 
the interest of the Nation?
  Certainly--and I agree with my colleague from Kentucky--if it wasn't 
spent to elect a candidate, if it was spent to sell the virtue of 
tobacco or of something that had nothing to do with an election, 
certainly that fits under the first amendment. I understand that. That 
is a separate issue that can be dealt with separately.
  I think we have to be even more frank than that in sort of 
acknowledging the kind of connection people perceive. The truth is, I 
think all of us know, to varying degrees, we are trapped in a reality 
where big money gets its calls returned. Big money gets its meetings. 
Big money gets the face time it asks for and looks for. We can see it 
in all of the fundraisers that take place in this city and in other 
parts of the country. Every single one of us is sensitive to that 
reality. I understand that.
  There are very few Senators who don't work hard to try to undo that, 
the notion of the walls of the prison, if you will. I don't think 
Senators like it particularly. Some are content to live with it, even 
though they may not like it. The reality is, nonetheless, it changes 
the way the institution operates.
  We only have to listen to someone such as Senator Byrd, the former 
leader, who has seen it on every side and has seen it change over the 
years that he has been in the Senate. He will tell us how the Senate 
has changed in the way it operates because of the amount of money in 
our system today.
  I say to my colleagues, rather than put current Members on the spot, 
listen to what some of our colleagues who have retired from Congress, 
who are liberated from having to raise the money, who are out of the 
system, have said about the current game in which they were once 
trapped.
  Representative Jim Bacchus, a Democrat from Florida:

       I have, on many occasions, sat down and listened to people 
     solely because I knew they have contributed to my campaign.

  There is an honest statement by a former Representative. I don't 
expect all my colleagues to stand up and say that, but that is what he 
said.
  When asked whether Members of Congress are compromising the 
institution of Congress when they solicit contributions from the 
special interests they regulate, former House minority leader Bob 
Michel, a Republican from Illinois, said simply:

       There is no question. I don't know how you even change 
     that. It is a sad way of life here.

  That is a former leader in the House of Representatives, and a 
Republican.
  I don't have the quote, but I remember my friend, Paul Laxalt, one of 
the closest friends of Ronald Reagan, who, when he left the Senate, 
said unequivocally:

       The amount of money being raised in the U.S. Congress was 
     corrupting the process, and it was having a profound impact 
     on the quality of the U.S. Congress.

  Listen to what former Representative Peter Kostmayer said:

       You get invited to a dinner somewhere, and someone gives 
     you money, and then you get a call a month later and he wants 
     to see you. Are you going to say no? You are just not going 
     to say no.

  Why do the special interests give money? I think everybody would 
agree that former Senator and majority leader George Mitchell was a man 
of enormous integrity. He led the Senate. He has been leading the peace 
talks in Northern Ireland, a person of huge integrity, a former U.S. 
district judge, a former Senate leader. George Mitchell summed it up 
saying:

       I think it gives them the opportunity to gain access and 
     present their views in a way that might otherwise not be the 
     case.

  That is fundamentally the flaw. The Senator from Kentucky and others 
can take umbrage at the notion of the use of the word ``corruption,'' 
but you don't have to be specifically corrupt in some way that breaks 
the law to be sharing in a general corruption, an ``impairment of the 
integrity,'' as Webster defines it, of the institution, and the 
integrity of this institution is impaired by the current system.
  I mentioned a moment ago some of the best minds in the business 
community--CEOs and others--who have shared with me, and I know with 
other colleagues, that they find the current system nauseating, 
sickening. They are tired of being ``shaken down''. That is their term, 
not ours. I know there are letters that have been sent by Members

[[Page 25753]]

of the Congress to those groups that don't give. People have been 
threatened not to give to the other party. People have been threatened. 
These stories have all appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, 
Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe--stories all across the country. People 
believe if they don't play the game on the fundraising circuit, they 
will lose out in the subcommittees, the committees, and on the floor.
  We saw, this summer, that some prominent business executives joined a 
coalition for campaign finance reform, called the Committee for 
Economic Development. They promptly received a letter from the Senator 
from Kentucky, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign 
Committee telling them in no uncertain terms:

       If you disagree with the radical campaign finance agenda of 
     the CED, I would think that public withdrawal from this 
     organization would be a reasonable response.

  So what is the message there? The business leaders told me what they 
thought the message was. They said: We find it ironic that you are--
  This is what they sent to Senator McConnell. This is their response 
to the people who are trying to keep us from voting for campaign 
finance reform. The business leaders wrote:

       We find it ironic that you are such a fervent defender of 
     First Amendment freedoms, but seem intent to stifle our 
     efforts to express publicly our concerns about a campaign 
     finance system that many of us believe is out of control.

  I don't raise these issues to suggest in any way that any individual 
Member of this body is corrupt. I am not saying that, nor is the 
Senator from Arizona. But the system is leading us all down a road that 
diminishes the trust of the American people in this institution and 
that diminishes our connection to the American people and therefore 
their faith in the system of Government and in the capacity of this 
Government to do what our Founding Fathers wanted it to do.
  This is less and less a real democracy, and more and more a ``dollar-
ocracy,'' a democracy mostly decided and impacted by the amounts of 
money that can be raised and spent, and not by the quality of the ideas 
that are put forward and debated in the great manner of Lincoln and 
Douglas and others who took ideas to the American people.
  Are we scared of ideas? Do we have to pitch every idea in a 30-second 
advertisement, or a 60-second advertisement, and flood the airwaves 
with seductive, distorted, completely contrived messages, rather than 
laying out to the American people a series of facts and relying on them 
to choose?
  I have been here now for 15 years, and every year I have been here we 
have tried to achieve campaign finance reform. In fact, I was the 
author, together with Senator Boren, Senator Mitchell, and others, of 
an original effort that had a component of public financing. We 
actually passed that on the floor of the Senate when the Democrats were 
in the majority. President Bush vetoed it. Subsequently, we got as many 
as maybe 46--I think it was--votes for a bill that might have had some 
component of public financing.
  But, each year, as the Republican majority has grown, the number of 
people willing to embrace a broader set of reforms has also diminished, 
leaving us now with a stripped-down version of McCain-Feingold--
stripped-down to the point that many people on our side of the aisle 
fear that it may have the unintended consequences of the 1974 reforms; 
that if you do one component of reform, but you don't have a fair 
playing field, you simply unleash torrents of money into other sectors 
that may wind up having a negative impact on the ability of people to 
be elected.
  I think we have to act. I say to my colleague from Kentucky, the 
notion that the members of the media are going to sit there--those who 
have covered the Senate for years--and believe that 4 days of 
truncated, half-hearted debate somehow represents a legitimate effort 
on campaign finance reform is beyond anything credible. I don't think a 
member of the media could believe that when we sit here and say, well, 
we went to this last Thursday, and on Friday half of the Senate left to 
go home, and on Monday half of them hadn't come back, and on Tuesday 
morning there was absolutely no debate at all, and then we had two 
votes, and pretend somehow that the Senate has done anything serious 
about campaign finance reform. What a farce. What a joke.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle need to understand that 
this is an issue that isn't going to go away. We must begin to be 
serious about having a fair playing field--and I do mean a fair playing 
field, not trying to jockey it for Democrats or for Republicans but 
deciding as a matter of common sense how we can approach an election.
  We are supposed to be the premier democracy on the face of this 
planet. We are supposed to be setting the example for people in other 
parts of the world. And more and more people look at our system, and 
say: That is what it is all about? They spend $20 million in States 
such as Nevada chewing each other apart trying to prove what an evil 
American the other guy or woman is. How extraordinary.
  I think everybody on our side of the aisle was prepared to go into 
long and serious meetings. We are prepared to caucus. We are prepared 
to have efforts to try to decide how we can come up with a fair playing 
field. We ought to have a real debate because we need to understand 
that the costs of campaigning are eliminating the capacity for fully 
representative government for most Americans. Some people do not 
believe that. I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle argue 
with fervor that the first amendment is represented by money, and the 
more money you can raise, the fairer it is. You can go out and 
campaign.
  In 1996, House and Senate candidates spent more than $756 million. 
That is a 76-percent increase since 1990. And it is a sixfold, 600-
percent increase since 1976.
  The average cost of a race in 1976 was $600,000 for a winning Senate 
race. The average cost went to $3.3 million.
  Many of us in 1996 were forced to spend more than that. My race in 
1996 was the most expensive race of that year in the country--a paltry 
sum compared to the Senator from California. I think she and her 
colleague had to raise upwards of $20 million, and I think perhaps $30 
million was spent against Senator Feinstein. I am not sure of Senator 
Boxer--but somewhere in that vicinity. My race in Massachusetts was 
cheap compared to that. We had only $12.5 million, maybe $13 million 
for 6 million people.
  In constant dollars, we have seen an increase of over 100 percent in 
the money spent for Senator races from 1980 to 1994.
  I know Senators don't do this. Not every Senator is raising money 
every single week. But many are because of the vast sums they have to 
raise. But on average, each Senator has to raise $12,000 a week for 6 
years to pay for his or her reelection campaign. That is just the tip 
of the iceberg now because we have had this incredible explosion in 
soft money.
  Soft money represents everybody taking advantage of the loopholes. It 
wasn't the intention of campaign finance reform or Congress to allow 
soft money. I must admit some Democrats managed to develop that 
loophole rather more effectively at the outset than some Republicans. 
It doesn't make it right.
  In 1988, Democrats and Republicans raised a combined $45 million in 
soft money; in 1992, that number doubled to $90 million; and in 1995 to 
1996, that number tripled to $262 million.
  Do you know where it comes from? It comes from U.S. Senators who are 
passing legislation making telephone calls, or having meetings with 
high-powered corporate types, or very rich people who write checks for 
$50,000, $100,000, $200,000, and $300,000. Indeed, I believe the last 
year, in 1996, there were nine people in America who wrote checks for 
$500,000.
  That is where it comes from. And don't let anybody kid you. It goes 
into campaigns. It wasn't meant to originally. But now it goes almost 
directly into campaigns.
  So you, frankly, have corporations and a lot of big money directed 
into

[[Page 25754]]

the campaign process which was never the intention of the U.S. Congress 
back in 1974 when they passed campaign finance reform.
  Do you know why ordinary citizens believe they are being shut out? Do 
you know why the average American doesn't believe the system is on the 
up and up? Do you know why the average American thinks big money gets 
influence over their money? I will tell you why. Because fewer than 
one-third of 1 percent of eligible voters donated more than $250 in the 
electoral cycle of 1996.
  I want to repeat that. Why do people think the system is out of 
whack? Because fewer than one-third of 1 percent of all the eligible 
voters in America gave more than $250 in the electoral cycle.
  Think what would happen in this country if we invited people, as we 
used to do in the Tax Code, to take a tax deduction for a $50 or $100 
donation. And those tax deductions, when people were encouraged to take 
them, in fact, added up to about $500 million a cycle, which would have 
paid for almost all the races back then. You could do it with small 
donations, if they wanted to--if they wanted to. But they like to go 
out and get the bigger dollars. One-third of 1 percent of Americans 
contribute over $250.
  Ask most Americans what they think they are capable of giving to 
campaigns or are able to contribute, and you will get a sense of the 
great divorce in this country, a huge gulf, a Grand Canyon of campaign 
finance gap that is separating the average American from the political 
process.
  Then we have another problem in the system--the issue ads. These are 
those ubiquitous TV and radio ads bought by all kinds of special 
interests to persuade the American people to vote for or against a 
candidate. Usually, these ads are negative. They are usually 
inaccurate. But they are one of the driving forces of the American 
political process today. They violate the spirit of campaign finance 
laws in the country. Of course, they do.
  Listen to what the executive director of the National Rifle 
Association Institute for Legislative Action said. He said:

       It is foolish to believe there is a difference between 
     issue advocacy and advocacy of a political candidate. What 
     separates issue advocacy and political advocacy is a line in 
     the sand drawn on a windy day.

  Mr. President, the American people want us to fix this system.
  An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll shows that 70 percent of the public 
believes campaign finance reform is needed.
  So what the Republican Party is doing today is saying, well, we don't 
care what 70 percent of the American people are willing to do. They are 
unwilling to pass campaign finance reform that is fair, unwilling even 
to deal with it in a serious way.
  Last spring, a New York Times poll found that an astonishing 91 
percent of the public favor a fundamental transformation of the system.
  I believe we ought to be able to deliver on that kind of reform.
  Some of our colleagues believe that reforming the current finance 
system in a comprehensive manner would violate the Constitution. The 
constitutionality of a ban on soft money could raise questions. I think 
the issue of a total ban on soft money, depending on how it is 
structured, could conceivably be worked out in a thoughtful and artful 
way. But the point is it is fundamentally a sham issue as it is being 
presented by the other side. And the first amendment is being used as a 
shield to prevent the proper scrutiny of this issue and to prevent us 
from changing it.
  The truth is there are ways that you can reform the system within the 
confines of the first amendment.
  On the critical soft money issues, leading constitutional scholars 
and former ACLU leaders agree that banning soft money contributions 
will not violate the Constitution if properly constructed. And we 
forget that the Supreme Court in Buckley versus Valeo held that limits 
on individual campaign contributions do not violate the first 
amendment. It simply cannot be said the first amendment provides an 
absolute prohibition of any and all restrictions on speech.
  When State interests are more important than unfettered free speech, 
that speech is appropriately allowed to be narrowly limited.
  Speech is already limited. We know in cases of false advertising and 
obscenity. And I think it is clear that under the limits of Buckley we 
can deal with the risk of corruption or the appearance of corruption 
and the warranted limits on individual campaign contributions.
  The ban proposed in McCain-Feingold simply requires all contributions 
to national political parties be subject to the existing Federal 
restrictions on contributions to those parties that are used to 
influence Federal elections, and it would bar State and local parties 
from raising soft money for activities that might affect a Federal 
election. Groups remain completely free to spend as much money as they 
want on speech.
  This is a red herring, a straw man. It is well used, I might add, by 
the Senator from Kentucky, but it is wrong. I am convinced the courts 
would ultimately hold it so, were we to do our work properly.
  We've also heard that if we ban soft money, we will 
unconstitutionally infringe upon the rights of special interest groups 
to engage in free speech. I would respectfully suggest that there is 
some real confusion here. The ban proposed in McCain-Feingold would 
simply require that all contributions to national political parties be 
subject to existing federal restrictions on contributions those parties 
use to influence federal elections, and it would bar state and local 
parties from using soft money for activities that might affect a 
federal election. Groups would remain free to spend as much as they 
wanted on speech--they simply could not funnel that money through the 
political parties.
  Another favorite argument offered by those opposed to reform is that 
we already have bribery laws to prevent corruption and the appearance 
of corruption. This argument ignores the fact that the Supreme Court in 
Buckley explicitly considered and rejected the same claim. The Court 
said that it was up to Congress to decide whether bribery and 
disclosure laws were enough to address the federal problem with real 
and perceived corruption. A majority of the Members of the House and 
Senate do not believe the bribery laws are sufficient to limit 
corruption or the appearance of corruption.
  Opponents of campaign finance reform are vehement that any effort to 
control or limit sham issue ads would violate the first amendment. They 
argue that as long as you don't use the words ``vote for'' or ``vote 
against'', you can say just about anything you want in an 
advertisement. But that is simply not what the Supreme Court said in 
Buckley. It said that one way to identify campaign speech that can be 
regulated is by looking at whether it uses words of express advocacy. 
But the Court never said that Congress was precluded from adopting 
another test so long as it was clear, precise and narrow. It is exactly 
that kind of test that is included in Shays-Meehan and that I hope can 
be put back into the reform bill we are debating here today.
  I believe reasonable people can come together and work through these 
first amendment questions. Certainly that ought to be a challenge the 
United States Senate is capable of meeting. And I believe that if we 
can do that we can move on to a question no longer of whether to reform 
the campaign system, but how.
  I believe that the amendment offered by our minority leader would 
help us embrace reform. Though not a cure, embracing the Shays-Meehan 
model passed in the House treats the most serious symptoms that 
threaten the health of our whole democratic system.
  Let me say again, this amendment is by no means sweeping reform. It 
does not limit spending by candidates. It does not replace private 
campaign contributions with clean money. But, it does address two of 
the most serious problems with our current, broken campaign finance 
system. It bans soft money and it clamps down on phony issue ads. We 
must attack both of these

