Tom Allen

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to thank the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee and chairman and ranking member of the full committee and say that the modified version of my amendment removes the requirement of financial guarantees from prospective owners of for- profit educational institutions during provisional certification. The modified amendment maintains the provisions which ensure that owners of higher education institutions may be held liable for repayment of funds that taxpayers intended for eligible students. In Maine, students and families are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in refunds by owners of for-profit institutions which have been closed down due to mismanagement. An owner of one such institution has been able to move his business to another State and continue to draw Federal financial aid dollars. This situation is not peculiar to Maine. Students and families all over the country are owed money by owners of schools that have failed. I have been told by the Inspector General's Office that between 85 and 95 percent of their open cases concerning for-profit institutions involve student loan refund problems. Students should be able to attend an educational institution and trust that their tuition and financial aid dollars are being handled properly. When this is not the case, the Secretary should have the power to impose appropriate sanctions not only against the institution involved, but also against the owner of the institution. My amendment will solidify the Secretary's power to hold the institution of a proprietary higher education institution liable for financial losses to the Federal Government and student loan recipients. Presently, the Secretary has only been able to seek recourse from institutions, not their owners; however, many such institutions are bankrupt, so no money is recovered. My amendment provides the Secretary with a mechanism to collect the funds. It does so by holding the owner liable in the same way that an individual would be responsible for penalties for the nonpayment of taxes. Taxpayer dollars must be protected to ensure the continued availability and viability of student financial aid programs. I urge my colleagues to accept this amendment, support this amendment.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to work through those issues with my colleague. It is certainly not our intent to hold the comptroller of any institution liable. We have felt that this amendment would apply only to for-profit institutions and not to any public universities or nonprofits. But if it is written in a way to apply to everyone, it should only apply to those who are owners in the sense that they own stock in the institution. That is the intention.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I would say in response to the comments of the gentleman from California that I do believe in the United States Constitution, and I think sometimes that the Republican majority in this House thinks that the U.S. Constitution is a draft document that needs constant revision. Our Founding Fathers set up a document that establishes a balance between the branches and establishes majority rule on those issues of substance that come before this particular body. There is a difference. As the gentleman from Massachusetts pointed out earlier, there is a difference between those rules laid out in the Constitution that govern how we operate here and the matters that relate to what working families in this country have to deal with.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, the Founding Fathers said very clearly that there is a process for establishing, for amending the Constitution. That is what we are going through. This is not hiding behind the supermajority vote. This is not minority dictation. This is an issue of how we are going to deal with substantial, substantive issues as we go forward. There has been a lot of debate here about State examples. They are, in my view, almost completely irrelevant. The States are not responsible for Medicare, the States are not responsible for Social Security, the States are not responsible for national defense, and the States are not responsible for taking this country out of a deep recession or depression, if we ever fall into one again. We want to preserve majority rules on those issues that matter, mostly that involve the business of this House, as we conduct it. I would say this. One speaker earlier said this limitation, constitutional tax limitation agreement, would make it harder for this Congress to raise taxes. That is right. It would make it harder for this Congress to raise taxes, and it would make it much harder for this Congress to reduce deficits, because the two go together. If we look back at history, what has happened here in this Congress in recent years, since 1982, five of the six major deficit reduction acts that have been enacted since 1982 and helped us balance the budget have included a combination of revenue increases and program cuts. President Reagan signed three of those deficit reduction measures, President Bush signed one, and President Clinton signed one. Not one of those five passed with a two-thirds majority in this House of Representatives. There is no one in this House, there is no one in this House who can look out into the future and see what is going to happen to Medicare in 10, 20, 30 or 40 years. There is no one in this House who can be absolutely sure that we are not going to need to do something with Social Security, or other issues that come before us. This is a bad bill, and it should be voted down.

