Steny Hoyer

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) may each control 4 minutes of time allocated to me and that they may yield time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I have two, but I will take 15 seconds, and I will yield the balance of the time to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays).

Mr. HOYER. The House is not in order, and particularly the gentleman from Arizona is not in order.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I am proud to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes), the chairman of the Hispanic Caucus.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 45 seconds to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gonzalez), whose father was a giant in this institution on the rights of all people.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 45 seconds to the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 45 seconds to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 45 seconds to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to the very distinguished gentleman from the State of Oregon (Mr. Wu), the only Member of this House born in Taiwan.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the distinguished gentleman from Washington State (Mr. Inslee). (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democratic whip.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) may control 5 minutes of the time allocated to me, and that he may yield such time as he determines.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 seconds. This amendment takes away rights that currently exist. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Mrs. Mink).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. Mr. Chairman, tarring with a broad brush is not worthy of this House. It has happened before, and it has demeaned the Constitution and the generosity of the Statue of Liberty that stands at her door. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time to close. Mr. Chairman, this has been a long day, a long night, and an early morning. I think the quality of debate, for the most part, has been very good. I think there has been respect on not only both sides of the aisle, but there has been a bipartisanship of action. On behalf, I think, of all of us, I want to congratulate the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) and the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays). Whether we agree or disagree with either one of them, they have fought a long and good fight. They have kept the faith with their principles and their premises, and I think that they have acted in the highest traditions of legislators seeking to put forward policies to make their country better. I, on behalf of all of us, want to thank both the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) for their work. We now end this debate. As I said at the beginning, if we adopt this amendment, we essentially start over. At least eight times we have made a determination not to do this. This is the ninth time. Let us once again say that we are prepared to move. We are prepared to act. We are prepared to take a step in reforming campaign finance reform. We are prepared to take a step to raise the confidence of Americans that their representatives, their government, their policies that are adopted by all of us are theirs. This is an historic night. Rarely do we have the opportunity to vote on such significant historical change. I ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on Ney-Wynn and to vote ``yes'' for final passage of Shays- Meehan. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. Mr. Chairman, The gentleman is wrong on both points. It does not take rights away from American citizens, and this bill neither gives nor takes away from rights of people who legally live in this country. That is the law today. You seek to take it away. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. The chairman of this committee, as I have said in the past, has been, in my opinion, as good a chairman as I could possibly work with on the Committee on House Administration. He is open, he is fair, he is a pleasure to work with. We have worked very closely on election reform. This House overwhelmingly passed election reform. It is now in the Senate. Hopefully, they will pass it soon, we will have a conference, and we will have a bill that we can all be very proud of. We agreed on that legislation. The gentleman made compromises; I made compromises. On campaign finance reform, however, we have differed. Essentially it has been his position to oppose the Shays-Meehan alternative. In fact, the Shays-Meehan alternative could not be favorably reported out of committee. In my view, the Ney-Wynn amendment, which was changed last night, as I understand it, to reduce the limits, but, nevertheless, still has soft-money payments to the national committees, is in effect Shays-Meehan extraordinarily light, and in fact does not cover most of what Shays-Meehan covers. Furthermore, notwithstanding the reduction in the $75,000 to $20,000, it still provides for very, very, very substantial payments of soft money to various party committees, substantially more than does Shays-Meehan. So if you want real campaign finance reform, you need to defeat this amendment, pass a motion to recommit, and pass Shays-Meehan finally and send that bill to the Senate, and then hopefully soon thereafter to the President of the United States for signature. Mr. Chairman, I would say to my colleagues, we are coming to the end of the evening. We have defeated almost all of the amendments that were designed to undermine and defeat Shays-Meehan. We have one more step to take. I urge my colleagues to take it. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I was not going to speak on this amendment, but the gentleman from New York (Mr. Reynolds), my good friend, mentioned hypocrisy. It is an interesting word. We stand here with an amendment that says we ought to have a ban on soft money tomorrow, today. Today is tomorrow, my friend from Massachusetts tells me. What a wonderful proposition, from the party whose President George Bush, the first, in 1991 vetoed campaign finance reform, an amendment that says let us do it today from the party that for 10 years has delayed the adoption of campaign finance reform. My, my, my. Now with the practicality of implementing an entire new program, that cannot possibly be done in the time frame set forth, designed, therefore, to kill this bill, is put forward. My, my, my. I say yes, hypocrisy is an interesting word.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I do not know a whole lot about this, but the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) and maybe the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), this was added in July.