[[Page 25755]]

problems simultaneously if our campaign finance system has any hope for 
recovery.
  And I would remind the Senate that even those of us who agree that 
there is a serious problem have different ideas on how to fix it, or 
what aspect in particular most desperately needs a cure.
  I have long been an advocate of one particular kind of reform. I 
joined Senator Wellstone once again this year in offering a clean money 
bill that would take special interest money out of the political 
system. But I am a realist. The Senate is not yet ready to embrace 
something as broad as clean money, in spite of its merits. that is not 
going to happen yet, but I continue to hope and believe that it will 
someday.
  In the meantime, we must focus on finding a remedy for the worst of 
the problems from which our campaign finance system suffers. I believe 
Shays-Meehan can do that.
  And, Mr. president, I believe we can move this debate forward and 
pass this legislation if we can avoid the hot-button issues on both 
sides, the poison pill amendments we've encountered again and again 
which have stopped us in our tracks.
  One amendment which particularly worries me is the so-called paycheck 
protection amendment. Some of my colleagues on the other side are 
advocating that unions obtain written authorization from all union 
members before using any portion of union dues for political activity. 
The amendment would not require corporations to obtain the same written 
authorization from shareholders before using corporate treasury funds 
used for political activity. Proponents of this amendment complain that 
union dues are used to run issue advocacy campaigns that are really 
thinly disguised electioneering. However, rather than closing the issue 
advocacy loophole, which would comprehensively solve the problem, my 
colleagues on the other side would inhibit unions only while leaving 
corporations as well as conservative advocacy groups untouched.
  If paycheck protection were passed, it would limit almost all 
political activities by unions, not just use advocacy. It would gut the 
funds the unions use for internal communications activities, 
particularly get out the vote activities. Rather than adopting this 
inherently unfair amendment, which would target only unions, a better 
solution is to close the issue advocacy and soft money loopholes. I 
hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join me in opposing 
a paycheck protection amendment if one comes up.
  Mr. President, I hope we can avoid those poison pills, I hope we can 
actually pass something this week, and that we can support the campaign 
finance reform bill that was passed in the House, so that we have the 
tools to remedy both sham issue ads and soft money.
  There is an awful lot riding on this debate. Because we have been 
down this road before, many think the result is a foregoing conclusion. 
In a front page article last Tuesday, the Washington Post stated,
  ``. . . opponents of reform will rest easy in the knowledge that 
nothing will be accomplished.'' I hope the Post is wrong. I believe we 
can make the system better. We are not going to take all of the steps 
that would be necessary for a cure, but we can take care of the parts 
of the system that are hurting all of us the most. And that is a course 
of action on which all our citizens--and this Senate--ought to be able 
to agree.
  I urge the Senate not to turn away from a real process where we sit 
together, work through the objections, have honest debate and 
discussion, and allow the Senate to work its will on the floor of the 
Senate rather than walking away again from one of the most urgent needs 
as expressed by our fellow citizens in this country.
  I yield the floor.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts. He 
is eloquent on this subject.
  I am grateful we have been able to extend the debate on campaign 
finance reform at least a little bit because of this motion that has 
been made. On the other hand, it was our understanding we were going to 
be on campaign finance reform for 5 days. Sadly, we didn't have the 
expectation met that we would be 5 days on this particular matter.
  I know the Senator from Michigan is here. I ask unanimous consent 
upon completing my remarks the Senator from Michigan be recognized.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Presiding Officer in his capacity as the 
Senator from Washington objects.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, it is hard for me to understand why my 
friend objects, but that is his right to do so.
  I wanted the Senator from Michigan to be heard because he is feeling 
very strongly this particular vote we are going to have is as important 
as the other two votes we took on the procedural matter of cloture. If 
Senators believe we should have campaign finance reform, they should 
vote against the motion to proceed to an abortion issue that truly 
should not be coming before this Senate. I will have more to say on why 
I believe that to be the case. The Senator from Michigan, Mr. Levin, I 
am sure, will get the time on his own accord at the appropriate moment.
  As Members know, the Democratic side of the aisle was not going to 
object to going to the abortion issue--although many do not believe it 
is the right time to do so--we would not object to that and we would 
have been willing to go to that. It would have meant as soon as the 
debate was finished on that abortion issue, we would have gone back to 
campaign finance reform. Because of the parliamentary maneuver of the 
majority leader, Senator Lott, we will not be able to go back 
automatically to campaign finance reform if we vote to proceed to the 
abortion question.
  I make a case for voting against that. I think the best case to make 
is the issue we have been trying to debate for the last few days, the 
issue of campaign finance reform.
  I stood on this floor last week and admitted, with all eyes upon me, 
I was a user of the campaign finance system, I was good at it, I was 
better at it than my opponents. I know how to use the system. I have 
been in Congress since 1983. I learned very well by making mistakes 
early in my career that Members need the resources in order to answer 
the charges that are thrown against them.
  I say the system is broken for three reasons. One, the average person 
doesn't believe in this system. They have tuned out. They don't vote 
because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that it is the people with 
the money who are the people with the access who essentially control 
this agenda. They feel very left out of the system.
  Second, there is an appearance of corruption. Everyone who partakes 
in this system plays the game that to many Americans appears to be 
corrupt. We all play it well. The system has the potential to corrupt, 
and the system, at a minimum, has the appearance of corruption.
  Third, this system takes too much of our time away from our work, 
away from our jobs.
  I see the Senator from New York. I am proud of the kind of campaign 
he ran. I know it was as hard for him as it was for me to raise the 
kind of money we raised. We are good at it. We know how to do it. It is 
not necessarily to our benefit to change the system, but we know how 
bad it is.
  My friend from Minnesota, Senator Wellstone, and I were talking about 
dialing for dollars, when we are up and we are hoping no one is on the 
other end, hoping it is an answering machine so we can leave our 
message because it is so demeaning to have to call total strangers we 
have never heard of --had 100,000 donors to my campaign; I didn't know 
the majority of those donors--to have to ask them for money. This is 
not why a Senator is elected.
  The system is broken and needs to be fixed. People are not voting 
because they don't believe in the system.
  What does the majority leader do after a couple of days of debate? He 
wants to take campaign finance reform out of here. He wants to take it 
off the Senate floor. I think I see a pattern

[[Page 25756]]

emerging in the Senate Chamber which I don't think is particularly good 
for the American people.
  Campaign finance reform, wheel it out the door tomorrow.
  The test ban treaty, we had a majority vote for that. Wheel it off 
the floor.
  Minimum wage, block it from ever coming. Lock the doors. We don't 
want to hear about minimum wage, even though we are in an economic 
recovery and the bottom economic class is not benefiting from it. The 
least we can do is raise the minimum wage a few cents an hour. We can't 
even get that through the door.
  He doesn't want sensible gun control. We passed it over his 
objection. The majority party doesn't want it here. It was wheeled out 
the door, into a conference committee, never to be heard from again. 
How many more of our children have to die before we bring that back and 
vote in those sensible gun control measures?
  The majority doesn't want real health reform. We passed a sham bill. 
The House passed a good one. How about going to conference, 
strengthening health reform so people can see the doctor they need to 
see, when they need to, that they can get the tests they need when they 
need the tests and they can live a good quality of life. No, that is 
shut out, wheeled out of here, never to be heard from again.
  School construction, nowhere in the majority's bills; 100,000 cops on 
the beat, nowhere in the majority's bills; school construction to begin 
to fix up the school classrooms, nowhere here, out the door.
  This is becoming a killer Congress--kill everything the people want, 
including campaign finance reform.
  I ask unanimous consent to have two editorials printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the editorials were ordered to be printed 
in the Record, as follows:

           [From the San Diego Union Tribune, Oct. 19, 1999]

 Campaign Finance Reform--Time for a Vote on ending Special Interests' 
                                 Reign

       Unpopular because of his relentless crusade to block 
     campaign finance reform, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is 
     resorting to stoning the messenger.
       Rising on the Senate floor recently, McConnell indignantly 
     challenged Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., co-sponsor of the 
     campaign finance reform bill, to specify which senators have 
     been corrupted by special-interest contributions. McConnell's 
     theatrics were seconded by Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, 
     objecting to McCain's suggestion that lawmakers could be 
     bought or rented.
       Coolly refusing to take the bait by naming names, McCain 
     recalled last year when Senate Republicans were assured by 
     their leadership that they needn't fear electoral 
     repercussions from voting against an anti-tobacco bill, 
     because the industry's political action committees would 
     generously support their re-election campaigns.
       McCain could have recounted many other examples where big 
     contributors have wielded inordinate influence over the 
     Senate. The open secret on Capitol Hill is that, the bigger 
     the contributions, the greater the access.
       Former Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich., conceded as much when he 
     was accused, along with four other senators, including 
     McCain, of receiving $1.4 million to run interference for 
     Charles Keating while he ran a California savings-and-loan 
     institution into the ground. Although McCain was a bit player 
     in this sleazy process, he was scarred by it nonetheless. 
     That may help explain why he's so committed to sanitizing the 
     system.
       The bill that he authored with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., 
     would ban soft money, which is unlimited contributions that 
     political parties collect and spend to promote their 
     candidates. The reform measure may not completely cleanse the 
     system. But it would put a crimp in the current process, 
     which amounts to little more than legalized bribery.
       For all his fulminations about protecting the sanctity of 
     free speech, McConnell knows that special-interest money 
     rules. In fact, he's altogether comfortable with a system 
     under which the National Rifle Association shoots down gun-
     control bills, the oil lobby secures lower royalty payments, 
     and the telecommunications industry benefits from legislation 
     that lawmakers passed largely on faith.
       These and other well-heeled interests make out very well 
     because they have invested plenty in lawmakers who repay 
     their favors. That is precisely what McCain means when he 
     says Congress has been corrupted by special-interest money. 
     And that's why Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike 
     support his bill to help clean up this mess.
       The question is whether McConnell and Senate Majority 
     Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., will permit a floor vote on the 
     reform measure. Or will they resort once more to procedural 
     gambits and strangle it?
                                  ____


           [From the Bakersfield Californian, Oct. 19, 1999]

                         Campaign Reform Vital

       Senators should be allowed to vote up or down on a proposal 
     to overhaul a federal campaign finance law. Then, if the bill 
     by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., 
     does pass, the courts can sort out a potential constitutional 
     issue.
       Instead, opponents of a proposed ban on so-called soft 
     money are vowing a filibuster--a non-stop talk-a-thon that 
     prevents debate on an issue. It is a parliamentary ``don't-
     let-'em-get-a-word-in-edgewise'' maneuver. The filibuster can 
     be broken only if opponents muster a two-thirds vote in favor 
     of open and free debate--more than the majority vote needed 
     to pass the subject legislation itself. Soft money is a 
     contribution made in federal elections to political parties 
     for activities that are not supposed to support a specific 
     candidate. The idea was to stimulate public awareness of 
     elections and issues with such tasks as voter registration 
     drives and get-out-the-vote efforts.
       However, critics of the practice wisely note that 
     experience shows a huge influx of money from well-heeled 
     interests--corporations, unions, special interest groups. The 
     effect is to overwhelm potential access to the campaign 
     process by individuals.
       Worse, with some clever use of the funds, they can be 
     directed to help build awareness among voters of issues being 
     emphasized by specific candidates. The real-world effect of 
     the practice is to void the very theory of soft-money; 
     emphasize issues and process, not specific candidates.
       In doing so, it creates an end-run around other rules which 
     set dollar limits on contributions that can be made directly 
     to candidates. Those limits are designed specifically to 
     level the access playing field by making all sources of 
     influence roughly equal.
       It is worth noting that the House of Representatives--which 
     does not allow filibusters and whose members have the grind 
     of seeking election every 2 years--were shamed into passing a 
     version of the bill. But senators, who have the comparative 
     luxury of six-year terms, are balking at even allowing a vote 
     on the issue.
       Opponents of the McCain-Feingold soft-money limits piously 
     say the law would inhibit the ability to buy advertising, and 
     hence limit politicians' freedom of speech. This from a 
     minority of senators who are muzzling free speech on the 
     bill???
       The issue of whether campaign finance laws are 
     unconstitutional needs serious consideration. It is getting 
     it where it should: in the Supreme Court.
       Let the Congress propose, the courts dispose. Vote on and 
     pass McCain-Feingold.

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I find these articles interesting because 
they are editorials from two Republican newspapers in my State, the San 
Diego Union Tribune and the Bakersfield Californian. Normally I would 
not be reading their editorials into the Record because I usually do 
not agree with them, but I agree with them on this. Because I do not 
want to mention the name of any Senator, I will leave it out. The 
article from the San Diego Union Tribune says:

       For all the fulminations about protecting the sanctity of 
     free speech [this particular Senator] knows that special-
     interest money rules. In fact, he's altogether comfortable 
     with a system under which the National Rifle Association 
     shoots down gun-control bills, the oil lobby secures lower 
     royalty payments, and the telecommunications industry 
     benefits from legislation that lawmakers passed largely on 
     faith.

  This is pretty extraordinary for the San Diego Union Tribune. Of 
course Senator Feingold has been on this floor daily, reading us this 
list of contributions and showing how it lines up with the legislation 
that is taken up on this floor. I assure you, the people who need an 
increase in the minimum wage are not making contributions to any of us, 
OK? I assure you they are not. They cannot. They can barely put food on 
the table. No wonder they cannot even get their bill heard.
  Then the Bakersfield Californian says:

       Opponents of the McCain-Feingold soft-money limit piously 
     say the law would limit the ability to buy advertising, and 
     hence limit politicians' freedom of speech.

  And they say:

       This from a minority of senators who are muzzling free 
     speech on the bill?

  That is interesting, by taking off the floor this bill for which a 
majority voted, they are muzzling us. That is why this vote tomorrow is 
so important.
  I want to make a couple of points about the bill waiting in the wings 
to

[[Page 25757]]

come back on this floor for the third time. It is called the partial-
birth abortion bill. There is no such thing as a partial-birth 
abortion. Ask any doctor. This is a made-up term. It is either a birth 
or it is an abortion. But it is fiery language. It makes people think 
that a woman is waking up at the end of her pregnancy and saying: I 
have changed my mind. Nothing could be further from the truth.
  What this bill is about is banning a procedure doctors say they need 
to save the life and health of the mother. The Senators want to come in 
here and play doctor and say what procedure can and cannot be used on 
my daughter and on everybody's daughter in the country. They are going 
to do it again, even though they do not have the votes to pass it over 
the President's veto, and even though across this country that ban has 
been ruled unconstitutional in 20 different states.
  So we are going to throw out campaign finance reform to go to a bill 
that does not even belong here. This subject belongs at the medical 
schools and in the hospitals and clinics across the country. They are 
the folks who have to decide how to deal with a medical emergency in 
the late term of a pregnancy.
  There is not one Senator in this Senate who favors abortion in the 
late term--not one. We have all voted for various bills to say no. What 
we do say is this: If it is an emergency to save the life of the woman, 
to spare her health, to keep her fertility so she can have other 
children, then it is up to a physician to decide.
  We are going back to that bill. I will be debating it along with my 
colleagues. There will be various alternatives. But let's be clear, 
let's not pull any punches here; it is all about politics. They think 
it is an issue that gets them some votes out there.
  I hope people will listen to the debate because I don't think people 
elected us to come here and be doctors. They go to the hospital to see 
a doctor, not a Senator, and they come to the Senate to hear Senators, 
not doctors. It is ridiculous. If 100 physicians walked in with their 
coats on and tried to evict us from our chairs, they would be arrested. 
But we come and we pass legislation telling doctors they are going to 
go to jail if they do something to save a woman's life or her health. 
Something is wrong. This does not belong here.
  But we are going to go to this bill for the third time. The President 
will veto it for the third time. We will uphold his veto for the third 
time. We will talk about it for the third time, and we will protect the 
life and the health of the women in this country for the third time.
  In the meantime, we are throwing off the Senate floor issues that can 
get through this Senate and can get a signature from this President: 
the minimum wage, 100,000 teachers, school construction, campaign 
finance reform. We can do it. We have a majority who believe in it. We 
can clean up the system.
  I wish to say a special word about the Senator from Michigan. He has 
shown tremendous leadership on this issue over the years. He has seen 
this as a moment where we can stand our ground and keep this bill on 
the floor of the Senate. I look forward to his remarks as well as to 
those of the Senator from New York. I am proud to have voted for every 
campaign finance reform measure that ever came down when I was in the 
House. Even when I was on the board of supervisors in Marin County many 
years ago this subject came up. So it has been many, many years. Maybe 
now, with this vote tomorrow, maybe now we can get 51 people to say: 
Keep campaign finance on the floor.
  My very last point: I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record one more letter.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                                 October 18, 1999.
     Hon. Trent Lott,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Lott: Saturday, October 23, will mark the one-
     year anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian, 
     who was murdered in his home in Amherst, New York. As you are 
     undoubtedly aware, there have been five sniper attacks on 
     U.S. and Canadian physicians who perform abortions since 
     1994. Each of these attacks has occurred on or close to 
     Canada's Remembrance Day, November 11. All of the victims in 
     these attacks were shot in their homes by a hidden sniper who 
     used a long-range rifle. Dr. Slepian was killed. Three other 
     physicians were seriously wounded in these attacks.
       Federal law enforcement officials are urging all women's 
     health care providers, regardless of their geographic 
     location, to be on a high state of alert and to take 
     appropriate protective precautions during the next several 
     weeks. Security directives have been issued to all physicians 
     who perform abortions for clinics or in their private 
     practices, and to all individuals who have been prominent on 
     the abortion issue.
       Senator Lott, on behalf of our physician members, and in 
     the interest of the public safety of the citizens of the US 
     and Canada, we urge you to reconsider the scheduling of a 
     floor debate on S-1692 at this time. As you are aware, each 
     time this legislation has been considered, extremely 
     explicit, emotional, and impassioned debate has been aroused. 
     We have grave fears that the movement of this bill during 
     this particularly dangerous period has the potential to 
     inflame anti-abortion violence that might result in tragic 
     consequences.
       We sincerely hope that you will take the threats of this 
     October-November period as seriously as we do, and that you 
     will use your considerable influence to ensure that the 
     Senate does not inadvertently play into the hands of 
     extremists who might well be inspired to violence during this 
     time. We urge you to halt the movement of S. 1692. Please 
     work with us to ensure that the senseless acts of violence 
     against US citizens are not repeated in 1999.
     Vicki Saporta,
       Executive Director, National Abortion Federation.
     Eileen McGrath, JD, CAE,
       Executive Director, American Medical Women's Association.
     Wayne Shields,
       President and CEO, Association of Reproductive Health 
     Professionals.
     Gloria Feldt,
       President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
     Patricia Anderson,
       Executive Director, Medical Students for Choice.
     Jodi Magee,
       Executive Director, Physicians for Reproductive Choice and 
     Health.

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, this is a letter signed by the National 
Abortion Federation, Planned Parenthood Federation, American Medical 
Women's Association, Medical Students for Choice, and the Executive 
Director of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Wayne Shields, 
President and CEO, Association of Reproductive Health Professionals.
  This is a serious letter. This letter points out this is the very 
worst time to go to this abortion bill. This letter points out that 
``Saturday * * * will mark the one-year anniversary of the 
assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian, who was murdered at his home * * 
*'' while he stood in his living room; ``* * * five sniper attacks on 
U.S. and Canadian physicians * * * since 1994.''
  I have to say this group is very concerned; this is not the time to 
bring up this bill. What is the rush to bring up this bill this week? 
Unfortunately--they sent this letter to Senator Lott--from what I 
understand, they did not get an answer. They are saying:

       Senator Lott, on behalf of our physician members, and in 
     the interests of the public safety of the citizens of the 
     U.S. and Canada we urge you to reconsider the scheduling of a 
     floor debate on S. 1692.

  That is the bill we are going to go to.