Mr. ALLEN. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, there are those here in Washington who believe that we do not need strong tobacco legislation. The other day the tobacco industry announced that it was withdrawing from settlement negotiations. But we need strong legislation because what is happening back at home is criminal. Let me give my colleagues an example. I am proud of my home State of Maine, but back in Maine we have a smoking problem. We just did a survey in Maine, and it shows that teenage girls are smoking at a higher rate than boys and that the smoking rate of young girls has increased by 30 percent since 1993. As one of our officials said, ``Now the slogan `you've come a long way, baby' has different meaning in Maine.'' As our Human Services Commissioner said, we would call out the Marines, the National Guard and the Border Patrol if we thought that the Colombian drug cartel was on their way to addicting one-quarter of America's youths, but the tobacco industry has free reign. It is time to call a halt. It is time in this session for strong tobacco legislation.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I also want to thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Livingston) for recognizing the need for additional funding for the CDBG program. I rise today in support of the manager's amendment to supplement that block grant program by $20 million. I do regret that the offset comes from Section 8 housing, and I hope that at some point that can be changed, but the Northeast has a real need for CDBG funding in the aftermath of the ice storm. This was for Maine the worst natural disaster in our history. Heavy ice accumulation accumulated on trees, on utility poles. We lost 2,600 utility poles, 2 million feet of cable and 1,500 transformers, all of those had to be replaced. Roughly 650,000 customers, half the State of Maine, were out of power for at least some point, many people for up to 2 weeks. Supplemental CDBG funding is critical to address their need. I support this manager's amendment.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of the manager's amendment to supplement the community development block grant (CDBG) Program by $20 million. While I regret that the offset comes from section 8 housing, the Northeast needs CDBG funding to recover from the aftermath of ice storm 1998. In January, Maine was hit by the worst natural disaster in its history. Heavy ice accumulation--up to five inches of ice--snapped utility poles in two. Two million feet of cable line, 2,600 utility poles, and 1,500 transformers were replaced. Roughly 649,000 customers--half of the population of Maine--were out of electricity in the dead of winter. For some rural areas, it took three weeks for electricity to be restored. When Vice-President Gore visited Maine after the first of two ice storms in January, he said that it looked as if a neutron bomb had hit Maine--the people were fine, but the utility infrastructure had been destroyed. The cost of repairing the electrical infrastructure in Maine was $81 million. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has identified utility costs as a major unmet need. In the President's action plan for recovery, the CDBG Program is cited as one that can supplement other Federal assistance in repairing and reconstructing infrastructure. 24 CFR Sec. 570.201(1) provides that CDBG funds may be used to acquire, construct, reconstruct, rehabilitate, or install the distribution lines and facilities of privately-owned utilities. Supplemental CDBG funding is critical to address needs stemming from the ice storm that devastated Maine and the other Northeastern States. Without the additional CDBG funding, our residents would bear much of the high cost of this natural disaster. That would be unfair. Mainers have paid their fair share over the years to defray the costs associated with other natural disasters. I commend Chairman Livingston's recognition of the need for additional funding for the CDBG Program. FEMA recognizes that there are unmet needs related to the ice storm and that the CDBG Program can address these needs. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Madam Speaker, I feel like I am in wonderland. This is supposedly a debate on campaign reform but the vote is rigged, the process is rigged. And one way my colleagues can tell that is the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson) and I, who spent 6 months working with freshmen on both sides of the aisle to develop a bipartisan approach to this problem, are now on opposite sides. This bill that is coming to the House today is not a bipartisan bill. The fact is that there are ways to deal with this issue. We can deal with it the way the freshmen did in a bipartisan way over a period of months. We can deal with it the way the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) have dealt with this bill, in a bipartisan way over a period of years. This is a sham. It is a fraud. We started our freshman process by agreeing that we have to take the poison pills off the table and this bill has a poison pill. It has the biggest of all. That is a worker gag rule, a rule that is aimed unfairly at the men and women in this country who contribute a few bucks a month. It promotes big money in politics. It continues big money in politics. It is aimed directly at working Americans.