Russell Feingold

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I now yield up to 15 minutes to the distinguished Senator from California, who has been a stalwart in support of campaign finance reform.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from West Virginia. I cannot think of a more eloquent testimony to the need for this reform than the statement that this great Senator, if he were starting out today, probably would not even have considered running for the U.S. Senate because of the incredible barrier of the money to be raised. Our bill is a voluntary scheme that allows people who would try to follow in Senator Byrd's tradition to raise a modest amount of money and have benefits for agreeing to do that. I greatly appreciate that.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Our estimates are that it would cover it. We go on the basis of estimates here. That is our assumption. Even if there was a small gap, the effect would be minimal. Let me quickly wrap up--because I want to turn to the Senator from West Virginia--and indicate again a very serious distortion. The Senator from Kentucky keeps saying that it will cost people who do not abide by the limits more. That is just not true. They will not pay a dime more than they pay today. They will still be eligible for the lowest commercial rate as the TV stations are required to give them. They will not have to pay more for their postal rates. It is simply untrue they will have to pay more than they do today. True, they will not get the lower costs that those who abide by the limits will get, but do not let anyone tell you people have to pay more under our bill. They can still spend as much as they want, and they will not have any higher cost for what they do. Finally, Mr. President, what this is about, really, is whether candidates who are more rooted back in their home States will have a better chance, or whether those who are dominated by big money or by D.C. special interests will dominate. I have this cartoon from one of the most distinguished political cartoonist of the 20th century. This is the context in which the vote today is being seen. We can talk here about how important PAC's are, and somehow this will put artificial limits on candidates. This is what the American public knows today's vote is about. It shows a gentleman from the U.S. Congress talking to a lobbyist with a lot of money and a cigar. The guy says, ``No more little gifts or junkets--from now on, it's strictly campaign cash.'' Mr. President, the American public knows we have finally done something about lobbying disclosures. The American public knows we have cracked down on the practice of gift giving, one of the most offensive practices to the American people. But they also know the big granddaddy of them all, the important issue is the money that is awash in this campaign because of campaign financing. If we do not take the action today to move this bill forward, if we fail in this bipartisan effort, this cartoon will be prophetic. This cartoon will show that all that has happened is that the gifts and the lobbying are being transferred through the campaign cash system. I do not think we should let that happen. Mr. President, with that, I yield 15 minutes of the proponents' time to the distinguished Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Our estimates are from----

Mr. FEINGOLD. If that happens, which I doubt, it would have to come out of the budget of the post office.

Mr. FEINGOLD. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. FEINGOLD. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, before I turn to my very distinguished colleague from West Virginia for his remarks, let me just make a couple points in response to the Senator from Texas and the Senator from Kentucky. First of all, it seems, almost as if in an effort to stop this bill from even being amended, that the kitchen sink is being thrown at this bill. Now we hear the Postmaster General is one of the lead opponents of the bill. But this completely disregards the resolution that we have placed in the bill, the Senator from Arizona has placed in the bill, that would provide that the money that is saved from preventing Members of Congress from franking during an election year would be used to provide a relatively modest funding necessary to provide the postal discounts which will only be given to those Senators and Members of Congress who agree to the spending limits. So that again is another red herring. Second, it does not matter how many times the other side says that this bill is not voluntary, it is voluntary. There are no such mandatory restrictions across the board for citizens as has been suggested by the Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from Texas. It does not matter how many special interests--whether it is the NEA, the AFL-CIO, or business PAC's--it does not matter how many times they tell you our scheme for allowing people to voluntarily abide by limits and give them benefits; it does not matter how many times they say that is not voluntary. It is. It is voluntary.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I yield 30 seconds to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Jersey. Mr. President, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, let me reiterate what the Senator said. It was not our idea to have a cloture vote up front so there could not be amendments. That was the idea of the other side. That is the only way we could get the bill up for a vote. I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, how much time do the proponents of the bill have?