       As you are aware, each time this legislation has been 
     considered, extremely explicit emotional and impassioned 
     debate has been aroused.

  They write, and I think this is very serious, I say to my friends:

       We have grave fears that the movement of this bill during 
     this particularly dangerous period has the potential to 
     inflame anti-abortion violence that might result in tragic 
     consequences.

  This is a simple request. Wait a week or two before bringing this 
bill to the floor. So I think it would be good if we didn't go to this 
bill right now. I am

[[Page 25758]]

very willing to debate it any time, any day of the year, for hours. I 
will stand on my feet. I will talk about the women who had this 
procedure who might have lost their lives or their health had they not 
had it. It is not a problem for me. We are going to be able to sustain 
a veto with this President. But at least we should put it off for a 
week if we are being asked to do that.
  For so many reasons, I hope we will not proceed to this abortion 
bill. If we do, we will be on the floor, we will talk about it, but I 
hope we will not go to it. I hope we will continue our work on campaign 
finance reform.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for 
her inspiring words, as well as the Senator from Michigan for his 
leadership on this issue. I will not speak for a long time, but I felt 
compelled to rise because we really are at a crucial time in a debate 
on campaign finance reform.
  We have debated this bill for a few days. Most of it has been on 
Friday and Monday, when most of the Members have not been here. The 
debate is just beginning to reach its fulsome place. We need to 
continue this debate.
  Campaign finance reform has been an issue that has been debated for 
over a decade. Scant progress was made. We made more progress on the 
floor today, when 55 Senators voted for the McCain-Feingold bill, than 
we have made in a long time. And those who wish to nip that progress in 
the bud are not for campaign finance reform.
  If anyone ever needed a distinction--there is a lot of rhetoric going 
on and a lot of little cloudmaking machines to hide what is going on--
look at the vote. If you were for campaign finance reform, you voted 
for that proposal; and if you were against, you voted against it--even 
modest campaign finance reform.
  Many of us bit our tongue when we voted for it because it is a small 
step, a very small step--the simple abolition of soft money. It is not 
even what the House did. I would expect, on a lofty issue such as this, 
the Senate to lead but instead the Senate trails far behind even the 
House of Representatives and certainly the American people.
  And now, when we want to continue the debate, there is a move to shut 
off that debate. I would certainly ask my 10 colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle who voted for this modest proposal not to shut off 
debate, if you are serious about campaign finance reform. We have not 
even begun the amendatory process.
  I have an amendment, along with the Senator from Illinois, that is 
very simple: When issue committees put ads on television, they should 
have to disclose where the money comes from--no prohibition, no 
limitation, simply disclosure. Isn't it unbelievable we would support a 
campaign finance bill and not have disclosure of where people are 
spending that money? The public certainly has a right to know about 
that.
  My good friend from Kentucky has been arguing the first amendment for 
a very long time. I don't know why we don't see the same passion on 
other first amendment issues as we see on this one, but so be it.
  But the amendment the Senator from Illinois and I will be proposing 
is a first amendment type of amendment: disclosure, sunlight, sunshine. 
If a big corporation, any other big interest--it could be an 
environmental group or a labor group or some group that I generally 
support--puts money out there, large amounts of money, to make their 
viewpoint known, the public ought to know, particularly in these days 
when advertising can be so deceptive. We have groups called citizens 
for fair this and fair that, when they are really interest group 
shields. Come clean.
  Allow that amendment to be debated. I think if the amendment were 
debated, it would pass. It has had some bipartisan support. Even the 
Senator from Nebraska has indicated a likelihood of support. But if we 
cut off debate, simply after the two cloture motions, we will have no 
chance to debate that amendment and other amendments. I think this 
amendment would strike a balance that would satisfy most people.
  So we sit in this Chamber. Today we began at 1:15. It is not that we 
are out of time; it is simply that those on the other side of the aisle 
do not want to debate this issue. They want to put a dagger in the 
heart of campaign finance reform and by not debating don't even want to 
leave fingerprints. With the cloture votes today, I say to my 
colleagues on that side of the aisle, your fingerprints are all over 
that dagger that killed campaign finance reform.
  There is not even a pretense, so at the very least let us debate it. 
Let us spend some hours reminiscent of the great days of the Republic 
and the Senate debating this issue, which is a very serious issue about 
how we govern our country. Let the debate be full. Let there be dialog. 
Let there be amendments.
  I worry about the future of this Republic. We have a great structure. 
The Founding Fathers were truly geniuses. The more I am around, the 
more I respect their genius. We have a great economic system, which the 
world emulates, that promotes entrepreneurialism, that allows anybody, 
no matter how poor they start out, to rise to the top. But we have a 
poison eating at us, and that is the mistrust that the public has of 
the Government. That mistrust is more caused by the way we finance 
campaigns than any other single issue. It creates the partisanship 
people decry.
  When I went home to New York, I got lots of that this weekend because 
of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It promotes the feeling that an 
individual citizen cannot have any influence on the Government. It 
promotes a view that it is not one-person/one-vote, but one-dollar/one-
vote. Those views we do not even have to comment on their veracity. I 
think there is a lot of truth to them. But it certainly creates a 
mistrust, a distance between Government and the people.
  In an era where things move quickly, in an era of global competition, 
in an era where we all have to work together as one, this is poison. We 
have a chance to take a modest step. It is not everything I would 
want--not even close--but it is a modest step. We made real progress 
today. We got more votes than we thought we would. Two Senators on the 
other side of the aisle who had not voted for campaign finance reform 
before have voted for it now. Maybe if we debate this for another few 
days, we will not win any more votes, but maybe we will. Maybe someone 
will offer an amendment that strikes some kind of unity, some kind of 
feeling of bringing us together.
  The issue is too important to brush aside. The issue cries out for 
full debate. To move off now, just as things begin to get going, is 
wrong and tragic, if that does not overstate it, because I think the 
issue is so important for the Republic.
  So I make a plea to the Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from 
Mississippi: Don't cut off debate. Don't use your legislative 
prerogative and might to shut this debate down. Let it continue. Let 
the debate continue. Let amendments, such as mine, be offered. Let 
amendments, such as others have proposed, be offered. Let the chips 
fall where they may. But to shut off debate in this untimely manner is 
a travesty of this body and for the American people.
  Mr. President, I yield back my time.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). The Senator from 
Washington.
  Mr. REID addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, what I would like to do now--not to bring 
any final disposition to this matter--there have been people coming on 
and off the floor. The Senator from Washington is here. If he would be 
recognized next, then Senator Levin after that, and then Senator Reed 
after that.
  Mr. REED. Could I----
  Mr. REID. Senator Reed before Senator Levin.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Senator Wellstone before everyone.
  Mr. REID. Senator Levin, and then Senator Wellstone. And then 
following Senator Wellstone, on our

[[Page 25759]]

side, Senator Bob Graham from Florida. If any Republicans come in the 
interim who want to speak, we will stick them in so there is a balance.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I will object to the request at least in 
the form in which it was presented. It seems to me there ought to be a 
right for anyone on this side of the aisle to speak first, after the 
conclusion of any speech on that side of the aisle. If the request is 
only for the order of speaking of Members of that side of the aisle, 
with the clear understanding that if a Member on this side of the aisle 
wishes to succeed one of them, that he or she may do so, then I will 
not object.
  Mr. REID. I say to the Senator from Washington, that was part of the 
consent. I already said that. If somebody wants to come in from the 
Republican side, they would step right in following the Democrat.
  Mr. GORTON. With that understanding, I will not object.
  Mr. REID. I say to the Chair, the reason for this is we have people 
who have been waiting for hours, not knowing when they are supposed to 
come. I appreciate the consent of the Senator from Washington.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Washington is recognized.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, for all of the hours that have been spent 
on the debate on the particular bill that has been before the Senate, 
this year's form of McCain-Feingold, I believe it was summarized best, 
with the most striking degree of contrast to the paradox imaginable, 
last Friday by the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Feingold. 
He came to the floor of the Senate and specifically singled out the 
Microsoft Corporation, based, of course, in the State I represent, in 
an attempt to make a direct link between campaign contributions and/or 
contributions to political parties and the appearance of political 
corruption. In order not to misstate in any respect, I will quote 
briefly from the remarks of the Senator from Wisconsin:

       Apparently Microsoft and their allies are not seeking to 
     directly affect the litigation that is being conducted with 
     regard to Microsoft by the Justice Department at this time; 
     what they are trying to do, according to this article [an 
     article in the newspapers on that day] is cut the overall 
     funding for the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. In 
     this context, if somehow things don't look right, there is 
     the ever present possibility that there would be an 
     appearance of corruption.

  The Senator from Wisconsin then went on to relate how he recently 
read that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is the world's wealthiest 
individual. This led the Senator from Wisconsin to say:

       I have no idea what Microsoft's or Bill Gates' actual 
     contributions are, and I am not suggesting that they are 
     making those contributions to influence funding of the 
     Justice Department. But for us to create a scenario where Mr. 
     Gates could give unlimited amounts of money rather than the 
     old $2,000 of hard money, or a Microsoft PAC could give more 
     than $10,000, to just have it be unlimited I believe almost 
     inherently . . . creates an appearance of corruption that is 
     bad for Microsoft, bad for the Justice Department, and bad 
     for the country.

  It is 2 weeks ago that the General Accounting Office issued a report 
indicating the Department of Justice had spent, so far, $13 million in 
a lawsuit that it has brought against the Microsoft Corporation. 
Included in that $13 million is a considerable amount of money for 
public relations efforts on behalf of that lawsuit.
  I think much of the speculation fueled by those public relations 
experts is that the Department of Justice, if it has the opportunity, 
may well ask the court literally to break up what has been the most 
successful single corporation, the single corporation most responsible 
for the dramatic change in the way our economy is run of any 
corporation in the United States. So we have an administration and a 
Government spending $13 million to prosecute a case against this 
corporation, speculating that it may ask for the breakup of the 
corporation. But for the CEO of that corporation to spend more than 
$2,000 in political contributions or for its political action committee 
to spend more than $10,000, that is an appearance of corruption which 
must be controlled by the Federal Government.
  The bill the Senator from Wisconsin was promoting at the time he made 
this speech would say that corporation and that individual could not 
give $1, either to the Republican or the Democratic Party or to any of 
their subsidiary organizations, designed to be used for the education 
of voters or indirectly for the election of an administration more 
favorable to entrepreneurship in the United States. And this is 
denominated campaign election reform designed to deal with an 
appearance of corruption. Absolutely amazing--the Microsoft 
Corporation, not accused of doing anything wrong at all but simply 
because a Member of this body or the Department of Justice itself says 
there might be an appearance of corruption, should be deprived of any 
effective means of defending itself in a political court of public 
opinion. The Government can spend $13 million or twice or three times 
$13 million engaged in the prosecution; the company cannot attempt to 
influence either the amount of money the taxpayers give to that 
Department of Justice or, more profoundly, the nature of the next 
administration that may or may not follow the same antitrust philosophy 
itself.
  Now, I guess I can lay it out. I am the Senator from the State in 
which Microsoft is located. Close to 15,000 of my constituents are 
employed by that company. They have transformed not only my State and 
my constituency in a magnificently positive fashion but the entire 
United States of America and have had a tremendously positive impact 
not only on America's image in the world but on its economic success in 
the world.
  You bet I defend them. You bet I hope in my next political campaign I 
will have its support. I already do, to a certain extent. That is 
totally public and above board. I would be totally remiss in my duties 
if I didn't do so. But to say, in a world with a Government that may be 
trying to destroy the company, that it is appropriate for this body to 
tell it that it effectively cannot participate in the political system 
or, for that matter, its employees can't effectively participate in 
preventing the Government from destroying their livelihoods in the 
corporation that they bring up is bizarre. Apparently, those who want 
to change the laws and ban political parties from raising so-called 
soft money say they do it to remove the appearance of corruption. But 
they will define what the appearance of corruption consists of so once 
anything that they dislike is described by them as an appearance of 
political corruption, all limitations are off. They can do whatever 
they want. They can restrict first amendment rights guaranteed by the 
Constitution of the United States in whatever way they would like to 
restrict them. The first amendment may permit, to an almost unlimited 
extent, pornography, but it doesn't guarantee the right of an 
individual or a group of individuals operating through a corporation to 
defend their livelihoods and their existence.
  At the outset of this debate, the proponents were asked to come up 
with any incidents of actual corruption. In fact, they go out of their 
way to say there aren't any, or there aren't any that they know of, or 
there aren't any that they are willing to report. But they say: In our 
mind's eye, the present system creates an appearance of corruption; 
therefore, we can say to Microsoft, we can say to General Motors, we 
can say, for that matter--in theory, as they work through political 
parties--to liberal individuals or interest groups that you cannot 
contribute one dollar to the political party of your choice, to the 
political party you deem is most likely to allow you to conduct your 
business and your affairs in a profitable and constructive manner.
  No attack on the first amendment rights of free speech could be more 
open or blatant than that. It says, simply, once we use those magic 
words ``appearance of corruption''--and we will define that phrase and 
we will define every activity that can be described by that phrase in 
our minds--we can then tell you that you are out of business; you can 
no longer participate, except with very modest contributions directly 
to candidates of

[[Page 25760]]

hard money. And this philosophy isn't limited to the rather bizarre 
nature of the bill before us, which says that of the 5,000 to 7,000 
registered organizations that say they want to participate in the 
political system through the use of soft money and so-called issue 
advertising, it prevents only six of them from doing so--three 
Republican formal organizations and three Democratic formal 
organizations.
  This bizarre bill says it is perfectly all right to contribute this 
money to any of the other several thousand such organizations, but it 
is only the historic political parties in the United States, around 
which we have organized for almost our entire history, the activities 
and support of which somehow or another create an appearance of 
corruption.
  Now, of course, the original McCain-Feingold bill did go beyond that 
and did say that no matter how seriously your most passionate interests 
as an individual or a group are attacked by the Government, or by a 
rival political organization during the last 60 days before an 
election, you could never mention the name of the candidate for office. 
Well, I think, for all practical purposes, we all know that proposition 
is simply blatantly unconstitutional. It flies in the face of the first 
amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
  But, this afternoon, at least for the more than 1 hour that I 
listened to speeches on this subject, the actual bill that is before us 
was almost not mentioned at all. All of the criticisms were aimed at 
the money chase through which candidates go, the demeaning nature of 
having to ask people directly for money to fund candidates' activities. 
But neither in McCain-Feingold 1 nor McCain-Feingold 2 is that subject 
dealt with at all. Not a word, not a line has anything to do with 
contributions to individual candidates.
  ``McCain-Feingold lite'' has to do only with contributions to 
political parties for purposes other than the direct advocacy, 
election, or defeat of a particular candidate. How that is supposed to 
corrupt the process is, for all practical purposes, unstated. There is 
not the slightest allegation that Members somehow do things that they 
would not otherwise do because someone has given their political party 
an amount of money that can't be used directly for their own election.
  ``McCain-Feingold heavy'' is hardly a selfless effort on the part of 
any Member of this body because what ``McCain-Feingold heavy'' says is 
that your name, Mr. President, my name, and the names of all other 
Members can't even be mentioned in one of these ads for 60 days before 
an election. Boy, that is certainly comfort for the political class--
take everyone out of the business for the last 2 months before an 
election of communicating their own ideas about candidates 
independently of a candidate himself or herself.
  Now, we are also told that we didn't get enough time to debate this 
matter and that the debate wasn't broad enough. I was here when we came 
very close to a unanimous consent agreement for a week's worth of 
debate on this issue. The whole thrust of that set of negotiations was 
that we could start with whatever the Senators from Wisconsin and 
Arizona wished, but there would be lots of amendments--amendments from 
the Democratic side of the aisle, amendments from the Republican side 
of the aisle, and several votes on a wide range of ideas.
  But what actually happened was, on the second day--I must say, over 
the objections of the Senator from Arizona, who sits right in front of 
me--the minority leader and the minority whip set up a situation under 
which nobody else's amendments except theirs could be brought up, until 
theirs were completely dealt with.
  My friend and colleague, the junior Senator from Nebraska, Mr. Hagel, 
came down here with a proposal in which I joined that said, OK, let's 
have a little bit more balance; let's increase the amounts of hard 
money contributions that we like--almost, though not quite, back to the 
level they were in 1974, in real dollars. And then at the same time, we 
will impose soft money limitations of the same amounts in which we have 
hard money limitations. There are even a few Members on the other side 
of the aisle who thought that was an idea worthy of discussion. But we 
weren't allowed to discuss it. We weren't allowed to put that one up. 
They used their perfect parliamentary right to squeeze it down to their 
own proposals. And now they complain because their own proposals could 
not get a sufficient number of votes to bring them to any kind of final 
decision.
  Now, in an ideal world, I don't think we should limit either of these 
kinds of contributions. I think we should make them all public and make 
them public promptly. But if we are going to do so, I can't see the 
slightest rationale in the world for saying that the limitation in 
certain forms of speech to six organizations across the United States 
of America is zero, while limitations on everyone else with that kind 
of money do not exist at all, and limitations on direct contributions 
of candidates are so low as a result of 25 years of inflation that 
anyone who truly wants to participate has to do it in a different 
division.
  One of the primary reasons more money goes every year into so-called 
soft money contributions is the fact that hard money contributions 
directed to candidates are increasingly limited simply by the passage 
of time and by inflation. But then, of course, there would be other 
forms of soft money that aren't even remotely covered by even the broad 
version of McCain-Feingold. That is the political advocacy of every 
major media in the United States--of newspaper, radio station, and 
television station. What is the value of those contributions on 
editorial pages across the country? Does the average citizen who is 
brought up having an interest in government have the same influence 
over the political process as the editorial director of the New York 
Times? Of course not. Does that individual have the same influence as 
the head of Common Cause or the National Rifle Association or the AFL-
CIO? Of course not. Both latter organizations are at least membership 
organizations which sometimes to a certain extent reflect the views of 
their members.
  The newspaper editorial writer reflects only the views of the 
newspaper owner or the newspaper publisher or the decisionmaker within 
that newspaper. Of course, those newspapers want to limit other 
people's voices. From their perspective, the first amendment is the 
total protection, from their view, and it is. But to exactly the extent 
they can limit the voices of others, their voices will be heard more 
loudly. And little is heard about the fact their voice is louder than 
that of the average citizen. But the first amendment does not say 
everyone has an equal voice in the public marketplace. It does say 
everyone has an equal vote in an election. But with respect to the 
marketplace and political ideas, it simply says Congress shall pass no 
law abridging the freedom of speech. And every member of the Supreme 
Court of the United States of America in 1974, when the last case came 
before it, said that freedom of speech to be effective does allow and 
require the use of money to make it carry further than any of our 
individual voices do on a windy day out of doors--every single one of 
them.
  So the idea that somehow or other all voices have to be heard equally 
is not only not found in the Constitution, it is not found in any free 
society. To allow the Government to try to determine what voice each 
person sends is exactly a power James Madison and the draftsmen of the 
first amendment said they would not allow the Government to do.
  Let me return to the point at which I started, which does at least 
have a virtue of dealing with the bill that is before us and not the 
lamentations of many of the Members on this floor that have nothing to 
do with the bill that is before us.
  They are saying, in effect, in one instance named by the Senator from 
Wisconsin, that a company now being prosecuted by the Federal 
Government may

