[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 13004-13006]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      THE CALLING OF THE BANKROLL

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, in 1906, Wisconsin sent a new Senator to 
Washington, and this body and this Government have never been the same 
since.
  From the moment he arrived, delivering powerful orations on the floor 
of this Chamber and taking on the most powerful interests in this 
country and all around the world, he became the stuff of legend. Of 
course, I am talking here about Robert M. La Follette, Sr., who was 
destined to become one of the greatest Senators in the history of this 
distinguished body. It is fitting that his portrait now hangs in the 
Senate reception room outside of this Chamber, along with just four 
other legendary Senators: Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, 
and Robert Taft.
  When he came to this body, La Follette was already known as an 
insurgent, and his arrival made more than a few of his colleagues 
nervous, including, of course, the Senate's leadership. At the time, 
because this was prior to the ratification of the 17th amendment in 
1913, Senators were still appointed by State legislatures, and La 
Follette himself had been appointed to fill the office after he served 
as Governor of Wisconsin for 5 years.
  By and large, however, the Senate of the early 1900s was dominated by 
the powerful economic interests of the day: the railroads, the steel 
companies, and the oil companies, and others.
  Senator La Follette did not disappoint those in his State and across 
the country who looked to him to champion the interests of consumers, 
taxpayers, and citizens against those entrenched economic forces. The 
Senate in those days, if you can imagine this, had an unwritten rule 
that freshman Senators were not supposed to make floor speeches.
  La Follette broke that rule in April of 1906. He gave a speech that 
lasted several days and covered 148 pages of the Congressional Record. 
Speaking on the most important legislation of the year, the Hepburn Act 
regulating railroads, La Follette discussed the power of the railroad 
monopolies and declared:

       At no time in the history of any nation has it been so 
     difficult to withstand those forces as it is right here in 
     America today. Their power is acknowledged in every community 
     and manifest in every lawmaking body.

  So La Follette offered amendments to try to make railroad regulation 
more responsive to consumer interests. His amendments lost, of course, 
but that was part of the plan. That summer he went on a speaking tour 
across the country. He described his efforts to change the Hepburn Act. 
And then he did something extraordinary and unprecedented: He read the 
rollcall on his amendments name by name. This ``calling of the roll'' 
became a trademark of La Follette's speeches. Its effect on audiences 
was powerful. You see, at the time Senators' actual votes on 
legislation were not as well known publicly as they are today. And then 
when Americans found out that their Senators were voting against their 
interests, they were shocked and they were angry.
  The New York Times reported the following:

       The devastation created by La Follette last summer and in 
     the early fall was much greater than had been supposed. He 
     carried senatorial discourtesy so far that he has actually 
     imperiled the reelection of some of the gentlemen who hazed 
     him last winter.

  La Follette's calling of the roll was part of an effort to expose 
corporate and political corruption. His view was that powerful economic 
interests controlled the Senate, preventing it from acting in the 
public interest. Then, in 1907, just a year after La Follette had come 
to the Senate, the Congress finally acted on legislation that had been 
under consideration since an investigation a few years earlier of 
insurance industry contributions to the political parties. That 
legislation, the Tillman Act, banned corporations from making political 
contributions in connection with Federal elections.
  Today, over 90 years later, obviously much has changed in the Senate 
and in the country. For one thing, the votes of Senators are available 
almost instantly on the Internet and published regularly in the 
newspapers. Come election time, political ads remind voters regularly 
about our voting records. La Follette's idea that the public should 
know how its representatives have voted and it should hold those 
representatives accountable for their votes is well accepted in our 
modern political life.
  The power of corporate and other interests in the Senate is still too 
strong. The nearly century-old prohibition on corporate political 
contributions is now a mere fig leaf made meaningless by the growth of 
soft money. Today, corporations, unions and wealthy individuals give 
unlimited--I repeat, unlimited--contributions of soft money to the 
political parties. While, technically, corporations still do not 
contribute directly to individual campaigns, they might as well be. 
Individual Members of Congress get on the phone and raise soft money 
for their parties, and that money is in turn targeted at congressional 
races. Some Members have set up so-called leadership PACs to accept 
soft money for use

