[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[May 7, 1993]
[Pages 584-589]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Campaign Finance Reform and a Question-and-Answer Session
May 7, 1993

    The President. Thank you very much. Mr. Vice President, 
distinguished leaders of the Congress, ladies and gentlemen from Close 
Up. I'm delighted to have the Close Up students sitting with us today at 
the White House. A little more than 30 years ago, when I was about your 
age, I came here, and the experience changed my life forever in terms of 
my dedication to try to do more to help our country work. Thirty years 
from now I hope that all of you will look back on this day and believe 
that you were witness to an event that helped to change the course of 
America, for on this day we seek to reform our political process, to 
restore the faith of the American people in our democracy, and to ensure 
that once again the voice of the people as a whole is heard over the 
voice of special interests in Washington.
    Today we're announcing the most comprehensive reform of the 
political system in the history of this country, a proposal that limits 
spending by candidates for the House and the Senate; a proposal which 
bans contributions to Members by lobbyists who lobby them; a proposal 
which curbs the power and influence of political action committees; a 
proposal that levels the playing field between challengers and 
incumbents and pays for it by taxing lobbyists and not the American 
people; a proposal that plugs loopholes in the financing of Presidential 
campaigns by eliminating so-called soft money contributions.
    We take these extraordinary steps in the bill proposed today and 
commit ourselves to adopting it into law for one fundamental reason. 
Without fundamental change in the way we finance campaigns, everything 
else we seek to improve in the lives of our people, from creating jobs 
to providing a secure system of health care, to educating our people 
better and enabling us to compete in a global economy, everything will 
be harder to achieve. Economic reform, health care reform, and political 
reform must go hand-in-hand. The system has to work to produce good 
results.
    Today, by one estimate, Washington, DC, has at least 80,000 people 
working directly or indirectly to lobby the National Government, a 
veritable influence industry. The more we seek to change things, the 
more we draw lobbyists to Washington to see if they can stop the change. 
To be sure, these lobbyists often represent points of view that 
genuinely deserve to be heard, and we in Government often benefit from 
their views. But there are times when these powerful interests turn 
debate into delay and exert more influence over decisions in Washington 
than the people we were elected to serve do.
    We're fighting hard to reform our health care system. Soon we'll put 
forward a plan to ensure health security for every American and to 
control the exploding costs of health care. Already, some special 
interests have gone beyond consulting about what the best way to do this 
is, to

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preparing to carve the plans to bits to make sure that the present 
system stays intact, which is good for the people they represent but bad 
for the public interest.
    We're fighting to ensure that the tax burden falls more fairly on 
those who can afford to pay and less on the middle class, whose incomes 
went down and tax burdens went up over the last 12 years. And already, 
special interests are clogging the halls of power, whispering that they 
deserve to continue the advantages which have pertained for too long.
    We're fighting to make it possible for every young person to go to 
college and to pay back your loans as a percentage of your income after 
you go to work so that you can never be bankrupted later by heavy 
student debts today. And already, banks and their allies are out in 
force, since they profit inordinately from the current system, seeking 
to frustrate our plans.
    It's quite clear, Government will work for the middle class and for 
the average American only if Washington is free to work for the national 
interests and not narrow interests. And that won't happen unless we 
change the way we finance campaigns in this country. It's time to curb 
the role of special interests and to empower average citizens to have 
their voices heard once again.
    Campaign finance reform is a tough issue to grapple with. It 
requires those of us who set the rules to change the rules that got us 
all here. That's not easy to do. Last year, Congress passed a good 
campaign finance reform bill only to see it vetoed in the past 
administration. As I promised, we would support campaign reform this 
year with a bill that is even tougher and better than the bill which 
passed the Congress and was vetoed last year. Particularly we have taken 
aim at the lobbyists who symbolize the reason that nothing ever seems to 
get done here in this city.
    And that's why I'm pleased to stand here with these congressional 
leaders, some of whom have worked for years and years and years on this 
issue, and others, including the leadership of the House and Senate, who 
have made it possible to us to bring this bill forward in a way that has 
a real chance of passage. We're moving forward with this. This bill is 
for real. Even if special interests object, even if they try to 
filibuster or delay, eventually I believe we will pass campaign finance 
reform, and I will sign it, because the people will support it and 
demand it.
    This plan will change the way Washington works, the way campaigns 
are financed, the way that politics is played. First, the plan will 
impose strict but voluntary campaign limits on spending in congressional 
campaigns as required by the United States Supreme Court. Spending has 
gone up too far and too fast. Last year alone spending on congressional 
campaigns shot up by 52 percent over the previous election. When 
campaign spending is out of control, candidates without access to big 
money simply cannot compete.
    Second, this plan will rein in the special interests by restricting 
the role of lobbyists and PAC's or political action committees. For the 
very first time, our plan will ban contributions from lobbyists to 
lawmakers they contact and lobby. It will even bar them from raising 
money for those officials they lobby. If enacted, this proposal will 
plainly change the culture in Washington in a very fundamental way. This 
proposal curbs the role of political action committees. It caps the 
amount of money any candidate can receive from PAC's. It limits PAC 
contributions to $1,000 to Presidential campaigns, to $2,500 for Senate 
candidates. And while it leaves the present limit on the House 
candidates, it limits the percentage of any candidate's budget which can 
come from political action committees, a dramatic change in the present 
system.
    Third, our political reform plan will open the airwaves and level 
the playing field between incumbents and challengers by providing 
communications vouchers to candidates who agree to the spending limits. 
This was an important part of my campaign last year. I think we have got 
to open the airwaves so that there can be honest debate and all the 
people who run, including challengers, have access to them. These 
vouchers can only be used to communicate with the voters through 
broadcast, print, or postage. Let me make clear, these vouchers, no 
matter what you will hear from the people who want to protect the 
present special interest system, these vouchers will not be paid for by 
middle class taxpayers. They will be funded by closing a major tax 
loophole that allows many businesses to deduct the cost of lobbying and 
the costs they pay for their lobbyists through repeal of the 
deductibility of lobbying expenses. Corporate lobbying, believe it or 
not, has only been deductible since 1962. It's time to close a 30-year-
old loophole and instead use the money