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the Members on the other side for the title of this bill, the Small Business Paperwork Reduction Act. That is a terrific title, and it is hard to imagine that any one of us could oppose a bill like that, except for the content of the bill. But that is a great title. But the fact is that we have got two proposals in front of us. One is the Kucinich-Tierney amendment, and I believe that is the right sort of amendment because it gives our agencies the kind of flexibility that we need. The other side has gone on about how the bill, as drafted and as reported out by the committee, only deals with paperwork violations. But there are paperwork violations and others. The fact is that for many of our agencies there has to be a regular period of reporting. I want to mention a couple of things. The principal deputy, an associate general for the Department of Justice, has testified that automatic probation for first-time offenders would give bad actors little reason to comply until caught, and that would work to the economic detriment of those hardworking small business owners who work hard to comply with the law. And that is my fear about this particular legislation. If we approve this legislation, we are creating a set of incentives, and among those incentives are an interest of some people in taking the reporting requirements less seriously; and, in my opinion, that hurts the legitimate small business owner who is out there trying to comply with the law, and helps those who are trying to get away with one thing or other. As my colleagues know, the Department of Justice has also said that this bill could interfere with the war on drugs, hinder efforts to control illegal immigration, undermine food safety protections, hamper programs to protect children and pregnant mothers from lead poisoning, and undercut controls and fraud against consumers and the United States. I am very concerned about this bill in a number of different respects, and I want to turn to one of them in particular. We have a set of protections that are designed to protect our safe drinking water, and self-monitoring and reporting are the foundations of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. These reporting requirements are designed to give State and Federal environmental protection officials knowledge of environmental compliance before any harm occurs. Under H.R. 3310, the agency would have to prove the failure to report the pollutant, and not just the existence of the pollutant, posed a substantial and imminent threat before it could assess fines. And I do not think that relying on EPA inspections is a viable alternative. The EPA only has enough staff to inspect our 200,000 public water systems once every 40 years. What we need is an effective system of reporting, and if my colleagues look at the Tierney-Kucinich amendment, what it is doing is saying that rather than a blanket exemption for all first time offenders, what they are doing is directing every agency to develop policies to deal with first time so-called paperwork violations. That is a far more sensible approach. It is a kind of approach that I think makes sense. It is a kind of approach that will give our small businesses the relief they need, and yet not let people off the hook when they do not create any incentives for people not to keep the kinds of records that help keep our public safe in a wide variety of different areas. As Franklin Raines has said, and I will yield in one second, the primary beneficiaries of section 2(B) would appear to be those who do not act in good faith and those who intentionally or willfully violate the applicable regulations. That is what we are concerned about on this side of the aisle, and I urge my colleagues to support the Kucinich-Tierney amendment.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 3310, the Small Business Paperwork Reduction Act Amendments of 1998. The intent of H.R. 3310 is worthy. For years, the small business community has voiced its concerns about the scope and burden of regulatory costs. These concerns were addressed in the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) and the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) and by the Administration in their current efforts to streamline paperwork requirements. Small business is responsible for 80% of the jobs that are created in our country. We are innovative and prosperous when our capital markets are efficient and the demands by the federal government reasonable. I was self-employed not too long ago and remember well the challenges that any small business faces. Some of these challenges are addressed by H.R. 3310: requiring the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to publish a list annually on the Internet and in the Federal Register of all the federal paperwork requirements for small business; requiring each agency to establish one point of contact to act as a liaison with small businesses; and establishing a task force to study the feasibility of streamlining reporting requirements for small businesses. The central problem with H.R. 3310 is its provision suspending civil fines for first-time violations by small businesses when they fail to comply with reporting and record-keeping requirements. I believe that this well-intentioned provision may reduce compliance and hamper the government's role to protect the public. When pension administrators, banks, financial advisors, food and drug manufacturers, and employers violate the law, these violations would not be addressed, even if willful, until a second violation. Under H.R. 3310, a pattern of noncompliance would be difficult to detect by the agency with jurisdiction. For instance, the Consumer Product Safety Commission's efforts to monitor product safety would be hampered. Compliance with the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992, which requires disclosure of lead-based paint hazards to prospective renters or buyers, would be reduced. The same applies to OSHA and ERISA requirements. The case is clear that the burden of paperwork requirements does not outweigh public health, safety, and financial security considerations. While the title of H.R. 3310 is appealing, I believe its enactment would have serious, negative consequences on our nation. That is why I voted against H.R. 3310.