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I yield up to 15 minutes to Senator Thompson of Tennessee, who has been one of the main authors of this bill and has been key to making this a bipartisan reform effort. I thank him for his good work on this bill.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I yield up to 5 minutes to the Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. FEINGOLD. I yield 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Florida, who has been one of the original supporters of this legislation and has helped us all through the difficult process of trying to get it up for a vote. I thank him very much.

Mr. FEINGOLD. How much time do the proponents have remaining?

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. But newspapers will regain some of the ground they have lost in terms of the influence. I believe that was one of the Senator's points.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Have newspapers regained some of the ground they have lost in terms of influence?

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, if I could ask one more question, is it a fair characterization for the Senator to say that the loss of the last 2 years or decades of relative influence of newspapers vis-a-vis television may be changed by this bill? Is it fairly characterizing his remarks as suggesting that newspapers may gain a greater influence than they have under the current system? I believe that was the gist of the Senator's remarks.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. FEINGOLD. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I know the Senator from Minnesota has been waiting for a long time. I will yield in a moment. Mr. President, I thought this was a colloquy on the issue of whether there were spending limits in this bill. The Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from Utah have come out here today and said, time and again, that there are mandatory spending limits or that there are spending limits that force you to lose something that you have now. We have to clear this up. I am going to stay out here as long as this bill is up to clear it up. The example the Senator from Kentucky used suggested that if somebody started to spend what they used to spend, they would lose something they used to have. It is not true. Our bill does not cause a person who wants to spend money to lose anything. If they want to go over the limit, they still get the lowest commercial rate. They never had the benefits of the bill in the first place. So let us be very clear about this, there is no gun to anyone's head. That is just false. In a State where the limit is $1 million, a person can spend $10 million, just as they can today, and they lose nothing. There is no gun to anyone's head in this bill. It only provides benefits to those who are willing to comply with it. I challenge the Senator from Kentucky at any point in this process to suggest where anyone is forced to give up what they have now. People can spend themselves into oblivion on this bill still. But at least those who are opposing them will have a chance. I think it is very important that the record show what this bill actually provides, not the parade of horribles that have been suggested that do not actually exist in the text of the bill.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Thank you very much, Mr. President. It is very good to be here on the floor with the Senator from Arizona and to finally have a chance to debate S. 1219, the campaign finance reform bill. I first want to return the compliments from the Senator from Arizona. I appreciate the kind words. I think everyone in the Senate and everyone in the country knows this would not be happening today, whether we win or not, this would not be happening today if there were not an independent-minded Senator from Arizona who feels so passionately about campaign and other reforms in this country that he is willing to take both the compliments and the lumps that go with leading a bipartisan effort, which he has done. It has been a pleasure and will continue to be a pleasure because we intend to win this, hopefully tomorrow, but if not, as the Senator from Arizona said, the American people will win this issue when some control is finally exerted over the obscene amount of money that is now dominating the political process. I also want to mention, Mr. President, the new Senator from Tennessee, one of our main coauthors, Senator Thompson, whose perspective and help has been very helpful and very useful throughout this process, and especially, of course, the Senator from Minnesota, Senator Wellstone, who, in my mind, is the most focused reformer in this entire body. You name the issue, I think he is most likely to be the first person in line to say, let us reconnect the political process between elected representatives and the people back home, rather than the special interests. We also have had wonderful help from the Senator from Kansas, Senator Kassebaum, and Senator Graham from Florida, Senator Murray from Washington, Senator Kerry from Massachusetts, and others. We cannot talk about this bipartisan effort without reminding everybody it has been a bicameral effort. Even more uncommon in the Congress than a bipartisan effort is having the two Houses have cooperation. And there the Representative from Washington, Linda Smith, and