Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until 12 noon on Monday, September 28. I further ask unanimous consent that when the Senate reconvenes on Monday, immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be approved, no resolutions come over under the rule, the call of the calendar be waived, the morning hour be deemed to have expired and that the time for the two leaders be reserved. I further ask that the Senate then begin a period for the transaction of morning business until 2 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each, with the following exceptions: Senator Roth in control of the time until 12:40; Senator Dorgan, or his designee, for 40 minutes thereafter.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I cannot let this exchange go without giving a word or two of explanation. The Federal Reserve Board, as the Senator from Iowa has accurately stated, was created by the Congress, and presents to the Congress an audited statement of its financials every year. It is addressed to the Speaker of the House. It is true that it was not done by the General Accounting Office, but they are audited by a legitimate outside auditor, and their activities, down to the penny, are reported to the Speaker of the House in a written document every year. I will be happy to supply it to any Member of this body that may wish it.

Mr. BENNETT. I don't know, either, I say to the Senator from Iowa. I have not looked into that. Frankly, I have examined the annual report that the Fed submits to the Congress, addressed, as I say, to the Speaker of the House every year. They do it in accordance with law. They respond to the law that created them in that fashion. At least to my satisfaction, after examining that document, I haven't felt the need for any additional information. As to whether there is a legal proscription against GAO, I have no knowledge one way or the other.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I am happy to have a debate about this with the Senator from Nevada or anyone else. I think it is a legitimate issue to be aired, but I did not want to let the opportunity go by with the misimpression that some might have gathered. I know it was not intended for the Senator from Nevada to grant that misimpression, but some might have the misimpression that the Federal Reserve Board does not respond to the Congress that created it in an orderly fashion.