[[Page 25761]]

not participate effectively in the political world out of which that 
prosecution grew, may not participate effectively in supporting 
candidates or a political party that will have a profoundly different 
view on antitrust laws. The Government can spend an unlimited amount of 
money. Editorials writers can write an unlimited number of editorials. 
But the very subject of that prosecution, the very subject of those 
editorials, cannot participate effectively in the political process 
that brought about the prosecution in the first place.
  The very statement of that kind of limitation is an argument--in my 
view an overwhelming argument--against this proposal at the present 
time. The marketplace of ideas is disorderly. The marketplace of ideas 
is open. The marketplace of ideas is often dominated by those who have 
the most ideas, the greatest stake in whether or not they carry. No 
citizen is limited in his or her participation. But each citizen can 
spend as much of his or her time and effort and money as he or she 
deems necessary at least to see to it those ideas are heard effectively 
by the people of the United States in a free country.
  I deeply hope Microsoft and the employees who work for it in my State 
and elsewhere will have decided by this time next year that they need a 
new administration with a very different direction of the United States 
in order to keep providing for this country the kind of leadership they 
have provided. I am not sure I have persuaded them of that yet, but if 
I do, and if others do, they should not be artificially limited with 
the statement that freedom of speech is for someone else but, for all 
practical purposes, not for you when your very existence is threatened.
  That is what this is all about. And I don't think views on the floor 
of the Senate--or at least the votes--are going to be changed by 
another week's worth of debate.
  I am unhappy only with an alternative idea, somewhat more reasonable 
and somewhat more balanced, that the very tactics of the people who are 
now protesting the end of this debate prevent this presentation.
  We will try at least to put it in play for the next time around. But 
for now, it seems to me appropriate to move on to another subject.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator withhold for a second?
  Mr. REED. I withhold.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, will the Senator from Nevada yield to me 
for a procedural request?
  Mr. REID. Yes.


                           Order Of Procedure

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a vote occur 
on adoption of the pending motion to proceed at 9:50 a.m. on Wednesday, 
October 20, with the 20 minutes prior to vote equally divided between 
the majority leader and the minority leader.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, under those circumstances, for the 
majority leader, I can now say that in light of this agreement, there 
will be no further votes today. The next vote will occur at 9:50 a.m. 
tomorrow.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, thank you.
  First, let me thank the Senator from Michigan for graciously allowing 
me to precede him. I also understand he may have a parliamentary 
inquiry.
  Mr. LEVIN. I thank my good friend from Rhode Island. I wonder if I 
could propound a parliamentary inquiry without the Senator from Rhode 
Island losing his right to the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEVIN. There has been a lot of confusion about whether or not the 
bill was amendable prior to the cloture vote, and whether it would have 
been amendable after the cloture vote had cloture been invoked.
  Parliamentary inquiry: I ask whether the tree was filled basically 
prior to the first cloture vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Prior to the cloture vote, an amendment to the 
Wellstone amendment was in order. If cloture had been invoked, the 
Wellstone amendment would fall, and an amendment to the bill then would 
have been in order.
  Mr. LEVIN. If cloture had been invoked after the disposition of all 
pending germane amendments, would the bill have been open to amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Once an amendment had been agreed to upon 
which cloture had been invoked, then further amendments would have been 
appropriate.
  Mr. LEVIN. If the amendment had not been agreed to but had been 
defeated, would the bill have been open to amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. It would still be in order.
  Mr. LEVIN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise with regret. Again, we are on the 
verge of abandoning substantive votes on campaign finance reform. This 
is an issue of vital importance to the American people. It is of vital 
importance to the majority of Members of this body.
  We are here today because of the efforts of many, but particularly 
the efforts of Senator McCain and Senator Feingold, who have advanced 
this issue relentlessly over the course of the last several years. I 
regretfully and unfortunately fear we will step away once again from 
this debate, step away once again from consideration of this important 
topic. This is detrimental not only to this body, but also to the 
American people, who desperately want to see changes to our campaign 
finance system. I am disappointed because we have come very close 
collectively in this Congress to a principled reform of our campaign 
finance system.
  The other body has passed legislation which is comprehensive. They 
have passed legislation which is now embodied in an amendment filed by 
Senator Daschle and Senator Torricelli. I believe this legislation goes 
a long way towards addressing many of the problems that confront our 
campaign finance system. It is not perfect. It is not absolutely 
complete. But it is a powerful corrective to the current problems we 
find in our campaign finance system.
  The amendment which Senator Daschle and Senator Torricelli have 
advanced, known popularly as the Shays-Meehan amendment for the 
sponsors in the other body, does several important things. First and 
foremost, it bans soft money. Unlike the McCain-Feingold legislation, 
it bans all soft money--not just soft money directed at political 
parties.
  Although we speak in these terms constantly, soft money, hard money, 
et cetera, I want to point out that soft money is unregulated 
contributions from corporations and individuals, typically very wealthy 
individuals, that are increasingly commonplace in elections throughout 
this country.
  The Daschle legislation bans all such soft money contributions with 
respect to Federal elections. I believe that is the best way to 
proceed. Even though the McCain-Feingold bill is noteworthy and 
important, I fear simply banning money from political parties will 
drive these contributions to other formats, other forms, other forums.
  Campaign dollars, like water, find their own level. When one channel 
is blocked, another channel will be pursued. Unless we have a 
comprehensive approach, unless we ban all soft money, rather than 
eliminating this problem we will merely redirect and reposition these 
soft dollars into other forms.
  The second important point with respect to the Torricelli and Daschle 
legislation, is that it recognizes a relatively new phenomena in 
campaigns, sham issue ads, which are really campaign ads which are 
unregulated. They are dressed up to talk about an issue, but they are 
really about attacking candidates. Unless we have some disclosure, some 
regulation, these ads will become more prevalent and more pernicious in 
our campaign system.
  The third point that the Daschle-Torricelli bill addresses is 
improving disclosure by the Federal Elections Commission and 
enforcement by the Federal Election Commission. It is not sufficient to 
have laws and rules on the books; they must be enforced. We all

[[Page 25762]]

understand and believe that the more knowledge the American public has 
about campaign contributions and their sources and uses, the more 
comfortable they will feel with the political system.
  Finally, this legislation which Senator Daschle and Senator 
Torricelli introduced establishes a commission to study further reform. 
All of these points are necessary. They don't completely solve all the 
issues that confront our campaign finance system, but they go a long 
way towards advancing the cause of fundamental campaign finance reform.
  Personally, I believe one of the problems we face is the escalation 
of spending on elections throughout this country and that we should 
address this issue of unlimited spending. None of the legislation 
currently before the Senate goes that far, but I believe we have to 
review and visit that issue when we again commence our debate on 
campaign finance reform.
  This issue of campaign finance reform is not an academic, 
hypothetical, theoretical concern. It comes directly from the concerns 
of the American people. It is manifested by their increasing cynicism 
about the political system. It is manifested by their increasing 
indifference to the forms of government, to elections, to voting. This 
cynicism and indifference weakens our civic connections, weakens the 
foundation of our government--which is at heart the belief by our 
people in its fairness, efficiency and its service to them. All of this 
can be traced in part to the growing cynicism towards the campaign 
finance system.
  These public phenomena have been measured by various surveys. In 
August, the Counsel for Excellence in Government released a survey 
conducted by Peter Hart and Robert Teeter, a Democratic pollster and a 
Republican pollster. They found less than 40 percent of the American 
people believe in the immortal words of President Abraham Lincoln: Our 
government is by and for the people.
  Rather, they believe it is a captive of special interests, and the 
lure the special interests use are campaign finance dollars.
  In the past, people have been disillusioned with big government and 
unaccountable bureaucrats. Today, they are cynical and disillusioned 
about the flood of cash flowing through the campaign finance system.
  Another survey in January of this year, the Center on Policy 
Attitudes, found continuing record high public dissatisfaction with 
government. This finding supports the notion that people believe that 
government, and particularly elections, are not about ideas and 
policies, but about money. Money is talking and the American public's 
voice is being drowned out.
  We must counter this--but we don't counter this type of public 
perception by walking away and abandoning campaign finance reform; 
rather, we counter it properly, correctly, and appropriately by 
debating and voting on substantive campaign finance reform.
  I have made it clear my preference is for legislation along the lines 
of Senator Daschle's and Senator Torricelli's amendment, essentially 
accepting the work of the other body in the Shays-Meehan legislation, 
moving it forward, letting the President sign it, and letting the 
American people know that we are listening to them; we hear them, and 
we want to respond positively to their concerns and their growing 
uneasiness with our campaign finance system.
  We are all trapped in a system that no one seems to like. The public 
does not like it and candidates are increasingly uneasy and concerned 
about the need to raise huge amounts of money, the constant effort 
needed to do that, and the perception of their efforts with respect to 
their obligations as public servants. Donors are increasingly troubled 
by the system. Indeed, many prominent business men and women throughout 
the country have banded together to support comprehensive campaign 
finance reform. It seems we are engaged in a race to the bottom--a race 
to see not what idea will prevail but how much money one can raise; to 
not just express a message but to drown out all other messages.
  Another disturbing aspect of this process, campaigns now are being 
wrenched away from the candidate. One of the more disconcerting aspects 
of recent campaigns, a candidate can be out there making his or her 
case and suddenly be informed there is a TV ad from some unknown group 
from someplace in America arguing against them, advocating their 
defeat. All of this suggests we have to do something about our campaign 
system.
  As I mentioned, the other body has stepped forward. They have given 
us legislation. We are very close, if we embrace this legislation, to 
passage of fundamental campaign finance reform. I hope we will take 
this step, but it appears increasingly clear we are abandoning our 
obligation to the American people. We are stepping away from votes on 
the substance of campaign finance reform, be it the McCain-Feingold 
legislation or the Daschle-Torricelli legislation. I believe that is a 
mistake. I believe the American people want us to act responsibly; they 
want us to act promptly; they want us to do what they sent us here to 
do, which is their business. And their business in the campaign finance 
area is putting in place reasonable restraints on spending.
  A lot has been said about the marketplace of ideas, and that any 
fetters on campaign contributions would somehow affect the marketplace 
of ideas. There very well might be a marketplace for ideas in today's 
campaigns, but it is a market with very high barriers to entry, 
barriers that require extensive fundraising to overcome. It certainly 
is not perfect competition because the American people believe their 
voices cannot compete with the voices of large corporations or wealthy 
individuals who can, through direct contributions to candidates and 
indirect contributions of soft money, get their messages across on 
television or in the advertising media. What many people fear is that 
elections have become less about candidates and ideas and more about 
auctions. They find that instinctively repelling.
  We have a chance to act. We should act. Regretfully, today we are 
forsaking that obligation. We are turning away from campaign finance 
reform. We are abandoning an obligation we should meet. I regret that. 
I hope we can proceed with this debate and move to votes on these 
measures, but I fear that will not be the case.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, tomorrow we will be casting the critical 
vote which will decide whether or not those of us who are in the 
majority will insist that this body continue on the debate on campaign 
finance reform. This will be the vote that counts. This will determine 
whether the majority will back off because our bill is being 
filibustered. This is a real test vote tomorrow in the battle to close 
the soft money loophole.
  We knew it was not going to be easy. We knew this was going to be 
filibustered. But it is not the first time that major legislation 
involving key democratic principles has been filibustered on the floor 
of this Senate. Those of us who favor closing the soft money loophole, 
reducing the influence of huge contributions in political campaigns, it 
seems to me, now have to be just as committed, just as determined, just 
as passionate in our beliefs as the opponents are in their beliefs.
  The opponents have every right to filibuster our bill. The rules 
allow filibusters. We ought to change those rules, but until we do, 
most, if not all, of us participate, from time to time, in cloture 
votes, making the other side get to 60 before we proceed. But just as 
the minority has a right to filibuster a bill, those of us who are in 
the majority have the right to say we are not going to back off just 
because a bill is being filibustered. We are not going to give up our 
effort. Rather, we are going to say to the opponents of this bill who 
are in the minority and who are filibustering our bill: That is your 
right and you have a right to exercise it. Proceed with the filibuster. 
We are not going to withdraw our legislation.
  During the civil rights days there were instances where there had to 
be

[[Page 25763]]

multiple cloture votes. There was a bill relative to fair housing in 
1968 which had four cloture votes over a period of 7 or 8 weeks before 
there were enough votes to end the debate. The people who passionately 
believed in civil rights proceeded with their cause. They did not give 
up because they did not get enough votes to close off debate and to end 
the filibuster the first time. They did not give up the second time. 
They did not give up the third time; 7 or 8 weeks later, on their 
fourth cloture vote, finally they were able to achieve success.
  I was reading these debates from the civil rights days, 1968, last 
night. I read some of the speeches of a whole bunch of great Senators 
on both sides of the issue: Senators Mansfield, Hart, Ervin, and other 
Senators, Javits. They were debating civil rights. It was a 
controversial bill. It involved whether or not citizens would have a 
right to housing free from discrimination based on race.
  What struck me was the determination of the supporters of civil 
rights, the unwillingness to give in, give up, because they could not 
get enough votes the first time around to stop the filibuster. Senator 
Hart, after they lost the first cloture vote said:

       Those of us who support the bill that has been pending now 
     for, I think, 6 weeks, on the occasion of the vote last week 
     . . . indicated our intention to submit a modification today 
     or prior to the vote today. The modification would lessen 
     somewhat the reach of the coverage and make some procedural 
     changes.
       I want to report that over the weekend a new and most 
     encouraging factor has developed. It is a new force and gives 
     a new dimension and promise for those of us who believe with 
     a very deep conviction that this country needs to be assured 
     that what a majority of the Senate has plainly indicated it 
     desires to achieve can be achieved, an effective . . . open 
     housing order.

  Today, a majority of the Senate, in the words of Senator Hart, 
``plainly indicated'' that it desires to achieve campaign finance 
reform. On one vote, there were 52 Senators; on another vote, there 
were 53 Senators. Today a clear majority of this Senate plainly 
indicated that it wants to achieve campaign finance reform.
  Then it occurred, the third time they tried to attain an end to the 
filibuster. By this time, Senator Dirksen, who was the Republican 
leader, who had been a supporter of civil rights prior to this bill in 
the earlier days of the 1960s--Senator Dirksen, in 1968, after voting 
against ending debate the first and second time, decided that, with 
certain changes in the legislation, he was going to vote to terminate a 
filibuster in which he had participated. He said:

       The matter of equality of opportunity in civil rights is an 
     idea whose time has come. And all the fulminations, whether 
     substantial or superficial, will not stay the march of that 
     idea.

  The time has come for us to end the unlimited amount of money which 
flows into campaigns. This is an idea whose time has come. A majority 
of us have so voted. A majority of us feel strongly about it, and the 
public, much more important than either of those comments, feels very 
strongly about it. They are sickened by the amount of negative 
advertising they are bombarded with. They are sickened when they read 
about $50,000 and $100,000 and $1 million going into political parties 
in order, mainly, to fund these negative TV ads.
  They are sickened when they read about a Democratic Party invitation 
or a Republican Party invitation that sells access to our key leaders 
for big contributions. They are disgusted when they see an invitation 
that reads: For $50,000 a year, you get two annual events with the 
President, two annual events with the Vice President, and you get to 
join party leadership as they travel abroad to examine current 
developing political and economic issues in other countries. They are 
disgusted when they see for $250,000 you get breakfast with the 
majority leader and the Speaker and you get a luncheon with the Senate 
Republican committee chairman of your choice. So for $250,000 you get a 
luncheon with the committee chairman of your choice. What do we expect 
the American public to think when they hear and read about that? And 
that is directly connected to the soft money loophole.
  The scourge of soft money, of unlimited contributions, inherently 
breeds distrust for our democratic institutions. It is something that 
is inherent in the unlimited amount of the contribution.
  Now, many of us believe very strongly that is true. But far more 
important than that is what the Supreme Court has said about this 
issue. In the Buckley case itself, a case which we all look to, and I 
will quote from, the Supreme Court said the following about the 
``appearance of corruption inherent in a system permitting unlimited 
financial contributions. . . .'' Those are the words of the Court, and 
now I am going to read the entire quote:

       And while disclosure requirements serve the many salutary 
     purposes discussed elsewhere in this opinion, Congress was 
     surely entitled to conclude that disclosure was only a 
     partial measure and that contribution ceilings were a 
     necessary legislative concomitant to deal with the reality or 
     appearance of corruption inherent in a system permitting 
     unlimited financial contributions, even when the identities 
     of the contributors and the amounts of their contributions 
     are fully disclosed.

  The Buckley Court went on to say the following:

       Not only is it difficult to isolate suspect contributions 
     but, more importantly, Congress was justified in concluding 
     that the interest in safeguarding against the appearance of 
     impropriety requires that the opportunity for abuse inherent 
     in the process of raising large monetary contributions be 
     eliminated.