others, have been very helpful in making this an effort that the American public has recognized. It did not hurt either that the President of the United States took the care in his State of the Union address to specifically endorse this effort, this bipartisan effort, as the way to go. And all of this has helped us move forward. Mr. President, I also want to thank the new majority leader for letting this bill come up. It is not the way I wanted it to come up. We did not want to have to start off by having 60 votes just to get the ball rolling. But it is sure better than not having the chance to discuss it at all. I do appreciate that and look forward to the process of hopefully ending up with a successful vote tomorrow at about 2 o'clock. But let us set the record straight, Mr. President, about what this bill is about. The first statement by the Senator from Utah certainly laid out one view of what this is about. But let us clear one thing up now. And I know we are going to have to clear it up over and over again. This bill has no mandatory spending limits that requires every candidate to only spend a certain amount. It has a voluntary incentive system. You will hear this red herring over and over again because the opponents of this bill want you to think that this bill creates mandatory spending limits even though we all know that such limits would be unconstitutional under the decision in Buckley versus Valeo. So let us remember that. The bill does not have a mandatory limit on how much a candidate can spend. No matter how many times you are led to believe that is what it does, it is just not true. It is not in the bill. It is not the McCain-Feingold bill that we have before us. Rather, Mr. President, what we are offering today in hopes of restoring the lost faith and confidence of the American people is something very different. We are hopeful the Democrats and Republicans can come together and demonstrate to the American people our willingness to restore some element of integrity to the political process. So the proposal we have has different goals than that suggested by the Senator from Utah. Our goals are as follows. We try to reduce the flow of money in the electoral process that has become dominated by dollars and cents rather than issues and ideas. We try to end the perpetual money chase on Capitol Hill by somehow allowing current office holders to spend less time raising the requisite campaign funds and more time fulfilling their legislative duties and obligations. Mr. President, those are important things but they are not the core of our proposal. The core of our proposal, the very heart of this legislation, is, for the first time, to provide qualified candidates who are not millionaires, and who are not able to amass colossal war chests and do not have access to the extensive net worth of well-heeled contributors with an opportunity to run a fair and competitive campaign for the U.S. Senate. That is what this bill tries to do. It tries to give most Americans, which includes those who are not multimillionaires, most Americans, a fighting chance to be a part of this process, that they were born and taught to believe was their right. That is what this effort is about. Our current campaign system is heavily tilted in favor of a privileged few. If you have access to large amounts of campaign funds, then our current system is great for you, it accommodates you. If you are a millionaire and are able to contribute your own personal wealth to your campaign without having to participate in the endless cycle of attending fund raisers and soliciting contributions, then our current system is good for you, too. But, Mr. President, if you are not an incumbent and you are not worth several millions of dollars, and even if you have a wealth of experience and ideas, and even a large base of grassroots support, the sad truth is that such candidates are automatically labeled long shots under the standards set forth under the current election system. Why is this, Mr. President? Why is someone who may have served as a city council member, who may have been a police officer or a schoolteacher, who believes in public service and holds an ambition to represent their particular community, why is such a person in America automatically labeled a ``long shot,'' making it so very difficult to get credibility? The answer is very simple, Mr. President. The answer, Mr. President, is money. Money has become the defining attribute of congressional candidates in this Nation. If you have money, you are considered a serious contender; if you do not have money, you get stamped on your head the phrase ``automatic long shot.'' I tell you what happens when someone declares their candidacy for the Senate in this country. They are not asked about the issues very much. They are not asked that much about what level of support they have in their home States. Maybe at some point they will be asked that. Those are not the questions that first greets either a real candidacy or a planned candidacy. The question that they are greeted with has become the determining question in American politics. The determining question in American politics, Mr. President, is, ``Hey, where are you going to get the money? How are you going to raise all the money? How much time will it take? How much do you have to raise every week in order to be a viable candidate?'' Most of us have