Fred Thompson

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Well, I do not want to delve too deeply into the motivations of anyone. People can have different reasons for their thoughts. But it does puzzle me because, you know, in looking back at the history of this thing, some of the leading Republicans, some of the leading conservatives, as well as some of the leading liberals and Democrats in this body, have all joined together on some of these basic things. What I think the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Wisconsin and I are trying to do here is kind of get back to where we were 20, 25 years ago. We do not have that situation now. I hope the answer to your question is not that we see this current situation as an opportunity for incumbents. And we know that most of the money goes to incumbents. I have been a challenger; I have been an incumbent, like we all have. And we know how the system works and operates. And that is fine. That will always be the case. We have some certain advantages, inherent advantages, in terms of news coverage and things of that nature that I have no intention of willingly giving up. And I think it is fine that I have those advantages. But the money situation has gotten out of hand, and incumbents have such an advantage there that about 90 percent of all the kind of money that we are talking about--well, that is not the correct figure either--but the great majority of the money we are talking about now goes into incumbents. In times past, in this body those considerations have not ruled, and I do not think ultimately they will here now. And I am not saying that that is the motivation. All I am saying is that I hope that is not the motivation. I am afraid that if we do not do some things--the Senator from Kentucky pointed out problems with Buckley that we have on the free speech side of things. He makes some valid points there. It is a problematic situation. It has to be either not dealt with at all, because of the Court interpretations, or it has to be dealt with very, very carefully. I do not know how far we can go constitutionally. But that has nothing to do with the contribution side. We decided back in 1907 that we did not want corporate contributions, large or small, and yet now we have effectively repealed that law, in my estimation.

Mr. THOMPSON. So we decided that--I think the country decided, after that, that we needed to decide what we wanted to have corporations and large labor unions do. Clearly, they needed to participate. We set up political action committees and decided how much we wanted them to participate. And we said to corporations, labor unions, ``You can't do any more than that in terms of direct political contribution.'' We said to individuals, ``You can't spend more than $1,000 per election per individual.'' That was not indexed. I think that was a mistake. I think that $1,000, frankly, is ridiculously low nowadays, and if we had a higher hard money limitation that maybe so much money would not go into these independent ads and more money would go into hard money. But we sat down and consciously decided, I think, as a Congress and as a country, how much was appropriate for candidates to get their message out and to communicate with people and in what line did you get to a point where the influence might appear to be too great. These were all conscious decisions. All I am saying to this body now is that we at least need to recognize that we are now addressing whether or not we still adhere to that or not or are we going to a system where there are no limitations. Some people make an eloquent argument there should be no limitations at all. But it ought to be debated. We ought to hash that out here on the floor and not fool the American people into thinking that everything is basically just the way it was, and we do not want to encumber the system with additional regulations, and everything is fairly simple, and everything is fairly clean. The Government, as I said, has been up to its eyeballs in this from day one, sometimes beneficially and sometimes ridiculously. And this law, to me, is just like most other major pieces of legislation. After 20 years, you learn some things about it. You have unintended consequences. You have court interpretations that go against what you thought you were doing. So you have to sit down and revisit it and bring it up to date. I hope we don't avoid the responsibility of sitting down and revisiting this. If the majority sentiment is that we don't want any rules anymore, that we want to allow candidates to pick up the phone and raise $5 million, maybe run it through a committee but coordinate all of it and direct it so that you can slam somebody maybe 2 years in advance who might be a potential rival--if we really want to do that, say that is what we are doing and lay it out in a piece of legislation. It is a hodgepodge now. We argue about what is legal and illegal. We have had some people say it is just violations of the law, what we need to do is enforce the law. That is true. Other people say, ``I don't see any violations of the law.'' See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. All we need is reform. They are in part true. The biggest problem is the gray area that everybody has assumed up until this last election was against the law. The Clinton-Gore campaign primarily went way beyond that and the Attorney General is trying to back them up. We can stamp our feet about it--I think she is dead wrong-- or we can sit down and say no, this is not the way it is, Attorney General, this is not the way it is, FEC, or courts, within the Constitution. We can make our own determinations as to what the Federal Government should be doing with regard to the election of Federal candidates. You and I do not want the Federal Government involved in many aspects of people's lives. I decided a long time ago, the motivation has to do with lots of other things, like term limits and how long people stay when they are here, what their motivations are when they come here, what is primarily on their mind. All those kinds of things are the business of this body. That is Federal Government business. I make no apology for that. So whether it is by inaction or by action, we are going to be determining how we elect people for Federal offices in this country.