  Then the Court wrote about the contributions which are given either 
for a quid pro quo or for the appearance of a quid pro quo. This is 
what they wrote:

       To the extent that large contributions are given to secure 
     political quid pro quos from current and potential office 
     holders, the integrity of our system of representative 
     democracy is undermined. . . . Of almost equal concern is . . 
     .

  That is, equal now to the quid pro quo--

     the impact of the appearance of corruption stemming from 
     public awareness of the opportunities for abuse inherent in a 
     regime of large individual financial contributions. . . . 
     Congress could legitimately conclude that the avoidance of 
     the appearance of improper influence ``is also critical . . . 
     if confidence in the system of representative government is 
     not to be eroded to a disastrous extent.''

  The Supreme Court wrote that before the soft money loophole became 
fully exploited, before invitations, such as the kind I read from, went 
out telling people if they contribute $250,000 or $100,000, they will 
get meetings with the majority leader or they will get meetings with 
the President or they will get meetings with the committee chairman of 
their choice. This kind of sale of access, which we see in such a 
disgraceful display, I believe, on the part of both parties, was not 
even in existence at the time the Buckley Court wrote that opinion.
  Both parties are engaged in this. This is not pointing the finger at 
either party. Both parties engaged in soliciting these huge--unlimited 
just about--amounts of money in exchange for access. And that is soft 
money. That is unregulated money. That is money above and beyond what 
is permitted to be directly contributed to a candidate.
  In fact, the Supreme Court was very explicit about another provision 
of the law which provides that $25,000 is the limit which can be given 
in all contributions during a year. The Supreme Court said this about 
the $25,000. They describe the $25,000 limit as a modest restraint 
which serves, in the words of the Court, ``to prevent evasion of the 
$1,000 contribution limitation by a person who might otherwise 
contribute massive amounts of money to a particular candidate through 
the use of unearmarked contributions to political committees likely to 
contribute to that candidate or huge contributions to a candidate's 
political party.''
  So we have a $25,000 per year limit in the law. That is the most you 
can give to a candidate or to a party, and the purpose, the Court said, 
was legitimate to prevent evasion of the $1,000 contribution limit to 
any particular candidate. And yet we have parties soliciting $250,000 
and $50,000 and $100,000. That is the state of decay of our campaign 
financing.

[[Page 25764]]

  So what we will decide in our vote tomorrow morning is whether or not 
the majority of this body--which has voted today to support the 
elimination of the soft money loophole--the majority of this body, 
which has voted today for campaign finance reform, will be willing to 
simply withdraw because the filibusterers have, so far, succeeded in 
stopping us from getting to 60 votes. That is what we will decide 
tomorrow.
  This great Senate is a battleground where wills are tested, where 
people who believe strongly in one side of an issue will test their 
commitment against people who believe strongly in the other side of an 
issue. Everybody in this body has rights. The majority has rights. The 
minority has rights. The minority has a right to filibuster, a right 
which I will defend until we change those rules.
  But the majority surely has the right not to give up in the face of a 
filibuster. The majority has a right--indeed, I believe an obligation 
on a matter of this principle--not to simply say: Well, we didn't 
succeed the first time or the second time, so we're just going to throw 
in the towel.
  If we feel keenly about this issue--as the majority, I believe and 
hope, does--then tomorrow, when that vote comes, we should vote not to 
move to other business. It has nothing to do with what the other 
business is.
  The issue tomorrow morning isn't whether or not we favor or oppose 
late-term abortions. That is not the issue. That was clear when the 
Democratic leader offered a unanimous consent request to move to the 
late-term abortions bill, to move to the late-term abortions bill by 
unanimous consent, which would have allowed us to then return, 
immediately after the disposition of that issue, to the campaign 
finance reform. But the Republican leader, our majority leader, 
objected to that unanimous consent proposal and as a result made a 
motion. And if this motion succeeds, then campaign finance reform goes 
back to the calendar and is put on the shelf. The vote tomorrow is the 
acid test vote as to whether or not we in the majority, who favor the 
closing of the soft money loophole, who believe that loophole is the 
principal culprit in the erosion of our campaign finance laws, those of 
us who believe that soft money has blown the lid off the contribution 
limits of our campaign finance system, those of us who believe the 
appearance of impropriety, which is created when people are solicited 
for huge sums of money to political parties and those parties, of 
course, turn around and spend it relative to campaigns and candidates, 
which is their business, those of us who believe keenly that this 
system is broken and we have to close this loophole--tomorrow will be 
the acid test for us. Tomorrow we will be put to the test.
  It is not an easy test for all of us. Tomorrow we will be asked 
whether or not we are willing to move to other business, to put back on 
the calendar, to put on the shelf, this fight for campaign finance 
reform.
  It is my hope the vote tomorrow will be at least as strong as the 
vote we had today, that 52 or 53 of us will say: No, we want to stay on 
this bill or come back to this bill automatically; we want to address 
an issue which has created such a terrible feeling in the stomachs and 
the hearts of our people. That is the feeling that is created when this 
huge amount of money washes into these political campaigns and when it 
is used to buy the kind of access which is purchased from both 
political parties.
  This will be the acid test vote. This is the key vote. I hope we can 
live up to the responsibility we have to fight as hard for something we 
believe in as the opponents oppose with all their hearts. I hope we can 
do what was done in the days of the civil rights bills, where one 
failure to stop a filibuster did not deter the supporters of civil 
rights, where two failures to stop a filibuster did not deter the 
supporters of civil rights, where three failures did not stop the 
supporters of civil rights. They proceeded. They amended. They 
modified. They worked the issue because civil rights day had come. And 
just as the day for campaign finance reform has now come, I hope we can 
live up to our responsibility tomorrow and vote not to move to other 
business but, rather, to stay on this issue, to put the public focus on 
this issue, to say to those who would filibuster, that is your right, 
but we are not going to withdraw simply because you in the minority are 
filibustering this important cause.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brownback). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Michigan for 
his comments. As I was listening to him talking about the history of 
the civil rights movement, it occurred to me that the civil rights 
movement was all about giving people of color, all Americans, the right 
to participate fully in the political life of our Nation. In many ways, 
I consider this issue to be every bit as important as that issue.
  The civil rights movement was a movement that changed our country for 
the better, not just for people of color but for all of us. I think 
today many Americans believe they have been locked out and they can't 
fully participate in the political life of our Nation. I think the 
ethical issue of our time is the way in which big money has essentially 
hijacked politics, has corrupted politics in a systemic sense. 
Therefore, I think Senator Levin is absolutely right.
  I will not speak very long. I have had a chance to speak many times 
during this debate. I believe, as a Senator, I should come here today 
and say this vote tomorrow morning is all about whether or not Senators 
who say they want this reform will maintain the commitment to it. It is 
quite one thing for those who are opposed to reform to filibuster this 
bill, but it is quite another thing for the rest of us to say: Well, 
you filibustered the bill; now we move on to other legislation.
  If Senators want to continue to block this, then they will have to 
continue to block it. If, in fact, those of us who believe the most 
important single thing we can do right now is to at least get some of 
this big money out of politics in the case of soft money, the least 
accountable part of the giving and the taking, then I think we have to 
be willing to fight for it.
  I hope the majority who voted for this legislation, who voted for 
what I think would be a historically significant reform, a step forward 
for our country in getting some of the big money out and bringing 
citizens back in, will be the same majority voting tomorrow. I think 
the vote tomorrow is really the critical vote. Either we essentially 
say to those who have filibustered and those who have blocked our 
efforts, we will go away; it is over, or we will say, no, you don't 
move on to other legislation; we are going to continue to speak out and 
continue to debate and continue to work hard until we pass reform.
  It is late in the day. The vote is tomorrow morning. But I am hoping 
that, through the media, citizens will understand what this vote is 
about tomorrow. I really believe people in the country want to see us 
make this change.
  I have an amendment. I have a self-interest reason. I have an 
amendment I have introduced. I am not going to get a vote on this 
amendment if everybody goes away. Given how difficult it is to pass 
reform, given all the ways in which those vested interests who give the 
money, those who are the well connected, those who are the heavy 
hitters, those who are the well heeled seem to have too much influence 
here, and given the fact that those who have the power don't want the 
change, I think that is, in part, what we are up against.
  The vast majority of the people in the country want the change. If we 
don't get this vote tomorrow and it is all over, I am absolutely 
convinced the energy is going to have to come from the grassroots 
level.
  I have an amendment--and I will come back with it over and over 
again--that basically says, if we are not willing to pass the reform 
legislation here, then let the people in our States decide. We are a 
grassroots political culture. Sometimes it is the

[[Page 25765]]

local level, sometimes it is the State level, which is willing to light 
a candle and show the way.
  If Massachusetts and Vermont and Maine and Arizona have passed clean 
money/clean election legislation, which basically gets all of the 
interested private money out and says to candidates, if you run for 
office, and it is voluntary, but if you will agree to spending limits, 
you can draw from the funding in this clean money/clean election fund 
so it will be a clean election; it will be clean money: it won't be 
interested money; it will be disinterested money, the elections will 
belong to the people in the States and the Government will belong to 
the people in the States and this is what we really ought to do.
  If they want to do that, then my amendment says they ought to be able 
to apply it to Federal office as well. They ought to be able to say 
that is the way we want to elect Senators or Representatives from 
Minnesota or Kansas or Michigan or whatever State we are talking about.
  If tomorrow we don't get the vote, which essentially says we refuse 
to back down, we don't have 60 votes yet, you people will have to 
continue to filibuster this and we are going to keep having amendments, 
we are going to keep having votes, and we are going to keep having 
debate.
  The majority leader said we had 5 days of debate. We haven't had 5 
days of debate. I am still puzzled why we didn't come into session 
until 1 today. I am not saying that in the spirit of whining. I am 
saying that in the spirit of some indignation and anger. We should have 
been in here this morning. We should have been debating the vote we 
were taking this afternoon on the McCain-Feingold bill. Senators should 
have had the opportunity to come and talk about why they were for it or 
why they were against it. It is not as if this is a small issue.
  It is not as if this is a small issue. When we talk about how we 
finance our elections, when we talk about who gets to run for office, 
who wins office, what kind of issues we look at, and whether or not 
people believe in the political process, we are talking about whether 
or not we have a representative democracy. That is what we are talking 
about.
  I argue that not only have we moved far away from the principle that 
each person should count as one and no more than one, but we are also 
getting to the point where we have Government of, by, and for a few 
people; Government of, by, and for those who can make the big 
contributions; Government of, by, and for just a tiny slice of the 
population. That is hardly a healthy, functioning, representative 
democracy. That is really what this debate is all about.
  The problem is, we haven't had much of a debate. It is 6:20, and I am 
out here, and this is the end of the day, I gather. Tomorrow morning, 
we will have the vote. This debate has just begun. It should not be 
over.
  Really, what I hope is that tomorrow we will vote against moving on 
to other legislation and there will be a lot of Senators out here. I 
will have this amendment that says let the people at the grassroots 
level determine this, and if people in our States want to get the big 
money out, and they want to have clean elections, and they want to have 
clean money, and they want to do it this way, then let them apply it to 
Senate and House races because, I am telling you, I think that is 
actually the way it is going to go. We won't get a chance to have an 
up-or-down vote on that amendment or many others that Senators have. We 
won't have people out here spelling out why they are for McCain-
Feingold, or for other changes, what ways they want to improve it, what 
do they think we should do. We haven't had that full debate.
  This issue deserves that debate. This is supposed to be the world's 
greatest deliberative body. But we haven't done the deliberation. What 
we have had is an effort to block this, and I think those who block 
this legislation are just hoping it will go away. The way it goes away 
is if those of us who have been for the reform just literally fold our 
tents and go away. Some of us around here are making the appeal that 
that should not happen.
  I want to make one final point. And I am speaking as one Senator from 
Minnesota. I think for me, ever since I came here in 1990, this has 
been the issue. There are many issues I care about, but this is such a 
core issue. I find it hard to believe that all of us will not focus on 
economic justice, on making sure we have equal opportunity for every 
child, and on making sure we have environmental protection on this 
land, making sure we do something about the conditions in the inner 
city, making sure people in rural America have a chance, making sure 
family farmers get a decent price, making sure there is a good 
education for every child, making sure we speak to the bread-and-butter 
economic issues that affect the vast majority of families, making sure 
we have the courage to take on the big insurance companies, big oil 
companies, pharmaceutical companies, and telecommunication companies.
  I think the way in which we finance campaigns and the influence of 
big money diverts our efforts, frustrates our efforts, and determines 
that we won't be able to make this change. This is the core issue. This 
is all about--as Bill Moyers, a wonderful journalist, has said--the 
``soul of democracy.'' That is what this debate is about.
  If this debate is all about the soul of democracy, if whether or not 
we are going to pass some reform is all about the soul of democracy, if 
this is all about whether or not we are going to continue to have a 
real functioning representative democracy, that we are still going to 
have self-government, then I think we don't do this in 4 days; we don't 
go away.
  Tomorrow morning, there is a critical vote. I am really hoping the 
majority who voted for the McCain-Feingold bill--a very modest effort, 
a stripped-down piece of legislation, with bare minimum reform, that is 
at least a step in the positive direction--those Senators who voted for 
that I hope will be the same Senators who will say: No, we are not 
going to let you take this off the agenda, this issue stays on the 
agenda of the Senate, and we want full-scale debate and an opportunity 
to introduce amendments, and we want everybody out here spelling out 
for the people in our States why we are for reform or why we think this 
current system is unacceptable.
  The other point I will make is that, for those of you who are working 
around the country with public campaigns, for all of the locally 
elected leaders who have said, we are committed in our States to 
passing clean money/clean election legislation, I say go to it. What 
happened out here on the floor of the Senate serves notice that the way 
this change is going to take place is from the grassroots level.
  What I want to do as a Senator is to support those efforts everywhere 
in the country. I want to meet with people doing the organizing. I want 
to continue to bring the amendment to the floor of the Senate which 
says, if States want to go in that direction and apply the clean money/
clean election initiatives to Federal races, they should be able to do 
so because I am convinced that you won't be stopped. It could be that 
the monied interests are going to be able to stop the forum here, but I 
don't think they are going to be able to stop it in Minnesota or in 
States all around our country.
  We are going to have to do it at the grassroots level. We are going 
to have to bring more pressure from the grassroots level and have more 
of this legislation passed by the States. It will bubble up, and 
eventually--I certainly hope before I finish up my career in public 
service--we will finally pass sweeping legislation which not only will 
get a lot of the big money out of politics and a lot of people back 
into politics but will do something that is even more important, and 
that will be to renew democracy.
  I look for the day when people in our country are engaged in public 
affairs, when we have a really good citizen politics. I look for the 
day when young people can't wait to run for public office and serve in 
public office. I just hope for the day, and dream for the day, when 
people have a really good

[[Page 25766]]

feeling about public life, a really good feeling about politics, a 
really good feeling about political parties, a really good feeling 
about the debate on the issues. I long for that day. I hope for that 
day. I dream for that day.
  One way or the another, I am hoping and dreaming that during my 
career in the Senate we will be able to pass this legislation. I hoped 
it would be now. Whether or not it will be now depends upon whether or 
not we will have a majority of Senators who will say tomorrow: We are 
not moving off this legislation, we are not going to let those who 
oppose reform take this question off the table; this will be the 
business of the Senate tomorrow, the next day, and the next day, and 
maybe the next day after that, until we pass reform.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAHAM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida is recognized.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, last night, surprisingly, our session 
adjourned early. This morning, even more surprisingly, we had no 
session at all. I am sad to say I am suspicious enough to think that 
the reason for the early adjournment yesterday and the absence of a 
session this morning was in order to reduce the opportunity for those 
such as myself who believe the issue we are debating is extremely 
fundamental, albeit also extremely sensitive to some, and therefore 
deserves a full discussion. By the shortening of the session yesterday 
and this morning's termination of the session, we lost several hours 
that would have otherwise been used to discuss this issue with our 
colleagues and with the American people. But there were some benefits 
of the fact that we were not in session last evening and we were not in 
session this morning. And that is that some of us--I hope many of us--
had an opportunity to see a repeat of a lecture that was given in 1995 
by the eminent American historian, David McCullough. The lecture was 
given at the LBJ school at the University of Texas in Austin, TX. It 
was on a general topic of ``Character Above All''--``Character Above 
All.'' The topic of David McCullough's lecture was Harry Truman, a man 
who served in this Chamber with great distinction, presided over this 
Chamber briefly as Vice President of the United States, and then for 
the better part of 8 years served as President of the United States.
  In his lecture, Mr. McCullough outlined a number of the 
characteristics of Harry Truman that made him such a distinguished 
figure. Mr. McCullough said that he was a better American than he was a 
President; that he was the embodiment of the essential value of his 
country--a man who had been raised in rural circumstances in Missouri, 
was not particularly well educated but, in fact, by his own efforts 
became classically educated, and then rose to the highest position in 
the land at a time of extreme national urgency during those critical 
years immediately after World War II.
  Mr. McCullough said one of the characteristics of Harry Truman that 
made him such an effective American, an effective President, and 
revered citizen of this land was the fact that he had a set of core 
values. He knew who he was; he knew what he stood for; he did not have 
to wake up in the morning and put his finger in the air to find out 
which direction the wind was blowing.
  I suggest that this debate today is essentially about character--
individual character, yes, but more importantly the character of our 
Nation, the character of our democracy at the end of the 20th century. 
This debate is also about fundamental values. In what do we believe? 
What do we consider to be worthy of asking our fellow citizens and 
ourselves to sacrifice for?
  Mr. McCullough talked about the fact that some Presidents who do not 
rise to the highest ranks of history's estimation were Presidents who 
were reluctant to ask the American people to do great things; that the 
Presidents who have challenged us to our fullest potential as a people 
have been those Presidents whom we mark as being our most revered.
  I believe those comments about character, about values, about who we 
are as Americans, are significant in this debate this evening because 
we are talking about an issue that goes to the heart of our society, to 
the heart of the relationship between our society of America and the 
formal institution of government, which is the embodiment of our 
society.
  I regret to say that today the abuses, the pernicious effects of 
money in our political system, represent a cancer, a cancer that is 
eating away at the heart of our values, the heart of our compact as 
Americans, the heart of our democracy. There are symptoms of this 
cancer. They include the increased feeling of disaffection between 
citizens and their government, a feeling that government is not a part 
of the ``we'' of which we all belong, but it is the ``they'' who are in 
confrontation with our own personal desire; and the low level of 
participation--not only the low level of participation in the act of 
voting, but also the low level of participation in people's willingness 
to serve in civic activities.
  There was a long essay recently by a Harvard professor called 
``Bowling Alone,'' about the fact that some of the institutions such as 
civic clubs and even sports organizations that have previously been a 
source of our national coherence have been increasingly shredded--low 
participation in people's willingness to accept positions of appointed 
responsibility, whether it is to the local PTA or to a governmental 
position, low participation of people in basic citizens' 
responsibilities such as jury duty, the very difficulty of our 
voluntary military to get an adequate number of persons to fill the 
ranks of our Army, Navy, and Air Force.
  I was struck over the weekend, which, frankly, was spent in part 
watching some football games, at how many ads were run by our services 
to try to entice people to join the military. Those ads are themselves 
an indication of the difficulty of securing the kind of citizen 
participation associated with our democracy--the difficulty of 
attracting people to run for public office. Unfortunately, many people 
today are running away from public office.
  I have had some considerable personal experience trying to encourage 
people who I thought had talent and integrity and would bring the 
experience of their lives to enhance public decisionmaking. How 
difficult it is to get those people to be willing to expose themselves 
to the kind of requirements of which the necessity to raise enormous 
amounts of money in a way that many people believe is degrading and 
requires them to pander makes seeking public office unattractive and in 
the final analysis is an option which is rejected.
  Another example of the symptoms of this disease of cancer eating away 
at the heart of our democracy is the fact that now leading business 
executives are declaring that they are going to opt out of this current 
fundraising system, that they no longer want to pick up the phone, as 
one of those executives said while interviewed on television, 1,000 
times for people soliciting funds, and not just soliciting what might 
be considered a reasonable contribution but soliciting for thousands of 
dollars of contributions over and over and over. And so they have opted 
out of the system.
  Our efforts today are a part of a larger effort to try to restore 
those values of community, those values of common sharing of the 
excitement, the responsibilities, and the obligations of a democratic 
society.
  I hope that our efforts this week will be the beginning of true 
reform--reform that puts our political system back in the hands of the 
people.
  The current version of Senator McCain's and Senator Feingold's 
legislation focuses on soft money. That is the money which comes into a 
political party that is not subject to the normal regulations and is 
unlimited in amount; with only minor manipulation soft money now can be 
used for almost any political purpose. Other than soft money which we 
typically refer to as hard money, the money that is regulated, the 
money that is limited in amount, the money that is subject to full 
reporting, there is virtually no difference in what today's soft money 
can