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I thank him for all his help on this issue, and for his concise summary of the Thomas bill, the Republican leadership bill. Let me just mention one thing before I turn to my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Arkansas. What we have in this Republican leadership bill is a worker gag rule. The Center for Responsive Politics has determined that in the last cycle businesses outspent labor by 10 to 1, and notwithstanding that 10 to 1 differential, the Republicans are determined to try to gag unions. Let me give a couple of examples. They have established a rule where essentially union members would have to give prior consent, individual prior consent, to the use of any portion of their union dues for political kinds of activities. That does not mean just running ads, it means educating their own membership, putting out material to their own membership to tell them what issues are coming up that may affect their jobs and their lives, their health, and all of those issues that we deal with here in this Congress. They say that they are trying to impose the same restrictions on corporations as they do on unions, but it is not true. It is not balanced and it is not fair. With respect to unions, the burden of proof is against the union. The member's consent is not presumed. You have to have an individual signed, written statement prior to the use of any portion of those union dues for that particular purpose. On the other hand, for a corporation, the burden of proof is in favor of the corporation. The shareholders' consent is presumed unless it is specifically rejected. This is just one of the many ways in which this bill is biased and is unfair. No surprise. It is not a bill that was worked out in committee by a bipartisan process, it is not a bill that has had bipartisan support for any period of time. It was simply put down and put in place, and put together at the last minute by the Republican leadership. It is not fair, and it ought to be voted down.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I am here tonight to talk about the issue of campaign finance reform. This is a topic that has been a subject of particular importance to the freshman class, and I want to explain why. We are going to start with the simple fact that the 1996 election was different from other elections in the past. One of the major differences was the amount of soft money that flowed to the national parties that eventually found its way into ads that were run for and against candidates around the country. Now, soft money is the unlimited money that comes from corporations, from unions, and from very wealthy individuals, to the national parties. This chart on my right will give my colleagues some sense of how there has been an explosion of soft money in the 1996 cycle. As my colleagues can see, in the 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1992 cycles, there was a certain amount of soft money flowing to the national parties, but then in 1996, all the limits came off. It is important to remember, as I said before, this is corporate money, this is union money, and this is money from very wealthy individuals. What was different about 1996? What was different in 1996 is that both parties figured out that they could legally use soft money that came to the national parties to run so-called ``issue advertisements.'' These were advertisements that did not say vote for or vote against a particular candidate, but they did talk about a particular issue, and they did frame the ad almost always in a negative way and urged the voter to call that candidate or call the elected official to complain about a particular position on an issue. They clearly were designed to influence Federal elections, but because they were about issues and not simply saying vote for or vote against a particular candidate, they essentially passed legal muster. So what was a small loophole became a highway for money that has been prohibited for decades in this country. When Theodore Roosevelt was President, 1905, the ban against corporate giving to individual candidates to influence Federal elections was established. In 1943, the same ban was applied to unions. But in 1996, those limits, those bans, were effectively circumvented as money flowed to the national parties and then went out to issue ads. Now, why is that important? What happened in 1996, this is half of the story, the explosion in soft money; the other half of the story that was different is that for the first time or for, I guess I would say, the first complete cycle, we had a lot of money coming from outside groups, issue advertisements, individual expenditures designed to do the same thing, to influence Federal elections, but that fell outside the scope of the Federal election laws. The freshmen, on a bipartisan basis, Democrats and Republicans, formed a task force, six Members on each side. The gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson), a Republican, was the cochair of the Republicans, and I, Tom Allen of Maine, was the cochair of the Democrats on our side. Over a 5-month process we held public forums, we debated these issues and we negotiated a bill. That bill, H.R. 2183, the Bipartisan Campaign Integrity Act, is a good bill. It bans soft money. It requires faster and more accurate reporting by individual candidates. It requires further disclosure by groups that run issue ads. Why do I bring this up today? Because after months and months of investigations with millions of dollars spent in this House by House committees to investigate campaign finance abuses in 1996, and after seeing some significant bipartisan efforts toward campaign reform in this House, what is the result this week? Well, this House, the Republican leadership, is now on the verge of reporting out a so-called ``campaign finance reform bill'' that is a sham. It is not bipartisan, it is not reform and, above all, it is not designed to pass, because the last thing that the Republican leadership wants on campaign reform is for a bill to pass. Now, that bill, we expect that it might be marked up, there might be a rule on it tonight, it might come up this week. The latest information that I have is that that is probably not going to happen, but I want to talk about the difference between doing this in a bipartisan way and doing it in a partisan way. If we approach the campaign reform issue in a bipartisan way, we have to begin by taking the poison pills off the table. And when I say a poison pill, I mean a provision that is designed to kill the reform. So what we did with our freshman