[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 131 (Friday, September 26, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10097-S10100]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BIPARTISAN CAMPAIGN REFORM ACT OF 1997
The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is truly what is called getting the
last word, as I understand the unanimous consent agreement is for the
adjourning of the Senate following my presentation.
I regret I was delayed. I wanted to be here to be involved in the
back-and-forth discussion on campaign finance reform. Nonetheless, I am
able to offer a few comments about some of the discussion we have had
in the last few hours on this important issue.
It is important for everybody to understand that we are talking now
about campaign finance reform, and we ought not take a victory lap by
virtue of the fact that it is on the floor of the Senate. We are at the
starting line, not the finish line. The starting line was to scratch
and fight and prod to try to get campaign finance reform to the floor
because a whole lot of people didn't want us to talk about it or to
consider it.
[[Page S10098]]
Well, it is here, and now we are going to have some votes. I am going
to offer amendments, some others will offer amendments, and we will see
how people feel about reforming our campaign finance system in this
country.
Much of the discussion in the last couple of hours has been by those
who say they have constitutional objections to the McCain-Feingold
bill, for example, and/or other proposals; that they somehow would
violate the Constitution. Earlier in the week, 126 legal scholars
weighed in saying, ``Nonsense, this wouldn't violate the Constitution
at all.'' In response to the scholars, one of my colleagues said,
``Well, I suppose we could get 126 people who would tell us the Earth
is flat.'' I imagine you could, but not constitutional scholars.
The issue here is people who understand the Constitution, people who
study the Constitution, weighing in on this question of whether the
proposals to change our system of campaign financing runs afoul of the
Constitution. The answer, clearly, at least by 126 constitutional
scholars is no, that's a bogus issue.
Mr. President, this issue of campaign finance reform is a critically
important issue. I have served in public office for some long while,
and I am proud to serve in public office. I am one of those who
believes public service is important. I wake up in the morning and feel
privileged to be able to serve in the U.S. Senate. I come to work
enjoying my job. I have a thirst for public issues and public debate
and a contest of ideas. I think this is an honorable profession. I
enjoy serving here. I want to do the things to advance public policy in
a way that gives the American people some confidence that those of us
who serve here serve the public interest.
I want to tell a story briefly about the campaign I waged for the
U.S. Senate, having served for some terms in the U.S. House of
Representatives. I was better known than my opponent because I was an
incumbent Congressman, although my opponent had run in statewide races
previously. Nonetheless, we both were endorsed by our respective
political conventions to run for the U.S. Senate.
So I called for something in public debate with my opponent that I
thought was unique, unusual, and something that had never been done
before in this country in a Senate campaign. I said to my opponent, Why
don't you and I engage in a campaign that is the most unique and
unusual that has been waged in modern times? Here's my proposition. I'm
better known than you are because I've served in Congress and have run
statewide a good number of times. I accept that. I will be better known
than you are when we start this race. I propose this: I propose that I
will not run any television commercials, no radio advertisements, no
commercials of any kind during the entire campaign. You commit to do
the same thing, and then what we do is we pool our money and we buy 8
hours of prime-time television on the stations that serve in North
Dakota, and each week for 1 hour, we show up at a television station
and have it simulcast across the stations in North Dakota; we show up
with no assistants, no aides, no handlers, no notes, no research
materials, just the two of us, and no moderator, and for 1 hour a week
prime time that we pay for, we tell North Dakotans why we want to serve
in the U.S. Senate and the kind of ideas that we have for the future of
our State in this country; we debate the issues of the day, one on one,
an hour a week prime time for 8 weeks leading up to the election.
At the end of 8 weeks, having an hour debate every week, prime time
simulcast on all the stations, everyone in North Dakota would know who
he is, how he feels about issues, how he reacts in response to a public
debate about issues, and they would know who I am and how I respond to
the same thing.
My opponent chose not to accept that challenge. So the result was we
had a traditional campaign: He ran 30-second advertisements, the little
slash-and-burn 30-second explosion that goes off in our minds that
contribute nothing to the public knowledge. It is part of the air
pollution in this country that happens every election year, that on
television and on the radio, we hear these 30-second and 1-minute
explosions that contribute nothing to the political dialog in America.