[[Page 25767]]

be used for and what hard money can be used for.
  We will have other amendments to consider in other areas of needed 
reform in our campaign finance system. All of these are important and 
worthy of debate. I hope we will keep our focus on what I suggest is 
the single most important issue we face: How can we eliminate from our 
system the amount that is coming from the enormous faucet of soft 
money? How can we begin to restore the American public's trust and 
confidence in their government? The public should be confident their 
elected representatives are voting on the basis of honestly held 
convictions, not on the basis of who has contributed tens or even 
hundreds of thousands of dollars to a political party, which money then 
is used to advance that particular public official's political 
candidacy.
  While we cannot legislate the trust of the American people, we can 
plant the seeds of confidence by enacting real campaign finance reform. 
We must change the path we are on to regain the public's trust. It is 
critical the American people have trust in their public institutions to 
assure the proper functioning of a democracy.
  In 1774, Edmund Burke was a member of the British Parliament. He had 
cast a vote which was contrary to the will of his constituency in the 
community of Bristol. They berated him for not having voted the way 
they--those who had elected him to the Parliament--would have 
preferred. Edmund Burke accepted the responsibility as a representative 
of the people to also become an educator of the people. He said to the 
electors of Bristol on November 3 of 1774, your representative owes you 
not his industry only but his judgment; and he betrays instead of 
serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
  The people of Bristol may have temporarily been disappointed that 
Edmund Burke did not do what they felt at the moment was their desire, 
but they were satisfied with the fact he was giving them more than just 
a weather vane of their opinion; rather, he was giving them the benefit 
of his informed judgment.
  Today, unfortunately, many citizens believe their representatives 
follow neither their judgment nor popular opinion. Instead, they 
believe it is only the donors of huge amounts of soft money who hold 
the ear and the vote of their elected representatives.
  We are not the first branch of government to recognize the connection 
between our actions and our appearances and the public's confidence and 
willingness to respect and legitimize our actions. For many years, the 
Judiciary has imposed upon itself strict rules governing the conduct of 
judges and lawyers. These rules do not exist because it is assumed 
judges will engage in unethical behavior; rather, it is to make certain 
they avoid even the appearance of impropriety. This self-regulation 
helps to maintain the public's confidence in the integrity of our 
judicial system. I suggest we in Congress have a similar obligation to 
maintain the public's confidence in the integrity of the legislative 
system.
  Make no mistake, by any measure, the public's faith and confidence in 
the political process is eroding. Voter turnout is low, youth 
participation is low, institutional confidence is down. It is our 
obligation, as it is the obligation of the judicial branch, to take 
those steps that will restore the necessary public confidence.
  It is no coincidence participation and trust in our governmental 
institutions are at a low point at the same time the pursuit of 
campaign money by parties and politicians is at an all-time high. The 
crass chase for soft money by candidates of both parties is demeaning 
to the contributor; it is demeaning to the political recipient. I hope 
we can convince Members of both parties to put an end to it. The ever-
increasing focus on fundraising has fundamentally and negatively 
changed the nature and the purpose of a congressional campaign. Our 
attention has been diverted from activities which are most beneficial 
to voters while we chase money. This need to amass a huge campaign war 
chest has led to the privatization of our traditionally public campaign 
process.
  Political campaigns should belong to the people, not to the few who 
can participate in the financing of those campaigns. Over the past two 
decades, we have watched as campaigns have been transformed. What used 
to be an effort to meet and to listen to voters has now become an 
exercise in raising money for carefully crafted, frequently negative 
television commercials. Candidates now move from the television studio 
to record sound bites to the telephone to solicit campaign 
contributions to pay to air those sound bites. This transformation has 
narrowed the range of issues debated to those few who can be broadcast 
in a 30-second commercial.
  What is lost? Lost is the interaction with voters. Lost are real 
debates about important substantive issues. Most important, what could 
be lost is our rich political heritage of a genuine dialog between 
candidates and voters. What had been a publicly owned campaign system 
has become a privately managed and staged event. The essential purpose 
of a political campaign is being subverted. Campaigns should provide 
the opportunity for two-way growth. Campaigns should prepare the 
candidate to represent and govern. Meeting the public, managing a 
campaign, a candidate learns important lessons crucial to government. A 
candidate learns important insights about the people he or she hopes to 
represent.
  I have suggested to newspaper editorial boards when they interview 
persons who are seeking their endorsement for a campaign that there are 
a set of questions that ought to be asked of all candidates. One of 
those questions is, What have you learned since you announced your 
intention to seek public office? What have you learned since that date 
that will make you a better person should you be elected to office? Has 
the candidate, in fact, used the campaign as a learning, growing 
process?
  Similarly, a political campaign and its interaction is important to 
the public. The observation of a candidate allows the voter to exercise 
a thoughtful judgment about who should be entrusted with the 
responsibility to govern. The shift from hard money to soft money has 
obliterated much of this relationship, the relationship of the 
candidate learning from the citizens, and the citizens' ability to 
assess the qualities of that candidate for public service.
  The shift from hard money to soft money brings many adverse effects 
which will move our campaigns away from this two-way growth. Soft money 
has no standards. It is unlimited, unregulated, unreported. It turns 
candidates away from seeking contributions from traditional fundraising 
sources. The public loses accountability.
  In relying on soft money, the candidate loses control of his or her 
campaign. There are not very many things that happen in a political 
campaign which are real. Most of the things that occur in a campaign 
are contrived or manipulated. One of the things that is real is how 
well a candidate runs their campaign. That requires acts of judgment as 
to the people with whom you will associate yourself in the campaign, 
how well you allocate resources to pursue your campaign, the kinds of 
priorities and issues upon which you base your campaign. Those are all 
indicators of how the person, if elected to office, is likely to carry 
out his or her public responsibilities in exactly the same area. But 
the heavy reliance on soft money and the ability of the candidate to 
turn his campaign essentially over to those who will present him or her 
in the most favorable television light causes the candidate to lose 
that control of the campaign and the public to lose the ability to use 
that campaign as an indicator of the individual's potential for public 
service.
  It is not just the candidate who loses control. The public also loses 
control. It loses the opportunity to see the candidate exercise his or 
her personal judgment and thereby loses an important opportunity to 
evaluate the candidate as a potential public servant.
  Finally, it is clear the distinction between the uses of hard and 
soft money have become pure sophistry. Experience has shown us that 
parties can advocate for a particular candidate with

[[Page 25768]]

soft money every bit as effectively as they can with hard money.
  Just a few hours ago, I saw a television commercial that was a 
commercial which was paid for by one of the campaign committees of the 
Congress. The commercial was an attack against a candidate alleging 
that candidate had broken the trust of the people by spending Social 
Security surpluses for other than intended Social Security purposes. 
The ad did not say: Vote against candidate and current Member of 
Congress X. But, rather, it ran that individual's name in the ad and 
said: Call him and tell him to stop raiding Social Security.
  That is the kind of ad that is being bought and paid for and 
disseminated over the airways with this gush of soft money. It is an ad 
which is intended not to enlighten the public but to distort and 
manipulate the public. It is the type of negative ad which has 
contributed so substantially to the loss of public confidence in the 
political system.
  The McCain-Feingold bill will not correct all the problems in our 
current system, but it will give us a good start towards that solution. 
Banning soft money, in my opinion, is the first step. Opponents of 
campaign reform argue that more money is good for democracy because it 
increases political speech. They also argue that even modest attempts 
at reform violate the first amendment's protection of free speech.
  Now, presumably these opponents, who would argue any attempts at 
reform violate our protection of freedom of speech, do not favor any 
limits on campaign donations--no limits by non-U.S. persons, 
businesses, or even governments. We have had a lot of investigations, a 
lot of bemoaning the fact that non-U.S. persons, businesses, and 
possibly even non-U.S. governments have made contributions to American 
political campaigns and potentially were doing it in order to secure 
favor for their particular interest within the United States. The fact 
is, that is a very serious and, in my opinion, extremely noxious policy 
that allows non-U.S. persons, businesses, and even governments to 
involve themselves in U.S. political campaigns. But it is not illegal 
under the current law. The basis of the fact it is not illegal is this 
enormous loophole called soft money.
  Citizens of another country, business interests of another country, 
governments, foreign governments, can all contribute to American 
political campaigns through the gaping loophole of soft money. Yet the 
opponents of this legislation that is before us tonight would argue 
that to close even those loopholes would constitute an undue 
infringement on freedom of speech. How absurd.
  The arguments against reform confuse the quantity of speech with the 
quality of speech. We have a great deal of evidence that pouring more 
soft money into our campaigns has actually harmed our electoral 
process. Party soft money expenditures for the 1996 Presidential and 
congressional elections totaled $262 million. Let me repeat that. Soft 
money to American political parties in the 1996 Presidential and 
congressional elections totaled $262 million. That figure was three 
times the $86 million which was spent through soft money in the 1992 
Presidential and congressional elections.
  Despite this threefold increase in soft money between 1992 and 1996, 
were there evidences that it had a positive effect on American 
participation in government? Are there evidences, as is suggested by 
the concept that more money is better for the political process, that 
these expenditures were used to energize the spirit of democracy? Oh, 
no. Presidential election turnout in 1996 was the lowest in 72 years.
  When you consider what a tripling of soft money that occurred between 
1992 and 1996 did to voter turnout, you can shudder to think what will 
happen in next year's Presidential election when soft money 
expenditures are expected to double again, to over $500 million. Voters 
seem to recognize that, while money may buy an increase in the volume 
of speech, it does so at the price of the quality, the thoughtfulness 
of speech. And the volume finally drowns out the quality, and the voter 
turns off and retreats from participation.
  Removing unlimited, uncontrolled soft money from the process would 
not infringe on anyone's right to free speech. Contributions to 
candidates and parties would still be not only permitted but 
encouraged. They would simply have to be made according to the rules, 
rules already in place, rules that have been sanctioned by our 
judiciary as being consistent with first amendment freedom of speech 
privileges.
  For years we have regulated hard money and union and corporate 
contributions. Indeed, some of these regulations have existed since the 
time of Theodore Roosevelt. These regulations are consistent with the 
first amendment. So is the proposed ban on soft money. I believe the 
actual quality of political speech will be enhanced with a prohibition 
on soft money. It provides ample avenues for contributing to political 
candidates, for candidates communicating with and learning from voters, 
and for raising the credibility of the tattered system by which we 
elect public officials. We can have all of those benefits by using the 
system we thought we had, and that is the system that provides for 
controlled, limited, fully reported campaign contributions.
  Reform will encourage more voters to participate because they will 
have renewed hope that their individual voices are being heard, that 
their individual voices will make a difference.
  Our colleagues in the House of Representatives have acted. Many 
States have acted. The public is now rightfully waiting for us in this 
Chamber which has been described as the greatest deliberative body on 
Earth. Our people are waiting for us to act to put our campaign system 
back in order. The system is broken. We have the power, we have the 
obligation, to fix it. The McCain-Feingold bill is a significant step 
in that direction. I am proud to support it. I encourage my colleagues 
to do likewise.
  Tomorrow will be the testing hour. We are asked to vote on what 
appears to be a procedural matter, to proceed to another piece of 
legislation, legislation that has considerable support, legislation 
that this Senate has considered on a number of occasions in recent 
years, legislation which this Senate will undoubtedly consider during 
this session of Congress.
  Make no mistake about it, the effect of voting tomorrow morning to 
proceed to another piece of legislation is a vote to strike a stake in 
the heart of even the beginning of campaign finance reform in America 
because if we adopt this motion to leave this legislation and turn to 
another subject matter, I sadly suggest we will never return again to 
campaign finance reform. We will have done a disservice to the American 
people.
  I hope that we will rise to the standard of character above all, that 
we will demonstrate we are worthy of our previous colleagues in this 
Senate, such as Senator and later President Harry S. Truman, that we 
know who we are, we know what our responsibilities are to the American 
people, and we are prepared to discharge those responsibilities. I 
thank the Chair.
  Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, today the Senate took two very important 
votes with regard to the question of how to reform the manner in which 
elections for federal office are financed. These votes provided the 
Senate two very different paths in which to accomplish this goal.
  As my colleagues are aware, a majority of Senators in this body 
clearly believe that the current system is in need of reform. Progress 
has been made in previous years in two important areas: in the 
substance of the issue and in gaining greater Congressional support for 
reform.
  Nevertheless, I believe that the paramount goals of any true effort 
of reform must be to reduce the perception that special interest money 
exerts undue influence on elected officials, and to address the blatant 
electioneering disguised as issue advocacy. These two components must 
be a part of any proposal forming the basis of Senate debate. The 
original McCain-Feingold legislation (S. 26) offered this base, and 
that is why I supported and cosponsored the bill.