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to give the political process back to the American people. And there 
will be the voluntary tax checkoff, which will let citizens choose to 
have $5 of their income tax go to make this system work. It is entirely 
voluntary, but I think a lot of Americans will like this system better 
than the one we have.
    Our reform plan won't just affect congressional campaigns. During 
the Presidential campaign, I promised to propose legislation that would 
shut down the system of soft money that increases spending so 
dramatically in national campaigns. Today this legislation does exactly 
that. Make no mistake, this legislation will cost me and the Democratic 
Party, like the Republican Party, significant sums of money. But it is 
the right thing to do.
    We envision a new Democratic Party and a new party system built on 
the energy of millions of average citizens who believe that politics is 
once again a thrilling collective endeavor, who want to give the small 
amounts of money they can afford to give to the political process and to 
the party of their choice because they will know that that money will 
count and will not be overwhelmed by special interests.
    This proposal can change the status quo. And the special interests 
surely will mobilize against it. They don't want to see their ability to 
give campaign contributions curbed. The status quo suits many of them 
fine. The problem is that even when a lot of these people are making 
their voices heard in legitimate ways, the totality of their efforts has 
served to paralyze this process, to paralyze this city, and to keep 
meaningful change from occurring long after everybody acknowledges that 
it has to occur in fundamental areas of our national life, such as 
economic policy and health care.
    I believe the winds of change are too strong. At the beginning of my 
term, I imposed the strictest ethics restriction ever on my top 
officials. They'll be prohibited from lobbying their Agencies for 5 
years after they leave, and they can never lobby for a foreign 
government. We've already seen progress in the United States Congress. 
Earlier this week, the United States Senate passed a historic lobby 
disclosure bill, a bill which opens the activities of lobbyists to the 
sunshine of public scrutiny. If this bill passes the entire Congress 
now, every time a lobbyist spends more than a small amount of money to 
lobby a bill on any Member, it will all have to be reported. And this is 
the kind of thing that we ought to be doing.
    I worked for this sort of reform for a decade in my own State. I 
know how hard it is. Finally I had to take my proposals to a vote of the 
people to pass them. In the Presidential campaign, from the snows of New 
Hampshire onward, I talked about these kinds of changes. Now we see, 
from the vote in the Senate yesterday and from the strong support we're 
receiving on the campaign finance reform bill today, the prospect of 
real political reform in Washington. I hope the House will act quickly 
on the measure that the Senate passed yesterday on lobby registration 
and disclosure.
    I believe the season of political reform has finally arrived. Today 
we are here united in our commitment to enact these kinds of reforms. We 
need your help, your parents' help, the help of the people that you go 
to school with, the help of the people that you represent all across 
this country to overcome the resistance that inevitably accompanies this 
kind of change. But when we do overcome the forces of inertia, we can 
once again make our political system work--work more quickly, work more 
efficiently, work less expensively, and most importantly, work for the 
people who work hard and play by the rules.
    Thank you very much.