had these questions thrown at us when we first ran. If you have the money, you are welcomed into our system with open arms. You are considered a credible candidate, and your pursuit of elected office is considered, right away, to be a tenable goal. But if you do not have the money, it is an entirely different reaction. Such candidates are usually shunned by the political establishment, labeled long shots, and entered into an electoral arena where chances of upsetting high finance candidates parallel their odds maybe of being struck by a lightning bolt or winning the Powerball lottery. Our campaign should be a discourse between candidates of differing perspectives. Instead, we have a system that is the equivalent of a high-stakes poker game, where only those players with the ability to ante up are truly invited to sit at the table and join the game. It does not matter what sort of experience you have or what your positions are or what ideas you can bring with you. It is all about your ability to put up big money on the table and ante up. That is really what this bill is about, Mr. President. It is not an effort to prevent people from participating in the process. It is just the opposite. There are no mandatory spending limits, as is suggested by the opponents of the bill. But we have another problem. That is, Mr. President, that a lot of people think it just cannot happen. I had this experience in talking to editorial writers and constituents. They think this can never happen. We have seen this before, whether it is partisan or bipartisan. It does not matter whether it is after major electoral changes. It does not matter that people think they have heard this song before and it just cannot happen, that Washington can never clean itself up in this regard. I admit this issue has been very difficult to alter. What is different this time is that we have a bipartisan effort. Maybe the polls in the past have shown the people do not rank this real high on their list. However, as the Senator from Arizona says, that is changing. Maybe the reason it was not so high on the list before was this sense that it could not happen. I remember the same attitude about the deficit issue. When I first started talking about the deficit in 1990 and 1991, the consultants would say nobody cares about that. The public gets bored, they get glassy eyed on that issue. After a while, people realized that was a central issue. The same thing happens here. Maybe it has been tough to get this issue going because it is not easy to understand. It is not as easy as the effort that Senator McCain, Senator Wellstone, and I all made on the gift ban. That was so easy. All you had to show was that people could get free golf trips all over the country and there was not much more to explain. It is awful hard to vote for that. But this is worse. This is even worse than the gift- giving system that we finally cracked down. I think there is reason to believe that we can win tomorrow and reason to believe that we will win, whether tomorrow or in the near future. There are many reasons, but I thought the vote we had in 1995 on the floor of the Senate was a little clue. That was when the former majority leader, Senator Dole, came to the floor to move to table an amendment I had brought up to simply say that campaign finance reform ought to be considered. I would have thought we would have lost that vote. The majority leader usually won, almost always won on those kind of votes. We had 13 or 14 Members from the other side who came over and joined us to make sure it got on the agenda. Unfortunately, of course, it took us almost a year to actually get out here and have a bill come up, but it has finally happened. How do I know this issue is stronger than it was in the past? When I go to my counties around the State to town meetings for listening sessions, I usually make an introductory statement --keep it short, because people have been told I will listen to them; I only give myself 5 minutes like I give everyone else. I found this year when I merely said the words to my constituents, I have signed on to a bipartisan bill concerning campaign finance reform, even before people knew who I signed on with or what the bill did, there was tremendous applause in the room. Many times I just get blank stares after I speak. This got major applause and response every time, because people are fed up. We have reached the time when this bill and this issue will come to fruition. I want to say--all of us have this same feeling who have cosponsored this bill--this is not our perfect bill. It is not the perfect bill for the Senator from Arizona or the Senator from Minnesota. I introduced S. 46 in the first day of the 104th Congress. That was a lot closer to what I would prefer, the Feingold bill. It included public financing, which I think is the best way to go. That is my preference. I think it is the preference of the Senator from Minnesota, who has long been an advocate of this issue. One of our responsibilities here in this body is to know when it is time to work with the other side and to give up some of the things we really want so we can move forward. I remember that is exactly what the former majority leader said in his farewell talk. If you cannot get 100 percent, get 90 percent today and get 10 percent later. I was delighted when the Senator from Arizona came to me and initiated this