Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I yield to the gentleman from Florida to explain the purpose of his unanimous-consent request.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I can guarantee to the gentleman, knowing the way this place functions, that we will have a new bill come out, his language will be in it in some form, and if he does not like that form, we will have a vote on the floor on his language, because we need a vote on this and other issues, and I can guarantee he can have a vote on this floor and I will be supporting it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentleman had just said, first of all, he abolishes the exemption; but, second, he makes you tell the Attorney General if you are going to get it. That is like saying, ``I didn't take the bicycle, and it was fixed when I gave it back to you, but it was broken when I took it.'' The fact is that the gentleman, inadvertently perhaps, restores an exemption that this bill repeals, and saying that the Attorney General has to tell us does not change the facts. That is why this would benefit from being able to be worked on, as we will do in January or February.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remainder of my time. I am disappointed in my friend. We are trying to work this out. You want to posture and wave your arms, fine. You asked me where is your bill weaker. We, in our bill here, page 26, line 13, letter D, striking subsection (q), subsection (q) of the law is an exemption granted to domestic subsidiaries of foreign agents. We abolish that exemption. Your bill merely amends it. Yes, your bill tightens this in some ways. But here is the specific case, page 26, line 13. Second, we are not being subservient to the Senate. We are recognizing what you yourself understand. There are enemies of this bill who, if it goes back into the parliamentary thicket, will make it less likely it emerges. That is why we want to get this thing done, and then move beyond that. But I will say at this point, there is a very specific area, page 26, line 13, where we strike an exemption for domestic subsidiaries of foreign interests, a pretty significant one, and you leave it in there and modify it. That is the difference. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me say the gentleman from Ohio has brought this to our attention before. I agree with most of his amendment. This is a complex issue, and as the gentleman from Florida pointed out, there is one point the gentleman from Ohio acknowledges, and I appreciate it, that the legislation here would strengthen regulation of foreign agents. He makes the point that we can strengthen it further. We agree with him. But there are two points that are relevant. First, and I think what happened was he quite sensibly drafted his amendment to the existing law. This bill, as it came to us, changed the existing law. So, while his amendment does, in fact, strengthen the regulation of foreign interests in most instances, there is one instance, because of the kind of problem that happens with drafting, where he drafted to the original law and then the bill about came in after that, and there is one provision here, domestic subsidiaries of foreign interests, which now have an exemption in the law, and the bill, as presented, would abolish that exemption. Domestic subsidiaries would have no exemption. What they have now is a too generous exemption. The gentleman from Ohio understandably tightens up the exemption. What he could not have known when he was drafting his bill was this legislation would do away with the exemption altogether. So, through no fault of anyone's, in fact, in this one case his bill weakens the scheme. In general, it strengthens it. His amendment, in general, strengthens it. In this one instance, it weakens it because it modifies an exemption we abolished altogether. I would note I mentioned yesterday we have, and I am holding a bill here that includes as cosponsors myself, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Bryant], I hope the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. [[Page H 13742]] Traficant], the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] on the other side, and others. Not the chairman of the subcommittee, because he quite understandably wants to preserve his ability to look at the whole thing. But he promised us yesterday--and I have worked with him for years and he is a man who has kept every promise he has ever made to other Members--there would be a hearing and markup of legislation that would focus specifically on tightening foreign agents' registration. Here is our problem. As my friend from Texas said, it is not anyone in the Senate has said if you change it we will kill the bill. It is worse than that. If we had such a public threat, then the gentleman would be correct, the gentleman from Ohio, and political pressure could be brought against them. But as the gentleman from Ohio understands as well as anyone here, this bill has a lot of enemies who do not want to admit they are its enemies. If we were dealing with someone who stood up and said, amend it and I will kill it, we could deal with that. This bill is not likely to be shot head on. It is likely to be nibbled at from all sides. It will disappear. There will be quicksand here. There will be a bend in the road. We have a crowded legislative calendar. It took a lot of energy to get this bill up even today. If it has to go to conference with everything else going on, with Bosnia, with the budget, with all the other major items, there is a strong likelihood of it being held up. The problem is not if you go to conference and someone stands up and says, ``I hate this bill,'' but people who want to kill it say, ``I like this bill better than you do. I want to do it this way. I want to do it that way.'' We have no way to resolve it. So we believe, and we appreciate the gentleman acknowledging this, we have a bill that improves the scheme of regulation of foreign interests. We agree it does not go far enough. Our hope is that we would get this bill passed, which we can do. If we get by this amendment without it being adopted, this bill goes to the President's desk, in my opinion, and we then immediately thereafter begin to tighten it. We tighten it in ways where I think we have a consensus. The only change we would want to make in the gentleman's bill, I want to make, would be one I think he would agree with, we would want to continue to wipe out that exemption rather than to restore it. With that, I hope the gentleman from Ohio would understand we say this in a cooperative spirit and want to get this bill to the President's desk. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Bryant], a major sponsor of this legislation on our side. (Mr. BRYANT of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady] for yielding me this time and for his contributions on this important issue. The issue here is whether or not we are going to have a lobbying bill. We have a history here of legislation getting killed because it gets caught up in House-Senate fights. I have filed a bill today, along with the gentleman from Texas and the gentleman from Connecticut, it is bipartisan, leaders in this fight, that take many of the amendments that will be offered that have a lot of merit and make them into a separate bill. Because if we amend this bill, the certainty is that it goes to the Senate; and the likelihood then is that no bill emerges and it becomes a way to kill it. Mr. Chairman, the preferable way is to send this first very good step to the President and have him sign it and then for us to deal with this amendment and others in a vehicle that will soon follow. I would ask the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady], the chairman of the subcommittee, who has done such a good leadership job in this, if he would agree, as he has told me, that we would have such a vehicle.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield my remaining time to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady].

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the chairman of the subcommittee has done a very good job of pointing out the substantive problems with this amendment. Let me just add a little bit to his analysis. Mr. Chairman, we do regulate the relationship lobbyists have to us. In the Senate, they are seeking to regulate the relationship that journalists have to the Senate through getting a credential. This, unfortunately, goes, I think, a step too far in regulation, because it regulates the relationships of two wholly private entities to each other. That is, the gentleman said, should there not be as much accountability on the press as on us? No, not as much because they are private. I would like to be able to make changes there, and I reject those in the press who argue that there should not be any scrutiny of them, et cetera. But there cannot be an equivalent in the way we deal with them officially. Yes, we have a right to require lobbyists to report on what they do with us. The Senate has a right, I believe, to require some disclosure on their journalists who get credentials, although you may agree or disagree with the substance. However, this amendment is one in which lobbyists and the press are being regulated. Let us be very explicit, that compulsory disclosure is, of course, a form of regulation. We had the Burton amendment today. It did not pass but it got a lot of votes. What the gentleman from Indiana said was the best way to regulate this is to require disclosure. We do not have as a Government entity the right, in my judgment, to go to two purely private entities and say, ``You must tell us what you are paying that one.'' I would say, particularly to my friends on the other side who are advocates of more limited government, this would be a very significant expansion of Government regulatory power, to say that we will require the public disclosure of what A pays to B, when neither one of them is in that transaction directly affecting the Government. Would I like to know it? Sure. I think it would be embarrassing to many journalists if we got that information, and embarrassing journalists is one of my favorite things to do. I like to embarrass journalists. But I do think that we have to abide by the Constitution, and having a Federal regulatory scheme imposed on the relationships of lobbyists who are in the private sector and journalists in the private sector and their private interrelationship does, in my judgment, transgress the first amendment. Therefore, I think this would be a mistake, in addition to the other reasons. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let me say, I again agree with my friend from Florida. I would make note here, I think this is very much an area where we should be legislating. We had our colleague from Michigan [Mr. Upton] offer an amendment that has some overlap here. Our colleague from Ohio, to be honest, I think if we were going to move now, I would have a problem because we have not had hearings on this yet. We have a lot of hearings. let me say, at no point will I criticize my friend from Florida for not having had a hearing. Because he has too many hearings. So I will not object to that. I would say that I would hope and I think it has been very clear here that we set aside a day for hearing and a markup in subcommittee of this whole question of how do you deal with restrictions on representing foreign entity. One of the problems I remember from when we had the hearings was the gentlewoman from Ohio. It is a problem these days to get a good definition of a foreign