So that is what happened in my Senate race.
I regret that was the case because we could have had a Senate race
that would have hearkened back to the old days in which, without the
30-second slash-and-burn advertisements, we would have had live, prime-
time debates without notes, without handlers, without moderators, just
talking about what we believed was necessary to do to assure a better
future for this country and for our children.
Election contests should, after all, be a contest of ideas, but it is
not that these days. I have run in 10 statewide elections in North
Dakota--10 of them. So I know something about statewide campaigns. They
are not any longer contests of ideas. They are an opportunity for
handlers and aides and gurus and assistants and pollsters and media
advisers to put together these little explosions and put them on
television, attempting to mischaracterize some other position or some
other candidate.
Often, the television commercial that is paid for by a candidate has
no explanation except a little line that no one can see on the bottom
that the candidate is even sponsoring it. I have made some suggestions
on how we should address that issue, just as an example, and I am going
to offer it as an amendment and we will have a chance to vote on it in
the Senate. Some will not like it. I don't know if it will prevail.
Here is what I think we should do. We, by law, say television
stations are to provide what we call the lowest card rate for political
advertising during certain political periods during campaigns. If you
are running political campaigns and buying political time, you get the
lowest rate on the rate card and you are guaranteed that by law. I am
going to offer an amendment that I think will change the culture of
these 30-second little slash-and-burn commercials that have become the
trademark of American campaigns. Mine will be very simple. The only
commercials in political advertising that will qualify for the lowest
rate or lowest cost will be those that are at least 1 minute in length
and on which the candidate appears on the commercial 75 percent of the
time. If those two conditions are not met, they don't buy at the bottom
of the rate card.
It costs them much, much more. Let us at least, if we are going to
have a law that requires cutrate advertising prices, be afforded
campaigns, as now exists in law, let us at least allow that to provide
an incentive for the right kind of public discussion. No one who is
thinking, in my judgment, can believe the right kind of public
discourse in this country these days is the little 30-second pollution
out there on television and radio that contributes nothing to public
dialog; it simply attempts to cut down the other candidate and demean
the other candidate, having nothing to do with the issues.
Am I suggesting those who run for public office ought to be free of
public scrutiny and free of public criticism? Not at all, but we ought
to provide some incentives in which the public gets a decent debate
about public issues in our campaigns. So we will have an opportunity to
vote on my amendment during this discussion.
I come to the floor of the Senate as a supporter of the McCain-
Feingold legislation. Would I have written it differently? Yes, I think
so. There are some things I would have changed substantially, but I
have great admiration for Senator McCain and Senator Feingold and for
the persistence with which they bring this legislation to the floor of
the Senate. They believe the current system of financing campaigns is
broken and something ought to be done. There are some in the Senate who
believe that things are just fine, let's just keep going just the way
we are going, things are just terrific, and they don't want anybody to
do anything to change what is now happening.
There is an old saying that the water ``ain't'' going to clear up
until you get the hogs out of the creek. The only way we are going to
clear up the water of campaign financing in this country is for those
of us who believe that we need to change the method by which we finance
campaigns in this country is if we are able to beat back, by voting on
the Senate floor, the attempts of those who want to stall, once again,
our ability to change this system.
Mr. President, I want to show a chart that describes better than all
the words
[[Page S10099]]
I can use what is wrong with our campaign financing system.
This is money in politics, an explosion of money in politics,
spending on all congressional races, 1976 to 1996. And you say,
``What's happening to this line?'' Money in politics.
I wonder if when George Washington and Mason and Madison and Ben
Franklin sat in that little room in Philadelphia and talked about what
kind of a constitution they should create for this country, I wonder if
they thought that we would get to this kind of situation where a
representative democracy would see the election of those
representatives part and parcel of a system in which there is an
explosion of money and elections all too often become auctions rather
than elections. I do not think so.