Mr. BENNETT. The Senator from Nevada is correct; they are not audited regularly by the General Accounting Office, but it is audited. A copy of the audited and exact financial activities of the Federal Reserve Board are submitted in writing to the Speaker of the House every year. I have constituents who are constantly saying to me that the Federal Reserve Board is owned by a group of Swiss bankers or foreign interests somewhere and that it has never been audited. I always send them a copy of the audited report of the Federal Reserve Board that is submitted to the Speaker so that they can know that this creation of the Congress does not go unexamined by an appropriate auditing firm. It is true to say that it is not audited regularly by the General Accounting Office. I think that is the point the Senator from Nevada was making. However, I think we should not let people be under the assumption that the Federal Reserve Board goes without anybody paying any attention to how they handle their money.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have listened with interest to the discussion that has taken place today regarding the Bumpers amendment and I would like to express my views on the BLM's proposed 3809 Regulations. I am concerned that my colleagues are facing another situation, like others in the past, in which policymakers in this Administration lacking support from Congress, nevertheless develop policy based on a predetermined outcome. Once that policy is introduced, we are then subjected to the usual vocalizing about the importance of public input and the necessity of hearing views of all interested parties. BLM's justification for new regulations is spotty--advances in mining technologies and current regulations which have not been updated for 15 years. Yet when we had this discussion last year, we agreed that since the regulatory authority of western states would be called into question, it was important that we allow for significant input from those impacted states. I am dismayed that the BLM draft regulations ignored most of the input received last year. The result has been a proposal that was so top-heavy with prescriptive regulation it would never pass muster if it were to move through the normal legislative process. We find ourselves in a situation where the Western Governors, which have individual state programs that are working very well with respect to mining in those states, wish to have greater input into the draft regulations. These Governors, regardless of party affiliation, have stated very clearly that the problems with the current law described by the Secretary simply do not exist. They would prefer to have several legal issues resolved prior to any modification of the current 3809 regulations. I do not see anything wrong with seeking guidance from an outside source as to how the current regulatory framework is deficient. I believe the language we have in this bill addresses those concerns by bringing in a non-biased entity to determine if the current regulatory framework is inadequate. I sometimes wish we could be more candid with each other. I am amazed at what happens when we can sit down around the table and have an open discussion. We have been successful in the past, as my friend Senator Bumpers well knows. Were it not for two or three candid discussions, we would have never reached agreement on National Park concessions reform. But this is a case where BLM is not willing to admit what it is really trying to do. The Secretary should admit that he is trying to accomplish mining law reform through the back door because the Administration lacks the votes in Congress. If he would simply say that, I would say that I disagree with his position. But because of the lack of candor around here, we go through various machinations and we find ourselves in this situation where we now have to bring in the National Academy of Sciences to provide a non-biased review so we can get the information to Congress. I think this issue has moved to the point where we are in need of unbiased, outside counsel. If there is a problem, let's fix it, if not, let's leave well enough alone. But the first step is to identify if a problem really does exist.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have two observations to make. We have had this debate virtually every year since I have been in the Senate. I don't want to repeat myself, although I have discovered since being here that there is no such thing as repetition in the Senate. We always pretend as if we have never said it before. Two things. One, a historic comment by John Adams, writing to his wife Abigail. He said: I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. One of the dearest dreams of our Founding Fathers was that we, as a nation, would turn our attention to the arts and have our children and grandchildren do the same. The second point is that we have heard a great deal of various aspects of grants from the NEA, where they have gone and what tremendous harm they are doing. I would simply like to share with the Senate where the funds from the NEA go in my home State. I don't usually list projects in my home State. But I think in this case it would make a good anecdote to some of the things we have heard. In Utah, NEA funds have been used for children's theater with educational outreach in Coalville, Kamas, Duchesne, Roosevelt, Castle Dale, Salina, Beaver, and Price. To those Senators who say they have never heard of those towns, I say that most people in Utah have never heard of them either. They are among some of our smallest communities. Without the NEA money, they would not have this educational outreach. NEA funds have helped fund community arts' councils around the State, including those in Springdale, Vernal, Richfield, Riverton, Cedar City, and Bluffdale, again in rural Utah. NEA funding in Utah includes the Festival of the American West, the Children's Museum of Utah, the Northern Utah Choral Society, the Chamber Music Society of Logan, the Payson Community Theater, the Utah Shakespearean Festival, the Dixie Art Alliance, the Sundance Children's Theater, Ballet West, Repertory Dance Theatre, Quarterly West, Ririe- Woodbury Dance Foundation, the Utah Symphony, and recently the central Utah Highlanders Pipe Band. The projects that I have listed are Utah projects organized by Utahns. The vast majority of the money spent on them is raised in Utah by Utahns. But here comes a bit of national recognition that brings pride and satisfaction to the local folks all across my State that says what you are doing is important, what you are doing deserves national recognition, and what you are doing deserves Federal support. I find as I walk around Utah spontaneously people coming up to me, saying, ``Senator, for all the things you do, the one thing we most appreciate is your defense of the arts.'' I would be unfaithful to those who asked me to continue that defense if I did not rise again, as I have on every occasion when this issue has come up, and make it clear that I support these appropriations. I support the chairman of the subcommittee in the way he has handled these appropriations. It is a legitimate expenditure of public funds. I hope it continues.

Mr. BENNETT. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Sure.

Mr. BENNETT. Exactly.

Mr. BENNETT. I didn't say he couldn't give to various groups.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I would suggest that individuals are seriously restricted under this bill because they cannot exercise their constitutional privilege of giving the money to a political party. Mr. Hiatt has made the choice not to give the money to the political party, if the article is to be believed solely on the basis that it didn't work, not because he was motivated by some other higher spirit. He decided to give the money directly to a faction because he thought it would be more effective. If this bill passes, as I understand it, Mr. Hiatt would be prohibited from changing that decision. That is, if he were to decide that, ``Gee, I could make things better if I gave it directly to the political party, I want to go back to what I was doing before,'' he would be prohibited from doing that on the grounds that this is soft money, and he is forced by the law to give his money to a special interest group rather than to a political party or to a political candidate. This puts us in the position of paradoxically strengthening the hands of special interest groups at the expense of political parties and political candidates. This puts us in the position of saying that eventually political discourse in this country will go the way that it is going in California. I lived in California for long enough to know that the California pattern of putting issues directly on the ballot with no spending limitation whatsoever eclipses elections for candidates. The amount of spending that went on in the last California election on the various referenda vastly outstripped and eclipsed the amount that any candidate was able to spend. And if we get to the point where political candidates are squeezed out of access to the voters by groups funded by people like Mr. Hiatt who have unlimited amounts to spend, we are going to be in great difficulty.

