Trent Lott

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LOTT. I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk to my amendment.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. LOTT. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, also, I note that this is done two or three times a year and certainly is not unprecedented. I hope no one will characterize this amendment as a ``poison pill'' for campaign finance reform. It is so fundamental to fairness in the campaign process. Shouldn't workers in America be able to have some say about how their fees, assessments, or dues are used in political campaigns? I think the answer truly should be yes. Some of our colleagues may not want to expose, much less vote on, one of the worst campaign abuses that exists--compulsory business or union dues--but that is no reason for them to suddenly change their position on campaign finance reform as a whole. Most Americans would be shocked to learn that some workers in our Nation are forced to contribute to a candidate or campaign they don't support or do not know anything about. They have no way of directing where those funds go. Because of that abuse, this amendment, the Paycheck Protection Act, is an essential element to genuine campaign reform. It requires that all political contributions be voluntary. The McCain-Feingold bill places restrictions on political parties, bans soft money, and curbs the activities of grassroots organizations. But it contains a giant loophole: It allows corporations and unions to confiscate money, for political purposes, from their employees' and members' paychecks without getting their permission. This loophole must be closed. Senator McCain himself stated that he ``personally supports much stronger [Beck] language.'' He said he ``believes that no individual--a union member or not--should be required to contribute to political activities.'' This was on a floor statement of September 26, 1997. The McCain-Feingold bill limits what people can voluntary contribute for political purposes, but it does not protect people from being forced to contribute involuntarily to political campaigns. We must require unions and corporations to get a worker's permission before taking money out of his or her paycheck for political purposes. As I have said before, my own father was a union member. This amendment is not targeted at unions. It is, as a matter of fact, directed at affecting both unions and corporations as well. No worker--whether union or corporate business, large or small-- should be forced to contribute against his or her will, as a condition of their employment. Many workers don't want to pay and be involved in campaigns or in politics, and many of those don't want to be told what they have to do and don't want to have their funds taken from them without their permission. A recent poll of union members revealed that 78 percent did not know they had the right to stop paying for politics. A 1996 poll of union members found that 62 percent opposed the AFL- CIO's expenditure of over $35 million--and probably much more--of their money in a campaign to control Congress. No worker should be forced to pay for politics that they do not support. As such, I hope Senators will support my amendment. There will be plenty of time to debate this amendment and other amendments, and then we will design a process to have some votes to see where the Senate stands on this and other issues. I yield the floor. Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield so that I may make a comment on that, I hope, first, that we will have some time on Tuesday of this week, before or after, during some of the votes that may be occurring on the continuing resolution, as well as the appropriations conference reports. I hope that most of those won't take a lot of time. We will have some time for debate tomorrow. But until we see exactly what will be available and how much time is needed on the CR, we won't know for sure. But we will find that out, hopefully, today and we will confer with the leadership on both sides of the aisle, as well as the Senators interested in this bill. I had hoped that we could also have some debate on Wednesday afternoon, even though we would not have any votes after 1 o'clock. But we would still have debate up until about 4 o'clock, and then Thursday is open. We don't want to, in any way, infringe on the religious holiday. So we will need to talk that through. We could have some debate on Thursday and, of course, we can, and I assume will, have some debate Friday. We want to talk that through to make sure everybody is comfortable with that. My hope is that we could continue debate on Monday the 6th and begin having votes on Tuesday, and the possibility also on Wednesday. But, again, we need to go and get started with debate and see how that is going to stack up, and we will talk about that. It is a little bit broken up because of the religious holiday, but we want to have full time for debate, and we will start votes after that. That was my thinking.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk to my amendment.

