Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. The Senator from Connecticut is exactly right. The reason I would support that is I am one of those who would increase the limits. So this gives us an opportunity to support the increase in limits in a number of other ways. But I appreciate this debate. I will repeat what I said yesterday about my own experience, because I ran against a self-funded, wealthy candidate. If I had been under the restrictions of the present law, let alone the restrictions of McCain- Feingold, I would never have gotten anywhere in the primary. The only way I was able to compete in the primary was to spend my own money and match the money that was being spent by a wealthy opponent. As I said yesterday, and repeat for my friend from Connecticut, who has an interest in Utah politics, my opponent--making the point of the Senator from Connecticut--outspent me three to one and lost. So that the expenditure of huge sums does not automatically result in somebody being elected. But, nonetheless, his willingness to spend $40 a vote in that primary made it impossible for anybody to challenge him unless it was, as it turned out, a self-funded candidate who would come along and spend $15 a vote. And that is about how it worked out. Actually, I do not think I spent quite that much per vote. But he spent $6 million. I spent less than $2 million. I was able to get enough to get my message out and win, but if I had to raise that less than $2 million, at $1,000 a person, I guarantee you, I would not have been able to compete in any way. That is why I am sympathetic to the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico. Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

Mr. BENNETT. I thank my friend. Since he has raised the issue of public financing in the campaign, I ask him if he would explain how the public financing would work with respect to special interest groups that raise their own money and run their own ads. We saw in the last election, for example, groups such as the Sierra Club and the National Rifle Association become very active in politics. We are no longer in a position where it is just Republicans running against Democrats, as far as the airwaves are concerned, but a whole host of groups. I ask the Senator, would he support public financing for political ads for even the Sierra Club or the National Rifle Association?