process. The bill included some ideas the Democrats had proposed before, some the Republicans proposed before. What struck me overall, it was a genuine attempt to reach an accord between the parties. You have to do that on an issue like this. This is an issue where if either side feels the other side has somehow rigged the bill, it is all over. That is why I am so proud of the support we have received for this bill. One of the problems with reaching a compromise is that you worry some how those who have been real strong advocates, especially out among the public, will say, ``Wait a minute. This is not good enough.'' That could have happened. As the Senator from Arizona knows, just the opposite happened. We have received enormous support. We have 60 sponsors of the two bills in the House and the Senate. It is almost evenly divided on bipartisan lines in the House. The lead author of this in the Senate is a Republican, although we do have more on the Democratic side who have cosponsored it. It has been supported vigorously by Common Cause and Public Citizen, AARP, and the United We Stand group that has helped on this issue all across the country. These are not necessarily political bedfellows, but on this issue they came together. As the Senator from Arizona indicated, we have had enormous editorial support all across the country--east, west, north, south--from major newspapers to minor newspapers. As I indicated, we have the support of both the President of the United States and Mr. Ross Perot. What I have been impressed by with regard to this support, Mr. President, is that even though it came out about a year ago, and this bill has been delayed and delayed, nonetheless, the support remains, and the people who have advocated this bill have kept the heat up. Mr. President, why does the public sense we absolutely have to move on campaign finance reform at this point? I think it is because people have finally realized that the No. 1 issue that we have to deal with in this country is getting the big money out of policymaking that goes on in Washington. For me, the No. 1 substantive issue is we have to balance the budget. If I had to pick the one reform issue, the one issue that is underlying all of this, it is the issue of campaign finance reform. Mr. President, why is it that people are finally sensing what is going on? Just a few of the statistics that are very troubling: In a U.S. Senate race now, the average winner spent in 1994, $4.5 million. That is what the average winner needs. It is not good enough anymore just to be a millionaire. You better have a lot more than that. You better have about $10 million if you want to finance it yourself. What about personal wealth contributions? They have gone up dramatically in the last few elections. In 1990, only 4 percent of the money that was spent on elections was from personal wealth, from individuals putting in their own money. The same in 1992. Suddenly, in 1994, 18 percent of all the money spent on U.S. Senate elections came from a dramatic increase in personal spending. Mr. President, what about overall spending? In 1990, it was a lot of money--$494 million. In 1992, the spending in House and Senate races grew to $702 million. Just 2 years later, it jumped again to $784 million. The same thing goes with the trend on out-of-State contributions. After staying at 16 percent in 1990, in 1992, the percentage of money in Senate elections that comes from out of the State for a Senator is now 23 percent, and growing. So these are not static concerns. These are not trends that have always been there or practices that have always been there. These are rapidly increasing trends in overall spending, out-of-State spending, and the huge infusion of personal money into campaigns. I know this from my own campaign. Everyone of us has our own story. For me, all three of my opponents--both of the primary candidates and the final election candidate, the incumbent--had all spent over what this bill suggests as a limit by the time of the primary. That is about a $14 million or $15 million Senate race in Wisconsin, which is certainly not a small State, but it is not a real large State either. It was a staggering sight for the people in my State. Fortunately, for me, my primary opponents felt so confident that I was not a factor in the race, they decided to turn all that money on each other, causing the people to look for an alternative. But we know that type of thing is an exception to the rule. That was just in a primary, not the general election. Mr. President, perhaps most disturbing, though, is not the issue of how can somebody finance their campaign, or even the issue of what happens when somebody is outgunned in a race, even though one person may be more qualified than the other. I think what the American public realizes more than anything else, and what really bothers them the most, is they know that this story does not end when the votes are counted. It is not just a question of who wins and who becomes a Senator. They know that the very policies enacted in this Congress are altered in some way or another by the presence of all of this money in the process. How does this happen? Well, one way it happens is that in this town there are, apparently, 13,500 people who are lobbyists. They help with this process. They are not inactive in connecting the campaign process to the policy process. Let me give