effort is, we sat down, we took the poison pills off the table. The Republicans did not want to agree to overall campaign spending limits for individual congressional campaigns. The most common suggested amount was $600,000. Now, some of us thought that for $600,000, one can run a pretty good congressional campaign in this country. They did not want it, so we took it off. The Democrats said, look, we are not going to go after one interest group and not another in this country, and therefore, the poison pills that involve going after labor unions, trying to gag workers across this country, was taken off the bill. That is what we did. We took the poison pills out. But recently the Republican leadership, in developing their bill, put all of the poison pills back in, all of the poison pills, that is, that mean that Democrats could not vote for the so- called ``reform bill.'' Mr. Speaker, let us go for a moment just to the immediate reaction around the country toward the Republican leadership campaign reform bill. In The New York Times today, they called it Campaign Finance Charades, and the first line reads, ``Newt Gingrich has a plan to snooker Americans yearning for a cleanup of their corrupt election finance system.'' The Washington Post today, same type of editorial. The headline: Mocking Campaign Reform. USA Today, an editorial entitled, Big Money Buys Big Favors as Campaign Reform Wilts. The League of Women Voters described the Republican leadership bill as, ``The approach is to package together several of the worst ideas on campaign reform. This bill is a complete travesty.'' Common Cause, which has been leading the fight for campaign reform, described this bill as, ``This bill is a hoax,'' Common Cause President Anne McBride said. ``It is laced through with poison pill provisions, and it not only allows the soft money system to continue in place, but also legalizes Watergate-size contributions for the political parties. No one should be fooled by this cynical effort.'' The fact is that we cannot do campaign reform on a partisan basis, and yet that is exactly what the Republican leadership has been trying to do. We have to get back to first principles, we have to get back to having a bipartisan approach to campaign reform, and I believe that there are others in this House on both sides that have taken an approach, a bipartisan approach. The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) on the Democratic side, have worked on this issue for a number of years. There are Members on both sides of the aisle who have worked on this issue. But the Republican leadership bill is not designed to pass; it is not reform, it is not bipartisan, it is a disaster. I know that on the Democratic side, we are committed to a real campaign reform bill. There is too much money in politics right now. We have to make sure that the ordinary citizen does not feel disenfranchised by this system, and the more big money that comes into politics, the more the cost of campaigns keeps going up, the more the ordinary citizen is going to feel disenfranchised. We have to stop the money race, slow it down, at least, do what we can in this session to do that. We need a different bill, a bipartisan bill on the floor of the House when this issue comes up. One of the leaders in this effort has been the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone). It is good to have him here tonight willing to talk on this subject. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder). It is interesting that the Republican leadership bill, I should say, because I want to say this, there are some Members on the Republican side of the aisle who have been engaged in this issue from the beginning, but not enough. We really think it is the leadership that has sort of shut down this exercise at this time. Let me just talk for one moment about the so-called soft money ban in the Republican leadership bill. The McCain-Feingold bill prevented Federal officials and candidates and parties from raising soft money. The freshman bill did the same thing. Supposedly the Republican leadership bill did the same thing, but there is a difference. Under McCain-Feingold, the McCain-Feingold bill says that State parties cannot raise or spend soft money as well on any activities that affect the Federal election. So the obvious problem was, if you ban soft money at the Federal level, why will not people just go out and raise it at the State level? So McCain-Feingold says, no, you cannot do that. You cannot do that. The freshman bill says, okay, we are not going to prevent State parties from controlling their own election laws and allowing soft money to be raised here if they want to, but we are going to prevent States from moving money, soft money being raised from one State to another, so we wall in each State. We have closed down that loophole. But that provision of the freshman bill was taken completely out of the Republican leadership bill, so it is not a real soft money ban. The obvious loophole, there is a huge loophole in the Republican bill in terms of a soft money ban. It does not work, it is not fair, and it is not real reform. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.

Mr. ALLEN. The gentleman from Arkansas makes a good point. If we think back to what happened on the Senate side, we can see the same sort of pattern over there, because the fact is that the McCain- Feingold bill, the stripped down version of the McCain-Feingold bill that was brought up in the Senate got 51 votes. A majority of the Senate voted for the McCain-Feingold bill in the Senate. Yet, it is only the Senate's rules that allow filibusters that sent that bill down to defeat. Here we are, over on the House side, fighting the same fight, and all we are trying to do is get a good, bipartisan bill to the floor for a vote. If we do that, I believe we will win. I believe we will win it. But this is not a topic that can be done in an arbitrary way, in a totally partisan way. It cannot be done with a bill that is designed to fail, intended to fail, constructed to fail. That is what we have on the other side right now.