Mr. THOMPSON. Is not being pushed hard enough, I don't think. We finally got a couple of indictments on matters that have been on the public record for a long, long time now. I am willing to reserve a certain amount of judgment to see what comes up. Based on the public record we have there could be a dozen indictments, based on things that have been on public record for a long, long time now. I expect there will be more indictments coming down the pike, but up until now it has not been aggressive. I'm afraid the trail has gotten cold on many. If you don't act promptly on some of these things, it is a lost cause. I'm afraid that has happened. Having said all of that, they can't blind us to the fact that separate and apart from the clear violations of the law which do not need amendment--they are clear laws, they are clear violations--we have now created another area that does not require our attention, except our oversight, to see the law is enforced. What doesn't require our attention because of what the courts have done, because of what the FEC has done, because of what we have done and because of what the Attorney General has done, we have a hodgepodge that results in the allowance of unlimited amounts of money coming into any campaign almost under any circumstances. You have to run it through a committee, perhaps. You have to be careful how you word the TV ads, but as a practical matter we have no limitations. That is what deserves our attention.

Mr. THOMPSON. I have heard that often. That was part of what we heard over the last several months. Everybody doesn't do it. Everybody doesn't do the things that we saw the Clinton-Gore campaign do last time. I think everybody doesn't do what their campaign did in terms of laundering foreign money into this campaign or using the White House and denigrating the White House. Everybody doesn't do that. Where there are clear law violations the laws ought to be enforced. That is another speech. If you get me started, it will be longer than the last speech.

Mr. THOMPSON. As a practical matter, I think there are no restraints. I think under the present situation, with the FEC interpretations that have come down, with the Attorney General decisions and opinions that she has made, I literally think that you could call up someone, if you knew someone in Russia or China or Brazil, or wherever you wanted to-- or California for that matter--get them to send a suitcase full of a million dollars cash, launder it, if you needed to, put it into a soft money account, and as long as you used issue ads and did not say ``vote for'' or ``vote against'' under this current ridiculous setup of interpretations we have now, that is permissible. That is the system we have currently.

Mr. THOMPSON. Absolutely, I would say to my friend from Arizona. Nobody ever knows for sure what is going to happen, but if the past is prologue, we have seen throughout history and in our own recent history, and certainly in the history of Europe, that when the money gets out of hand, the scandals come. And we have gone from a system now where we were arguing whether it should be a $1,000 limitation per individual or a little more or little less or whether it should be a $5,000 PAC limitation or not, and a big controversy whether that had a corrupting influence, to where now, instead of soliciting those amounts, we are soliciting $250,000 from these large entities. So if the past has brought those kinds of political problems and legal problems to us, I think we can almost rest assured that in the future, with those amounts involved, that we will have the same thing. As I said, I do not think that we have abridged the laws of human nature over the last few years. And I suppose that Lord Acton's admonition about the corrupting influence of power is still very much alive and well and with us. So I say to my friend, I regret to say it, but I know that you predicted it would take another one to get anybody's attention on this issue. Now we have had one. Your prediction has come true. I am afraid that I am just following up with the next prediction.

