Marty Meehan

Mr. MEEHAN

Mr. MEEHAN. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. MEEHAN. Small ``I'' at the end of that paragraph, I believe it should say ``and.''

Mr. MEEHAN. I yield to the gentlewoman from Washington.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I do not think I need a minute, but paragraph small ``i'' at the end where it says, ``candidates,'' I believe that there is a printing error and after the comma, it should be ``and,'' as we go to each of the paragraphs.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I just want to say that I am happy that the gentlewoman has agreed to work with us. I think that her amendment makes some important clarifications to the voter guide and safe harbor provisions in the bill. I know that I have worked with the gentlewoman, as the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) has, for some time on campaign finance reform, and this is a good opportunity to take a number of the amendments, and as the gentlewoman knows, we have many, many amendments left to go in order to get the Shays-Meehan legislation passed. So I thank the gentlewoman for her cooperation. Both sides of the aisle have looked at this. I think it is a good amendment. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. MEEHAN

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I am not asking the gentlewoman whether or not one can buy donuts. I am asking whether or not under the gentlewoman's amendment, would one be able in any way to get cash, if cash was required to go buy a cup of coffee or donuts for poll workers? I am not asking whether one can buy donuts. Let us keep it professional.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, let me just say to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Pickering), we enjoyed working with the language. I think to take ``high probability'' and insert ``known or should have known'' certainly makes a lot more sense in terms of coming up with a section of the law that would be enforceable, whether it is civilly or criminally. I do wish, however, that as we work through these amendments, and many of the amendments are being proposed to the Shays-Meehan legislation by people who I suspect ultimately will actually oppose campaign finance reform, I would like to encourage those Members who are able to work out agreement on amendments to actively consider supporting the Shays-Meehan legislation. This is an amendment we have agreed to. I think it is a good amendment. Most of us think it is a good amendment. But if we really want this amendment to become part of law, what we really need Members to do is to support the Shays-Meehan legislation, which is a bipartisan piece of legislation. It has support on both sides of the aisle. It would make soft money illegal. It would also crack down and require disclosure on sham issue ads. It would give the FEC the teeth that they need to enforce the laws that are already on the books. I think many of us on both sides of the aisle have witnessed over the last year or two all kinds of areas where we need to make improvements in our campaign finance laws. The best way to make those improvements is by supporting the Shays-Meehan legislation. I believe that we are at a point in time that we are on the verge of having a majority of the Members of this House who support that legislation. So, I look forward to working with both sides of the aisle on amendments, amendments that we can come to an agreement on. But I would hope that the authors of these amendments, many of whom I suspect have no intentions of supporting the Shays-Meehan legislation, will consider changing their view ultimately on our bill and having a strong bipartisan vote in favor of Shays-Meehan at the end of this legislation.

Mr. MEEHAN

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, if we pass this amendment, is the gentleman going to support the Shays-Meehan bill?

Mr. MEEHAN

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, obviously I am not thrilled about 55 amendments to the Shays-Meehan bill to begin with, but as I add it up, it looks certainly like we could get through this in a shorter period of time, but I look at the schedule and I see that really we only have 3 weeks left to the session, and I would hope that assuming we come in on Monday and debate campaign finance reform for some period until 11 o'clock or so, if we did not deal with it the rest of the week, I would be concerned because the following week we start the 27th, and then the final week would be the last week. In addition to that, as the gentleman knows, we have a very aggressive schedule in a number of appropriations bills that we need to pass. We have tobacco legislation, Commerce-Justice appropriations, D.C. appropriations, foreign appropriations, VA-HUD appropriations, Transportation. So I am concerned about when we are ultimately going to get our vote on this, on the Shays-Meehan proposal, and then as the gentleman knows, we have another nine or so substitutes which presumably are open to amendments as well. Given the fact that the clock is ticking, and given the fact that I know the gentleman and the leadership has indicated we would finish campaign finance reform by August 7, I would hope that we could get through this quickly, maybe work out some kind of an additional agreement to at some point stop the debate and get an up or down vote on the significant proposals before us.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I would like to ask the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) a question, and I appreciate the gentleman's work in trying to come to an accommodation on this. I am looking at the schedule for next week, and I only see campaign finance reform scheduled for 1 day, which is Monday. Is that correct?