Mr. ALLEN. I think the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder) has had the best set of special effects and exhibits as anyone has come to the floor.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I would say the ``travesty,'' ``hoax,'' ``charade,'' are all appropriate words when, in the name of reform, we have a bill which allows an individual who used to be able to give $25,000 to an array of candidates to give $75,000 to candidates. Or when someone used to be able to give $20,000 to the national parties, to be able to give $60,000 to the national parties. That is not reform. That is an explosion of money. Whereas some increase might be appropriate to offset the loss of soft money, because we want our political parties to still be participants in this process, we do not want the campaigns dominated entirely by outside groups, by running issue ads still. That is ridiculous. That does not make any sense. The gentleman from Arkansas was just saying there are other good bills out there, and I want to spend just a few minutes on what is called McCain-Feingold 2, because that is a bill that I think really ought to come up for a vote in this House. It is very close, with just a couple of adjustments it is almost the same bill that passed in the Senate, got 51 votes in the Senate, was not allowed to pass, but it got 51 votes in the Senate. Let me say a few words about that. The McCain-Feingold 2, which is really the Shays-Meehan bill here in the House, eliminates Federal soft money as well as State soft money that influences the Federal election. It has a real soft money ban. Second, it reforms this whole area of issue advocacy. It basically applies to those broadcast communications that refer to a clearly identified Federal candidate within 60 days of a general election. And it restricts what can be done. It says that any of those kinds of ads or express advocacy, they need to be funded the way regular candidate expenditures are funded. Third, the bill requires FEC reports to be electronically filed and it provides for Internet posting of disclosure data. Fourth, it strengthens the campaign finance law by providing for expedited and more effective FEC procedures. Five, it bans fund-raising on government property. The Pendleton Act, which is over 100 years old, has prohibited in some very vague and sometimes confusing ways the raising of money on Federal property, but it is not very clear, and it is certainly not clear how it applies in the cases of telephone solicitation. Well, this bill, the McCain-Feingold bill, fixes that particular problem. And those are some of the highlights, but it is a good bill and ought to come to the floor. I think that the Democrats want to make sure this bill comes to the floor and want to give it an airing. But here is a bill with a bipartisan history; it was put together by Republicans and Democrats, it got 51 votes in the Senate. The least that could happen is that that bill should be allowed to come to the floor of this House for a vote before this body.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, that, as I mentioned at the outset, is the second problem. In addition to the soft money problem, that really arose or became dominant in the 1996 election cycle, and I think it is important to understand that this is political speech. This is free speech. We have got a first amendment. So it is not possible to say with respect to outside issue groups that they cannot run ads, they can never run ads. All that we are saying, all that McCain-Feingold says, is that if within 60 days of an election, when they mention the name or show the likeness of a candidate for Federal office, then it is brought into the reporting scheme that applies to Federal elections. Because at that point, it is pretty clear they are trying to influence the outcome of a Federal election, and that kind of regulation has been upheld. It seems pretty clear that that should be a constitutional way of improving the information that flows to the public, because the bottom line is, I believe, that we believe that the American public is entitled to know who is running ads out there. And if there is a group that is running an ad and calls itself the Coalition for Real Change or the Better Government Group, I mean who are these people? I think the American public needs to be well informed to know who those folks are and, in the best of all possible worlds, to know where the money is coming from. But that is one of the kinds of changes that we need.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, we have got to change it, and I think I agree with the gentleman from Arkansas. If we spend as a body, if this Congress spends 2 years and millions and millions of dollars investigating what happened in 1996 and we do nothing, no reform bill, no change, it will be an embarrassment. And we are here tonight because we do not want this House to be embarrassed. We do not want the American people to be embarrassed. We want this Congress to deal with an important, pressing issue that in our view has to be dealt with on a bipartisan basis, but under this Republican leadership bill is not being dealt with in that manner. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.