Mr. LOTT. I now ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LOTT. I now send an amendment to the desk to the language proposed to be stricken.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LOTT. I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. LOTT. I send a perfecting amendment to the desk.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I would like to explain what just transpired. Mr. President, Senate procedure can be sometimes confusing. So let me take a moment to go over what are the amendments that were offered and what is pending. Under the unanimous-consent agreement reached last week, Senator McCain modified his original McCain-Feingold bill. I was then recognized to offer an amendment. The amendment I offered--the Paycheck Protection Act--will not wipe out the underlying McCain bill, if it is adopted. On the contrary, if adopted, this amendment would become part of the bill. The other amendments I just offered were part of the process which is informally known as ``filling up the amendment tree.'' This is a fairly standard procedure to ensure opponents of an amendment cannot gut it by offering yet another amendment. I ask unanimous consent that five recent examples be printed in the Record.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LOTT. I send a final amendment to the desk.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I now move that the Senate recommit S. 25 to the Committee on Rules and Administration with instructions to report back forthwith, and I send an amendment to the instructions to the desk.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, today the Senate will resume consideration of S. 25, the pending campaign finance reform bill. As a reminder to all Senators, no votes will occur during today's session of the Senate. The next vote will occur 11 a.m. on Tuesday, September 30, on the motion to invoke cloture on the Coats amendment regarding scholarships. That amendment is to the District of Columbia appropriations bill, which is the last appropriations bill that we need to pass through the Senate for this fiscal year. It is hoped that the Senate will be able to complete action on the D.C. appropriations bill on Tuesday, although there are still some amendments that are being negotiated that could require more time, maybe even another cloture vote. I hope it will be worked out, though. Also during Tuesday's session of the Senate, the Senate will consider the continuing resolution. As Members are aware, we have been able to make good progress on the appropriations bills, so it is hoped that the continuing resolution and the remaining appropriations conference reports can be acted upon in a timely manner. We don't know of any problem with the continuing resolution. We think and we hope that it will be a clean CR, with a limited amount of time for debate, although we have not worked out those details yet. I will discuss it with the minority leader and we will advise the Members as to how much time would be required there. With those things in mind, Members can anticipate votes throughout the day on Tuesday. With regard to the pending campaign finance reform bill, I encourage all Members to come to the floor and participate in this important debate. We will have time throughout this week, even though we will, of course, be affected, regarding how much time we can use toward the end of the week on this debate, by the Jewish religious holiday. We still need to work with those that would be needing leave to go to their respective States, as to how we will deal with that on Thursday and Friday. We will work that out. As I announced last week, there will be no votes after 1 p.m. on Wednesday in observance of the Jewish holiday. However, the Senate will remain in session as is necessary in order for Members to fully debate S. 25. Still, we will need to talk about exactly how we will do that to make sure we are not inconveniencing any Senator that would need to be away for the Jewish holiday who would also like to be involved in that debate. We will work that through as the week goes on. Mr. President, I believe now we are ready for the reporting of S. 25 by the clerk and the modification by Senator McCain.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Among other things he will be doing in Houston today is attending a fundraiser tonight, where it is estimated they will raise $600,000, some of which if not much of which is exactly the kind of money that he has said, ``Oh, we ought to stop.'' What is he saying here, ``Oh, please stop me before I do it again?'' So, I think we need to start off making it clear what is going on here. A lot of what is going on is an effort to change the subject. ``Oh, gee whiz, the Governmental Affairs Committee has come up with some things that are a real problem. Gee, why won't the Attorney General appoint independent counsel? We have to have another subject on the griddle here.'' But that's OK. That's fine. Finally we will, maybe, shed a little light on what is going on here. It seems that much of what will need to be done with regard to violation of the laws--before you start changing laws to try to see if you can fix problems, wouldn't it help if the laws already on the books were obeyed and enforced? Wouldn't it be better if we found out how people violated the laws last year? Who did it? What do we need to tighten it up with regard to illegal foreign contributions, direct and indirect? But it seems that much of the task of what really went on will be left to others, unless the Attorney General can discover still more ingenious reasons for delaying what increasingly seems inevitable, the appointment of independent counsel. For us here, we will do what we are going to do anyway, before Mr. Clinton's unnecessary and irrelevant letter. We will at least have the opportunity to lay before the