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Senator for his response. I agree with him that my question didn't have anything to do with the amendment. It was stimulated by the Senator's endorsement of Federal funding. I thank him for his response. I am prepared to debate the other issues he raises in the appropriate context. I think we are both getting far away from the amendment.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, this is a very simple amendment. It is very short. I hope it is very much to the point. I refer to it as a consistency amendment; that is, it brings a degree of consistency to McCain-Feingold that has not been there before. I must confess I didn't read McCain-Feingold all that carefully in previous debates since I was opposed to it and I was convinced it was going to fail. I opposed it on constitutional grounds. I still feel that way about McCain-Feingold, but there is now a prospect that it might pass. That being the case, I think it appropriate we address some aspects that we perhaps did not look at before. The fundamental proposition within McCain-Feingold, as I understand it, is that soft money is evil, soft money must be banned, soft money leads to the appearance of corruption, and therefore McCain-Feingold is drafted to eliminate soft money. As we went through McCain-Feingold carefully, we discovered it does not eliminate all soft money. So my amendment, to be consistent, does eliminate all soft money. Let me be specific as to that which is not eliminated under McCain-Feingold and would be eliminated under my amendment; that is, the use of soft money to pay the administrative expenses of PACs, or political action committees. I have something of a history with PACs by virtue of the fact at one point in my career I worked for the late and legendary Howard Hughes. Mr. Hughes, or Mr. Hughes' executives, rather, constitute the fathers of PACs because in California, where Mr. Hughes had his operations, they initiated what was at the time a whole new idea in politics. Mr. Hughes' executives were tired of California politicians coming to them and saying: We want political contributions. So they said: Let's do something different. Come to our plant and address our employees, and when you have finished addressing our employees, we will pass out envelopes and pledge cards to our employees and they can pledge money to you or to your opponent, depending on how they received your presentation when they were there. To my knowledge--and I can be corrected on this--this was the beginning of a political action committee. I can remember when I was employed by the Hughes organization, every politician in California wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. They all wanted to come by the Hughes companies, address the Hughes employees, make their points, and then walk away when it was over with a single check that represented the aggregate of the commitments the employees had made to that particular candidate. It was considered at the time to be individual participation in politics at its finest, and it became, I believe, the pattern for the political action committee that we now have. But it is very different from what we now have in that now instead of simply inviting the candidates in and letting them speak to the employees and then inviting employees to make contributions in whatever fashion and whatever amount the employees may want to do it, in today's political action committee, the organization--be it a union or a corporation--goes out and actively raises the funds itself. It doesn't involve the candidate in any way except when it gets to the point of disbursing the funds. It has become a major business activity--I say ``business activity''--a major campaign activity on the part of corporations and unions. The administrative costs of running this activity are traditionally borne by the corporation and union. In other words, this is a soft money contribution on behalf of the corporation or the union which is not disclosed in any way. Let me share with you some numbers that come from the summary page of reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Committee on Political Education reported that they raised in the calendar year $2,653,257.29. That is a high enough figure to get everybody's attention. What were their operating expenditures? Zero. Mr. President, you and I and every other person who is in this body knows that you don't raise $2.6 million without having any overhead. Indeed, the rule of thumb is that you spend a minimum of 25 percent of your receipts in raising the money, and sometimes it can go as high as 45 percent. If we simply take that kind of rule of thumb and say a third of $2.650 million is $700,000, or $800,000, that means this report is prima facie evidence of an $800,000 soft money contribution to this PAC by the overhead of the union. It is not just unions. There are businesses that do it. I will give you some summary data with respect thereto. For example, Bank One had receipts of $2,378,211 on their FEC report, and they showed operating expenses of $259.46. Again, we know that couldn't possibly be true if you take the rule of thumb and apply it. It is somewhere, once again, between $700,000 and $800,000 that it would cost to raise that amount of money. This is an effective soft money contribution of between $700,000 and $800,000. Let me be clear. Based on my past history and my voting prospects, I do not object to Bank One doing that. I do not object to the soft money that they contributed. But McCain-Feingold, as a bill, does. If it passes, I believe it should be consistent because this soft money contribution, unlike the others that we have heard so much about on the floor, is not disclosed. This soft money contribution must be devised by the kind of mathematical analysis I have just applied to it. I could be completely wrong. I do not know that it is $700,000 to $800,000 that Bank One put into rates raising that much money because it is not disclosed in any way. This is not to imply any wrongdoing on Bank One's part because the present law does not require it. They are abiding by the present law in a perfectly legitimate and proper way. The same thing can be said of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Committee on Political Education. The present law does not require them to disclose the amount of soft money they put into raising the $2.6 million that they report on their FEC report. But if we are going to be consistent, if we are going to say that soft money is bad, this amendment that I am offering will close a significant soft money loophole. It will close the loophole where soft money is currently being spent by both corporations and unions and is not being disclosed in any way. I don't know how controversial this might be. But I offer it because I think it shines an appropriate spotlight on an aspect of the McCain- Feingold bill that has not been discussed in the past. I have no desire to take the full hour and a half. I see that there doesn't seem to be a great deal of interest one way or the other on this. But I will be happy to yield for questions or comments by any Member of the Senate who wishes to discuss this amendment.

Mr. BENNETT. Certainly.

Mr. BENNETT. The Senator from Kentucky is correct. All of us are familiar with the requirement to cover our administrative costs for fundraising out of the proceeds of that fundraising effort. The Senator is correct that this amendment would simply put PACs on the same course as individual candidates. A PAC could not raise money with the advantage of soft dollars any more than a candidate would. The Senator from Kentucky is further correct in that it has an impact on what happens at the State party level because I understand now that a State party can use soft dollars to do certain kinds of things unconnected with advertising or direct contributions to candidates. They would say: No, you can't do that if there is a fundraising effort. The fundraising expenses must be paid out of the fundraising receipts and cannot be solicited in soft dollars.