Mr. ALLEN. I appreciate the help of my colleague and the support and leadership on this issue. I want to make a couple of comments. People who have been around this place for a long period of time or who write about what goes on here will often say, well, the American people do not care. Well, in my district in Maine they care. I hear about this issue every time I go home, ``When are we going to get some campaign finance reform? When are we going to change the way we fund elections?'' I hear it all the time. But it is also true that this is a different kind of issue. People care about it, but it is not the same. They do not worry about it in the way they may worry about what happens to an elderly parent who may have to go in a nursing home. They do not worry about it in the way we have to worry about, how are we going to get our kids through college. They do not worry about it in the way, what happens to me if I lose my job, what effect will that have on my family? They do not worry about it in the way they may be concerned if somebody in their family is ill or has an extraordinary health care problem that has to be dealt with. And they do not worry about it in the same way they worry about the education of their kids. But it is our job here to provide the leadership on an issue that is fundamental to whether or not the American people, the ordinary American people, can participate in the system in a way that is healthy and strong and viable. And the more big money comes to dominate our politics, the more the average person in this country has a diminished role. And I hear about it because people do understand that. They know that. And they may pick education as the most important problem that we have to deal with, and they do that in poll after poll, and I agree with them; but there are these underlying problems, underlying structural issues, that we have a responsibility to deal with, that they care about very much and they want us to do something about it. But they also have become very cynical that we are capable of dealing with it. The only point I would make is this: 51 votes in the Senate for McCain-Feingold II, 51 votes, the majority of the Senate. And in this House, give us a chance. Give us a chance. Let McCain- Feingold II go to the floor of this House and see what happens. I think we would find there are many Members who would say, this is a right kind of reform, it is bipartisan reform, it is serious reform. It is not the complete answer, but it is a step in the right direction. I believe that we are entitled to have that kind of vote on a bipartisan bill on the floor of this House, and we should not be stymied by the Republican leadership.

Mr. ALLEN. I want to thank both the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) for their participation in this special order tonight on campaign reform. I know you have all worked hard and others have worked hard to see that we do get a vote on campaign reform. I guess I would just close by saying that we are at an extraordinary time in American politics. The Cold War is over. The budget is balanced for the first time in 30 years. The number of civilians in the Federal Government is at the lowest level in 30 years. Unemployment is down. The economy is moving along very well. We are at a time when we really could focus on the issues that matter most to working families: improving education, dealing with health care issues, reforming Social Security so it is there for our children and our grandchildren, and making sure that we leave no child behind, that we build the kind of society in the 21st century that can make this country and make the people here to have all the opportunities or greater opportunities than people have had anywhere on the face of the globe at any time in our history. To do that, we need a healthy political system, we need a system where people want to participate, want to be engaged in the great issues of our time. I believe to do that we have to have a system which does not run on money, which allows the ordinary citizen a chance and a sense, the confidence that his or her voice can really make a difference. And that is why this issue is so important. It underlies everything else that we do. If we are going to get to hear all the voices of America come into this Chamber, if we are going to make good decisions, we need to diminish the role of money in politics. We are not going to eliminate it entirely. We simply have got to try to control a system that is now out of control, try to shut down a loophole that has become a highway for soft money, control issue ads and make sure that the voice of the American people can be heard in all of its diversity and all of its power. So I thank both of my colleagues for being here tonight, and I thank all of those who have worked so hard on this issue. And I extend a last request of the Republican leadership to give us a fighting chance to vote on a fair campaign finance reform bill.

Mr. ALLEN. In a nutshell, what the Republican leadership is trying to do is to place restrictions on and to gag people who contribute a few bucks a month for political activities that are not just activities related to Federal candidates, but just their own union. At the same time, they are tripling the limits that wealthy individuals can give to the national parties. That is an embarrassment.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, the fix is in. After the Republicans have spent millions of dollars in campaign finance investigations, now the Republican leadership has crafted their own campaign finance reform bill. It comes to the floor tomorrow. The fix is in. It is not bipartisan. It is not reform. It is designed to fail. This Republican leadership bill attacks unionized workers, it triples what wealthy individuals can give to candidates who are political parties in hard money. They say it bans soft money, but they are wrong. It does not. It allows the soft money races to go on at the State party level. The Freshman Task Force developed a bipartisan bill. It was a good bill. The Republican leadership will not let it come to the floor. Mr. Speaker, the fix is in. Vote against the Republicans so-called campaign reform bill when it comes up tomorrow.