American people the pros and cons of various proposals for campaign finance reform. In the process, I think it will become clear that in campaign law, as tax law, there is no bad idea that cannot be made presentable by taking on the label of ``reform.'' This is our chance to see more closely some of the ideas that have been presented and whether or not they will really work--or not; whether they will be fair; and whether they will encourage discourse and expression of views and opportunities for candidates to go directly to the people instead of being filtered by the news media. Let me offer this comparison. On the issue of campaign reform we have been like a customer in a used-car lot. The salesmen have been talking about this little beauty's wire wheels and leather upholstery, and it has all sounded pretty good. But now we get to look under the hood and find out why this deal looks too good to be true and, in fact, probably is. Before we launch into the details, though, I want to pay tribute to those of our colleagues who have worked on this issue at great length and in good faith. Some of them I agree with and with others I disagree. And, hopefully, we will disagree without being disagreeable. But all those who have pursued this issue out of personal conviction, rather than political expediency, merit our commendation. My disagreements on this matter with Senator McCain and Senator Feingold are well known--and may well become more emphatic in the course of this debate. But I recognize the sincerity of their views and I thank them for their cooperation that has enabled us to take up other legislation without being intercepted or interrupted or heckled. They have been responsible. They deserve the right to talk about their bill and we deserve the right to point out where the problems are. And I think we have set up a way to consider this legislation in an orderly manner. Senator Mitch McConnell more than anyone else has argued against their position. Entirely apart from the part that I agree with him, he stands today as an example of political courage, someone who is willing to challenge the prevailing wisdom because it is incorrect and because it would violate or restrict the fundamental rights of Americans. Legislation is never considered in a vacuum and this legislation is no exception to that rule. The Senate will be debating campaign finance reform against a background of lurid exposes about the campaign of 1996. All summer long the Nation has heard news about people ignoring the law, fleeing the country to avoid the law, explaining away the law, refusing to testify about their actions and the law. From all that, some may conclude that we need more laws. Others may wonder why we don't enforce the laws we already have concerning campaign finance, and let the personal chips fall where they may. The fact is, this country already has so many campaign laws and campaign regulations that to avoid breaking the law most congressional campaigns have to hire a battery of legal experts just to avoid fines and censure by the Federal Election Commission. No longer do you sit down, like I did in 1972, and fill out my campaign finance reports, you know, in longhand, and try to make sure it adds up, send it in and struggled to get it in on time. Nah. Now you have to have legal advice, you have to have a CPA, you have to have somebody familiar with the FEC laws. It becomes one of the burdens of elections. Why don't we, instead, go with freedom, open it up, have full disclosure and let everybody participate to the maximum they wish. But, no, no, no, no; we keep tightening down, tightening down, tightening down. Do you know what really is involved here? There are a lot of people who don't want the people involved. They want the news media to dictate, through their editorial columns and their editorials in their news articles, who will be elected. Boy, I know how that works. I have had to deal with that in my State. If I hadn't been able to get the money to get my message across, how could a conservative Republican be elected in the State of Mississippi, where the courthouses were all owned and operated by Democrats almost entirely, so I had the so-called court house gang fighting me and the biggest newspaper in the State bashing me regularly in its editorials and in its news stories in the form of editorials. You know, I took basic 101 journalism in high school and I know the difference between a news story and an editorial. But my friends in the print media quite often get that a little confused. As well as the largest television station in the State, which regularly took my head off any way they could. So, how did I win? Because I had the opportunity to take my case to the people, raise the money to get my message across over the head of the opposition, and the people gave me the opportunity to serve in this body. The fact is, today's political campaigns are forced to operate within a web of campaign law first devised almost a quarter century ago. No matter how unworkable some of them are, how out of date some of them are, instead of pulling back and clearing away, the temptation is always to add on. That is what happened with the IRS. Can you believe it? The U.S. Senate Finance Committee, with jurisdiction over the Internal Revenue Service, this week had its first ever oversight hearing on the violations, abuses, intimidations, and threats from the IRS. We are partly to blame. We have been hearing about these problems for years. What did we do about it? More laws. We kept adding on. We kept putting on more pressures. Unfortunately, too often we added more taxes. The same is true here. The temptation is to restrict and limit free speech. Add on another restriction, one on top of another, with regard to campaign spending or the ability to raise money. Add on another reporting requirement. Add on another