Tom DeLay

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman made a statement earlier that I take great exception to, that his party does not lead reform. No, I totally disagree with the gentleman, and would say that the gentleman's party does not lead the kind of reform that the gentleman wants. His party wants other kinds of reform.

Mr. DeLAY. No, it does not. The gentleman is wrong.

Mr. DeLAY. Reclaiming my time, I am not sure exactly the one the gentleman is referring to. The voter guide?

Mr. DeLAY. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, would it not be interesting that the NAACP would have to disclose who belongs to the NAACP and who is supporting the NAACP to the exposure to whom? Would it not be interesting some of the hate groups out there that would love to know who supports the NAACP and would like to? But the gentleman from California, Shays-Meehan, wants everybody to know it and wants to lay it out there for everybody. I just find that just really frightening that they not only want to step on our right and freedom of speech, but now they want to step on our right of privacy. I think this is what this is all about is those kinds of freedoms.

Mr. DeLAY. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. DeLAY. We have the opportunity to make sure that they do not cross, and it is against the law to do so. The Supreme Court has upheld our position. That is why the Doolittle Amendment reflects and almost quotes the Supreme Court decision.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's point, but what we are doing is here is debating the Doolittle amendment. I would ask the gentleman, is he for or against the Christian Coalition, the NAACP, or others to be able to offer those kinds of voter guides we have put up as examples?

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the gentleman is absolutely right. And that is the debate over Shays-Meehan. Shays- Meehan and the gentleman from California want to shut down people's right to talk about issues and positions of people that are participating in the process. That is one issue. The other issue that the gentleman is talking about is campaigns. Campaigns, they do not have hidden agendas running around in campaigns. They are giving money to me to participate in a campaign. The two are not supposed to cross. In fact, even in Shays-Meehan they talk about the two are not supposed to cross.

Mr. DeLAY. No, no, no. I want to correct the gentleman's premise. It would allow a voter guide, a piece of paper or on the internet, a voter guide that lists the votes and the issues and positions that a Congressman has taken. If they happen to say that he is a bad congressman because he took a position against their position, I know that is uncomfortable, but they have every right to say that.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, I am not advocating issues. Yes, I want my constituents to know who is giving me money to be used in my campaign and how I am spending it. Absolutely. They have the right to know, not some Federal bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.

Mr. DeLAY. Absolutely not. Not at all. I am all for the Doolittle substitute that brings full disclosure, full disclosure of people participating in campaigns. Not talking about issues.

Mr. DeLAY. Not at all.

Mr. DeLAY. No, because we have experienced--if we believe in the Constitution and the right of people to petition their government, whether it be by writing a petition or talking about my voting record or however they do it, the point is that if we believe in the Constitution and the people having a right to petition their government, then we do not want the government to be able to go and punish these people. And we have seen time and time again, whether it be the NRA or NOW or others, people that belong to these organizations that want to express themselves are persecuted, in some cases oppressed by their enemies by being able to reveal their names. I do not know why we would want to get at them. Why does the gentleman want to get at them?

Mr. DeLAY. Yes, I have an objection.

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

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, without the Doolittle amendment, the scorecards will have to be removed from the web sites. Now, make no mistake about it. A vote against the Doolittle amendment is a vote for banning voter guides and scorecards and the Shays-Meehan voting guide exemption is no exemption at all. They may think it exempts, but if we read the language, we can see, and I am not even a lawyer, but I know how I can get through this language and stop a voter guide in a very easy fashion. The Shays-Meehan bill would impose a chilling affect on the distribution of material that reports on our votes and where we stand on the issues, and the Doolittle amendment protects these voter guides. Nothing in the Shays-Meehan exemption, in my opinion, does. And I just urge my colleagues to vote for the first amendment by voting for the Doolittle amendment.