Mr. BENNETT. The Senator from Kentucky is correct. That is exactly the position I have taken. In the interest of full disclosure of motive, I know there is some conversation on this floor about raising the limits for hard dollar solicitations. I am solidly and strongly in favor of raising the limits on hard dollar solicitations. I recognize if this loophole for soft dollars--as I have pointed out--is, in fact, closed it will increase the pressure when we get to the appropriate amendment to raise the hard dollar limit because it will shut off one significant source of soft dollar contributions that is currently in the bill. I don't want to fly under any false pretense. I am hoping that by the passage of my amendment we will not only achieve the intellectual consistency I have been discussing with the Senator from Kentucky, but, quite frankly, it would create some political pressure to raise the hard dollar limits because I think raising the hard dollar limits is a salutatory thing to do. So let there be no mistake that that agenda is in my mind as I offer this amendment. But nonetheless, I think the amendment has an intellectual sustaining consistency to it because it takes the position that if, as McCain-Feingold says, soft money is inherently corrupting, or gives the appearance of corruption, this is a form of soft money that is even more the appearance of corruption because under McCain- Feingold it is, A, allowed and, B, not disclosed.

Mr. BENNETT. The Senator from Kentucky is exactly correct. If this amendment passes, treasury funds in the union, treasury funds in the corporation, cannot be used to pay the expenses of political fundraising in a political action committee that is organized by either the union or the corporation.

Mr. BENNETT. As I said, the amendment is very short. It is very straightforward. It does not require the kind of complex analysis that went into the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico, which required an entire evening to review and rewrite. I think it is very straightforward. I am not anxious to prolong the debate, but I will, of course, be here to respond to any comments anyone might have one way or the other. Mr. DODD addressed the Chair.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. So by choosing gentlemen who like the print media rather than the electronic media--I miss the point?

Mr. BENNETT. I stand corrected. It was my understanding that there was a prohibition 60 days prior to the election. Can the Senator from Kentucky help us out on this?

Mr. BENNETT. Is there no prohibition for ads 60 days prior to the election?

