Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. There again I think it is important that people at least have a requirement that at least 50 percent of the money come from their own district, because you can be elected from one district and then gallivant around the globe, going to Hollywood, going up to New York, meeting with big labor bosses in Washington and then going back home and your opponent has raised 100 grand on local contributions, you have raised $800,000 with the Washington big money types, and you can spend and annihilate your opponent. You can make yourself look conservative, a liberal, a moderate; you can target women, you can target minorities, or white middle class, people with blue suits, people with red hair, anything you want with that kind of money, and that is what lopsides this thing in favor of incumbents. We need to level the playing field more.

Mr. KINGSTON. Hold on 1 minute. I want to reclaim the time and I want to admonish you. Have you ever read Robert Mitchum, who wrote ``Alaska''? Have you ever read any of his books? He always starts at the very beginning, and I am interested. But I do have something else to talk about, and so I want to say if you can quickly get to the point, I would appreciate it, so that I can talk about this other issue. I do also want you to acknowledge the fact you guys did not yield us any time, and I do want you to remember that.

Mr. KINGSTON. I had to slap myself on the back since you are not volunteering to do it.

Mr. KINGSTON. Well, listen, I appreciate what you guys are doing, and I know you appreciate what we are doing. I think that what we will do, as we do have these genuine disagreements on just different portions or sections of campaign finance reform, as long as we can identify those that we do agree with and keep the ball moving, then we will continue haggling over some of the other parts. And, again, that might take a while, but I believe Democrats and Republicans all realize on an issue like this we have to have each other, we have to work forward if we want it to move down the road.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time and wanted to say first of all a couple of things about the, and I am not going to call it a debate, my friends from the other side of the aisle who would yield 1 minute and then go off on a tirade. I do not think that is quite a debate, but then again I am not from their districts. But I want to point out one thing, Mr. Speaker. The Clinton administration came to office, and they have been in office for 3\1/2\ years. They enjoyed 2 years of majority rule in the Senate and in the House. During that period of time, campaign finance reform was not passed. I have heard that Phil Gramm was the problem. Who controlled the Senate during that period of time? Obviously the Democrats did. If they are going to bring in partisan politics, then it certainly stands to reason it should have passed under their watch the first 2 years. I know this, Mr. Speaker, because I worked with Tillie Fowler and Peter Torkildsen on a campaign finance bill that we introduced as a freshman class. announcement by the speaker pro tempore

Mr. KINGSTON. I understand that, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate that point. Let the record be clear that the Senate and the House were controlled by Democrats for the 2-year period of time. The House Republicans have been working on campaign finance reform on a bipartisan basis for some time now, and one of the issues that we are trying to get bipartisan support on but we cannot is the issue of soft money and the practice of unions and big union PACs to participate in elections and not even to have to report that money even though it is spent on behalf of a candidate. They can come into a district and spend under the label of soft money, an independent expenditure of money on ads, money directed toward the incumbent Republican, almost unlimited, and there is no check on that. True campaign finance reform would account for all political money, not just the reportable money, and I hope that we do get some Democrats who are willing to stand up to the big union bosses. I know that they are raising $35 million on behalf of Democrat candidates right now and Democrats are somewhat very reluctant to take on such a cash cow, but it would be great if they would. Just to give Members some idea, AFL-CIO in 1994 spent $804,000 on Democrat congressional candidates, 99 percent of their contributions. The American Federation of Teachers spent $1,053,000; 99.3 percent of their total contributions went to Democrats. The American Trial Lawyers Association spent 94 percent of their campaign contributions on Democrat candidates, $1,759,000. The Human Rights folks spent 96.5 percent of their money on Democrats. That is $470,000. The Community Action Program spent 96 percent of their money on Democrats, $42,000. The International Longshoreman's, $300,000, which was 96 percent going to Democrats. The IUE, this is some other union, I am not sure which, $204,000, 100 percent going to Democrats. The International Union of Bricklayers, $143,000 going to Democrat candidates, 98.9 percent of their entire budget of contributions. The National Education Association, $1,968,000; 99 percent of it going to Democrats. And one more, the UAW union PAC, $1,914,000, 99 percent going to Democrat candidates. I would say if you want true campaign finance reform, this has to be included in the formula. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Massachusetts wanted some time, and let me yield to him.

Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming the time just a minute with the intent of yielding back to you for further explanation, does your bill also limit or eliminate independent expenditures, such as those that have been targeted by the AFL-CIO to the tune of $35 million?

Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming my time for a minute, I understand that and I think that is a good point. Let me ask the gentleman this, though, in terms of individual union members who are not necessarily buying the big labor union Democrat embrace, should they not have the right to know where their dues are going? For example, here is a union, the Democrat-Republican Independent Voter Education Committee. I am not sure which union this is, maybe the gentleman can tell me. But just the name, Democrat-Republican Independent Voter Education Committee would lead me as a rank and file union member to think that my money was going everywhere when in fact $2,131,000 went to Democrats which represented 97.8 percent of the entire expenditures. Clearly that is a Democrat PAC. It would be fair to tell the people who have to contribute where their money is going. So my question is, do you support that worker contributor's right to know clause, which we have been working very hard with in our campaign finance reform to try to get in there?

Mr. KINGSTON. I yield.

Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming the time for a second, I agree with you absolutely. PAC contributors, people who work for banks or insurance companies or manufacturers, they should know also because clearly some of those PAC's are lopsided, also. Now, none of them are as lopsided as the labor union PAC's, but I mean, for example, even NRA and tobacco PAC's, the tobacco PAC's gave more to Democrat candidates in 1994 than they did to Republicans. NRA is on like maybe a 60-40 split. I do not have the number with me but I did look at it. I truly believe anybody who contributes to a PAC needs to know to the dollar where that money went. So I am in complete agreement with you on that.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica].

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I just want to say what I believe has happened from the investors' standpoint is, trying to encourage private investment and getting into an airport, they felt like they had a certain agreement with Customs and that Customs, in the later stages, changed the rules of the game on them. We had a sincere concern with the way Customs has apparently handled that, but the gentlemen from Maine, Mr. Baldacci and Mr. Longley, have brought up some excellent points in terms of the impact on Bangor's inconsistency with Customs, and so forth. So we are all working together to try to continue this dialogue. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I also have a modification at the desk and I ask unanimous consent for the modification.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let me just say right now we are trying to address a problem that has occurred at the Sanford Airport in Florida and one that has developed as a result of that in Bangor, ME, and we have some private sector investors who have bargained to work in good faith with the U.S. Customs Service on that. It seems now there might be a problem, maybe of major miscommunication on it. We are trying to address that problem. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Chairman, I have been listening to them, about children and so forth. This is the same rhetoric we heard from the same group when we passed welfare reform, when we tried to change some of the other entitlement programs, to not have a complete overhaul but to target the areas that are wasting money, to try to reduce the bureaucracy of Washington. Yet, we hear from the same people. To my knowledge, we have not heard from one Democrat who has ever supported a welfare reform bill on the floor of the House. Madam Chairman, I think what we are really hearing is people who are against welfare reform. I am a father of four children. I do not want to see any kids starving out on the street. I do not want to throw any elderly out. I am hearing people debate a bill that is not even on the floor of the House. I think it is time to get back to the fact that we are increasing food stamps. The school lunch program was mentioned. We are not even affecting the school lunch program by this bill. Madam Chairman, this Congress is concerned with a government policy that has spent over $5 trillion fighting poverty, and it has failed. It has not moved us down the road. I would hope that these folks would say, listen, it is time to say welfare should not be a way of life; that able-bodied people should be required to work in order to get public assistance. One of the gentlemen earlier talked about coming to this country during the Depression. The FDR-type programs all had a work requirement. That gives people self-esteem. I heard President Clinton say one of the best things about people getting off of welfare is when the 12-year-old child at school, when he is asked ``What does your Momma do?'' instead of saying ``She is on welfare,'' they can say, ``She works. Here is where she works.'' That is what we want to do. We want to get the poor independent instead of keeping them dependent so bureaucrat after bureaucrat in Washington can benefit from a government poverty program. They are poverty brokers in Washington, they are not people who want to make the recipients independent.

Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Chairman, here is what I hear from Democrat after Democrat: We want welfare reform, but we----

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentlewoman would yield time, we can talk about it.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Are we going to debate or grandstand?

Mr. KINGSTON. Are we going to debate or grandstand?

Mr. KINGSTON. And I will be glad to yield to you on my time if you do want to have a debate.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I heard my colleague say some people over here were interested in the debate. I wanted to actually have a debate instead of people throwing softballs back and forth at each other.

Mr. KINGSTON. The question is, as I have listened to my colleague and the gentleman who left earlier, and I believe we are in the same class, the gentleman is a freshman class Democrat.

Mr. KINGSTON. Absolutely. I did not want to derail it by just coming out. But the Democrats had a reform bill, Republican freshmen had a reform bill in the 103rd previous Congress. Then if I recall correctly, the Democrats controlled the House, the Democrats controlled the Senate, and President Clinton was in the White House. I am just kind of wondering why we did not have campaign reform then. If it is fair to blame it on Republicans at this point, why would it not be fair to blame it on Democrats?

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.