Mr. BENNETT. Yes. Certainly.

Mr. BENNETT. I was unaware that Mr. Hiatt would be allowed to spend his soft money for a faction. I think it is still true that he would not be able to spend his soft money for a party. Is that not the case, I ask my friend?

Mr. BENNETT. Yes.

Mr. BENNETT. It is my understanding that the bill would make that illegal and improper.

Mr. BENNETT. That is not the only effect. If I can repeat once again, this bill, in light of the Snowe-Jeffords amendment, would hasten the day when people would abandon candidates and abandon parties and give their money directly to special interest groups, as Mr. Hiatt has voluntarily decided to do in this situation, and I think that would be tremendously deleterious to the cause of worthwhile political discourse in this country. I pause at this example. Let us suppose that in the State of Utah the Sierra Club were to decide that their No. 1 goal was to drain Lake Powell. Indeed, they have announced many places that that is soon to be their No. 1 goal.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, we have heard a good deal in this debate about people buying access to politicians. Indeed, there has been a tremendous amount of time and printer's ink and television signals spent on debating how you buy access to a politician. I want to turn this debate around, for the sake of looking at it from a different point of view. It may take me some time to do this because there has been so much expenditure in one direction, but I think the core of this issue requires us to look in another direction, and that is not access to the politician, but access to the voters. Let me develop this for just a minute. We live in a democracy. Ultimate power in a democracy lies with the voters. Madam President, when you and I wished to become an elected official, in order to get here we have to have access to the voters, and this whole political process is about that challenge--how does the Presiding Officer gain access to the voters of Maine in order to get her message across? How do I get access to the voters of Utah in order to convince them that I am a better person than others who are seeking this opportunity? That is the focus that has never come into this debate. It is always assumed that the politicians are the constant and the voters somehow are the variable. It is, in fact, the other way around. The voters will always be with us in a democracy. It is the politicians who come and go and who are variable, and the question of how a politician becomes an officeholder depends entirely on how effectively the politician can get his or her message across to the voters so the voters can then make a choice. What I am about to say for the next half hour to 45 minutes, will be focused in a whole new direction than the direction that we have been having in this debate. I begin, Madam President, by going back to a historical review of the whole issue of money in politics. For this, I am dependent on a number of sources. One is the Wilson Quarterly published in the summer of 1997, with the cover article being entitled ``Money In Politics, The Oldest Connection.'' This gives us a historic point of view that will start us off in this direction that I think we ought to explore. In this particular article, it points out that in the beginning of our Republic, a politician had access to the voters because he knew them all. They all lived in his neighborhood. George Washington was personally known to the people who voted to put him in Virginia's House of Burgesses. Thomas Jefferson was personally known to the people who he would turn to for political support. He had no problem gaining access to the voters. I find it interesting, out of this Wilson Quarterly article, that even then, however, the subject of money did come up. If I can quote from the article: 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. Interestingly, many times the price of a house for a seat in the State legislature. Oh, what fun we could have with the rhetoric about that in this Chamber when we are saying that a seat in the House was up for sale. Quoting from the article again: Washington's electioneering expenses included the usual rum punch, cookies and ginger cakes, money for the poll watcher who recorded the votes, even one election-eve ball complete with fiddler. An interesting footnote about that appears in the article later relating to one of Washington's fellow State members, James Madison. Quoting again from the article: 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 decided to enforce his own form of campaign finance reform, refused to treat the voters in Virginia, and they responded by refusing to send him to Virginia's House of Delegates. As the country grew, obviously the circumstances changed. We got to the point where no longer could a candidate announce for office and assume he would be known to all the voters. Even if