[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 441-442]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




MORPHING CAMPAIGN FINANCE, GOVERNANCE, AND PERSONAL AGGRANDIZEMENT IN A 
                              TANGLED WEB

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, while the U.S. economy retrenches, the front 
page of the Wall Street Journal today reports that former President 
Bill Clinton could ``get a $20 million payout from a politically 
sensitive partnership tie to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, made 
possible by his high profile business relationship with the investment 
firm of billionaire friend Ron Burkle.
  The last time I looked, Dubai is not part of the United States and it 
is not a democracy.
  As I read this article by John Emshwiller, I thought to myself, has 
any President in modern history, but for Jimmy Carter, not used the 
White House to cash in upon retirement? Further, has any modern 
President not used their White House connections to build themselves 
pyramid monuments upon leaving office in the form of presidential 
libraries where they milk their presidential contacts for millions and 
millions of dollars? How sad is it that former President George Bush 
and former President Bill Clinton took huge sums of money from foreign 
interests like Saudi Arabia to build their presidential libraries? 
Contrast this to our Nation's Founders, who pledged their lives, their 
fortunes, and their sacred honors to the cause of freedom. Now it 
appears all is for sale.
  Today's story is but another example of where our Nation's highest 
elected officials are morphing campaign finance, governance, and their 
own personal aggrandizement in a tangled web. It raises to the highest 
levels the issue of influence peddling and what was done during those 
White House years to yield such super human rewards.
  I lament the condition in which we find our national politics. Until 
the American people hear and understand what is happening, nothing will 
change. It will only worsen. Look at the disgraceful sums of money 
being raised by presidential candidates in both political parties and, 
of course, waiting in the wings the latest batch of billionaire 
contenders who are just ready to put their oars in the water too.
  One of America's greatest President's was John Quincy Adams. After 
John Quincy Adams left the presidency, he did not immediately head out 
onto the lecture circuit. He did not sell his services to a rich 
foreign power. He did not set out to enrich himself on the fame that he 
had acquired by virtue of his service to the Nation. No, it was a 
different day and time. John Quincy Adams, after leaving the 
presidency, came back to Washington as a Member of this U.S. House of 
Representatives. To this day, he is the only President who did. He 
finished his life here, dying on the second floor of this Capitol. John 
Quincy Adams, instead of lining his own pockets, started his vaunted 
``second political career'' by fighting against slave power. He made it 
the cause of his lifetime.
  Just as money power dominates the national political preoccupation 
today, so slave power dominated political life in the United States in 
the first half of the 19th century. It was as deeply entrenched as the 
neoliberal model of international trade is today.
  When Adams was President, Members from the Deep South had enacted a

[[Page 442]]

``gag rule'' here in the People's House so that anti-slavery petitions 
would be summarily rejected, as if this parliamentary maneuvering could 
stop the discussion about slavery and the slow march to justice.
  Professor William Lee Miller has written about John Quincy Adams's 
commitment to fighting slave power here in Congress, a battle that some 
historians have described as the ``Pearl Harbor of the slave 
controversy.'' John Quincy Adams refused to give up the fight until at 
last the Nation had heard the message of the petitioners: That slavery 
was inimical to the American ideal, an assault on the Constitution, and 
a stain on the Nation's conscience.
  America must cleanse our political system today of the stains that 
even Presidents of the United States create as they enrich themselves. 
The Wall Street Journal article describes how Mr. Clinton is a partner 
of the Yucaipa Global Partnership Fund, which raised several hundred 
billion dollars from a range of investors. Who were these investors? 
How did any of them relate to the policies of the Clinton 
administration? These private funds do not have to disclose their 
activities as a normal business; so how do the American people know?
  The director of this fund is Mr. Ron Burkle, a major fundraiser and 
backer of the Clintons. To mix fundraising, undisclosed business 
interests, and the presidency is a combustible mix. The American people 
have a right to know.
  The article goes on to relate how Rudy Giuliani's consulting firm has 
interests in the government of Qatar. What are those interests? And how 
does he seek to personally benefit if elected President?
  Mr. Speaker, the American people want Washington to clean up its act. 
As the presidential races proceed this year, isn't it high time that 
the campaign finance reform question be a top one in all the debates? 
John Quincy Adams would not recognize the Republic as it stands today.

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