[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 24 (Monday, June 21, 1993)]
[Pages 1094-1095]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Exchange With Reporters at the North Portico

 June 16, 1993

Campaign Finance Reform

    Q. Mr. President, those Senate Republicans, sir, who are now 
blocking campaign finance reform even though they voted for it before, 
what do you say to them? I mean, this thing could go down today and be 
dead.
    The President. The real question is what can they say to the 
American people. What possible reasons can they give other than pure 
politics for filibustering a bill which they voted for last year? And as 
I said, this isn't the first time it's happened. It happened on motor 
voter, but we were able to work that out.
    But these are good people, and I think they must be searching their 
hearts about it and about wondering if they can even begin to defend it 
on anything other than raw politics. And I'm hoping that there will be 
some change and some breakthrough. I got some information this morning 
that it's at least somewhat encouraging, and we'll just keep working on 
it and hope we can prevail.
    Q. Would you agree to give up any public funding? Would that be one 
way?
    The President. Well, the only problem with that is, if you give it 
all up you have no control on the amount of money being spent. And the 
argument for the public funding is simply that the Supreme Court has--
that unless you give candidates something, you can't condition how much 
they spend. So if the object is to control the cost of campaigns, as 
well as to limit the influence of PAC's, and to open the airwaves, it is 
difficult to meet all those objectives if you don't have some public 
funding. They're talking about the various compromises. I don't know 
whether they can reach one, but that's why I hope that Republicans who 
voted for the bill last year will think about it. It is essential to 
limit the overall costs of campaigns, and

[[Page 1095]]

somehow there's got to be a public funding element to it. Thank you.

Note: The exchange began at 10:15 a.m. A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of this exchange.