he bought some rum punch or ginger cakes, he still could not sway voters' opinion and, as the article says, quoting again: Leadership was no longer just a matter of gentlemen persuading one another; now, politicians had to sway the crowd. As the article goes on to point out: In fact, the more democratic, the more inclusive the campaign, the more it cost. In that one sentence, we have a summary of the challenge of a politician gaining access to the voters. I will repeat it: . . . the more democratic, the more inclusive the campaign, the more it cost. Stop and think of the challenge today in that context where the Senator from New York has to reach millions, tens of millions, the Senator from California even more millions than that, in campaigns this fall. And the more democratic and more inclusive those campaigns are, the more they will cost. Cost to do what? To gain access to the voters; to get your message across to the voters. The cost is directly connected with how democratic, how inclusive, and in the case of the larger States, how big the electorate is going to be. We come into the present century, and we find things are getting worse in terms of the high cost of reaching the voters. One of the things, paradoxically, that has driven the cost of campaigns through the roof has been the cause of campaign finance reform. The reforms themselves have added to the burden of cost on a candidate who is seeking to have access to the voters. Again from the article: Some reforms, such as the push for nomination of presidential and other candidates by primaries, made campaigning even more expensive. Ultimately, the reformers' decades-long efforts to improve the American political system did at least as much harm as good. They weakened the role of parties, lessened faith in popular politics, and hastened the decline of voter participation. I find that very interesting. A historical analysis of America's politics written in an outstanding academic journal says that it has been the reformers' efforts that have ``weakened the role of parties, lessened faith in popular politics and hastened the decline of voter participation.'' We heard on this floor this morning the statement that voter participation is going down, and the reason is because we do not have campaign finance reform; indeed, that the more money we put into politics, the less people vote and the lower the level of participation and that there is a direct correlation between the money chase and the voters being turned off. We were told that in the State of Arizona, they just had a primary that set an all-time low for voter participation in this era when we have an all-time high in spending. Madam President, I offer the case of my own State and what happens with respect to voter participation and money. If I can go back in my own political career, the one career I know better than any other, I can tell the Members of the Senate that the highest voter participation in history in a primary in the State of Utah occurred in 1992 when I was running for the Senate. We had an open seat for the Senate, and originally five candidates on the Republican side and two on the Democratic side. We had an open seat for Governor, and originally there were five candidates for Governor on the Republican side, and I believe three on the Democratic side, plus an independent thrown in who ran on a third party ticket. By virtue of the Congressman in the Second District in Utah challenging for the Senate seat, we had an open seat in Salt Lake City, the media center of the State. So even though it was not a statewide office, it nonetheless called for purchase of statewide media. We had the largest spending amount of money in the history of the State as we went through that primary. In the Senate primary alone--there were only two candidates, I say, because under Utah's law a convention eliminates all but two--we had the highest expenditures in the State's history. My opponent spent $6.2 million in the primary in the State of Utah, setting an all-time record for money spent per vote. I struggled by with second place in spending with $2 million, which would have beaten the previous high if it had not been for the amount of money my opponent was spending. So that is over $8 million spent on a Senate primary in the State of Utah that has fewer than 1 million voters. At the same time, we had a heated race for Governor with primaries in both parties. Fortunately, the gubernatorial candidates did not spend in the millions that the senatorial candidates did, but they spent a lot of money for a primary. And we had spending in the House race in the Second Congressional District. If we believe what we were told on the Senate floor this morning, that should translate into the lowest voter turnout in history, people turned off by the money chase. But in fact it produced, as I said, the largest voter turnout in the history of the State.