entity, with the internationally owned conglomerates. That is something which I believe we can do but takes some doing. We have had three different amendments, all of which I support in concept but have a different angle on this. I would hope that we could defer on this because I know the chairman plans to move on this. I think one other bill we would probably be dealing with would be a regulation of foreign representation within the United States. We are going to talk some more about the coauthor, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] about the Foreign Agents Registration Act. I would say to my colleagues, this is of some complexity. I honestly do not think we could adopt all of these amendments now with the assurance that we had not created some problems, some overlap, et cetera. I would hope we could agree that we would have a day, a few days where we would have hearings and then a markup and come out sometime early next spring with a comprehensive billing dealing with the regulation of representation of foreign interests in the United States. In that spirit, I would vote against this amendment if it comes to a vote now, but I hope I will see it and the gentleman from Michigan and the gentlewoman from Ohio, the other gentleman from Ohio, that we will be able to put together a very comprehensive package of which we can all be proud. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I do remember and I was chair of the Administrative Law Subcommittee, which then had jurisdiction over this. I remember we began working on it and as we were dealing with some of the difficult issues like appropriately defining foreign entities at the time with international conglomerates, I then left that subcommittee chairmanship. But, Mr. Chairman, I believed then, and believe now, that the gentlewoman is absolutely right. The gentleman from Michigan had a related issue that dealt specifically with former Members of Congress and he wants to deal with their representation of foreign governments. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] has had some concerns there. My view is, now that we have a consolidated jurisdiction here, is that one of the bills we should be dealing with as soon as we are through with this, is the notion of bringing out some legislation in the next session that would be a look at this whole question of foreign representation, and particularly the leveraging that people might get in working for our government and using it against them. I was glad to hear the gentleman from Florida say that. I would be glad to be a participant in that effort. I think the gentlewoman is absolutely right.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from South Carolina has helped clarify this issue. There are people in this society, obnoxious, irresponsible, biased people, who have a right to tell us, ``None of your business.'' No, we do not have a right legally to compel two purely private actors to tell us how much money is changing hands between them when no statute is being violated and it is not a question of fraud or bribery. I am surprised that the gentleman does not see that distinction. Would the public like to know? Of course they would. The public would [[Page H 13137]] like to know a lot. Some of what the public would like to know is very important. Some of what the public would like to know bothers me, and I think Bill Bennett was right to talk about some of the trash TV. But the fact that people would like to know what other people have a right to keep private does not justify legislating it. The gentleman from South Carolina said, one of the gentlemen said, this is going to protect the first amendment rights, maybe it was the gentleman from Illinois, of those reporters who do not take honoraria because it will show how they are being objective. Mr. Chairman, it is not the business of the government of the United States to stamp approved or disapproved on people. To say objective or not objective. Verbally, can we say that as Members? Of course we can. But to enact a statute into law that reaches out to the purely private relationships of two people, organization A, that happens to be a lobbyist and, journalist B, and says, ``You know, we would love to know how much money you people are paying each other,'' and compel its disclosures makes a mockery of the notion of limited government and of privacy rights. The fact is, having a Constitution, having limited government, means exactly that we do not find out things we would like to know. We do not need a Constitution to protect information that nobody cares about. We do not need a Constitution to protect the privacy of people in whom no one is interested. We need a Constitution to limit government, and the notion, the argument, ``Well, the media has gotten too big for its britches and is biased,'' yes, I will stipulate, the media is a pain in the place I should not say here, but that is absolutely irrelevant to whether or not we, by law, say, ``You must tell us these things.'' It is not simply a first amendment right not to be thrown in prison or beaten or have your property confiscated. There is a right to say to the government, ``None of your business. I do not want to tell you. You do not have a right to know. You do not have a right to use the law to find out this information.'' So, on this amendment, I hope we will vote it down, not simply because it is going to weight down this bill, but because it really is yielding to a temptation that we should not yield to. The gentleman talked about Sisyphus. Let me talk about Tantalus. Let us remember Tantalus was tied to the table and he could not reach the goodies. Constitution ties us down. We are Tantalus. The goodies is all this dirt on the press we would love to have, but the Constitution is what ties us down and I do not think we want to try to loosen those bonds.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry. When we had a previous objection----