[[Page 25769]]

  In the past two years, the Senate has voted five different times to 
invoke cloture on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform proposal. 
I supported each of these motions because of my belief that the Senate 
needed to begin the process of debating the merits of the bill. I also 
voted for cloture on the paycheck protection proposal because I 
believed that it was an opportunity for the Senate to level the playing 
field on the pending debate.
  Now, what is the playing field about which I speak? I believe that 
the Senate should keep its eye on the overall objective of limiting the 
explosion of unregulated spending which has diminished the role of the 
candidate and heightened the role of not only the political parties, 
but of outside groups who have a direct impact on federal elections 
without any accountability to the public.
  Let me now take a moment to explain my reasons for supporting cloture 
on the Daschle amendment to S. 1593 and for opposing cloture on the 
Reid amendment to the Daschle amendment.
  I voted for cloture on the Daschle substitute amendment to the 
scaled-down McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill because it 
would have provided the Senate with a better starting point than we 
have had in previous years. While it was not a perfect version of a 
campaign finance reform bill, it offered the Senate the opportunity to 
debate and to amend a comprehensive and level bill, similar to the 
version recently approved by the House of Representatives.
  On the other hand, I voted against cloture on the Reid amendment 
because I believe this approach would restrict the political parties 
without acknowledging the skyrocketing impact of outside groups on the 
political process. The Reid amendment, which was almost identical to 
the scaled-down version of the McCain-Feingold bill (S. 1593), in my 
view, did not go far enough to address this important issue. I am 
troubled by the prospect that non-party activities would remain 
unregulated while the parties would be restrained. This could make a 
flawed system even more unbalanced.
  I admire the work Senators McCain and Feingold have done in raising 
awareness of the problems of our campaign finance system. I fully 
intend to continue working with them, as well as the other supporters 
of campaign finance reform, to develop a comprehensive approach in this 
matter. The Senate had the opportunity to make this important change in 
the current fundraising system by invoking cloture on the Daschle 
amendment. I will continue to support campaign finance reform measures 
that follow this approach.
  In addition, I intend not to support the Majority Leader's motion to 
proceed to S. 1692, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban bill at this time. 
My vote for cloture on the Daschle amendment was based on the belief 
that debate on this issue should move forward and the reform process 
should begin. The Daschle amendment provides the Senate with this 
opportunity for a meaningful debate on the bill.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss an issue that is 
very important to our political system. I believe that our current 
campaign finance system needs serious reform. But, I cannot support the 
current version of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. I 
believe the bill's total ban on so-called ``soft money'' is 
unconstitutional. It is a clear violation of the free speech clause of 
the First Amendment.
  Soft money is used by political parties to advocate specific policies 
or issues, as well as other party-building activities, such as voter 
registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. The Supreme Court considers 
these issue advocacy activities to be free speech and has made it 
perfectly clear through previous rulings that any total prohibition of 
funds for issue advocacy would be a violation of the First Amendment.
  That's why I have been working with several of my colleagues, 
including Senators Hagel, Abraham, Gorton, and Thomas, to come up with 
a campaign finance reform proposal that makes much-needed changes in 
the system, while still preserving the free speech rights guaranteed 
under the First Amendment. I believe that by correcting the problems, 
we can achieve a fair and open system of campaign finance laws, which 
is a big step toward restoring the people's faith in our democratic 
government.
  Our proposal would achieve a number of important goals.
  First, it would improve our disclosure laws and increase 
accountability of political candidates and political parties. Our 
proposal would provide for more disclosure of contributions given to 
candidates and parties, institute immediate electronic disclosure by 
the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and require disclosure of the 
names of those who purchase political advertisements on radio and 
television.
  Second, our proposal would impose overall limits on what individuals 
can provide to both candidates and parties. As I noted earlier, right 
now, a person can contribute any amount of ``soft'' money he or she 
wishes to a political party. Under our proposal, a person could give a 
maximum of $60,000 to national political parties. The proposal also 
would allow that same person to make individual contributions to 
candidates of up to $3,000--up from the current $1000 limit. This would 
bring the total amount that an individual could give to parties, 
candidates, and other political committees to $75,000. The limitation 
on contributions to political parties would not take effect until after 
the Supreme Court has a chance to review any constitutional challenges 
to these limits.
  The goal here is to limit one person's or organization's ability to 
distort the political process through massive cash contributions to 
parties. In addition, we would like to see more of that limited 
contribution go toward the candidates, themselves, rather than the 
parties, because candidates currently face tougher disclosure 
requirements than the parties. In short, our plan would put a lid on 
overall contributions and increase accountability of these funds.
  I know a number of my colleagues and I were looking forward to 
discussing our proposal and others and how it would bring reform to our 
political process. We should view today's vote as a demonstration for 
the need for our proposal--one that will not run counter to the First 
Amendment, and one that will ensure greater accountability and 
credibility of our political process.
  Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, I rise to register my support for meaningful 
campaign finance reform. I will be voting today for cloture on the 
Daschle amendment which is the broader version of campaign finance 
reform passed by the House, including provisions to limit issue 
advocacy advertising during campaigns. Should we have a vote on the 
Reid amendment, I will also be voting for cloture on a ban on so-called 
soft money contributions to political parties. Although I was 
unavoidably absent from the Senate during yesterday's vote, I would 
have voted against the motion to table the Reid amendment banning soft 
money contributions.
  Banning of soft money is the least we can do. This unlimited flow of 
money into party coffers creates the greatest opportunity for special 
interests to seek favor with politicians. The reality that businesses 
or organizations can be tapped for such vast sums has dramatically 
changed the atmosphere surrounding the work of our legislative and 
executive branches of government. Even responsible voices in business 
have said that they want out from this unseemly competition. The 
Committee for Economic Development, a group of 200 senior executives 
and college presidents, has put forward its own campaign finance 
proposal, mirroring many of the ideas we have discussed over the last 
few days, stating, ``As business leaders, we are troubled by the 
mounting pressure for businesses to contribute to the campaigns their 
competitors support, as well as the dangers that real or perceived 
political corruption pose for business and the economy.''
  Whether the presence of unlimited political contributions is 
corrupting or

[[Page 25770]]

whether it just creates the appearance of corruption, the damage is 
done. Americans are disaffected with politics and political campaigns 
and have voted against the current system with their feet: U.S. voter 
turnout in elections is in serious decline. According to the Committee 
for the Study of the American Electorate, over the last 30 years we 
have witnessed a 26 percent decline in voter participation. Fifty-four 
percent of voting age adults reported voting in the last Presidential 
election in 1996, the lowest level since the Census Bureau began 
collecting these statistics in 1964. And these statistics may not even 
tell the whole story, with some citizens unwilling to admit they did 
not vote. The official statistics maintained by the Clerk of the House 
measured voter turnout in 1996 at 49.8 percent. For non-Presidential 
election years, the numbers are even more discouraging. During the 1998 
elections, we witnessed the lowest voter turnout since 1942.
  Our representative democracy is harmed by eroding participation. As 
elected officials we have a responsibility to try to address the 
sources of voter disaffection. According to the Census Bureau, 17 
percent of non-voting registered individuals reported they did not vote 
because of apathy. That number was up from 11 percent in 1980. In 
response, we should be working to help reconnect the voters with their 
elected officials and to invest them in the political debates of the 
day. Campaign finance reform, in one form or another, is an important 
part of that process. However, there is more we can be doing to bring 
citizens back to the polls and to engage them in the issues facing our 
country. We must be clearly responsive to our constituents and not the 
special interests who often seem to have a stranglehold on the 
political process. Unfortunately, there are far too many bills which 
have the fingerprints of special interests all over them. We must take 
back the process from the special interests and craft bills beholden to 
no one but our constituents.
  We should also be working to eliminate barriers to voting. Nearly 5 
million registered voters said they did not make it to the polls in 
1996 because they couldn't get time off from work or school to vote. In 
response, we need to explore ways to make it easier for Americans to 
cast their ballots, and we need to do so in a way that does not 
encourage voter fraud. One such approach which merits further 
consideration is longer voting hours at the polls.
  In the past I have introduced legislation to study the possibility of 
extending voting hours across the weekend. If polls were open on 
Saturday and Sunday, people would have more than enough time to vote. 
Since the mid-19th century we have held election day on the first 
Tuesday in November, ironically because it was the most convenient day 
for voters. Tuesdays were traditionally ``court day'' and landowning 
voters were often coming to town that day anyway. We need to consider 
the national rhythms of today and determine what framework for voting 
makes the most sense for the American people.
  While weekend voting may pose some challenges, others have 
recommended that we require the states to keep the polling stations 
open from early in the morning until late in the evening on election 
day. This more limited proposal would be less costly and more 
manageable for states and would also provide more opportunities for 
people to vote.
  We should consider proposals to create a national voter leave, 
perhaps just two hours on election day to enable workers to make it to 
the polls. I am also intrigued by proposals to allow the disabled to 
vote by telephone, and we should be investigating how we can make use 
of the internet to make registration and voting easier.
  The internet is already ushering in a new era in elections, bringing 
new meaning to the issue of transparency in the financing of political 
campaigns. Until now, disclosure has been one of the cornerstones of 
campaign finance reform. The disinfectant of sunshine has always been 
heralded as a means of keeping politics clean. However, in this era of 
instant posting of campaign contributions, we are seeing an interesting 
side effect. The very tool to limit the role of special interests in 
politics is also highlighting that role and adding to the disaffection 
of voters. While it is important for us to continue to shine a 
spotlight on campaign contributions, we must recognize that disclosure 
is not enough. Ultimately, meaningful campaign finance reform and other 
efforts to increase voter motivation are the keys to bringing citizens 
back into the polling booth. Elections are essential to maintaining a 
robust democracy. Looking at the fragile democracies around the world 
reminds us that the right to elect our own leaders is a precious 
right--most valuable if it is exercised.
  Mr. President, whether we pass campaign finance reform today or at 
some point in the future, I want to acknowledge the hard work of my 
colleague from Wisconsin, Senator Russ Feingold in moving this issue 
forward. Senator Feingold and Senator McCain have persisted in raising 
campaign finance reform in the face of opposition from a minority 
determined to block reform. I will continue to support their efforts 
and look forward to the day when all Americans recognize that they have 
a stake in our society and are motivated to exercise their civic duty 
to vote.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise to express my extreme 
disappointment in the Senate's failure to invoke cloture on the 
campaign finance reform legislation. This is the third consecutive year 
we have held this debate and I am disturbed that each attempt to move 
this bill has failed.
  Our campaigns are awash in money. Over the weekend, both the 
Washington Post and the New York Times ran stories detailing the rise 
of soft money contributions and the impact it is having on our 
electoral process.
  We do not need newspapers to tell us what we already know. We have 
run the campaigns, we have raised the money, and we have felt the sting 
of negative attack ads.
  I am now entering my fourth statewide campaign in California. In the 
1990's, I have raised more than $40 million. In the 1990 race for 
Governor, I had to raise about $23 million. In the first race for the 
Senate, $8 million; in the second race, $14 million. This process has 
got to stop.
  I want to speak for a few minutes about my last campaign. All of us 
in the Senate have all faced tough campaigns, but I think this election 
was a little different because of the record amounts of money that were 
spent.
  In 1994, my opponent spent nearly $30 million in his effort to defeat 
me. It wasn't simply the amount of money spent that made this race 
unpleasant, however. It was how the Money was spent.
  This race was not a discussion of issues. Instead, money was spent on 
negative ads that misrepresented votes I had taken and mislead voters 
about my positions. This campaign was primarily about bringing a 
candidate down, not promoting a view or even another candidate.
  I wish I could say that this was a unique circumstance in which a 
wealthy individual used unlimited resources to mount this type of 
campaign. Unfortunately, it has become all too common. Instead of 
wealthy candidates using their own money, political parties and outside 
organizations are raising millions of dollars in soft money 
contributions. They are bankrolling attack ads designed solely to 
defeat candidates.
  Studies have clearly shown that as election day gets closer, ads 
become more candidates oriented and more negative. Instead of promoting 
a position or an issue, these ads attempt to influence an election by 
painting a distorted view of a candidate.
  The impact that this type of campaigning is having on the electorate 
as whole is of much greater consequence than the effect on any single 
race. Voter disenchantment with the political process is at an 
unprecedented level. Negative campaigning may be designed to drive 
candidates from office, but it is actually driving voters away from the 
polls.
  Over the past several days, much has been said about the rise in soft 
money

[[Page 25771]]

spending and its influence over our elections. The numbers are clear 
and unquestionably disturbing. Soft money spending doubled between 1992 
and 1996 and it is projected to double again this cycle.
  I believe the most distressing effect of soft money, however, has 
been the impact on the voters. Since the early 1990s, when soft money 
began to explode, voter turnout has significantly declined. Between the 
presidential election years of 1992 and 1996, the percentage of 
eligible voters participating in elections fell 6 points from 55 to 49 
percent.
  Voting participation in midterm elections fell from 38.78 percent in 
1994 to 36.4 percent in 1998. There may be a number of reasons for this 
decline, but I believe it is largely due to a growing distaste for the 
political process. The political dialogue has become dominated by 
personal attacks and unsubstantiated charges and voters have chosen to 
not participate.
  I voted in favor of the Shays-Meehan legislation that the minority 
leader offered as an amendment. I believe it represents the most 
comprehensive reform of the current system. This bill has already 
passed the House by a decisive, bipartisan margin and the Senate should 
have followed suit.
  I also supported the streamlined version of the McCain-Feingold bill. 
As we know, this bill contains only the ban on soft money and permits 
union members to prevent the use of their dues for political 
activities.
  I supported this bill, but I did so with some misgivings. One of the 
key provisions that was dropped from the original legislation dealt 
with issue advocacy. This is a loophole in the current campaign finance 
system that allow unions, corporations, and wealthy individuals to 
influence elections without being subject to disclosure or expenditure 
restrictions.
  I am very concerned that banning soft money without addressing issue 
advocacy will simply redirect the flow of undisclosed money in 
campaigns. Instead of giving soft money to political parties, 
individuals, and organizations that want to influence elections will 
create their own ``independent'' attack ads.
  One study now estimates that between $275 million and $340 million 
will be spent on so-called issue advertisements during the last 
election cycle. This amount of spending becomes a third campaign where 
candidates can't respond because they don't know from where the attack 
is coming.
  Despite the lack of issue advocacy, I voted in support of the soft 
money ban. While this may not entirely solve the problems in our 
campaign finance system, at least it would move the debate forward. 
Banning soft money is an important and necessary step in a larger 
effort to reform the system.
  Unfortunately, the Senate did not invoke cloture on either amendment 
and it now appears the bill will be removed from the floor and the 
debate ended for the year.
  This is the worst possible outcome. As a result of our actions today, 
the influence of soft money will continue to grow, attack ads will 
saturate the airwaves during each election, and voters will continue to 
lose interest in the process.
  I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle not to take down 
this bill. Let us go forward with the amendment process and give us an 
opportunity to pass this legislation. We owe it to the American public.
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise today to express my concerns about 
the proposed McCain-Feingold bill.
  I have always maintained several guiding principles when considering 
proposals to change the way our campaigns are financed, the most 
important of which is the first amendment right of Americans to 
participate in the political process. I have heard from many 
constituents who agree that Congress should focus its attention on 
preserving the first amendment, which has been the basis for active 
citizen participation in our political process.
  Recently, a constituent from Woodbury, Minnesota, wrote, ``The First 
Amendment to the Constitution must not be legislated into obscurity. 
Money is only one of the many voices people use to express their views. 
You must not remove the voice of the people in an attempt to remove 
avarice and greed from the political process.''
  By guaranteeing to citizens the right to speak freely and openly, the 
first amendment ensures, among other things, average Americans can 
participate in our political process through publicly disclosed 
contributions to the campaigns of their choice. The first amendment 
also allows Americans to freely draft letters to the editor, join 
political parties, and participate in rallies and get-out-the-vote 
drives. I am proud of Minnesota's long history of active citizen 
participation in many of these activities during each election year.
  Mr. President, before this debate concludes, the Senate will have 
considered many broad, sweeping proposals to amend the McCain-Feingold 
bill in an attempt to impose new restrictions upon our fundamental 
rights. However, rather than pass new campaign finance laws, we should 
encourage and protect citizen involvement in our political process 
through greater enforcement of our existing election laws, fair and 
frequent disclosure of candidate campaign contributions, and a long-
overdue increase in Federal contribution limits. I remain concerned 
about any proposal that infringes upon the fundamental right of 
citizens, candidates, groups, and political parties to have their 
voices heard in the democratic process.
  In my view, efforts to pass burdensome and restrictive campaign 
finance proposals overlook the fundamental reason why the American 
people have begun to lose faith in their government. The public's 
mistrust of their elected officials has not grown from a lack of laws, 
but from the activities of those who break our existing laws. 
Minnesotans have contacted me to express their outrage over blatant 
violations of our existing Federal election laws, and more 
specifically, illegal and improper campaign activity that occurred 
during the 1996 elections.
  During the course of this debate, we should not forget that election 
laws enacted 25 years ago to curb corruption in the political process 
have been circumvented and repeatedly violated. This was made very 
clear to the American people throughout the extensive hearings 
conducted by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee during the last 
Congress, despite the fact that more than 45 witnesses either fled the 
country or refused to cooperate with the committee investigation.
  Importantly, the investigation conducted by the Senate Governmental 
Affairs Committee has contributed to the investigative and 
prosecutorial efforts of the Justice Department's Campaign Task Force. 
Above all else, the findings issued by the Senate Governmental Affairs 
Committee have proven that the current law works if we simply enforce 
the laws on the books.
  For these reasons, I am pleased to be a cosponsor of the amendment 
offered by Senators Thompson and Lieberman that would improve the 
enforcement of our existing election laws. Among its provisions, this 
proposal would authorize federal prosecutions of federal election laws 
if the offender commits the existing offense ``knowingly and 
willingly'' and the offense involved more than $25,000. As my 
colleagues know, current law only allows violations of election laws to 
be prosecuted as misdemeanors.
  Mr. President, the Thompson-Lieberman amendment also extends the 
statute of limitations for criminal violations of the Federal Election 
Campaign Act from 3 years to 5 years--consistent with the statute of 
limitations for most other federal crimes. It would direct the United 
States Sentencing Commission to promulgate a sentencing guideline 
specifically directed at campaign finance violations and consider 
issuing longer sentences for those whose convictions involve foreign 
money or large illegal contributions.
  Most importantly, this amendment would make it clear that all foreign 
money is illegal by prohibiting soft money donations to candidates or 
political parties by foreign nationals. I know that all Americans were 
outraged by the improper role of foreign money contributions during the 
1996 presidential campaign. I commend Senators

[[Page 25772]]

Thompson and Lieberman for this meaningful proposal to improve our 
current enforcement structure and ensure that violations of federal 
election laws do not occur during the 2000 campaign.
  In addition to more timely enforcement of our existing election laws, 
I believe reasonable disclosure requirements provide the electorate 
with more information, deter corruption or the appearance of corruption 
through increased exposure of contributions, and help to determine 
violations of election laws. However, we should ensure that disclosure 
requirements do not infringe upon the individual rights and privacy of 
donors or discourage citizen involvement in the democratic process. In 
fact, it was a former Minnesotan, Chief Justice Warren Burger, who 
emphasized the need for carefully drafted disclosure provisions as part 
of his opinion in the case of Buckley versus Valeo.
  In Buckley, Chief Justice Burger wrote,

       Disclosure is, in principle, the salutary and 
     constitutional remedy for most of the ills Congress was 
     seeking to alleviate. * * * Disclosure is, however, subject 
     to First Amendment limitations which are to be defined by 
     looking at the various public interests. No legislative 
     public interest has been shown in forcing the disclosure of 
     modest contributions that are the prime support of new, 
     unpopular, or unfashionable political causes.