you one example of what happens around here. I will omit the names of those involved, but it is just a sample so that nobody is confused or puzzled about how sometimes what we decide to do out here is somehow connected to what happens during the campaigns. Here is an invitation: During this year's congressional debate on dairy policy, representative ``blank'' has led the charge for dairy farmers and cooperatives by supporting efforts to maintain the milk marketing order program and expand export markets abroad. To honor his leadership, we are hosting a fundraising breakfast for ``blank'' on Wednesday, December 6, 1995. To show your appreciation to ``blank,'' please join us at Le Mistral Restaurant for an enjoyable breakfast with your dairy colleagues. PAC's throughout the industry are asked to contribute $1,000. ``Blank'' would prefer that the checks be made to his leadership fund. If your PAC is unable to comply with this request, please make your PAC check to ```blank' for Congress.'' Thank you for your support of our industry's legislative campaign this year and your recognition of ``blank's'' important role toward achieving our objective. Now, this is legal. I am not suggesting anyone here has done anything legally wrong. It is just what goes on in this town. A vote is taken, and a fundraiser is held. I am not suggesting the opposite, which would be wrong. But, boy, it is a tight connection. That is what is going on in this town, and that is what the American people have come to realize. Earlier this year, a report was issued by the Center for Responsive Politics. It does show a relationship--at least an arguable relationship--between campaign contributions and the congressional agenda. The list includes cattle and sheep interests contributing over $600,000 during the last election cycle, while fighting to protect Federal grazing policies to give them access to Federal lands at below- market prices. Mining interests spent over $1 million in 1993 and 1994 on campaign contributions to Members of Congress while trying to prevent reform of the 1872 mining law. Oil and gas interests contributed over $6.1 million in the last election cycle pushing for the alternative minimum tax. That is a change that would cost the U.S. Treasury $15 billion. So this problem affects everything, including our deficit problem. If special interest money can encourage us to spend more money, or create more tax loopholes, then it is part of the reason we cannot balance our budget. Mr. President, there are many other issues that I wish to discuss, just as the Senator from Arizona does, and there will be time to do that. At some point, we will lay out some of the specific provisions of the bill. We will discuss in detail the constitutional issues that I know the Senator from Kentucky will tenaciously raise, and we will certainly point out that, although they are interesting arguments, they are not the arguments that the U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately follow. But I think it will be a spirited debate. Finally, I hope to get a chance to stand again and talk about what this means. Let me conclude by saying what it means to me from the point of view of someone who grew up believing that everybody had a chance to run for Congress or the Senate if they really wanted to. This summer, I will go to my 25th high school class reunion at Janesville Craig High School in Janesville. I am looking forward to it, and I am eager to see my former Democratic and Republican friends-- there were more Republicans than Democrats in that town, which taught me the value of bipartisan cooperation. Recently, I had a chance, here in the Halls of the Capitol, to meet with the political science students from the another high school, our crosstown rival, Janesville Parker. They asked me what I was working on. As I looked at them, I realized something had changed from 1971 when I told people that maybe I would go into politics someday. You know, in 1971, nobody said, ``First, Russ, you have to go out and raise about $5 million, or you better become so connected to the political structure in Washington, or you are never going to be a Senator or a Congressman.'' Nobody said that to me, and I have had the good fortune to be an exception to the rule here. But I could not tell those kids 25 years later that anyone of them had any reasonable expectation to ever be elected to this body, unless they become very, very wealthy, or very, very well connected. To me, that is a little bit of a denial of the American dream. It is not the same thing as being able to buy a house. It is not the same thing as not having health care. I realize it has to be down the list as compared to basic necessities. But I still believe that the right of every American to fairly participate in this process is part of the American dream. That is all our bill is about, making sure, on a voluntary basis, that every qualified American has a fair chance to participate in the process. That is what we are trying to do. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, perhaps this would be a good time to spend just a few minutes on distinguishing what is in this bill and what is not in the bill. We have heard a number of concerns from the opponents that apparently relate to other pieces of legislation. What I would like to do just briefly is indicate what we do have in the bill, and then the Senator from Arizona, I think, will more plainly explain the basic structure of the bill. The Senator from Alaska just made a few comments about the bill which, unfortunately, simply do not reflect what the bill does now. A concern was raised in the past about these voter guides that people want to be able to send out. The concern was heard. The Senator from Arizona and I specifically included a provision in this bill which reads as follows: The term ``expressed advocacy'' does not include the publication and distribution of a communication that is limited to providing information about votes by elected officials on legislative matters and that does not expressly advocate the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate. We heard the concern. It has been taken care of. This is another red herring. Second, speaker after speaker in the opposition today has said that there are mandatory spending limits on this bill, that it is a return to the legislation in the early 1970's. That is just false. We read Buckley versus Valeo. We understand there is a concern in that decision, and that is why we have a voluntary structure. You only have to limit your campaign spending voluntarily. If you do not want to, you do not have to. Third, the Senator from Alaska says that small TV stations in places like Alaska will have a problem with the free television time. We were aware of that problem from the beginning and specifically have included a hardship provision where a station can easily demonstrate--a smaller station, which is not very likely to be the station used for the free time anyway, can get out from under those provisions. Again, a red herring. And finally, the concern about the postal service. Senator McCain and I have included a sense-of-the-Senate provision suggesting that the money we save on not having franking done in an election year by people running for office be used to fund the postal reduction. So this is not some kind of new public financing or new burden on the post office if it is done right. Mr. President, let us talk a little bit about what the bill really does. The proposal does not advocate taking money completely out of the process. Consistent with the Supreme Court's ruling in Buckley versus Valeo, we do not limit any single candidate's ability to spend as much money on their campaign as they want. No matter how many times the opposite is said to try to confuse the issue, all we try to do here is set up a fair fight. That is all, just a fair fight. We want to ensure that all qualified candidates, not just those with access to big money, have the ability to adequately participate in the political process. All this talk about a gag rule or automatic limitations simply does not relate to our bill. What the overwhelming majority of Americans believe, Mr. President, and what I suspect most Members of this body believe is that our current campaign system which has as its foundation unlimited campaign spending has become about as dysfunctional as it can possibly get. So what does our bill actually do? None of the things that have been said in the Chamber today by the opposition. What it does do is create a simple, voluntary system. What are the things that one must volunteer to do in order to get the benefits of the bill? Three major things. First, you have to agree, in order to get the incentives that the Senator from Arizona says, if you want to get the incentives, you have to agree to limit how much you spend in total based on the size of your State--$1 million in a smaller State, something like $9 million in California and all the States in between. You do not have to. But if you want the benefits of the bill, that is what you need to agree to. Second, you need to get 60 percent of your campaign contributions from individuals from your own home State. That means all the PAC money and all the out-of-State contributions have to be less than 40 percent. If you do not want to do it, you do not have to. If you want to spend $20 million in out-of-State money or PAC money, you can do it. But if you want the goodies, if you want the benefits, if you want the fairness of this system and not spend all of your time raising money from out of State or from PAC's, then you have to agree to this 60 percent limitation. Third, you cannot spend any amount of your own personal money in order to get the benefits of the bill. In the largest State, you cannot spend more than $250,000. In my State, you could not spend more than $150,000. This is irrelevant to me and some of us in the body, but assuming you have that, that is what you have to do. But again, you can do whatever you want. Mr. Huffington could still spend $30 or $40 or $100 million in California. He just would not get the benefits of the bill. So it is all voluntary. It is a major distortion to suggest that any of that is mandatory. It simply is not. We crafted it that way because, of course, we intended for this bill to be constitutional, and we strongly believe it is. What does the person get if they abide by these rules? They sure do not get equality. That is not what the Senator from Arizona and I believe is the result of this bill. They just get a fighting chance. One of the things a person gets who obeys and abides by the rule is half price on their television time. They get half of the lowest commercial rate--30 days before the primary and 60 days before the