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, partisanship does now appear to be rearing its head. We now see a threat to this bill. The gentleman from California was fair and talked about problems in previous administrations and an executive branch problem, but the gentleman who just spoke and the other gentleman used this as a platform to attack the Clinton administration. That is going to unravel this kind of consensus. There was documentation only about recent problems. Yes, there have been tensions between the executive and the legislative, but the gentleman from California and the gentleman from Louisiana want to make this into a platform for attacking the current administration. No, you are not going to easily get a bill both back again through the other body and then signed by the President when it does this. I am very surprised to hear my friend, the gentleman from California, say this does not need hearings. Every bill needs hearings and a markup to make sure you get it right. For example, this bill does, it seems to me to say that a press release can only be done if it deals with any pending legislative issue, including a nomination by the Cabinet head himself or herself. It says you cannot delegate this. Saying that you respond to an oral request for an interview, it can only be done by the Cabinet head himself or herself. No legislation does not need a hearing. I think if this is what we are going to have, that this kind of partisan attack on one administration, no reference, except the gentleman from Pennsylvania, to the fact that this has been done previously, then you are not going to get legislation. If you care about it, you control the subcommittee and the committee, where is your bill? Why did you not bring a bill out? If this is so important, what have you been waiting for? Have your hearing, have your markup, bring a bill and let us debate it, but do not catch a ride on this train when you know it is going to derail it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say to the gentleman from Connecticut, because he is a good friend, I appreciate his spirit of friendship to other Members. I would point out to the gentleman that under the gift rule, Members are allowed to give other Members presents, so the gentleman from Connecticut can give a birthday present to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, now that he remembers his birthday, and it does not have to be a product of the gentleman's own State.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield my time to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady].

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's intentions, but I would join with the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady] in opposing this on two grounds. First, it will interfere with the likelihood of this bill becoming law if we send this back to the Senate and we have differences between our gift ban and the Senate ban. In fact, one of the things we talked about was whether or not Members could receive products from their home State. Now, with the objection of the gentleman from Iowa before, products from the State were ruled out under the gift ban, but they are an exception here. So, we have somewhat of a mismatch between them. Beyond that, I would say to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, I do not think it is an appropriate thing for us to say, namely, that having passed the rule that said we could not accept these things, we somehow need further protection against the temptation of having them offer them to us. To say that the Members need further protection because it would be against the rule for the Member to because it would be against the rule for the Member to accept it and we therefore, want to make sure the lobbyist does not offer it, I think does the Members a disservice. And as far as the unwary Member, I think the notion of a Member sauntering aimlessly through the halls and being ambushed by a gift-bearing lobbyist and before the Member has time to reject the gift, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct ``police'' come and the Member is hauled off to the basement of the Capitol to be made to give up the T-shirt that was now illegal for him to receive, because we are not letting Members have T-shirts. I just think that the notion that we, having adopted a stiff rule that says Members cannot accept gifts, that we need to protect Members against the temptation of people offering them gifts is unwise. But over and above that, Mr. Chairman, I would hope the gentleman would agree with us then even if he believes that this has merit, and it has some merit, it is not worth the jeopardy we would encounter in the other body if we were to change this. I would just say to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, I have heard us get all tangled up in T- shirts. I can just imagine what the Members of the other body would do. [[Page H 13117]]

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I will not insist now, I will withdraw it, but I would encourage any Members who do have any amendments to get them to us. I know the gentleman meant no discourtesy, it moved more rapidly than he had anticipated and it was not his fault, but now that we are in the amendment process, any Members who have amendments, if they could get them to us so we could review them for parliamentary purposes, that would expedite things. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of the point of order.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Barrett], one of those who has been active on behalf of this bill.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?