Mr. MEEHAN. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, I agree to the unanimous consent request, and I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. MEEHAN. Reclaiming my time, first of all, both my mother and I thank the gentleman for his work on the UC and also for his pronunciation of her name. Also, let me just mention the fact that I think it is clear from the votes that have been taken that there probably is a majority of the Members of this House that are ready, willing and able to vote for passage of the Shays-Meehan substitute. I would hope that we would do everything in our power to get that up- or-down vote and to get through with this debate. The majority of the Members of this House, I think, want to pass this bill and get it over to the other body and get it over there in enough time to get a bill to the President's desk. So I would ask the Speaker and the Republican leadership to keep that in mind.

Mr. MEEHAN. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. MEEHAN. Further reserving the right to object, I yield to my colleague, the gentleman from Connecticut.

Mr. MEEHAN

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the bill currently under consideration. This bill rests on a fallacy. The fallacy is that we can compel each and every woman to inform her parents or a judge about her desire to have an abortion. The reality is quite different. Some young women are horrified at the prospect of telling their parents or a judge about a pregnancy, and they will do everything in their power to avoid it. So the question we really should be asking ourselves today is this: What will these young women do if H.R. 3682 were enacted into law? The answer is some will travel across State lines alone to have abortions, while others will be accompanied by trusted friends and relatives to underground illegal abortion providers who offer a way around consent laws. Can this really be the sort of behavior we want to encourage? We tell adults who have teeth pulled to bring along a friend or a family member to drive them home. Yet some Members of this body apparently have no qualms about seeing young women who cross State lines for abortion take home the bus with strangers. Mr. Speaker, we all would welcome a world where abortion is less prevalent, but I, for one, will not attempt to usher in that world by erecting obstacle after obstacle in the way of a woman's right to choose. I assure my colleagues we will pay a steep price for that strategy in the currency of many pregnant young women's health and safety. I urge opposition to this misguided legislation.

Mr. MEEHAN

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

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I think that is another amendment that we can get to. But I get the point. Hopefully, we will be able to work out the language on this. I just do not want to see us accept all kinds of amendments and then have a high probability that it will all have to be thrown out once we finish with all this, because there clearly is a high probability that that would happen. But if we are looking at a legal term, I have a number that I can suggest and I think come to an accommodation. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), and I thank him for his patience.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague for yielding. The problem with the amendment, and we could come to some kind of an agreement, it seems to me, but the problem with the amendment is the term high probability is a statistical term. It has to do with the likelihood that something is going to happen. It is not a legal term. There is not any case, any civil case, there is not any criminal case. We cannot just be passing legislation. We have to take this seriously. We should assume that this might become law. If we are doing that, we ought to sit down and come up with legislation and come up with wording in this instance that is something like this: That an individual knew or should have known. That is the legal terminology we should be able to sit down and come up with so we can have an agreement on this amendment. There is plenty of time in this debate to show photographs of the Vice President or anyone else for the political part of the argument, but it seems to me that it would be more constructive if we could work out language that we could come to an agreement on like knew or had reason to know. There have been civil actions all over the country that people have been very successful on. There have been criminal actions people have been in. It is knew or should have known, that is what the legal term is, but not high probability. I think we can work this out.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, I, too, could potentially support the amendment, but high probability, there is no legal texture to that. I do not believe that there is any case law that has been determined anywhere that I know of where high probability was the legal basis of anything. Before I got here I was a prosecutor in Massachusetts. We had 13,000 cases a year. I think willfulness may be the legal term that we want, but I just do not know that there is any court that has ever defined from the legal perspective the term high probability. I do not know what high probability is. High probability. If we get a contribution from someone whose last name is, I do not know, Chin, and there are a lot of Chinese people named Chin; is that high probability? If the court cannot define what a high probability is, then I think we ought to use a term that has a legal texture, a term that is in Black's Law Dictionary, a term that courts somewhere somehow have used to determine legislative intent.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin) who has been a leader and a person who has really made a difference in bringing this fight to the floor of the House of Representatives. (Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. Mr. Chairman, obviously I have said that we agree to support this amendment. After hearing the eloquent gentleman from Arizona, he has a real opportunity to do something about the problems under campaign finance system, and that is by voting for Shays-Meehan at the end of this long, cumbersome process. I hope he will join us in supporting this legislation. Mr. Chairman, I yield five minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Rivers).

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, we agree with this amendment. In fact, we could probably get through this pretty quickly. Our bill, by ending the soft money loophole, would take away the incentives for any of this to happen. We have spent a lot of time over a period of the last year or so reading about problems in our campaign finance law. I think we can all agree that the White House, any White House, a Democratic or Republican White House, should never trade meals or accommodations for political fund-raising. So we would agree with this amendment, and we could have a vote on it right now and pass it unanimously. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, I am not opposed to the amendment, but I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition.