Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. In the last cycle.

Mr. BENNETT. Let me ask a question, which I will be asking my friends on the other side as well. But since my colleague has raised it, I think he could be an expert on this issue. Since we are being told repeatedly throughout this debate that the huge amounts of soft money are corrupting and controlling the votes, let me ask the Senator from Idaho, who is a member of the Republican leadership: If the AFL-CIO were to simply give that $49 million to the Republicans and thus corrupt and influence our votes, would that not be a better investment on their part than to have it wasted on people who are already with them?

Mr. BENNETT. I do not believe it is corrupting either, but we are being told repeatedly that it is.

Mr. BENNETT. I agree with that.

Mr. BENNETT. I agree with the Senator from Idaho completely about that. But I want to go back to the argument that has been made again and again by my friend from Wisconsin and the Senator from Arizona, that the tremendous amount of money that is being put into the system influences how people vote. If I were sitting on a $49 million pot of money, advising the AFL-CIO, saying what you want is to get more of your legislation through the Congress, I would say to them: If in fact the $49 million does change the way people vote, why not give the $49 million to the people who are not voting for us? Why not give the $49 million to the Republicans and turn them all into rabid supporters of the AFL-CIO?

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Chair. The Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Torricelli, took the floor a day or two ago to give us a glimpse of the real world that we are facing if certain portions of this bill go forward. He was arguing that we should not pass the substitute, commonly known as Shays-Meehan, because he said it will limit the speech of political parties and leave us to the mercies of special interest groups. I wrote down some of the things he said. He said, ``The debate will be fought by surrogates over our heads in a far larger context.'' I agree with that absolutely. If political parties are limited in the amount of soft money advocacy in which they can be involved but special interest groups are not, special interest groups will simply ignore the political party by the ads themselves. Mr. Torricelli laid out for us in great detail some of the stratagems that would be followed, thus validating the comments Robert Samuelson made about political money finding another way around, finding a new way to come into the arena. That is the real world we will face, and the junior Senator from New Jersey was exactly right in outlining how it will work. Yet we seem to go plowing ahead on the assumption that somehow the real world will be different if we just show how honest and anxious we are to appear not to be corrupt. Let me give you some real-world examples. We have heard that from other Members of the Senate. People have talked about their own elections. I want to talk about several real-world examples from elections in which I have participated. Let's go back to the 1998 election when I got reelected. My opponent complained about this very issue. He complained often and he complained as loudly as he could that somehow there is something broken about the system because, he said: I can't raise enough money to compete with Senator Bennett. What is the matter with a system where ordinary people can't compete? We pointed out to him in one of the debates that on the ticket with him was a sixth-grade schoolteacher running for Congress who raised more money than her incumbent opponent. What is the difference? The candidate for the Senate can't raise enough money, he says, to compete with me, whereas another Democrat in the same State, a sixth-grade schoolteacher, can raise enough money to compete against a sitting Congressman. My opponent, by the way, according to his financial disclosure, is a millionaire. The sixth-grade schoolteacher clearly is not. The sixth- grade schoolteacher clearly depends upon her paycheck very heavily. The difference was not because of my personality or his personality. The difference was that the people who are involved in providing money for political races make a very cold calculation as to what your chances are. When I first ran for the Senate, and I came to this town, and I did the circuit of all of these terrible places we have been hearing about on this floor asking them for money, they did not ask me what I believed. They didn't ask me, what will our access be if we give you money? They didn't say to me, gee, we want to know your positions before we decide. They wanted to know if I had a chance of winning because, they said: We don't back losing horses. And they were convinced I was a losing horse, and they didn't give me any. I went out of this town empty-handed. I was outspent 3 to 1, with my opponent in a primary in the State of Utah spending $6.2 million. That sets a record on a per vote cast that I don't think has ever been broken. I was able to put my message across with a third of that amount, and I beat him, at which point people started to say: All right, now we will talk to you, because now that you have won the Republican nomination, it looks as if you may have an opportunity. The problem my opponent had had nothing to do with his positions, had nothing to do with his own bank account, had nothing to do with his own personality. It was simply that he was perceived as a loser and the people who were giving money decided they didn't want to back a loser. But here comes a sixth-grade schoolteacher with no money in the bank and no political experience of any kind, and they thought she might be a winner, so she got all the money she needed. She didn't win. One of the reasons she didn't win is very appropriate to this debate. She signed the term limit pledge; her opponent did not. So Americans for Term Limits--or whatever they are called--came into that congressional district with a whole series of issue ads attacking her opponent, attacking him for his failure to sign the term limit ad. This is a special interest group with soft money. We have no idea where it came from. We have no idea in what amounts it was raised. We have no idea who signed on because they are not under the FEC. But they exercised their constitutional right. They came into the Second Congressional District in the State of Utah, and they flooded the airwaves with some of the nastiest, most vicious political ads I have ever seen attacking the incumbent Congressman. What happened? Early polls showed that the sixth-grade schoolteacher was going to beat the incumbent Congressman. She had more money than he did. She had momentum. Then these ads started to run, and the reaction on the part of the voters in the second district--I heard it everywhere I went campaigning--was: We hate those ads. How can Lily Eskelson be so vicious as to run those ads? She then went on the air, and she said: I am not running them. I don't have anything to do with them. This is a special interest group. All I did was sign the term limit pledge, and Congressman Cook didn't. Congressman Cook went on the air and said: I am the victim of a smear campaign. And in the minds of many voters, it was Lily Eskelson who was doing the smearing. She had absolutely no control over the ads. If she had, she would have pulled them. But she didn't. It was the special interest group that was exercising its constitutional right, and there was nothing she could do about it. Congressman Cook appropriately protested: How can you attack me for violating term limits when I am running for my first reelection? He had only been in Congress one term. They were attacking him for being part of the system and not signing the term limit pledge that would have given him three terms. He said: Don't come after me until I have served at least the three terms you think are appropriate. I think the special interest ads in the second district had a significant impact on the outcome of that election. I point this out. Here is a sixth-grade schoolteacher with no money who is able to outspend and outfundraise her opponent because those who put up the money thought she has a chance to win. That is the criterion, nothing else. She lost the race because a special interest group came in and flooded the district with their ads, thinking they were helping her but were in fact hurting her. If we say that political parties cannot defend themselves against these special interest ads, we will do exactly the thing about which the Senator from New Jersey talked. We will create a situation where the candidates become unimportant, and the special interest, in the words of the Senator from New Jersey, ``fight over our heads in a far larger context.''