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

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, when the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), the chairman of the Republican Campaign Committee, raised the issue, I went to find out because I do not know much about this issue. First of all, let me tell him that most of the funds, at least on our side, I do not know what is in your accounts, are non-Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae funds, soft dollars. The overwhelming majority of them, number one. Number two, clearly what this is is under the present system we have, I presume from time to time my colleagues have, they may not be doing so now, raised money for the purposes of either rehabing or constructing headquarters. My colleagues have a major headquarters. We have a headquarters. What the provision obviously says, if my colleagues have done that, as we have and I presume my colleagues have, and we have that money in the account for the purposes of building a building, we will be allowed to do that. We cannot raise more soft money, but you will be allowed to spend that money for the purposes of completing that project. It seems to me that we do that in almost all legislation that we pass. It is fair for both sides; and while it may seem to be a politically advantageous argument to make, as if it is some special deal, in fact, it is a transition provision that not only applies to our parties when we change the rules, but applies to almost every facet of business, and we do it in Ways and Means tax bills all the time. So I suggest that we defeat this amendment and move on with the substance of this legislation.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I have great respect for my chairman, and great affection for him as well, but we disagree on this piece of legislation. On the one hand he says that Shays-Meehan does not do much. On the other hand his leader, the Speaker of the House, says that it is Armageddon for those who rely on soft money to perpetuate their power. Mr. Chairman, the long road to victory on campaign finance reform has not been paved with ease. But as Woodrow Wilson once remarked, ``Nothing is worthwhile that is not hard.'' And so it is today in this our third vote in 4 years on real, meaningful campaign finance reform. We have passed virtually identical versions of this Shays-Meehan bill twice before by overwhelming bipartisan votes, 252-179 in 1998 and 252- 177 in 1999. But today's vote, which comes only after a discharge petition, led by my friend the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner), permitted this issue to come to the floor over the objections of the Republican leadership, this day is clearly the most important yet. Unlike in years past, the other body already has passed nearly identical legislation. Thus, the enactment of meaningful campaign finance reform is within our sights this day. This issue, like the issue of election reform, which the Senate hopefully will soon take up, strikes at the very core of our participatory democracy. When the typical American, the man or woman who works hard every day, pays their taxes and raises their children, hears about campaign contributions and the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, they cannot help but wonder, has democracy passed me by? Has democracy been reduced to a form of government of and by and for the most affluent? Make no mistake, I reject the cynical and, I believe, false notion that contributions and policy decisions are inevitably linked. But none of us could be so naive as to reject the infrequent reality and the too frequent appearance of such a relationship. Every one of us recognizes that in public life, appearances are as important many times as reality. One five-letter word ought to crystallize the point for us. The chairman is right. Enron. None of us knows for certain whether that Texas energy company received any special treatment because of its enormous campaign contributions, from either party, but I am confident that congressional investigations and our regulatory and legal processes will get to the bottom of that. But there is no denying these facts: When Enron began to implode, its calls to officials at the highest level of our national government did not go unanswered. And, when the Bush administration began to draft its energy policy, it rolled out the red carpet for Enron's participation. In and of themselves, these facts mean little. But the American people have every reason and every right to wonder, did Enron receive special treatment because of its contributions? Even the Supreme Court of the United States has recognized that we cannot ignore appearances. In Buckley v. Valeo, it upheld campaign contribution limits because they serve the government's compelling interest in protecting the integrity of elections by preventing even the appearance of impropriety. Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, the appearance that something is fundamentally wrong with our campaign finance system has clearly reached the boiling point, and thus Shays-Meehan is not only necessary, it is essential. This legislation, in short, will ban so-called soft money contributions to the national political parties and prohibit soft money from being used for sham issue ads by third-party groups that most of us would agree are nothing more than campaign ads. While this legislation will clearly reorder the ways in which candidates and parties finance campaigns, it is a modest but crucial investment in our participatory democracy. We are the role model for democracy in the world. We have learned that we cannot take our democratic values for granted and we cannot be so naive as to believe that the appearances do not matter. As we seek to expand democracy's reach abroad, it is only fitting that we strengthen her foundation at home. That is precisely, precisely, what this legislation is intended to do. Because it is so critical, I urge every one of my colleagues to support this legislation this day. Its time has come. Mr. Chairman, I am glad to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner), who has been such a leader in this effort.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) may each control 7 minutes of the time allocated to me and that they may yield such time.