[At this point, Senator George J. Mitchell, Speaker of the House of 
Representatives Thomas S. Foley, Senator David L. Boren, and 
Representative Sam Gejdenson made statements in support of campaign 
finance reform legislation, and the Vice President invited questions.]

    The President. We'll take some from the students. But I'll take a 
couple from the press and a couple from the students.
    Q. [Inaudible]
    The President. As you know, I favor a smaller PAC limit, and I 
wanted--in our legislation we go to $1,000 in Presidential campaigns, 
which is more broadly dispersed. I think there were two reasons. One is 
the House Members believe they have less access to raise funds on a 
Statewide basis, particularly those who come from very poor 
congressional districts, and obviously very limited ability to raise 
money beyond their States. So they were insistent on keeping the limit 
higher. But they did do something that I never proposed when I ran for 
President that I think provides an equally important limitation on the 
influence of PAC's, and that is to set a very strict limit on the 
percentage of total

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campaign contributions which could come from PAC's, one which is, as 
Senator Boren has already noted, is lower than the average that Members 
of Congress received last time in running for reelection. So they have 
agreed to dramatically reduce the impact of PAC money on their campaign 
treasuries over and above what they have been getting. And I thought 
that was a reasonable agreement.
    The Vice President. And the lobby contribution----
    The President. And of course, they also, the leadership and the 
sponsors of the bill, have also agreed to a dramatic change--I want to 
emphasize this; this is new from the last bill--to say that lobbyists 
give money to or raise money for Members of Congress whom they have 
lobbied within the previous year. And if they do that, then they cannot 
lobby them for a year after this. That is a very significant change. Did 
you say I got the facts right?
    Q. Mr. President, you have no Republicans here. I know you have been 
trying to get some bipartisan support. Do you think now this is fated to 
be filibustered and won't----
    The President. Why don't I ask maybe one of the Senators to discuss 
that. Senator Boren and I have already talked about it. Senator 
Mitchell.
    Senator Mitchell. We've reached out to Republican Senators. Senator 
Boren and Senator Ford have met individually with a large number of 
Republican Senators. And as you know, yesterday a group of five of them 
sent me a letter detailing concerns they have and principles they hold 
with respect to campaign finance reform. And we're going to continue our 
dialog with them. Having received the letter, it's my hope that we can 
shortly meet with them, talk with them, and work together to try to 
achieve a bipartisan bill.
    Q. Well, is the issue of public financing negotiable?
    Senator Mitchell. Well, we think that the bill the President has 
presented is the right way to go. Obviously, we're going to listen to, 
consider thoughtfully and seriously suggestions made by anyone, 
especially and including the Republican Senators who sent the letter and 
others. We hope very much that we can reach a bipartisan agreement. We 
passed this bill last year with Republican Senators' votes. We hope we 
can do so again this year.
    The President. I'd like to make two points, if I may. First of all, 
the House Members reminded me in response to the previous question that 
this bill also does something that we don't do now. This limits the 
contributions from individuals that House Members can get above $200 to 
one-third of the total, which is a pretty dramatic change.
    Secondly, I think we ought to hone in on the question you just 
asked, Andrea [Andrea Mitchell, NBC News], in terms of the expressed 
reservations. And I had talks with Senator Boren and Senator Ford as 
well as Senator Mitchell before we came out here. The people who will 
oppose this bill and will say, well, this is public financing, and we're 
against public financing, and we have so many other needs, how can we 
spend tax dollars on it--I want to make two points. First of all, this 
bill will be financed entirely by repealing the lobbyist tax deduction 
and voluntary contributions from the American people. No taxpayer who's 
paying anything now will pay any more to finance this bill. No 
expenditure now going to the education and welfare or national defense 
of this country will be diverted to pay for this bill, not one red cent.
    The second point I want to make is this: If you wish to limit the 
expenditures on congressional races, as we limit the expenditures in 
Presidential campaigns, it can constitutionally only be done if it is 
tied to the receipt of public financing, because the Supreme Court has 
ruled that a millionaire or a billionaire can spend as much money as 
they want and that anybody can spend as much money as they can raise on 
any campaign, unless there is some benefit tied to it. Correct? So there 
is no way, we will never limit spending in national races unless we can 
tie it to a broad-based stream of financing, accountable to all the 
people. That's why some Republicans voted for this bill 2 years ago. 
They understood this--or last year. And I hope they will again.
    Yes, sir.
    Q. You're stressing no public support here, but on the Presidential 
checkoff and presumably the congressional checkoff and also the loss of 
a deduction of lobbyists, wouldn't that revenue be useful for things 
such as jobs programs and other areas that you favor? How is it not 
public support? Could you go into that a little more deeply?
    The President. Well, that's only if the individual taxpayers want it 
to be diverted to that. If they make a decision to do that in the 
context