I do not think this represents the best of democracy. I do not think
it represents something that we can be proud of, as those of us who
participate. I think we ought to change it.
So the question for me and some others in this Chamber is not whether
we address this issue and make some changes, the question is, What kind
of changes should we make? The McCain-Feingold bill comes to the floor
of the Senate--as I have indicated, I am a cosponsor but I might have
written parts of it differently.
As I understand it, the specific McCain-Feingold proposal that is
brought to the floor of the Senate now does not contain some of the
central portions that I think are necessary in really making progress
in reforming our campaign financing system.
For example, we have to, in my judgment, have expenditure limits on
campaigns in order to be effective. There is too much money in
politics. If we do not put spending limits on campaigns, then we are
not going to solve the problem. I understand that the spending limits
which were in the McCain-Feingold bill, which were voluntary spending
limits, have been removed and we will now have to try to put them back
in by amendment.
So the question for the Senate is going to be, Can we attach
individual spending limits, State by State, to campaigns and enforce
them in some way in this piece of legislation?
Originally, the legislation had what are called voluntary spending
limits which had incentives in order to get people to say, ``Yes, we'll
accept spending limits.'' And the incentives persuading them to accept
spending limits would then impose limits on the campaigns.
It is interesting, the Supreme Court in a case called Buckley versus
Valeo ruled by a 5-4 decision that we cannot have spending limits that
are enforceable in campaigns. I would like to see the Supreme Court
revisit that issue, the 5-4 decision. Everybody has a right to be
wrong. When the Supreme Court is wrong, of course, it is the law of the
land.
The Supreme Court, in my judgment, was fundamentally wrong here. We
really ought to have the Supreme Court review this once again--and I
think we reach a different result. But, nonetheless, the result we now
have in Buckley versus Valeo says that you cannot have enforceable
spending limits. So the attempt has been to provide what are called
voluntary spending limits and sufficient incentives in law that would
persuade people to abide by and adopt those spending limits.
I think in the coming days it is going to be clear, with respect to
the debate in the Senate, the difference between the two groups. I am
not talking about Democrats and Republicans; I am talking about two
groups of people. There is one group that says, ``Look, things are
fine. What do you mean, there's too much money in politics? Too much
money spent on Rolaids or Kleenex,'' they will say. ``Gee, we don't
have enough money in politics.''
There is another group that said, ``Wait a second.'' I mean, it does
not take glasses to see what is going on here. What has happened is an
avalanche of money is thrown into this political system, and it is
corrupting the system. If we cannot have some spending limits
someplace, if we cannot, as a group, decide there is too much money in
politics, if we cannot decide that this red line going nearly straight
up represents the corrosive influence of money in politics, then we are
not going to succeed. Yes, we got the bill to the floor of the Senate,
but we will not succeed in solving the campaign finance problem that
exists in this country.
So we will see now in the coming weeks, I suppose the coming 2 weeks,
perhaps, when this is finally complete. There is a group that says,
``Gee, things are terrific. Let's leave things the way they are. We
like money. In fact, the more the merrier.'' They don't say it, but I
think they are kind of concocting a golden rule--he who has the gold,
rules. The fact is that we have one group that has twice as much as the
other group, so they want the rules to admire that and suggest that
that is just fine.
I suppose you can make the case that those who do not have as much
money would like to put limits on those who do. But you know, the
American people are eventually going to rule the day here. The American
people are going to make the decision through their representatives
here in Congress and through public pressure to say either, ``Yes, we
think this is great. We think this flood of money coming into politics
is a wonderful thing. It really nurtures our political system,'' or the
American people will likely say, as all the polls tell us, by 70 and 80
percent, ``This doesn't make any sense at all. This avalanche of money
is hurting our political system.''
We have what is called ``hard money'' and ``soft money'' and
contributions on this side and that side. I imagine that people have
difficulty understanding ``hard money'' and ``soft money.'' The easy
way to understand it, for example, is soft money is the legal form of
cheating--cheating, yes--because no one anticipated, with current
campaign laws, that the kind of money that is now used called ``soft
money'' would be, could be, or should ever be used for purposes it is
now being employed to achieve; that is, millions, tens of millions of
dollars, yes, by both political parties, tens of millions of dollars
thrown into what is called party building. But it is not party
building. These are moneys that are spent in a way designed to
influence individual elections and designed carefully in ways to avoid
it appearing like they are direct expenditures under regulation of the
Federal Election Commission.