[[Page 13005]]

in their own political endeavors. Soft money has, once again, given 
corporations the kind of influence over this Congress that La Follette 
railed against on this very floor.
  Since I have come to the Senate, I have noticed that we talk about 
the money that funds our campaigns and the influence on policy only a 
few times a year. That is when we are debating actual campaign finance 
legislation. It is almost as if the influence of campaign money on our 
business here is an abstract proposition, relevant only when we debate 
changing the way campaigns are financed. But we all know that the power 
of money in this body is much more pervasive and, I would say, 
insidious than that.
  We know, if we are honest with ourselves, that campaign contributions 
are involved in virtually everything that this body does. Campaign 
money is the 800-pound gorilla in this Chamber every day that nobody 
talks about but that cannot be ignored. All around us and all across 
the country, people notice the gorilla. Studies come out on a weekly 
basis from a variety of research organizations and groups that lobby 
for campaign finance reform that show what we all know: The agenda of 
the Congress seems to be influenced by campaign money. But in our 
debates here, we are silent about that influence, and how it corrodes 
our system of government.
  Mr. President, we can allow that silence no longer. In the tradition 
of my illustrious predecessor Senator La Follette, I am inaugurating a 
modern version of the Calling of the Roll. I will call it the ``Calling 
of the Bankroll.''
  I don't expect to be listing votes or specific contributions to 
specific Senators, but I will be providing vital information, both to 
my colleagues and the public, as to how much money special interests 
are donating overall to candidates and political parties. I'll be 
providing a context for evaluating our debates on legislation, and I'll 
be doing it right here on this floor, and in the Congressional Record, 
for the convenience of the public and my colleagues.
  I plan to Call the Bankroll from time to time here on the floor of 
this Senate as we debate significant legislation and at least until 
this body passes a campaign finance reform bill. This body can no 
longer ignore the 800 pound gorilla. I'm going to point him out 
sometimes when I speak on a bill, because I think we in the Senate need 
to face this issue head on. We cannot just pull our head out of the 
sand to discuss the influence of money on the legislative process once 
a year when we take up a campaign finance bill.
  I am sure my colleagues are familiar with the old adage that is 
attributed to Otto von Bismark: ``If you like laws and sausages, you 
should never watch either one being made.'' Well, we might not like to 
admit that campaign contributions are an ingredient of our legislation, 
but we know that they are. And the public knows too, although they 
might not know the details.
  But it's those details which help the public see the big--and 
disturbing--picture of the influence of wealthy interests on our 
legislation.
  It's time to illustrate clearly how our flawed campaign finance 
system, which corrupts our democracy, also affects our daily lives. The 
public has a right to this information--it has a right to know how the 
special interests have worked to influence legislation, and how that 
influence has had an impact on everything from defense spending to the 
Y2K problem, and just about everything in between.
  I think this information should be part of our public debate on 
important legislation, and that's why I will Call the Bankroll from 
this floor. In fact I've already started to do this over the past few 
weeks on several occasions. For example, when we considered the 
Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill, which included a rider to 
delay the implementation of new mining regulations, I called attention 
to the more than $29 million the mining industry contributed to 
congressional campaigns during the last three election cycles, and the 
$10.6 million the industry made in soft money contributions during the 
same period. During our debate over the Juvenile Justice bill, I noted 
the $1.6 million the NRA gave in PAC money in the last election cycle, 
and the $146,000 in PAC money Handgun Control gave during the same 
period. Just last month, when I argued for my amendment to the 
Department of Defense authorization bill concerning the Super Hornet, I 
included information about the more than $10 million in PAC and soft 
money contributions the defense industry made in the last cycle. I also 
pointed out during the debate on Y2K legislation that the computer and 
electronics industry gave close to $6 million in PAC and soft money in 
1997 and 1998, while the Association of Trial Lawyers of America gave 