Mr. BENNETT. I am happy to yield to my friend from Kentucky.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, the Senator from Kentucky is now getting into grounds that I love but that some others have sometimes scorned in this debate; that is, the basis of the free speech position of the Constitution of the United States. If I may respond to the Senator from Kentucky by quoting from James Madison and the Federalist Papers that support exactly what he said, they didn't use the term ``special interest'' back in Madison's century. The term of art then was ``faction.'' This is what James Madison had to say: By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens. That sounds like the definition of a special interest group to me. Madison goes on to say: There are . . . two methods of removing the causes of faction: The one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests. It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire. Certainly we do not want to eliminate air that we cannot breathe in the name of stopping a fire that might occur, and we do not want to eliminate liberty. So Madison makes that point. Referring to the second, giving everyone the same opinions, passions, and interests, Madison says: The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. Absolutely the Founding Fathers created the Constitution for the sole purpose of protecting the rights of every one to have his own special interest, belong to his own faction, and hold his own opinion. An attempt on the part of the Senate of the United States to destroy that right is clearly going to be held unconstitutional as it has been again and again, as my friend from Kentucky has pointed out so often on the floor.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Kentucky that is what I have heard referred to as a good working definition. I might add to that a comment that came out of the Thompson committee hearings from my friend from Georgia, Senator Cleland, when he talked about tainted money and the definition of tainted money in Georgia. He said, ``Taint enough; taint mine.'' Yes. Every man's special interest is the other man's noble cause.