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Chair. This is the real world. The real world is a world in which attempts to get around the first amendment and attempts to find ways to regulate political speech backfire against the reformers, and they do not work. One last description out of the real world. We have heard a lot on this floor this afternoon about access. All right, maybe we are not corrupt. We had that debate earlier last week whether or not we are all corrupt. So now we are being told, well, no, we are not corrupt. At least we have made that clear--not to Maureen Dowd, but to a lot of other people we are at least not corrupt. But we are somehow tainted by virtue of the fact that we can't control this access, and access becomes the issue rather than corruption. As I said once before, the easiest way to get access to me is to be a voter registered in the State of Utah. I will take your call, and I will have you come into my office. But my opponent in this last election raised this issue of access in this context. As it so happens, he has been lobbying me for the entire time I have been in the Senate about a program of which he is in favor. He successfully lobbied me. I agree with him on their program. It is microcredit. I have done everything I can as a member of the Appropriations Committee to increase the appropriations for microcredit. And, frankly, I have been successful. All I did during the campaign was ask him this one question: Every time you came to see me to try to lobby on behalf of microcredit, did anyone in my office ever ask you if you had made a political contribution to Senator Bennett? He immediately said: No, no one ever asked me that question. I said: Then why do you stand here and claim that access is for sale when you, now my opponent in this race, have had full access to my office for the entire 6 years I've been here? It boils down to those who are corrupt will be corrupt regardless of the system; those who are not corrupt will not be corrupt regardless of the system. For those who say we are now far worse than we ever were, I offer two last comments. No. 1, when I moved into the Dirksen Building, I noticed there was a safe in every Senator's office. My father was here when the Dirksen Building was built. Let me state why there is a safe in every office--for the Senators to put the cash they receive in their offices from people who come to see them. That doesn't mean they are corrupt. My father was not corrupt. But I watched him receive an envelope full of cash in his office in the Dirksen Building, and I watched him open the safe and put it in there. It happened, by the way, to have come from one of the senior Senators on the Democratic side of the aisle who said, ``I don't want any other Republican to be the ranking member of my committee; I want you to win, Wallace, and I raised this money for you.'' It was $5,000, which in those days was in excess of 5 percent of the total cost of a campaign. Dad put it in his safe in the Dirksen Building. When my office was renovated recently in the Dirksen Building, what did I do? I took the safe out because I have never used it, and I don't think any other Senators ever use it. We don't get offered cash in our offices anymore. Second, David McCullough wrote the biography of whom many considered the most incorruptible President we have ever had, Harry Truman. In his biography of Harry Truman, David McCullough reports that the highest paid individual on Harry Truman's staff was Bess Truman, who lived in Missouri and never came to Washington or entered the Senator's office. Why was she his highest paid staff member? Because Senators routinely did that in order to be able to live on their salaries. According to Mr. McCullough, Harry Truman was terrified the people of Missouri would find out he was paying Bess the highest permissible salary so he and Bess could handle the financial challenges of serving in the Senate. Was Harry Truman corrupt? No. Even in a corrupt system, and I am sure there are Senators who were, he was not a corrupt man. There may have been an appearance but the appearance did not mean the reality. They changed the system. We are now paid a living wage. We don't do that anymore. We don't put our relatives on the payroll and have them not show up. But let Members not sit here and say the system is far worse now than it ever used to be. Politics in America is as clean as it has ever been and far cleaner than it used to be. Let's not do what Robert Samuelson warns against: In the name of campaign finance reform make things worse again. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I am interested and pleased to hear the Senator say he does not agree with those polled who say money buys votes and that the individual Members of the Senate are not corrupt. My question to the Senator, since he is a teacher by profession is, if that perception in the public is not true, why shouldn't this teacher spend his time trying to educate the public as to what is true rather than to fall in with the sentiment expressed in the poll which is inaccurate?

Mr. BENNETT. I was planning to discuss the amendment that I was unable to offer. I want to spend 15 minutes or so on that. Then I want to make a general statement about the bill. I will try not to get overly enthusiastic about my arguments, but I might get carried away for another 20 minutes or so about that, so between 30 or 40 minutes. I will do my best to restrain myself.

Mr. BENNETT. If we accept that logic, it is perfectly clear it ought to come on this side of the aisle rather than the other. Let me ask the Senator from Idaho, if he was to suddenly receive in his campaign--through, let us say, the State party of Idaho, because it cannot be given to him directly, there is no way the soft money can corrupt you because you cannot receive it--but, if the AFL-CIO were suddenly to give to the Republican Party of Idaho $1 million in cash, would you change your position on any of the labor issues you have discussed, paycheck protection, for example?

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Senator for his courtesy. I have had the experience of explaining my position and once explaining, being endorsed. My question to the Senator is, again, if he disagrees with the position stated in the poll, even though it is held by 92 percent of the respondents to that poll, inasmuch as he is a skilled, trained, and professional teacher, would he not spend his time well using his skills as a teacher educating these people in his State, as I have tried to do with the people in my State, rather than simply going along with them and saying if that is your position, I will follow it legislatively even though I disagree with it? Would that not be a better use of the Senator's obvious teaching skills?

Mr. BENNETT. If I may, I was responding to the statement made by the Senator from Minnesota on the floor today when he talked about the poll.

Mr. BENNETT. Absolutely, and I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator, and I shall not interrupt again. I have had the experience, the polls in Utah show a very large percentage of people holding the same opinion as the Senator from Minnesota has subscribed. Because I am convinced that McCain-Feingold is, (a) unconstitutional, and (b) unworkable, I have----

Mr. BENNETT. I accept the integrity of the Senator from Idaho. Let me ask him, as a member of leadership----

Mr. BENNETT. I will be happy to do 20 minutes on the bill itself and delay my 20 minutes on the amendment.

Mr. BENNETT. That is why I am raising the question, because in a bordello you can change what happens by where the money goes, without any question.