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I enjoyed listening to the Senator from New York and will respond in a moment. We are on my amendment so I would like to talk about the details of my amendment. Before I do, the Senator from Arizona gave an example of volunteer activity, all of which is currently exempted under Federal law and which would continue to be exempted under Federal law. My amendment goes to organizations such as those we have all seen in the field where there are a number of paid employees devoted full time to PAC activities, occupying dedicated facilities that can be easily identified, running up travel expenses that are clearly billed to that activity. There would be no difficulty on the part of the cost accountant, be it in a union or a corporation, to identify that kind of PAC activity. There is no question that the sort of informal activity of people talking in the workforce, saying they want to support Senator Bennett or Senator McCain, does go on, is voluntary, is completely exempted from all law now, and would continue to be exempted. My amendment would not apply to that. I also point out McCain-Feingold has some of the same aspects of how to anticipate time because, as currently drafted, in Federal election years, McCain-Feingold requires State, district, and local parties to use 100-percent federally regulated hard dollars for the entire salary of any State, district, or local party committee employees who spend 25 percent or more of his or her time in a single month in any of the above-mentioned Federal election activities. If it will be difficult, as the Senator from Arizona described, to figure out what constitutes volunteer activity on behalf of a PAC and what constitutes activity that should be reimbursed out of the hard dollar profits of the PAC, it will be equally difficult, if not more so, for some Federal official to determine what constitutes 25 percent or more of an individual's time in a single month on a particular Federal activity. There will be hairsplitting in that regard that will go further than the hairsplitting to which the Senator from Arizona objected as he made his comments about my amendment. Let me respond in a different way to the comments of the Senator from New York when he said we should look at the forest. I agree with him absolutely. We should look at the forest. I have tried to do that in all of my activity with respect to campaign finance reform since I first came here in 1993. The forest I look at, that must be preserved and protected--indeed, that which I have taken an oath to preserve and protect--is the Constitution of the United States. I do not want to be part of a Congress that dilutes the freedoms that are outlined in the Constitution of the United States and, specifically, the first amendment thereto. We are in the 250th anniversary of the birth of James Madison, little Jimmy, as he was called by his contemporaries, because he was short. That seemed to be the kind of nickname that stuck with him. I make this interesting point about Madison before I go on. This comes from an article on money and politics that was printed in the Wilson Quarterly in the summer of 1797. Reference has been made to the Founding Fathers. The Founding Fathers were geniuses, the Founding Fathers gave us an incredible legacy, but the Founding Fathers were also very practical politicians or they wouldn't have been in the positions where they were. Quoting from the Wilson Quarterly: George Washington spent about 25 pounds apiece on two elections for the House of Burgesses, 39 pounds on another, and nearly 50 pounds on a fourth, which was many times the going price for a house or a plot of land. Going back to the debate we had with the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico, George Washington was a wealthy man, trying to buy his election, if we use today's rhetoric. Washington's electioneering expenses included the usual rum punch, cookies and ginger cakes, money for the poll watcher who record the votes, and even one election eve ball, complete with fiddler. Now it talks about James Madison and money: James Madison considered the ``corrupting influence of spiritous liquors and other treats'' ``inconsistent with the purity of moral and Republican principles.'' But Virginians, the future president discovered, did not want ``a more chaste mode of conducting elections.'' Putting him down as prideful and cheap, the voters rejected his candidacy for the Virginia House of Delegates in 1777. Leaders were supposed to be generous gentlemen. Madison's attempt at purity, though futile, signified the changing ideological climate. Madison obviously learned elections cost money, even in the days of the Founding Fathers. The one thing that Madison guaranteed would happen in every election was that there would be complete freedom of expression at every place and at every point. Since this is the 250th anniversary of Madison's birth, may I, with the suspension of belief, resurrect James Madison and place him in the gallery, if you will, in the press gallery, because James Madison has a history of being an author and a journalist, being the author of much of the Federalist Papers. Let us have Madison up there, listening to this debate. Now, he would turn to one of his friends in the press gallery to have him explain terms that would be unfamiliar to him. He would say: What is hard money? What is soft money? What is the difference? What is it used for? He would have explained too much hard money is this and soft money is that. He might have a little trouble understanding the difference because he would say: Wait a minute. In the first amendment that I authored you were free to speak in whatever way you wanted. You could be like Washington and buy rum punch and ginger cakes, if that is what it took to get the voters to listen to you; or you could run an ad. You could print a pamphlet. That is what Hamilton and Jay and I did. We went out and raised money and printed our own pamphlets and circulated them. Maybe you have seen them. Madison's friend up there in the press gallery might say: Yes, I have seen them. We call them the Federalist Papers today. But we must remember that when they were written, they cost money. Madison could not have spoken if he had not raised and spent some money. Money was speech all the way back in James Madison's time. As James Madison sits there in the gallery, and he hears the details of McCain-Feingold, James Madison says: Wait a minute. You are telling me that there will be limits on how Americans can participate in the political process? Yes. There will be limits. James Madison asks: Who is in charge of this outrageous idea? You see the handsome young fellow from Madison, named after you, from Wisconsin, his name is Russ Feingold. He has been pushing for this. James Madison says: I must do something about this. I must express my opinion with respect to Senator Feingold. He snaps a finger and gets his partner, Alexander Hamilton, to join him. He says: Alexander, look what is happening. There is that fellow down there from Wisconsin. He comes from a town named after me. He is trying to limit Americans' ability to speak in politics. What do we do about it? Alexander Hamilton says: You do whatever you always do when you want to make a statement. You write a letter to the New York Times. James Madison says: Great, Alexander, let's do that. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison sit down and write a letter to the New York Times protesting the activities of Senator Feingold. The editor of the New York Times says: We are not going to run it. Madison says: Well, Alexander, you certainly lost your cachet. There was a time when anything you said in New York automatically was run in any newspaper. What do we do? Alexander Hamilton says: Well, we are going to have to buy an ad in the New York Times. That way they cannot censor our speech. Money is required. How much money do you have, little Jimmy? Madison puts his hands in his pocket, and he pulls out whatever money he brought with him from the 18th century. And he says: Ready cash, I have $7.23. How about you, Alexander? Alexander Hamilton says: Don't get into the issue of money. I don't want to talk about the blackmail payments I have been making. It is a very sore political point. I can't help you. But maybe the amount of money you have will do the job. So they call the New York Times and say: How much is the full page ad in the New York Times? The New York Times says $104,000. I have $7.23. I can't speak unless I raise some money. Who do we know that knows how to raise money? Snap of the finger and Benjamin Franklin appears. Benjamin, you were one of America's good businessmen. He said: Yes. And I put mine in a CD that has been accumulating interest ever since I died in the 1700s, and I have enough for an ad in the New York Times. But let me be practical with you. Not only am I a practical businessman, but I recognize that most of the people in Madison, WI, don't read the New York Times. That is going to come as a great shock to you, Alexander Hamilton. You think the whole world reads the newspapers in New York. The fact is, if we are going to have an influence by running our ad, we are going to do it in Madison, WI. They contact the Madison, WI, paper, and find out that the cost of a full-page ad is 10 percent of the cost of the New York Times; $14,000 on a Sunday gets you a full-page ad in the newspaper in Madison, WI. Let's do it. But while they are debating, while they are doing this-- again we are compressing time--McCain-Feingold passes and is the law of the land, and it is within 60 days of the election of the Senator from Wisconsin. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin walk into the newspaper and say: We want to buy an ad urging people to vote against Senator Feingold. The editor of the newspaper says: In the name of campaign finance reform, we will not permit you to buy that ad. We will not permit you to express your opinion about Senator Feingold or any other candidate. We will forbid you from speaking. As they turn to walk from the editor's office, with Madison and Hamilton disconsolate about the fact they cannot speak their mind, Benjamin Franklin says: I can fix it. How can you fix it, Benjamin? He says: I told you I put my money in a CD, and it has been accumulating interest ever since the 1700s. I have enough to buy the newspaper. I don't have to buy the ad. I have enough to buy the paper. Once we own the paper, then we will have unlimited free political speech because, you see, the impact of McCain-Feingold means the people who have the most speech are the people who truly have the most money--the people who own the newspapers, the people who own the television station, and people named Turner who own networks. They have complete freedom of speech because they have enough money. And it has taken almost 250 years for me to accumulate enough. But I, Benjamin Franklin, have enough that I can buy their newspaper. And then I can run an editorial attacking Senator Feingold every day of the week, if I so choose. At that point, there are absolutely no limits on any speech. But you, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, there are limits on your speech placed there by McCain-Feingold saying that there will be no political speech from you during the 60 days before the election. We come back to reality. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin are not available as witnesses in this particular debate, even though I called them up rhetorically. But I am moved to do that by the comment of the Senator from New York who says we must look at the forest and we must protect the big picture. The big picture, as we are debating McCain-Feingold, has to do with freedom of speech. It has to do with robust debate of the American economy. It does not have to do with getting money out of politics because the reality in the big picture is that we never have had money out of politics, starting with George Washington and his rum punch and his ginger cakes. And we never will have money out of politics. Somebody will find a way to do it. I am a cosponsor with Senator Allen who has offered the Virginia Plan. I am not sure it is going to be offered on this floor. But it is offered in the arena of public opinion. I hope it gets offered. Historians will recognize that the Virginia Plan was James Madison's plan for the Constitution. What is the Virginia Plan for campaign finance reform? Two sentences. The first one, worthy of James Madison, says: No American, any provision of law to the contrary notwithstanding, shall be prohibited from expressing himself or herself in any way in any arena or any contribution to any party or any candidate. That sounds like first amendment language to me. That sounds like James Madison language about which he would be very comfortable. Then the second one, recognizing where we are in technology, says--I am not quoting the legal language, just the effect of it--every one of those donations will be in the modern world disclosed, using the technology that is available to us. This means in all probability, 48 hours, and it is on the Internet for everybody to see. Forty-eight hours, and electronically the contribution is there. That is the Virginia plan. When I discuss this with people outside the Senate, they all say: Gee, that makes a lot of sense. Why don't you start voluntarily disclosing within 48 hours right now? If you are such a great campaign finance reformer, why don't you do that immediately? I say: You know, there was one candidate for President who did that. It is a very interesting thing to do. I recommend it to all of you in your town meetings. I say: There was one candidate for President who did, in fact, disclose every one of his donors within 48 hours. Question: Do you know who it was? I did this to a group of political science students the other day. The first answer I got back was Ralph Nader. I said: No, Ralph Nader did not do it. Then someone answered: Well then, was it John McCain? I said: No, it was not John McCain. Then someone answered: Gee, Al Gore? I said: No. The candidate who did it is now sitting in the White House. His name is George W. Bush. He got little or no credit for doing it from those who sit in the press gallery because they do not want to admit that he was on to a good idea--in my opinion, a better idea than the bill we are debating. None of this has had anything to do with my amendment, and I recognize that. But none of the debate on the other side has had anything to do with my amendment either. And, if I may, if the Senator from West Virginia can talk about spring, I hope the Senator from Utah can talk about the Constitution. I remain ready to answer any questions about my amendment or respond to anything about my amendment. But, so far, there has been little or no debate about it.

Mr. BENNETT. Yes.

Mr. BENNETT. Is it only television?

Mr. BENNETT. I am happy to be corrected.

Mr. BENNETT. It is my thought, I say to the Senator from Kentucky, that the reason we have not considered this as an abuse in the past is because there have been other things at which we have been looking. But if McCain-Feingold outlaws those other things, there is no reason to believe that this will not become the target of campaign finance reformers in the years ahead, and we will see at that point their thundering rhetoric about how terrible it is. Today, they have no rhetoric and they say it is no problem. Of course, I say to the Senator from Kentucky, knowing how he feels, I think the thundering rhetoric is overheated as to the problem on the other side, but corruption becomes ultimately in the eye of the beholder.

Mr. BENNETT. The Senator from Michigan said this is a solution looking for a problem, that there has been no abuse of this in the past. I was interested and pleased to hear the Senator from Wisconsin say we used to say PACs were a problem. I remember when the Senator from Kentucky and I were lonely voices here defending PACs as being a legitimate thing in the face of those who were attacking it in the name of campaign finance reform. So at least that debate is over and now PACs are good. To the point the Senator from Michigan raised, would the Senator think this exception--I will call it an exception--could, in fact, become a major loophole in the future if McCain-Feingold passes, and that some clever lawyers could sit down and figure out a way to create something that came under this exemption that could raise significant amounts of hard dollars, funding them with soft dollars that are totally undisclosed, unlike the other soft dollars to which they object--soft dollars that would be totally undisclosed, finding a way to turn this into the next monster that we hear about in campaign finance reform debates 5 to 10 years from now?

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have never started a leadership PAC because I have never been in a leadership position. But I understand that it is, indeed, easy to do; and it is done only with hard money. There does not seem to be any difficulty in keeping track of who is volunteering and who is being paid.