Mr. DeLAY. If the gentleman will yield further, what about the language in Shays-Meehan that says or offers the opportunity to regulate voter guides when it says that, in context, it can have no reasonable meaning other than to urge the election or defeat of one or more clearly-identified candidates? Is that not a huge loophole that would prohibit the Christian Coalition from offering those kinds of voter guides, say in the gentleman's church?

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman being from Missouri, because Missouri just cuts through all the lawyerspeak and gets right to the bottom line. That is exactly what we have, what we find here. We find a bunch of lawyer language, and that is what we are trying to point out here. It is lawyer language that you can drive a truck through to stop these kinds of voter guides put out by these organizations that every Member that has stood up and opposed the Doolittle amendment has said they do not want to stop. They claim that because Shays-Meehan has some sort of exemption for voter guides, that that makes it all all right.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, it is the same organizations that the opponents to the Doolittle amendment say they are trying to save that are supporting the Doolittle amendment. The whole point here is how in the world, other than taking the Christian Coalition or NAACP or others to court and penalizing them, how in the world are we going to decide what does ``reasonable'' mean, other than going to court and getting a bunch of lawyers together, costing a lot of money, and restricting people's rights to stand up and say, this Congressman's voter record says this, this challenger's voter record says this, you can compare it for yourself and make a decision. It does not advocate the election or defeat of any one candidate. What it does say, and I think we are just clearing it up, in Shays- Meehan they make an exception for voter guides. We are just saying, fine, but we want to stop the loopholes that you have written in here, and we want to make sure that we are protected in being able to put out voter guides.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Missouri goes right to the point of the gentleman from North Carolina. The Shays-Meehan bill is an attempt by incumbents, incumbents, to decide what you say is the truth, not the courts. They want this Congress to decide and set up regulations to regulate people's participation in the process. We want to get rid of all these uncomfortable ads that are being run against us because I do not like them and they make me uncomfortable. We want to get rid of the opportunities of people to stand up and say, I voted this way or I voted that way and they either like the way I voted or they dislike the way I voted. We want to get rid of all that so that we could be a little more comfortable and limit people's ability to participate in the process. That is what this is all about. The gentleman from North Carolina pointed that out very well.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, I do not know who is watching this, I hope some of the Members are, but we just got a legal lesson and I do not know what these lawyers were talking about. I do know what willful blindness as a defense means from a personal common sense point of view. I also know what high probability means relative to a contribution originating from a foreign national. It is English language. It is a pretty high probability that if one goes to a Buddhist temple and gets all kinds of gifts and are told either verbally or in memos that it is a fundraiser, it is a pretty high probability the money is being raised there and it is a fundraiser. Maybe 80 percent, 90 percent. I mean, if you have a friend by the name of Charlie Yah Lin Trie that you have known for 14 years, as a person that does nothing but business with Asian clients, and he comes and gives you $640,000, then there has got to be a high probability that it came from foreign nationals, and you cannot walk around and say, I was blind to that, even though it came on a check from a Chinese bank, wrapped in red Pagoda cigarettes or something. If you have got a friend by the name of Paulene Kanchanalak, who is a lobbyist for Thailand and helped form a U.S. Thai business council and donated contributions to the DNC and had frequent contacts and coffees with John Huang, then it is a high probability that the money that you are getting comes from foreign nationals. If you have a friend by the name of Johnny Chien Chuen Chung, a Taiwanese American from Torrance, California, and his company does business with foreign nationals and comes up with $366,000 for the Democratic Party, then it is a high probability that when you receive that along with all the other stuff you have received, that you probably, in high probabilities, know that it came from foreign nationals. You cannot walk around and say, oh, gee, I did not know that, and then get off, and then have your spin meisters run up and down Pennsylvania Avenue and get all kinds of interviews and try to cover-up the fact that you are taking money from foreign nationals. If you have a friend by the name of Arief and Soraya, and I cannot even