John Doolittle

Mr. DOOLITTLE

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, it is quite obvious that there is not too much money in the system just by the facts. The amount of campaign spending as a percentage of GDP is relatively constant at 4 to 6 percent. We keep hearing these exaggerated claims that they cannot back up with any specifics. Then, as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) pointed out the charges that the system is corrupt, somehow we are all corrupt but nobody ever names anybody who is corrupt. We are supposed to create that pervasive feeling. Mr. Chairman, this is destructive of our institutions and I for one have determined, that is why I introduced the bill to take off all the limits, I am not going to put up with this left-wing morality play. I am going to answer the charges every time they are made that we are spending too much money.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. No, I do not yield.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to remind people that in that disastrous 1974 law which, thanks to its nonseverability clause we are still saddled with its oppressive regulations of this day which have given birth to PACs, soft money, hard money, issue advocacy, independent expenditures, all of the symptoms of the disease that our liberal friends here are trying to focus on rather than the cause of the disease, which is the government regulation itself, that one of the parts of that disastrous law that was struck down, because it was a comprehensive law, just like Shays-Meehan is trying to be. And part of that was a ban on soft money. It was struck down, one of the first things to go. It has been gone since 1976. That was banned. Been tried before. Mr. Chairman, they are doing the same unconstitutional thing again. It will be struck down. I listened to the arguments from the other side: Well, no, we cannot go for the nonseverability clause of the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) because the evil majority might sneak through some amendment they know is unconstitutional. We do not have to sneak anything through. This bill is unconstitutional, open and shut. It will be so declared when it goes through the courts. All we want then is a nonseverability clause in so the whole thing falls and certain vestiges do not remain that further clutter up the system and make matters only worse from what they are today. Since this whole scheme of regulation was invented some 25 years ago, political participation in elections has declined, public cynicism has shot up. We hear people are spending more and more time fund-raising because these hard dollars have been unadjusted. The limits, since 1974, remain in place. That means we have to work a lot longer to raise the same amount of money. It becomes that much harder for challengers, because it is always easier as incumbents once they are there, and that is why we say this is an incumbent protection bill. If we were acting in our own self-interest tonight, every one of us would vote for Shays-Meehan. It would lock in our seats in Congress because it makes it so much harder for a challenger to raise money and to be able to take on the system. Eugene McCarthy even, the great liberal, admits he never would have been able to make his campaign if he could not have gotten a few large contributions from wealthy people across the country. He was clearly not in the mainstream in terms of appealing to what most people wanted, but he had a political and important statement to make. He was able to raise the money because he was not fettered by the very campaign law that we have in force which would be made worse by Shays-Meehan. This is an important point to think about. Do we want just homogenized pabulum for the future of our political campaigns, something that will appeal to everyone, so in effect it appeals to no one; or do we want the sort of vigorous debate that was contemplated by the founders that the Supreme Court recognized in Buckley v. Valeo that is the essence of the American Republic, the American democratic experience? That is why the Supreme Court gave us Buckley v. Valeo, wiping out much of the disastrous law, unfortunately, because it did not contain the gentleman from California, Mr. Thomas', nonseverability clause, leaving much of it in place. That is why we have this myriad of problems that we are trying to address, and I say focus on the problem, not on the symptoms. Soft money is a symptom. If we do somehow succeed in banning soft money, we will increase independent expenditures, because we still have a Constitution, and the court still says it is the right of people to speak independently, and it is their right. But when we skew the campaign law in such a way that responsible speech is discouraged, i.e., from the candidate who wants people's votes, who therefore has incentive to be responsible in the use of his speech, we disfavor that in favor of the independent expenditure. We do not even know who they are. They can spend unlimited amounts of money, raise unlimited amounts of money in contrast to the candidate, and they are the ones who have more incentive to make the less responsible statements. Why do we not empower the candidate? Why do we not do as the Nation's largest State, California, and a very large State in the East, Virginia, already do it? And it works well. They do not have the limits and they allow people the freedom.

Mr. DOOLITTLE

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

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, I respectfully disagree with the gentleman's interpretation. I think that is not what the law says. The Supreme Court in Buckley has spoken and has reaffirmed as recently as Colorado and all the cases as far as I know that makes quite clear that we have to have a bright line. Because we do have that little phrase in the Constitution that says, ``Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.''