Mr. BENNETT. The Senator is entirely correct. That is my point. If, indeed, we want to increase the amount of public confidence in the system and candidate participation in the system, we should remove the restrictions that now make it virtually impossible for anybody other than the well-known or the well-funded. I used Jack Kemp as an example. The Senator from Kentucky has mentioned Steve Forbes. It is widely assumed--I have not discussed it with him directly, but I think it is probably accurate--that Steve Forbes would have backed Jack Kemp in the last election if Kemp had been able to run. It is widely assumed --and I think it is correct-- that if Jack Kemp, pre-Watergate reforms, had gone to Steve Forbes and said, ``Steve, give me $1 million,'' Steve Forbes would have done it. But because he can't do it under the Watergate reforms, Steve Forbes ends up getting in the race himself because the only way he can make his money available to his causes is to spend it on himself. The reforms we have make it impossible for him to spend it supporting anybody else, unless, of course, he does it in the terrible, dreaded form of soft money. And I will talk about that in a minute. But right now I want to focus again on the historic fact that, in the name of campaign finance reform, we have restricted rather than expanded the opportunities of politicians to get their message across. We have made it more difficult for a politician to gain access to the voters than it used to be before we had all of these reforms. Back to the article for just a moment. A summary of this point, and one other aspect of it: In an age of growing moral relativism, reformers raised standards in the political realm to new and often unrealistic legal heights. Failure to fill out forms properly became illegal. This growing criminalization of politics, combined with the media scandal-mongering, did not purify politics, but only further undermined faith in politicians and government. We are all familiar with that, Mr. President. Failure to fill out forms properly--oh boy, what a terrible sin that is, and how dearly we pay for it. I have remained silent on my own experience with the Federal Election Commission, but I suppose the time has come now for me to confess my sins. My campaign in 1992, staffed primarily by volunteers, failed to fill out some forms properly--indeed, they failed to fill some of them out on the proper timeframe. They filled them out properly, they just didn't submit them in the proper timeframe. And for that, after spending about $50,000 in legal fees to convince the Federal Election Commission that I was not some kind of an ax murderer, we finally achieved an out-of-court settlement that cost me another $55,000. In the negotiations between my campaign and the Federal Election Commission, my attorney made it very clear. He said, ``You will settle at the amount they know is below what it would cost you to litigate this issue.'' It has nothing to do with what constitutes an illegitimate penalty; it has to do with how much they know they can get from you because you would rather spend money to have this thing over than you would spend it for legal fees. As I say, I spent about $50,000 in legal fees. The settlement figure was $55,000. It is clear that it would have gotten to more than $55,000 if I had to go to litigation, and so financially I made the decision to settle. That is another one of the fruits of reforms. In the words of the article, ``Criminalization of politics, combined with media scandal-mongering, did not purify politics, but only further undermined faith in politicians and government.'' All right. I started this by saying the focus of this is on access to the voters. All of the debate we have had has been on how we must somehow deal with access to the politicians. Let's talk about access to the politicians for just a minute before we come back to the main theme. We are told again and again that the only reason people give any money, the only reason people make any contribution is because they want access. I will again refer to the article, but I will have other references out of a more current publication: Wealthy people who purchase status with payoffs to museums are admirable philanthropists. When they plunge into public service, they risk being called ``fat cats'' who want something more in return for their generosity than advancement of their notion of the public good and something more sinister than status by association. Donors are ``angels'' if they champion the right candidate or the right cause, but ``devils'' if they bankroll an opponent. In this week's issue of Fortune Magazine, Mr. President, there is an article on money and politics that brings up to date that observation from the article I have been quoting. It talks about fundraisers for campaigns and makes this point in concert with the point that was just made: Conspiracy theorists will be disappointed to learn that the majority of money raisers don't seek quid pro quos. Most have made their fortunes and dabble in politics because they are partisans and get a kick out of it. That has been my experience. The people who give really big money-- Rich DeVos of Amway, for example, for the Republicans, and a gentleman I believe named DeMont, who gave over $2 million to George McGovern and the Democrats, were not expecting an ambassadorship and not expecting to be appointed to the Cabinet. They made their fortunes; they are partisans and they get a kick out of it. What they really crave is status and minor celebrity in the Nation's Capitol. The nastiest battles between fundraisers are often over who gets to sit next to the President or Presidential ``wannabes.'' It may seem absurd to the uninitiated, but among fundraisers, top pols are the rock stars of the beltway. In some ways, the real scandal of the White House coffees and overnights that got President Clinton in such pre-Monica trouble is that many sophisticated people were willing to raise or give so much to be little more than Washington groupies. Buying access? It is not automatically the motive on the part of those who give. They give because they believe that this is good for the country. They believe in the cause. In this same article in Fortune, there is a specific example of one of these gentlemen--Arnold Hiatt. He is highlighted in the article. Mr. Hiatt believes in many things in which I do not believe. He is of the opposite political persuasion than I, and the article reports that: In 1996, Arnold S. Hiatt, 71, 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, who is now better known for his Chinese missile connections. According to the article, Mr. Hiatt has decided not to give any more money to the Democrats. He gave $500,000 a month before the November 1996 election, specifically to help unseat 23 vulnerable House Republicans and return the House to Democratic control. Quoting the article: It was the failure of his money to produce that result--not just a fit of conscience--that spawned Hiatt's change of heart. Asked 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. He gave the money for what he believes is a public-spirited reason, and he stopped giving to the parties because he didn't get the result that he wanted. Being a good businessman--he is the former CEO of Stride Rite, the company that makes Keds--he discovered he wasn't getting a return on his investment--not a return in corruption, not a return in access--I am sure he still has access to all the Democrats he wants--but a return on his ideological investment. He wanted the Democrats to control the House. He gave money to the Democratic National Committee. The Democrats didn't control the House so he decided to do something else. What is he going to do? He is going to give his money directly to special interest groups. Now, according to the article, he doesn't believe that the groups to which he gives money are special interest groups; it is the groups he opposed that are the special interest groups. The article says: Hiatt then having gotten religion, has 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. Since the business interests that Hiatt so dislikes tend to have more money than the green groups he backs, Hiatt believes taxpayer funded elections would curtail the clout of the bad guys. Both the House and Senate would be controlled by the voters and less by special interests, Hiatt insists. But what he means is that Congress would be controlled by the people he agrees with. Once again, Mr. President, the issue is access to the voters. Mr. Hiatt thought he could help get his agenda if he gave money to the Democrats. It didn't work. So he is seeking access to the voters through special interest groups. He has decided that the parties are not able to help him advance his agenda, and he is going to fund other groups to help advance his agenda. He has every right to do that. I applaud his willingness to get engaged and involved in American politics. But, if we pass the amendment that is before us, he will be curtailed, and the groups to which he contributes will be curtailed in their effort to gain access to the voters.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, it is my understanding that is the way the bill is written. I think James Madison would be turning over in his grave, although I think he would take comfort from the fact that the institution he helped create--the Supreme Court--would clearly strike it down.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to finish my thought.

Mr. BENNETT. I withdraw my request and suggest the absence of a quorum. Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.