$2.8 million.
  We have many difficult and important bills to work on this year, Mr. 
President: bankruptcy reform, financial modernization when it comes 
back from conference, a patients' bill of rights, and all of our 
spending bills. It won't be difficult, indeed it will be easy, to find 
examples in each of those areas of huge campaign contributions coming 
from industries and groups that are affected by our work. The 
bankruptcy reform bill itself is a prime example: The members of the 
National Consumer Bankruptcy Coalition--an industry lobbying group made 
up of the major credit card companies, and associations representing 
the nation's big banks and retailers--gave nearly $4.5 million in 
contributions to parties and candidates in the last election cycle.
  The public deserves to know about this, Mr. President. It deserves to 
know about the campaign contributions these interests are giving us and 
our political parties at fundraisers--fundraisers that sometimes take 
place the night before or the night after we vote on bills that affect 
them.
  Now Mr. President, I do not have any pride of authorship here, nor do 
I plan to lay out the whole picture of campaign contributions that 
might be relevant to our discussion of a bill. To the contrary, I 
encourage my colleagues to join this debate. And in particular I want 
to recognize the effort of my friend the Senator from South Carolina, 
who on Tuesday came to this floor during the closing debate on the Y2K 
bill, calling his own roll of the high tech companies that have made 
campaign contributions to this Congress.
  If any of my colleagues feel that the contributions of a different 
industry or interest group should be highlighted, I encourage them to 
add that information to their remarks in this chamber. I will also 
welcome any corrections or additions that my colleagues might wish to 
provide. Nor do I believe that organizations that may have supported me 
should be exempt from the Calling of the Bankroll. Providing 
information about the contributions of any group or interest is 
welcome, and, more than that, it is critical to the purpose of this 
effort.
  This information should be in the Record, and all Senators should be 
aware that these facts are in the Record as they decide how to cast 
their votes. It is time that the 800-pound gorilla of campaign money be 
made a part of our debate on legislation.
  I look forward to the day when the Calling of the Bankroll will no 
longer be necessary; when this body has adopted bipartisan campaign 
finance reform legislation to ban soft money and to restore the 
vitality of the law banning corporate contributions to federal 
elections that was enacted in 1907, the year after Robert La Follette 
of Wisconsin came to the Senate.
  Let me close with another quote from Senator La Follette's inaugural 
speech on the floor of the Senate. He was responding to the argument 
that public sentiment had been whipped into an unreasonable hysteria 
over the question of whether the railroads controlled the Congress. His 
words seem quite apt to me as a response to those who argue on this 
floor that we really have no campaign finance problem in this country--
and that the media and the groups that support reform exaggerate the 
impact of money on the legislative process. He said:

       [I]t does not lie in the power of any or all of the 
     magazines of the country or of the press, great as it is, to 
     destroy, without justification, the confidence of the people 
     in the American Congress. . . . It rests solely with

[[Page 13006]]

     the United States Senate to fix and maintain its own 
     reputation for fidelity to public trust. It will be judged by 
     the record. It can not repose in security upon its exalted 
     position and the glorious heritage of its traditions. It is 
     worse than folly to feel, or to profess to feel, indifferent 
     with respect to public judgment. If public confidence is 
     wanting in Congress, it is not of hasty growth, it is not the 
     product of `jaundiced journalism.' It is the result of years 
     of disappointment and defeat.

  Mr. President, the Senate must respect the public judgment and fix 
its reputation for fidelity to the public trust. It must let the solid 
bipartisan majority of this body that supports reform, work its will 
and pass a campaign finance reform bill this year. Until it does, Mr. 
President, I plan to Call the Bankroll. I'm going to acknowledge the 
800 pound gorilla in this chamber, and I'm going to ask my colleagues 
to do the same. And then I'm going to see if we can't agree that it's 
time to show him the door.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Voinovich). The Senator from Minnesota.

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