Mr. BENNETT. I was planning to----

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding for a question, and I precede the question with a comment that I think the Senator from New Jersey is doing us a very worthwhile service in pointing out the reality of the world in which we would live if soft money were banned for political parties but not for everybody else. I agree with the Senator from New Jersey, absolutely in his words, when he says the debate would be fought by surrogates which would take place over our heads, a far larger context. I ask the Senator to give us his opinion of what would happen if Shays-Meehan, which he is endorsing, were to pass and then the Supreme Court were to strike down as unconstitutional the ban on issue ads by outside groups? Would that not, in fact, then leave us with the situation which the Senator from New Jersey is decrying, I think appropriately, as a bad system?

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, if I can ask a further question of the Senator from New Jersey, if he is aware--I know he is aware because he is a very astute student of politics but maybe not aware enough to comment without further research--if he is aware of what has happened in the State of California where they have virtually unlimited initiative opportunities and virtually every truly contentious political issue is now decided by initiative rather than by the legislature and the amount of money that is spent in an initiative fight dwarfs any of the sums we are talking about here. In the State of California, when an initiative fight comes up over an issue, which traditionally would be handled by the State legislature, the special interests on both sides of that fight routinely go over the hundreds of millions of dollars on both sides of the fight which dwarf the amount of money spent for a senatorial or gubernatorial race in that State. I ask if the Senator is aware of some of those particulars and if he will comment on the implications of that on a national basis if we get to the point where issues are fought out by special interest groups with unlimited budgets being spent on both sides, the implications on the role of the legislature in its constitutional responsibility to control the legislative agenda.

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Senator.

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Senator from New Jersey. Is he aware of a gentleman named Arnold Hyatt?

Mr. BENNETT. If I may, then, could I enlighten the Senator from New Jersey on the case of Arnold Hyatt. This comes from an article that appeared in Fortune magazine on September 7, 1998, in an article entitled ``The Money Chase,'' the subtitle of which says: It's as venal as this: The Presidential candidates who raise the most money get the nomination. Fortune's guide to the masters of the political universe. Now, in that article, it describes Arnold Hyatt, 71, who, in 1996, was the second largest individual contributor to the Democratic Party. His $500,000 gift was second only to the $600,000 given by Loral's Bernard Schwartz. The article goes on to say: Hyatt wrote his $500,000 check a month before the November 1996 election, specifically to help unseat vulnerable House Republicans and return the House to Democratic control. I am sure the Senator from New Jersey would accept that as a laudable goal. The Senator from Utah might argue with that, but that was his purpose. In the article it says he has decided not to give any more soft money. Quoting the article, why he decided to stop contributing to politicians so soon after giving so much, he admits that it was because his Democrats didn't win. Then, the article goes on: He still aspires to topple his enemies by ending the Republican majority in Congress. Hyatt then hasn't gotten religion, he's changed tactics. Rather than relying on the Democrats to press his agenda, he is now giving heavily to organizations like the Washington-based Public Campaign, which lobbied for publicly financed elections. I submit to the Senator from New Jersey that what he says will go on and, in fact, is already going on, as demonstrated in the case of Mr. Hyatt who gave one-half million dollars--enough to put him on the chart of the Senator from Wisconsin all by himself, without any company behind him, his own money, one-half million dollars. Clearly, it had to be soft money because if it were hard money, it would be illegal and over the $25,000 limit. He decided to shift that giving from a party--because he wasn't getting the results he was hoping for--to a special interest group. That is why I asked if the Senator was aware of him because, in my view, he represents a class A example of exactly what the Senator from New Jersey is saying will happen. It has already started to happen and will continue to happen if we pass the underlying legislation. I thank the Senator.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I don't have a time schedule today. I will spend the entire weekend in the Washington area. My friend from Montana has an airplane to catch, so I am happy to step aside and let him make whatever statement he wants to make and delay my comments until he has finished.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I commend Senator Stevens for his work on the Defense Appropriations bill, and will support the passage of this legislation. Before the final vote, I would like to get some clarification on the Defense Health Science program that is funded in this bill. In the conference report, the Secretary of Defense in conjunction with the Surgeons General is to establish a process to select medical research projects. I see that a number of possibilities are listed in the bill. Is it the Senator's intent that the Secretary of Defense and the service Surgeons General will consider the programs listed in the conference report?