financial incentive, often from the taxpayer's purse, for campaigns to behave or advertise in a certain way. Remember now some of the things that have been advocated along the way, I believe, in the campaign finance reform bill proposed originally by Senators McCain and Feingold--a form of public financing of campaigns. People don't support that. Great; we are going to have the U.S. Treasury dollars go to candidates with a system of incentives and punishments and voluntary do this, don't do that; oh, by the way we will give you free broadcasting. The American people know there ain't nothing free. Somebody is going to pay. But that is kind of what the push has been. I hope the debate we are starting today will break us out of that regulatory rut. We now have a chance to go back to square one and to reconsider the fundamental principles of what all along has been taken for granted. For example, with today's computer technology--so rapid and so revealing beyond the imagination of the lawmakers of 1974 when the present law was enacted--perhaps the public good would best be served, not by restricting donations to campaigns, but by promoting them, with full disclosure--full, total, and immediate disclosure. I wonder what would happen if every donation to a Federal campaign had to be logged onto the Internet as it was received by the campaign. Anyone interested in the integrity of that campaign, the identity of its donors, the possibility of undue influence or corruption, would be able to track the campaign's revenues dollar by dollar as they come in. Maybe we could agree on that. Then let interested Americans donate as they will, for this one overriding reason: Because spending money to advance your own political views is as much a part of the right of free speech as running a free press. I think the whole problem can be summed up in this one example. Suppose a distinguished surgeon feels strongly about a particular issue, whether it is Government control of health care or environmental policy or our entanglement in Bosnia. Her work is her life. She is saving lives every day. She has no time to devote to politics. Instead, she donates to candidates who agree with her views. But her college-age son, on the other hand, has plenty of time, and he disagrees with his doctor-mother on just about everything, which wouldn't be unusual for a young college student to disagree with his or her parents. So he cuts back on his classes and volunteers 40 hours a week for the candidates who oppose her candidates. In the process, he saves those candidates a considerable amount of money doing for free what they otherwise would have to pay for. Now, which of those two is a good citizen: The wealthy physician who writes checks to campaigns, or the pugnacious young man who gives them his time and labor? My answer is both of them. Our campaign laws ought to encourage both their public spirit and their political involvement. But our laws don't do that. They don't advert at all to the student volunteer or, for that matter, to the Hollywood personality whose donated performance brings in, say, $1 million for a Presidential campaign. For some reason, campaign contribution limits seem to stop right outside the gated driveways of some of the richest and most influential personages of the land. But those laws do apply to the doctor and to everyone else who sits down to write a check, to put their money where their views are. I have made no secret of the fact that we need more such people, not fewer, and that our present campaign laws should be reformed so that they don't discourage citizen involvement of any sort. That is especially important with regard to issue advocacy by the whole range of public policy organizations, left or right, liberal to conservative. The inclination by Government to regulate speech--or expenditures that are the equivalent of speech--is hard to contain. It starts with the understandable wish to discourage slander and libel in campaigns. It proceeds to various schemes to review and control the content of campaign ads, and it ends up in attempts to restrict the essential right of private citizens to expose the records of candidates and reveal where they stand on crucial issues of the day. Do I like this? When I am the brunt of some of that, no, I don't like it, and we can probably get bipartisan agreement that some of the negative aspects of it are not good. We don't like it. But how do we tell a private citizen that he or she can't pick a billboard and say, Congressman X or Senator X voted wrong on an issue? I think we need to think long and hard about that. I hasten to add that, in its current form, the legislation before us does not do all of those things. I have been speaking more generally about various proposals that have won considerable credence in the media which, come to think of it, is the very last place those proposals should be tolerated. After all, once we lower the bar between Government and free expression of political ideas, we imperil that expression for everyone. I am not suggesting that every aspect of campaign financing is so clear or so simple that all well-meaning persons will inevitably come to the same conclusion about it. They won't. But there is one campaign finance issue about which that is the case, about which all persons of good will should, indeed, reach the same conclusion. That is the principle that no person should be compelled to financially support a political campaign, especially a campaign with which he or she does not agree. Surely we can agree on that. Our instinctive reaction is to say, ``Oh, that's out of the question; you can't be compelled to contribute to a candidate or campaign you don't agree with or against your will; it couldn't happen in America.'' Well, it does. It happens all the time, and it is happening now. I am referring to the great scandal in