pronounce the last name, Wiriadinata, something like that, who donated $450,000 to the DNC and was friends with a guy named Johnny Huang, and later returned it because Wiriadinata could not explain where it came from, then probably there is a high probability that it is money from foreign nationals. I could go on with John Lee and Cheong Am, Yogesh Gandhi, Ng Lap Seng, Supreme Master Suma Ching Hai and George Psaltis. These are American names, I know, and a lot of them are Americans and American citizens, but many of them did business with foreign nationals and brought money to the DNC and others. All this amendment does is give the opportunity or take away the defense, with all the legalese pushed aside, takes away the defense that says, oh, well, I did not know it. It did not seem proper to me but I did not know it. Therefore, I am not guilty for breaking the law. We are just making it once and for all breaking the law.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I am really excited about this debate. I think the American people are really starting to understand what this is all about. This is incumbent protection. This is incumbent comfort. This is making sure that incumbents do not have people out there running around talking about their voting records, making them uncomfortable. This is basically about people's freedom of speech. I rise in support of the Doolittle amendment because I am not afraid of someone talking about my voting record. I am not even afraid about people going out and running voter guides that distort my voting record. I think that is part of the process. Unfortunately, it is the dirty part of the process. It is a part that makes people very cynical about the process, but it is part of the process. I feel very strongly that a vote for the Doolittle amendment is a vote for the first amendment. This is very critical. A vote against the Doolittle amendment is a vote to ban voter guides distributed by citizens' organizations, whether they be in union halls or churches or on the internet. I really believe that. Because they have written in lawyerese that creates loopholes that we can drive a truck through and stop voter guides. Every year thousands of national, State and local organizations, like the Christian Coalition or the NAACP or, as we show here, the ACLU, they publish voter guides comparing elected officeholders on issues of interest to these organizations' memberships. Now, I doubt if there are many in this body who would openly question the right of these groups to make those comparisons, but without this amendment, the Doolittle amendment, Shays-Meehan would threaten, I believe, the ability of these groups to publish and distribute these kinds of voter guides. Supporters of Shays-Meehan claim that there is a voter guide exemption in their bill. But if we take a closer look at it, at this so-called exemption, it shows that voter guides, such as the NAACP's voter guide, in my opinion, would be banned or, at the very least, regulated by bureaucrats in the Federal Government. The so-called exemption in Shays-Meehan requires a voter guide that talks about the position of one candidate being banned or regulated by the Federal Government. Under Shays-Meehan, a voter guide characterizing a candidate as pro life or pro choice or any other commentary describing a candidate as a civil rights hero, as the NAACP does, would be banned or regulated, in my opinion. Under the Shays-Meehan exemption, groups could be punished, punished, if after the fact bureaucrats decide that their voter guides or their scorecards were not written in an ``educational manner''. Decided by ``educational police''? I do not know. Under the Shays-Meehan exemption, a scorecard cannot contain words, ``that in context can have no reasonable meaning other than to urge the election or defeat of one or more clearly identified candidates.'' Now, this language would prevent the ACLU from distributing a voter guide that highlights Members of Congress who have a 100 percent ACLU voting record as members of an ``ACLU honor role''. They cannot say things like that because that is advocating defeat or election of a candidate, or it could be construed as such under the Shays-Meehan language. It also prevents the NAACP from calling a Member of Congress a civil rights hero. For example, last month, the NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, former member of this body, released the organization's annual legislative report card on the 105th Congress at a news conference on Capitol Hill. He said, ``As the report card circulates through our branches, it will be used in a nonpartisan fashion to punish those with failing grades and reward our heroes.'' Guess what? Under Shays-Meehan, they could not circulate that kind of report for that kind of purpose. The Doolittle amendment, I think, would allow groups that post their voter guides and scorecards on the internet to continue to do so, groups like the Americans for Democratic Action, not exactly friends of mine; the ACLU. How about the National Organization of Women? Not exactly my best supporters. They all carry scorecards on their web sites.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 2 additional minutes.