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of a very large budget, it would be a tiny amount that they can divert. 
But their lawmakers will not divert it; the taxpayers can do it. The 
taxpayers won't pay extra. They can say, well, we'll spend up to $5 of 
our money on this. But that is their decision. That's not our decision. 
I like that. I wish we could give people more control over their lives, 
not less. So I think that's an advance.
    Q. Mr. President, on a different subject, now with the Christopher 
mission over, can you tell us what you and the Europeans have 
accomplished? The impression is that despite all of his diplomatic 
skills, that nothing on the ground in Yugoslavia or Bosnia is going to 
change, at least for the foreseeable future.
    The President. I'll be happy to answer that, but if I might, can I 
just answer--and I'll come back to you before I leave, but could we--if 
there are any other questions on this subject from the press, on the 
campaign finance reform. Yes.
    Q. Mr. President, how do you intend to convince the public to spend 
tax dollars on Federal election campaigns? Because, back to Frank's 
[Frank Murray, Washington Times] question, they haven't been checking 
off that dollar. One of the reasons it has to be raised to $5 is because 
the fund is running out of money.
    The President. Why don't you answer this?

[At this point, Representative Gejdenson, Senator Mitchell, and Senator 
Boren each responded to the question on the voluntary taxpayer checkoff, 
and the Vice President commented on public support for campaign finance 
reform.]

    The President. One of the reasons that I think people will 
participate, by the way, is exemplified by the enormous way that lobby 
registration and disclosure bill carried through the Senate yesterday. I 
think that when it finally got on the floor it was 95 to 2. The only 
argument against this will be, well, there's public money involved. But 
people are smart enough to know that we're paying for it by repealing 
the lobbyist deduction. The public knows that they're not going to get 
the money in their back pocket, and they're not going to get the money 
spent on their favorite program. We're either going to repeal the 
lobbyist deduction and do this and open up this system, or we're not. 
And I think we ought to.
    Let me also say that I think one reason more people will participate 
is, they can see some tangible evidence of political reform which is 
worth their money. I remind you, we had a big outpouring of voters in 
the last election. I don't take full credit for it; they voted for all 
three candidates. But there was a big increase in voter participation, a 
huge increase in voter participation among young people. This White 
House has already received more letters in 1993 than came into the White 
House in the entire year of 1992. People are interested now. They're 
concerned. They want their country back. They want their Government 
back. And I think they will seize this opportunity if we give it to 
them.
    Now, we had a couple of young people who had questions there on 
this. Go ahead.
    Q. I was wondering, because incumbents don't have to spend as much 
money as their challengers, how are you going to make that equal for 
everyone?
    The President. Well, the truth--you can't give the challengers more 
than the incumbents, but--I have two responses. One, as a practical 
matter, what often happens is the incumbents hugely outspend the 
challengers unless the challengers are very well-known or independently 
wealthy, 4 to 1 is the average. So this will even it up. That's a long 
way from 4 to 1.
    The second thing is that all of us who have run in elections know 
that there is a core, a threshold amount of money you have to have to 
make sure your voice is heard. After that, if somebody's got a little 
more, it's not as important. But this will even up the spending, number 
one; and number two, it will bring everybody to that threshold where 
they can be known by the voters and their message can be heard.
    Q. My question is this: Do you feel that PAC's like Emily's List 
that aren't funded by big business and big corporations should be exempt 
from your proposal?
    The President. That's a hot issue up here. The answer is, I don't, 
from the bundling proposal. The question is whether Emily's List or any 
other list not tied to a specific interest group like labor or 
manufacturers or whatever but instead tied to a set of ideas should be 
able to go and gather up contributions from people all over America and 
then send them to the candidates of their choice who may or may not be 
known to the people who gave the money to Emily's List. I can only tell 
you this bill does not explicitly address that.
    My own view is--and I really appreciate the