American politics, what is to my mind the worst campaign abuse of them all: The forceful collection and expenditure of business fees or union dues for political purposes. This is not something that is aimed at businesses or at unions because I am unduly critical of them. We want more business. We want jobs. We want them to be involved in the political process. I am the son of a shipyard worker, a pipefitter, who was a union steward for a while. I think we should encourage union members to be involved and active in politics. My own father was and so were my grandfathers on both sides of the family. So I have made the point over the years to go into plants and mills and stand at the gates and go into union halls--yes, union halls. I have had some interesting times there, because I quite often ask union members, ``Do you agree with these things?'' and run down the list. They don't agree with them; they agree with me. It is the union ratings of who is voting right or wrong. The local union members in my hometown more often agree with me than they do with the union bosses in Washington. Sometimes, by the way, I think businesses do this, too, that somehow you have to contribute fees, or some process is used to get your money and put it in campaigns. The individual should have the final say and total control over how that happens. They should either have to write out the check for a specific purpose or give specific approval before those dues or those fees could be used. I have heard complaints from union members about how disgruntled they are about the way their dues are mishandled by the national union officers. I have heard their anger and frustration knowing their unions are financially supporting a candidate whom they oppose. When they ask me why this is permitted, how am I supposed to answer? ``Well, the law just allows that.'' The courts are saying that shouldn't happen, but, buddy, you are going to hear a lot of screaming and hollering on the floor of this body about, ``Oh, we can't have that opportunity for members or employees of a business or a union to direct where their contributions go, where their dues go.'' I think that is going to be pretty hard to defend for the average blue collar working man and woman wherever they are. Should I tell them those who wrote our earlier campaign laws deliberately slanted those laws to hurt certain interests and advance others? Should I tell them that much of what passes for campaign finance reform today would only worsen those deliberate inequities? As far as I am concerned, righting that wrong is the price of admission to campaign finance reform. If a Senator is willing to free employees and union members from that compulsory contribution of their hard-earned wages to political campaigns, then I can accept that Senator as a legitimate participant in the campaign reform debate, whether or not I agree with his or her views on the rest of the subjects. At least we know they want fairness, an opportunity for people to have some say where their dues, their fees, will go. But anyone who is not willing to take that essential first step to protect the earnings and consciences of employees and union members against the political diversion of their fees or expenses or union dues, that person, in my mind, has no standing in the debate we are beginning today. Madam President, I never deceive myself into thinking the American people follow every word that is spoken on the floor of the Senate. I hope not. They usually are too busy making America better by pursuing their own individual dreams. But this debate, I think, will catch and hold their attention for a while, and I think they are going to be interested in what they hear. They may not have been able to read both sides in some of the news media, but hopefully they are about to hear it from me and from others and from the media that will tell both sides of the story and tell what the options are. At the end of what I think we are going to see this debate deliver will be a sea change in opinion as the public rethinks the role of candidates, of donors, of volunteers, of issue advocacy groups, and of Congress itself, whose track record on legislating on this issue has not been stellar. In the past, the Supreme Court has had to overturn patently unconstitutional campaign reform legislation. Let us do nothing now to force a repetition of that rebuke. As a Member of the House and Senate over the years, I have heard, ``We can't worry about that; we don't know what they will do. Let's just do what we want to do and then we will see.'' I don't think that is very responsible. You can always argue what is constitutional and not constitutional, but free speech is pretty easy to discern, and it ought to be hard to limit. In the very recent past, there were 38 Members of the Senate who were willing, on the record, to amend the Constitution to give a Federal agency, the Federal Election Commission, the power to limit the first amendment rights of individual Americans. That, I trust, is an idea whose time has come and gone and will never come again. In closing, Madam President, I would like to recall a line from what was probably the first drama written and performed in America. It was called ``The Candidate, or the Humours of a Virginia Election.'' In it, a seasoned older candidate advises a younger one that when he makes promises he knows he cannot deliver, he should say, ``upon my honor,'' otherwise they won't believe you. Well, thus far, in the national debate about campaign finance reform, much has been said ``upon my honor.'' Now comes the real test of ideas, so the American people can decide for themselves whom to believe and whom to trust about this matter that goes to the heart of their personal rights and their political liberty. I yield the floor, Madam President. Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.