Mr. BENNETT. The amendment deals with activities on the part of corporations every bit as much as on the part of labor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Thank you, Madam President. I appreciate the opportunity to comment on this amendment. I believe I have some personal experience which I will share with the Senate. It has to do not with a general election but with a primary. That is an issue that sometimes we forget because there are many States where the primary is the ultimate election--States that are overwhelmingly Democratic, such as the State of Massachusetts, and States that are overwhelmingly Republican, quite frankly, such as the State of Utah. The real contest in 1992, when I ran for the Senate, was the primary, which I won by about 10,000 votes, compared to the general election, which I won by 180,000 votes. Percentage-wise, I won the primary 51.5 to 48.5. I always add the half to make it sound as if it was a better victory than just 51-49. I won the general election by a 16-point gap. So the primary was the big issue. I had to spend my own money in that primary race. I remember a conversation with the then-chairman of the Senatorial campaign committee, Mr. Gramm of Texas, who warned me with the following story about the perils of spending your own money. He talked about the two fellows in Texas--I don't remember their names so I will call them Joe and Bill--who both put their own money into the race. At the end, on election night, when Joe had won, Bill said to him: Joe, if I had known you were going to spend $4 million of your own money, I would never have gotten in the race, to which Joe said: Bill, if I had known I was going to spend $4 million of my own money, I would never have gotten into the race. You get caught up in these things and the money starts coming. And if you have it, you just keep saying, well, another $100,000, another flight of ads, another mailing, and that will put us over the top. Then you look back and say: I shouldn't have done it. I spent too much money. In our primary race, my opponent, a man of considerable means, spent, we now know, after all of the tallying up has been done, $6.2 million in the State of Utah in the primary. I know there are some States where $6.2 million does not seem to be a lot. That happened to be more than was spent that same year in the Republican primary in California in total, of all of the candidates. It worked out, in terms of the number of votes--I know the Senator from Kentucky likes to talk about the cost per vote--to about $40 a vote that he spent: 150,000 votes, roughly, $6 million, about $40 a vote. He actually spent 6.2 but he fundraised $200,000. The other $6 million was out of his own pocket. In order to win that primary, I spent around $2 million. I wasn't as successful as my opponent. I couldn't raise $200,000 because everybody was sure my opponent was going to win. The only amount of money I got was from members of my family, a few very close friends who felt sorry for me, and a couple of others who came across because they decided they believed in me. I spent about $2 million or one-third the amount my opponent spent. The point of this, with respect to the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico, comes from a conversation I had with the candidate for Governor, as we were talking about that primary race and the way it was beginning to turn. As it started out, as you might imagine, with my opponent spending $6 million of his own money, it was assumed he was going to win. Everybody thought I was wasting my time; everybody thought I was crazy. Then it began to turn. It began to shift. You could feel it. Those of us who have been in campaigns know how that goes. You are out on the hustings. You just get a feel for the way people are beginning to think. This other candidate who was out on the hustings, too, running for governor, said: It is beginning to shift. It is beginning to turn. It is beginning to come your way, and it looks as if you are going to make a race out of it. Indeed, you might even win. Then he made the key point that is appropriate to the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico. He said: Of course, you are the only candidate who could have done this. You are the only candidate who could have caused this coronation not to happen. I don't think he was talking about my political skills, although I have a big enough ego to assume that I have some. He was talking about the fact that I could fund my campaign in a style to compete against this self-funded candidate who was funding his campaign. Assume that I went into that race without having $2 million of my own money. Assume I went into that race having to raise the money $1,000 at a time. Assume I went into that race having to go around and plead with people to help me. It is very clear I would not have raised $100,000. It is very clear I would not have been able to buy a single television ad. All of the money I could have raised would have been eaten up in fundraising costs. The only way I was able to compete against a self- funded candidate and, indeed, win was the fact that I had my own funds so that there was no cap on my spending. I found that spending $6.2 million in Utah in a primary can become a self-defeating kind of activity. He ran out of places to spend it. He was buying ads on the Saturday morning cartoons because there weren't any other places to buy ads. That caused him, frankly, some problems, as people laughed a little bit at that. The fundamental point that the Senator from New Mexico has made is that if I were limited to the standard kind of fundraising activity, I would not have been able to compete with that candidate, as he exercised his constitutional right to spend his own money. I would have been denied the right to express myself unless, as it turned out, I had significant personal funds of my own. I offer a real-life example of how important it is, when you are dealing with a candidate with virtually unlimited funds, for the opposition to have something other than the traditional $1,000-per-head contribution. I repeat: If I had lived under the circumstance with only $1,000 per head, there is no way I could have competed in that primary, and I would not be in the Senate today. There may be many who would applaud that possibility that I not be here. I think the Senator from New Mexico has come up with the right solution. If you are going to deal with somebody who has unlimited funds out of his own personal pocket, you have to release his opponent from the restrictions of the present circumstance. That is what the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico would do. That is why I intend to support it. I have lived through that experience. I know how difficult it is for the underdog to raise money under the present system when the outcome is assumed to be predetermined and how much a difference can be made if the underdog is released from those requirements and given an opportunity to express himself. I had an opponent who outspent me three to one, but because I had sufficient money to get my message out, I was able to defeat him. I think we ought to give that same opportunity to every other opponent who has a message, faced with that kind of challenge on the other side.

Mr. BENNETT. Sure.