The corrosive part of the soft money issue is that is money that can
be thrown in--it can be by a corporation, labor organization, rich
individuals, you name it--it can be thrown into a race under the guise
of not part of the hard money contribution, but it can affect that race
in a dramatic way. The source of the money is never revealed--secret
money out there, never revealed. And you can move the money around
three, four different ways to different organizations, and the source
of the money is never revealed--half a million dollars here, a million
dollars there.
You know who the victims have been of that? We can name some of the
victims who at the end of their campaigns, thinking it was them versus
another candidate in a contest of ideas in their State, found out it
was not that. Yes, that was part of it. Then there are organizations,
unnamed and newly named organizations, off to the side, running in with
saddlebags full of soft money, the source of which no one would ever
disclose, putting advertisements on television, negative, corrosive,
ugly advertisements in order to knock one of the candidates out of the
race.
That is what this political system has become. If we do not fix it,
if we do not address that, shame on us. The American people know it is
wrong, and we ought to know it is wrong.
So the question ought not be for anybody in this Chamber whether we
address this issue in a thoughtful way and pass some legislation
finally to reform the campaign finance system; the question ought to
be, how? How do we do it? We have a couple weeks in which this Senate
can express its judgment on that issue.
I have great respect for every other Member of this Senate. There are
some who stand here today and say they are very concerned about this
aspect or that aspect. I have great respect for them. I am not going to
suggest they have impure motives. But I am saying that in the strongest
possible ways, if they believe that what we ought to do is nothing, if
they believe the current system of financing campaigns in this country
is good for this country, then they are dreadfully wrong. So we will
see in the next couple of weeks.
[[Page S10100]]
I just mentioned soft money and independent expenditures. There is
another category called issue advertising which is tied in with the
same sort of thing--issue advertising.
Let me read from an article out of Rollcall.
While presidential, Senate, and House candidates spent a
record $400 million on TV ads last year, more than two dozen
organizations dumped an additional $150 million into
controversial issue advertising in the 1995-96 cycle . . .
And guess what? What kind of advertising was this? Eighty-one percent
of it was negative advertising; 81 percent negative advertising. That
is the air pollution in this country that we ought to worry about. We
ought to do something about it.
I am not suggesting it is inappropriate to have issue advertising.
But we ought to make it all accountable. If you are going to come in
and play a role in these campaigns, then tell the American people where
you got your money, whose money is it you are spending, and what is the
purpose of the expenditure.
Mr. President, we have had a lengthy discussion today and the
discussion will go on, I assume, for about 2 weeks, and it will be
between those who believe we ought to have reform and those who don't.
Speaker Gingrich calls for more, not less, campaign cash, in an
article in the Washington Post. He represents a group who believe that
money is not a problem--we probably need more money in politics, not
less. I absolutely disagree with him.
In another article, ``Group launches effort against campaign finance
reform bill.'' Some very large influential groups in this country who
are deeply involved in issue advertising of the type I just described
don't want campaign finance reform. I guess I can understand why, but I
think they are wrong.
Mr. President, 45 members of my caucus signed a piece of legislation
saying they are prepared to vote for McCain-Feingold; four in the other
caucus said the same thing. If we can get a vote, up or down, we are
looking for one or two additional Members of the Senate who will decide
whether we pass this legislation.
There are those, I suppose, who will say, ``We need more time.'' We
have had 6,700 pages of hearing, 3,361 floor speeches--and we can add
today's to that, all of this on the issue of campaign finance reform--
446 legislative proposals, and 113 votes in the Senate. I don't know of
anyone who can credibly say we need more time.
What we need is the nerve and the will to do what is right. I hope we
might see that kind of nerve and will in the next couple of weeks.
____________________