  Mr. President, I commend Senators McCain and Feingold for their 
decision to modify their proposal and reduce the level by which this 
legislation would infringe upon the first amendment rights of 
Americans. Unfortunately, the revised McCain-Feingold bill continues to 
place new restrictions upon national political parties through a 
proposed ban on party soft money.
  I do not believe that any limit or ban on party soft money would 
survive strict scrutiny by the Supreme Court. We should not pursue a 
suspect expansion of government control of national parties, but rather 
recognize that political parties enjoy the same rights as individuals 
to participate in the democratic process. This is a view consistent 
with the Supreme Court decision in Colorado Republican Federal Campaign 
Committee versus FEC, in which the Court found that Congress may not 
limit independent expenditures by political parties.
  In striking down limits on the ability of political party independent 
expenditures, the Supreme Court wisely questioned any attempt to 
demonstrate a compelling reason for government regulation upon the 
ability of political parties to support state and local party 
participation in the political process when it declared:
  ``We also recognize that FECA permits unregulated `soft money' 
contributions to a party for certain activities, such as electing 
candidates for state office * * * or for voter registration and `get 
out the vote' drives. * * * But the opportunity for corruption posed by 
these greater opportunities for contributions, is, at best, 
attenuated.''
  Mr. President, I believe we should strengthen, rather than diminish, 
the role of political parties. In my view, some of my colleagues favor 
a ban on party soft money because parties promote ``issue advocacy'' 
communications. These advocates fail to recognize that a political 
party's ability to engage in these communications is fully protected by 
the first amendment. In debating the merits of a proposed ban on party 
soft money, we should heed the Supreme Court's wisdom in Buckley when 
it held that communications which do not expressly advocate the 
election or defeat of a candidate using such words as ``vote for'' or 
``defeat'' cannot be regulated.
  Mr. President, I firmly believe there would be less reliance upon 
party soft money if Congress would increase the current contribution 
limits and encourage individuals and donors to become involved in 
entities that are already subject to regulations and disclosure, such 
as political action committees and national parties. In many ways, the 
prevalence of soft money in recent campaigns is a consequence of 
contribution limits established in 1974 and upheld in Buckley.
  I am very encouraged that the Supreme Court for the first time since 
1976 recently heard arguments regarding the constitutionality of 
contribution limits. I believe both contributions and expenditures are 
entitled to protection as core political speech and have concerns with 
the Supreme Court's decision in Buckley, which upheld limits on 
contributions while striking down limits on expenditures. In my view, 
to leave these limits in place without any adjustment would be unfair 
and continue to threaten the individual rights of donors and 
individuals. As Chief Justice Burger wrote in Buckley, ``Contributions 
and expenditures are the same side of the First Amendment coin.''
  Mr. President, I am committed to protecting the rights of all 
Americans to participate in the political process. However, we should 
not use violations of existing law to restrict political speech and 
participation in the political process. Those who choose to offer their 
ideas and talents in a manner that will help to strengthen our nation 
for future generations must not be discouraged from doing so.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, in her most recent book, ``The 
Corruption of American Politics,'' the very skilled and veteran 
Washington reporter Elizabeth Drew writes that ``indisputably, the 
greatest change in Washington over the past 25 years--in its culture, 
in the way it does business and the ever-burgeoning amount of business 
transactions that go on here--has been in the preoccupation with money. 
It has transformed politics and its has subverted values . . .''
  This evaluation once was nursed by a few public interest groups and 
then a group of congressional reformers. Now, it constitutes 
conventional wisdom. It is written in the books. It is fact. The 
political preoccupation with money has ``transformed us and subverted 
values.'' According to a Quinnipiac College poll published October 14, 
68 percent of those surveyed believe large campaign contributions 
influence the policies supported by elected officials and a June survey 
by the National Academy of Public Administration reported the number 
one thing politicians could do to regain public trust is to curb large 
campaign contributions. Despite these assessments from the people we 
serve, Congress remains incapable of changing how U.S. federal 
campaigns are financed.
  With the 2000 election cycle well underway, it is clear the worst 
habits of the past two decades have become the springboard from which 
new excesses will be launched. Candidates are awash in more money than 
ever before and party fund-raising records are being shattered again 
and again. At least two presidential primary candidates--George W. Bush 
and Steve Forbes--have decided to forego public matching funds in order 
to avoid the related limits on their campaign spending, while 
candidates and third party groups are seeking ever more inventive ways 
to raise undisclosed and unlimited funds to communicate with voters and 
influence elections.
  As a member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, I had hoped 
the system had reached its nadir in the 1996 federal election campaign, 
which the committee investigated for most of 1997. I was too 
optimistic. Because of Congress' failure to enact campaign finance 
reform, the system continues to fester and elections seem to be 
auctioned off to the highest bidders.
  After it's over, the complete story of the 200 presidential race will 
be told. Until then, the investigation conducted by the Governmental 
Affairs Committee provides the best portrait there is of how corrupt 
our elections have become and how obviously current practices violate 
the clear intent of Congress in passing campaign finance laws. Our 
investigation revealed that in 1996, the major parties sabotaged some 
of the most fundamental values underpinning our American experiment in 
self-rule. They gave millions of Americans good reason to doubt whether 
they had a true and equal voice in their own government.
  What emerged from that investigation was the picture of a campaign 
finance system gone haywire--a story replete with abuses ranging from 
institutionalized failures to two-bit

[[Page 25773]]

hustlers--a story that should have made any elected federal official 
ashamed and disgusted by the taint that has diminished our 
representative democracy, that is to say, every citizen's right to an 
equal voice in his or her government. The investigation forces us to 
ask whether we are no longer a nation where one person's vote speaks 
louder than another person's money. Or have we reached a place where 
one person's money can drown out another person's vote?
  For those who may have forgotten the unseemly details, let me remind 
you of what our year-long investigation uncovered, because it's 
important to remember these things. We learned about a brazen man named 
Roger Tamraz, who contributed $300,000 in soft money to the Democratic 
Party for access to the White House in order to try to override the 
NSC's rejection of his plan for a Caspian Sea oil pipeline. Ultimately, 
he never gained the White House support he was looking for but he did 
get to talk to the President of the United States. Any lessons to be 
learned from his experience, we asked? Yes, he responded. Next time he 
would contribute $600,000. After this remarkable comment, Tamraz 
admitted he had never even bothered to register to vote because, in his 
words, his checkbook was worth ``a bit more than a vote.''
  We also learned about Johnny Chung, a California entrepreneur, who 
visited the White House 49 times, had lots of pictures taken with the 
President, and once gave the First Lady's chief of staff a $50,000 
check right there in the East Wing. He had a particularly jarring 
assessment of our government. ``I see the White House is like a 
subway,'' he told the committee. ``You have to put in coins to open the 
gates.''
  For those of you who may think these are just marginal opportunists 
who slipped through the cracks of our system, let me remind you of the 
revolving cast of top-dollar contributors who slept in the Lincoln 
bedroom and of the chairman of the Republican Party who sought a $2.1 
million loan for a Republican think tank from a Hong Kong 
industrialist, which was intentionally defaulted on 2 years later. The 
chairman said he had no idea this was a foreign contribution, even 
though the industrialist had renounced his U.S. citizenship and the 
chairman obtained the loan while cruising Hong Kong Harbor on the 
industrialist's luxury yacht.
  These are colorful stories and among the most outrageous incidents 
uncovered by the committee. But the far more prevalent collection of 
big soft money donations came not from the carnival hawkers but from 
mainstream corporate and union interests and individuals. In total, the 
parties raised $262 million in soft money during the 1996 campaigns--12 
times the amount they raised in 1984. And that's chicken feed compared 
to the amount of soft money being raised for the 2000 campaign. Based 
on the first 6 months of this year, both parties have doubled their 
take over the same period in 1995.
  To my friends who say these contributions are an expression of free 
and protected speech, I respectfully disagree. Free speech is abut the 
inalienable right to express our views without government interference. 
It is about the vision the Framers of our Constitution enshrined--a 
vision that ensures that we will never compromise our American 
birthright to offer opinions, even when those opinions are unpopular or 
repugnant. But that is not at issue here, Mr. President. Absolutely 
nothing in this campaign finance bill will diminish or threaten any 
American's right to express his or her views about candidates running 
for office or about any other issue in American life.
  What we would be threatening, is something entirely different, and 
that is the ever increasing and disproportionate power that those with 
money have over our political system. Let's not fool ourselves--because 
the American public isn't fooled. Much of the campaign money raised 
comes from people seeking to maintain their access to, and perhaps sway 
over, particular parties or candidates. That explains why so many big 
givers are so generous with both parties at the same time.
  Everyone of us in this chamber knows intimately the cost of running 
for office. It requires us to spend so much more time raising money 
than we ever did in the past, so much more time that we find we have 
less time to do the things that led us to run for office in the first 
place. Barely a day seems to go by in this town in which there is not 
an event or a meeting with elected officials attended only by those who 
can afford sums of money that are beyond the capacity of the 
overwhelming majority of Americans to give. That, Mr. President, is 
threatening the principle that I--and all of us, I dare say--hold just 
as dearly as the principle of free speech. It is the genius of our 
Republic, the principle that promises one man, one vote, that every 
person--rich or poor, man or woman, white or black, Christian or Jew, 
Muslim or Hindu--has an equal right and an equal ability to influence 
the workings of their government.
  I have always said the most serious transgressions of the 1996 
presidential campaign were legal. Wealthy donors contributing hundreds 
of thousands of dollars in soft money blatantly skirted legal limits on 
individual contributions. Unions and corporations donate millions to 
both Republican and Democratic parties, despite decades-old 
prohibitions on union and corporate involvement in federal campaigns. 
And tax-exempt groups paid for millions of dollars worth of television 
ads that clearly endorsed or attacked particular candidates even though 
the groups were barred by law from engaging in such extensive partisan 
electoral activity. Each of these acts compromised the integrity of our 
elections and our government. Each of these acts violated the spirit of 
our laws.
  To achieve significant reform of the Federal Election Campaign Act, 
the unrelenting pressure to raise vast sums of money simply must be 
reduced. A ban on soft money contributions is the necessary beginning 
to that process and the current McCain-Feingold proposal is the vehicle 
through which this goal can best be accomplished now. I believe the 
record created by the Governmental Affairs Committee's hearing in 1997 
helped that bill obtain the votes of a majority of the Senate in the 
105th Congress, but an anti-reform minority filibustered the bill and 
prevented it from passing. The House has twice approved the companion 
Shays-Meehan proposal. A majority of Congress supports this bill. A 
large majority of the American public supports this bill. One day, if 
not today, it will become law. By placing a limit on the amount of 
money raised for campaigns, we can restore a sense of integrity--and of 
sanity--to our campaign financing system and to our democracy.
  If I could waive a magic wand, I would have Congress enact far 
broader reforms than what is in the bill before us today. I would make 
sure that advertisements for candidates could no longer masquerade as 
so-called issue ads, thereby evading the disclosure requirements of our 
campaign laws; I would make sure that no organization could claim the 
benefit of tax-exemption and then work to influence the election or 
defeat of particular candidates or parties. I would make sure that 
candidates for the Presidency who receive public funds live up to the 
original intent of the law, that they remain above the fund-raising 
fray and abstain from raising any more money once they have accepted 
public funds. I would like to see more exacting criminal law provisions 
become part of the campaign finance law. Indeed, I hope to offer and 
support amendments aimed at some of these problems as our debate on 
this bill continues.
  The truth is that we can never fully write into law what every 
citizen has a right to expect from his or her representatives--that 
those who seek to write the rules for the nation will respect them, 
rather than search high and low for ways to evade their requirements 
and eviscerate their intent; and that those who have sworn to abide by 
the Constitution will honor the trust and responsibilities the 
Constitution places in their hands.
  We can, however, reduce the feverish and incessant chase for money, 
the chase that has pushed candidates and their parties to duck, dodge 
and ultimately debase the laws we have now.

[[Page 25774]]

The pressure to raise ever expanding sums of cash will continue to 
drive good people to do bad things, almost regardless of what the law 
calls for, if we do not recast the system to permanently defuse the 
fund-raising arms race and stem the corrosive influence of big money. 
That is the challenge ahead of us.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the first amendment does not permit 
regulation of contributions or expenditures for issue advocacy. The 
Supreme Court has allowed regulation of contributions and expenditures 
that are (1) coordinated with a candidate--and thus a contribution--as 
well as (2) those that can be used to expressly advocate the election 
or defeat of a candidate, including independent expenditures by 
corporations and unions--but not independent expenditures of political 
parties. The Supreme Court has never allowed regulation of 
contributions and expenditures for issue advocacy and other activities 
that are (1) not coordinated with a candidate and (2) do not include 
express advocacy of the election or defeat of a candidate.
  Buckley and its progeny prohibit regulation of issue ads and 
contributions and expenditures used to engage in issue advocacy. As 
originally drafted, the Federal Election Campaign Act FECA would have 
required disclosure of all contributions over $10 received by any 
organization which publicly referred to any candidate or any 
candidate's voting record, positions, or official acts of candidates 
who were federal officeholders.
  The D.C. Court of Appeals struck down this ``issue advocacy'' 
provision in Buckley v. Valeo, 519 F.2d 821, 869-78 (D.C. Cir. 1975). 
The invalidation of the issue advocacy disclosure provision was the 
only part of the D.C. Circuit's decision that was not appealed to the 
Supreme Court. Back then supporters of regulation at least accepted the 
constitutional impossibility of regulating issue advocacy.
  In Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 43 (1976), the Supreme Court 
expanded upon the D.C. Circuit's view that issue advocacy could not be 
regulated and limited the scope of FECA's contribution limits and other 
regulations to cover only money used for ``communications that include 
explicit words of advocacy of election or defeat of a candidate.'' This 
includes money contributed to a candidate, his committee and the hard 
money account of his party.
  The court stated that ``funds used to propagate * * * views on issues 
without expressly calling for a candidate's election or defeat are * * 
* not covered by FECA.''
  And such funds cannot be covered by any bill Congress adopts because 
the Supreme Court said in Buckley that its narrow construction of the 
Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), limiting its scope to money that 
can be used for ``express advocacy,'' was necessary to avoid 
``constitutional deficiencies.''
  In sum, the Buckley Court looked at Congress' effort to cover ``all 
spending'' intended to ``influence'' elections and said we cannot 
regulate beyond the realm of express advocacy. Buckley held that:

       So long as persons and groups eschew expenditures that in 
     express term advocate the election or defeat of a clearly 
     identified candidate, they are free to spend as much as they 
     want to promote the candidate and his views.

  As one former FEC chairman, Trevor Potter, has written, Buckley.

       Clearly meant that much political speech Congress had 
     intended to be regulated and disclosed without instead be 
     beyond the reach of campaign finance laws.

  The outer bounds of constitutionally permissible regulation of 
political activity. The farthest the Supreme Court has ever gone in 
permitting constraints on political speech was its decision in Austin 
v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652 (1990).
  In this case the Court upheld prohibitions on independent 
expenditures--non-coordinated ads that expressly advocate the election 
or defeat of a candidate--paid for directly from corporate treasuries.
  There is no basis for construing this case as justifying restrictions 
or prohibitions on contributions or expenditures that are not express 
advocacy.
  In fact, any argument that Austin provides a basis for contribution 
or expenditure limits on funds that do not go to a candidate and are 
not otherwise used for express advocacy is foreclosed by the Supreme 
Court's decision in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 
765 (1978).
  In Bellotti the Court ruled that a Massachusetts statute prohibiting 
``corporations from making contributions or expenditures for the 
purpose of . . . influencing or affecting the vote on any question 
submitted to the voters'' was unconstitutional because it infringed the 
first amendment right of the corporations to engage in issue advocacy 
and, more importantly, the wider first amendment right ``of public 
access to discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and 
ideas.''
  The case made clear the distinction between portions of the 
challenged law ``prohibiting or limiting corporate contributions to 
political candidates or committees, or other means of influencing 
candidate elections'' (which were not challenged) and provisions 
``prohibiting contributions and expenditures for the purpose of 
influencing . . . issue advocacy.
  The Court explained that the concern that justified former ``was the 
problem of corruption of elected representatives through creation of 
political debts'' and that the latter (issue ads) ``presents no 
comparable problem'' since it involved contributions and expenditures 
that would be used for issue advocacy rather than communications that 
expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate.
  Bellotti conclusively rejected prohibitions on contributions and 
expenditures for issue advocacy, while expressly leaving open the 
possibility that the government ``might well be able to demonstrate the 
existence of a danger of real or apparent corruption in independent 
expenditures by corporations to influence candidate elections.''
  And Austin merely confirmed that the state government could regulate 
or even prohibit independent expenditures by corporations, which are 
used to expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate. But 
Austin has nothing to do with contributions and expenditures for 
communications discussing issues.
  The reformers are fond of the Supreme Court's statements in Austin 
concerning the corrupting influence of aggregated wealth. But this 
dicta does not support regulation of party soft money. And arguments 
predicated on it do not withstand scrutiny.
  This clear from the fact that after Austin the Supreme Court stated 
in the 1996 Colorado Republican Committee case that ``where there is no 
risk of ``corruption'' of a candidate, the government may not limit 
even contributions.''
  Moreoever, the Court has explained that the prohibitions on 
corporations and unions making contributions or independent 
expenditures that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a 
candidate are permissible to the extent that they ``prohibit the use of 
union or corporate funds for active electioneering on behalf of a 
candidate in a federal election'' the Court does not consider 
contributions and expenditures used for issue advocacy and purposes 
other than expressly advocating the election or defeat of a federal 
candidate to involve such risks because it has held that the government 
cannot prohibit ``corporations any more than individuals from making 
contributions or expenditures advocating views,'' that is a quote from 
Citizens Against Rent Control, 454 U.S. 290, 297-98 (1981).
  Moreover, the Court has explained that ``Groups [such as political 
parties] . . . formed to disseminate political ideas, not to amass 
capital'' do not raise the specter of distortion of the political 
process necessitating regulations on the use of the treasury funds of 
unions and for profit corporations because the resources of groups such 
as political parties and other issue groups ``are not a function of 
[their] success in the economic marketplace but popularity in the 
political marketplace.''
  Restrictions on issue advocacy, including contributions for it are 
always

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invalidated by the Supreme Court. Consistent with this narrow 
definition of the legislative power to intrude into this most protected 
area of free speech, the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional 
the most rudimentary state and local restrictions on individuals, 
political committees and corporations when it involved regulation of 
issue advocacy and the funds that pay for it, as opposed to 
contributions or expenditures for express advocacy.
  See McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U.S. 334, 356 (1995), 
invalidating requirement that issue-oriented pamphlets identify the 
author;
  Citizens Against Rent Control v. City of Berkeley, 454 U.S. 290, 197 
(1981), invalidating city ordinance limiting contributions to 
committees formed to engage in issue advocacy.
  First National Bank v. Belotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978), invalidating law 
banning corporate contributions and expenditures for issue advocacy.

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