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work that Emily's List has done--is that you can't just make an 
exemption for Emily's List. Anybody who says, we stand for certain ideas 
and certain values, whether you like them or not, could do the same 
thing. So I think there's a way that can be compromised. I think, you 
know, you might have Emily's List, for example, or any other similar PAC 
be able to send specific envelopes to their contributors and have the 
contributors send them directly. But my own personal view is that the 
law should be the same for everyone.
    Q. My question is, with the bill that was passed through the Senate, 
and if it is passed through the House, would that hurt or will it help 
your bill if it is passed through legislation?
    The President. It will help. Let me tell you what the difference is. 
The bill that the Senate passed yesterday requires much more extensive 
registration by people who lobby the Congress, so that the press will be 
able to find and tell you who is lobbying on what issues, who they are 
and where they live and what they do. It furthermore now requires the 
Senate and the House Members who receive any kind of benefit like a 
trip, a hunting trip or something like that, that is over a certain 
amount of money, that that has to be disclosed. I think it's over $20, 
isn't it? Over $20. There has to be a record made of that. That will 
almost certainly discourage a number of those things. And if they occur, 
then you'll know what kind of lobbying is really going on. A lot of 
money is spent on that every year. So getting that into the light of day 
is a big deal. If that were to pass the House, that would not--I think 
it would help to pass this, because that bill only deals with the 
activities of lobbyists. It doesn't deal with the activities of 
lobbyists and spending limits and political action committees in 
campaign financing. So I see these two things as going hand-in-hand.
    When I ran for President, I said I wanted to have lobby reform and 
campaign finance reform and motor voter registration and a lot of those 
things which will all fit together to open the system to the people. So 
I think it will help. If the Senate bill passes the House, I think it 
will help campaign finance reform.
    That's a very intelligent question, by the way.
    The Vice President. They're recommending that you just take one more 
because of the group from the----
    The President. They say I can--go ahead. I have a crowd waiting for 
me. I'm sorry. And then I've got to answer your question.
    Q. If the bill doesn't pass, what aspects of it would you be willing 
to change, if any?
    The President. Well, I don't want to say that, because if I do that, 
then the people who don't want it will try to go to the lowest common 
denominator. Senator Boren I think made the comment, or Senator 
Mitchell, one of them talked about the letter that was received from the 
five Republican Senators. So we will see what they have to say as we go 
along. But let's see, first of all, let's see if it can pass the House. 
Let's see how the Democrats feel about it and whether there are some 
Republicans who favor it. And if we can pass it, then we'll go forward.
    I think the key thing, frankly, is whether you could say we 
shouldn't spend taxpayers' money on this when there are so many other 
needs. If that can really be presented, then the opponents will have won 
an enormous victory. They will just keep the system just the way it is. 
When the truth is that we're going to pay for it with voluntary 
contributions and repealing the lobbyist deduction that they've enjoyed 
for 31 years. I think if people see this as a way of controlling 
spending, limiting lobbyists, and limiting PAC's, then the support for 
it will be overwhelming. And that's why we've been so careful in the way 
it's been drawn up.

Bosnia

    Now, to your question. First, when Secretary Christopher gets back, 
I expect to see him. I also expect to see Senators Nunn and Lugar at a 
minimum from the representatives of--the three Republican and three 
Democratic Senators who have been in the area. Secretary Christopher and 
I will meet with the other members of our national security group, and 
we will see where we go from there.
    But I've been keeping up with this trip as well as with events and 
been making some calls overseas myself. I expect we will be able to 
reach a consensus fairly shortly on which approach to take. And as soon 
as we do, we will announce it and go forward.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 9:40 a.m. on the South Lawn at the White 
House. A part of the question-and-answer session could not be verified 
because the tape was incomplete.