final. That is the biggest expenditure of most campaigns. That is what they would get. Second, they get 30 minutes of free television time if they make it to the final election. And third, they get the equivalent of two statewide postal mailings at the third class rate given to nonprofits. That is all they get. They do not get public financing. They do not get equality with their opponent, and the opponent can still spend $5, $10, $15, $20 million. Again, the notion that these provisions are either unconstitutional or mandatory is simply false. In addition--and this has not been brought out yet--this bill puts the toughest restrictions on soft money ever in a piece of legislation in this body. In other words, we are going to shut down on this practice of pretending that there are hard money limits of $1,000 or $5,000 for PAC's and then somehow allowing individuals and political action committees to come through the back door and end up spending anything they want. Currently, individuals can only give $1,000 to candidates per election, but, with soft money, individuals can give unlimited contributions to a national party's non-Federal account. PAC's are limited under the law today to $5,000 for hard money, but they may make unlimited contributions to a national party's non-Federal account. Corporations and unions today are prohibited from making direct contributions to Federal candidates or national parties, but they may make unlimited contributions to a national party's non-Federal account. The McCain-Feingold bill shuts this down. So there is a voluntary scheme that candidates need to abide by to get the benefits, but, yes, there is a scheme of cracking down on soft money that would make the process much more fair and much more accountable. Mr. President, I want to emphasize, because of the criticisms of the bill as being unconstitutional, the voluntary nature of the bill. If a particular candidate wants to spend more than the system allows or if the candidate is spending $1 million and wants to drop more money into the campaign, they can go ahead and do it. All the candidates can operate as under the present system. Mr. President, in the time remaining, let me indicate specifically that the authors of this bill strongly reject the notion that this bill is not constitutional. Let me read from the opinion of L. Paige Whitaker, the legislative attorney for the Congressional Research Service, who was specifically asked the question about the constitutionality of our voluntary scheme. He said as follows: In the 1976 landmark case of Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court held that spending limitations violate the first amendment because they impose direct substantial restraints on the quantity of political speech. The Court found that expenditure limitations failed to serve any substantial Government interest in stemming the reality of corruption or the appearance thereof and that they heavily burdened political expression. As a result of Buckley, spending limits may only be imposed if they are voluntary. Mr. Whitaker continues: It appears that the provision in question would pass constitutional muster for the same reasons that the public financing scheme for Presidential elections was found to be constitutional in Buckley. The Court in Buckley concluded that Presidential public financing was within the constitutional powers of Congress to reform the electoral process and that the public financing provisions did not violate any first amendment rights by abridging, restricting or censoring speech, expression and association but, rather, encouraged public discussion and participation in the electoral process. Indeed, as Mr. Whitaker quotes the Court, he says: The Court succinctly stated, ``Congress may engage in public financing of election campaigns and may condition acceptance of public funds on agreement of the candidate to abide by specific expenditure limitations. Just as a candidate may voluntarily limit the size of the contributions he chooses to accept, he may decide to forego private fundraising and accept public funding. Finally, applying this principle to this bill, which does not involve public financing, he says: Because the subject provision does not require a Senate candidate to comply with spending limits, the proposal appears to be voluntary. Although the incentives of public benefits are provided in the form of reduced and free broadcast time and reduced postage rates to those candidates who comply with the spending limits, such incentives do not appear to jeopardize the voluntary nature of the limitation. That is, a candidate could legally choose not to comply with the limits by opting not to accept the public benefits. Therefore [he concludes] it appears the proposal would be found to be constitutional under Buckley. The constitutional analysis that has been given to this closely reads Buckley versus Valeo and concludes what is inescapable, and that is, if it is a voluntary scheme, which this is, it will pass constitutional muster. All the claims that have been made today that this bill that is before us today is somehow the bill that was passed 20 years ago are simply false. This is a constitutional provision; we drafted it that way with that in mind, and this is, again, perhaps, the largest red herring that is being offered by the other side. I yield the floor. Mr. PELL addressed the Chair.