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, I was just concerned. It is clear to me, reading the law, that you have to have words of express advocacy. I just wanted to make sure that it was the gentleman's understanding, my colleague from California, that we were not dealing with some reasonable person test or anything of that kind. There is a magic word. It has to be a word of express advocacy. It may not be the seven magic words, whatever the number that was actually enumerated in Buckley. But I think the law is quite clear. It has to be a term of express advocacy. Does the gentleman disagree with that?

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, I did not strike the last word. I thought we got 5 minutes on our side to oppose the initial offering of the amendment.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, I was rising in opposition to claim the 5-minute time under the rule to his amendment. Is that not indeed the case?

Mr. DOOLITTLE

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, we will carry on at that point.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, I would like to pose a question to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) if I might. She had spoken against soft money and we are desirous of banning it. I just wanted to read a quote by Mr. Robert F. Bauer. He is a leading Democrat election lawyer and counsel for the Ohio Democratic Party in its current suit against the FEC to have a court strike down the FEC's allocation formula which deals with soft money because the allocation formula requires parties, even though they are engaging in issue advocacy, to spend 60 percent of that from hard money funds as opposed to what everybody else can do from soft money. What he said was, ``Government control over money is control over free speech.'' I just wondered how she felt about that. Is that a statement that she agrees with or disagrees with?

Mr. DOOLITTLE. I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Connecticut.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, the system we have now is not better than the one we had. One wrong does not make a second wrong. All we would need to do is have full disclosure in a very timely fashion like one of the proposals before us will do, and you would let the electorate judge. Then you would not have the heavy hand of regulation. Let the electorate do it. The Founders did not want a government czar regulating our freedom of speech.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman indicated we spend too much money on campaigns. I just wonder if he could tell us what is too much money or perhaps what is the appropriate amount of money that we should spend.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Let me just ask the gentleman, setting aside for a minute soft money, then, since that is somewhat nebulous and it is not spent by the candidates themselves, how much hard money is enough?

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Reclaiming my time, it is the people of my colleague who own the New York Times, the Washington Post, every major newspaper in this country; and under their system, they can do whatever they like. And under a Shays-Meehan/Hutchinson-Allen bill, they are the only ones who will have the freedom of speech.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Well, they certainly are not Republican papers.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. My colleagues want more regulation, more government and less freedom. I might point out that since the 1974 FECA amendments, political participation has steadily declined in this country. And then I hear the philosophy of the gentleman and bootstrap that to demonstrate why we need more government regulation, which would be further reduction.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Weygand) if he would tell us what is a special interest? What does he understand that term to be? I hear that term used a lot.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. No, no, I want the gentleman to define--it is my time and I reclaim it. What is the definition of special interest? Is all the labor PAC money the gentleman got special interest?

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

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, under the present disastrous system which this philosophy has given us, the philosophy of my colleague, the only ones who have unlimited rights are the rich. But somebody who is not rich, who wishes to go and run for a Federal office, is forced under these terrible laws that we have to go and raise money in dribs and drabs. They spend all their time doing that instead of addressing the issues.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. What I would like to see happen is to deregulate. If you deregulate, they are not going to have soft money. It will not be needed. Issue advocacy will dramatically drop. Look at what went on in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the gubernatorial elections, where they had men and women of average means running. I think the current governor is the son of a butcher. They had the campaigns running. They were able to raise their money. It was all reported. Nobody claimed that it was an aristocracy or nobility. No, there was no hint of graft in that election, and they do not have these regulations. Where we have had the present scheme of regulation due to inflation over the years, money has had to come in through other ways because the hard money has never been adjusted for inflation since 1974. And yet, we have had two-thirds of those limits eroded by inflation. If I may ask the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), why do you folks not agree to adjust those limits at least for inflation?

Mr. DOOLITTLE

Mr. DOOLITTLE. I just wondered if I can get the gentleman's comment on the Minority Leader's statement as reprinted in Time Magazine last year: What we have is two important values in direct conflict, freedom of speech and our desire for healthy campaigns and a healthy democracy. You can't have both. Is that true? I ask the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth) does he agree with that?