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, during a 3-month period, the Governmental Affairs Committee saw examples of clear violations of the law--money laundering, foreign campaign contributions, violations of the Hatch Act, possible sale of influence. These are simple, flat-out legal violations which require little debate or delay in terms of prosecuting the appropriate individuals. There has been considerable delay, however, but at least we now see three indictments and the request for one special council coming totally or in part from our committee activities. One would assume that several more are imminent, judging from the record laid out before our committee. There is another category of matters which up until 1996 were also considered to be violations of the law by most people--using the White House for fundraising purposes, a Presidential candidate actually controlling the expenditure of millions of dollars of soft money for TV ads containing electioneering messages placed specifically to advance his reelection prospects. I say ``considered to be violations until recently'' because the Attorney General and Justice Department apparently now take the position that these activities are legal for the final time. Although I believe that these are erroneous interpretations of the law, supported by neither the law or logic, the result is to give new arguments to those who would seek to circumvent the clear intent of the law. This along with court decisions, Federal Election Commission interpretations of the law, and piecemeal Congressional amendments has resulted in a campaign finance system that is in shambles. The loopholes are now bigger than the law and there are now effectively no limits on big corporate, big labor, big individual monies flowing into our political campaigns--a situation that Congress has said we do not want for almost a hundred years. And if people think the 1996 campaign set new records for the big money scramble, they only have to wait until the next election cycle, and especially the next Presidential race. At least the last time there was some concern among the candidates, and even the Clinton-Gore campaign, as to how far they could go in pushing the limits. Now that everyone has seen that the Justice Department is apparently willing to bless the most egregious of this activity and refuse to request the appointment of an independent counsel for what the Courts and FEC consider to be illegal activity, there will be no such hesitancy next time. And the Clinton-Gore example will be picked up and followed in the Senate and House races, one can only assume. Under the Attorney General's interpretation, I can see nothing wrong with a Congressional candidate raising unlimited amounts of soft money for use in TV ads praising the candidate or denigrating his opponent, so long as the ads do not contain the magic words of ``vote for'' or ``vote against'' a particular candidate. Congress must decide whether or not we are going to pass on this patchwork, swiss cheese system, which goes against the clear intent of Congress the last time they addressed these issues. If so then the implicit message will be that we are no longer concerned about the appearance of corruption; that we think that millions of dollars from companies, unions and individuals who are trying to get us to pass legislation is okay with the American people. I don't think it is and I don't think that is what we want to say. The McCain-Feingold bill addresses the worst of these problems. Also, many of my colleagues have amendments which would greatly improve our current situation, although they may never see the light of day. However, I would urge that we don't get so caught up in the details of a particular piece of legislation that we are oblivious to the fact that we are going to have to comprehensively address money in our political system eventually. We haven't really done it in 20 years and it shows. In many other areas we see that after a period of time laws that have been passed have resulted in unintended consequences, and there are court decisions and there are administrative rulings to point out weaknesses in the legislation and sometimes they go contrary to congressional intent and we conclude that we need to address the law again. That is clearly what we are going to have to do with regard to campaign finance legislation. It's important for us to understand how we got to where we are today. In 1907, Congress banned corporate contributions. In 1943, Congress banned labor union contributions. Congress comprehensively addressed how we finance our federal political campaigns in 1972 and 1974. Again, Congress was specifically concerned with the extent to which corporations, union, and individuals should be allowed to contribute to political candidates. Individuals were limited to $1,000 per election and limited to $25,000 in total annual contributions--$20,000 of this could go to party committees. Corporations and labor unions were strictly forbidden involvement in the federal campaign process, outside of $20,000 per election per candidate political action committee contributions. The underlying justification for allowing political action committees was to provide a mechanism to facilitate voluntary contributions from individual union members, corporate stockholders, and their administrative personnel. In 1972 and 1974 limitations were placed on expenditures but all of them were either repealed or deemed unconstitutional with the Buckley versus Valeo decision in 1976, except for the restrictions on party committees and publicly funded Presidential candidates. And the contribution limits were upheld. So we have been talking about Buckley v. Valeo. The Senator from Kentucky rightly pointed out that in Buckley the Court struck down most of the limits on expenditures. The Court did not strike down the limits on contributions because the Court recognized that, historically, governments of all kinds have been concerned with the amounts of big money that could be given to politicians who were in charge of public policy. And, as I said, Congress has been concerned about that since 1907. This is not a new concern or a new issue. Also, Congress eliminated private contributions to Presidential general election campaigns altogether for those who opted into the Presidential public financing program that was established. So for the last 25 years or so, Presidential nominees, who were willing to certify that they would not raise and spend additional funds, were given millions of dollars of tax payers money to fund their campaigns. That has been our system. Again, as with the idea of limiting corporate, union, and large individual contributions, the idea was to cut down on the corrupting influence or appearance of corruption of large sums of private money being given to Presidential candidates, or maybe Presidents who were already in office. Congress also believed this legislation would have the added benefit of pulling presidential candidates out of the fundraising chase, and instead allow them time to focus on issues and not so much on the money behind factions supporting those issues. So, for a long time, Mr. President--we talk about the Government being in charge and we don't want to put the Government in charge--for a long time in this country, many Members of this same body and many Members from both sides of the political spectrum, enough to get these laws passed for almost a century, the Government has been involved. I am not a big one for having the Government involved in a lot of things, but many of us have come to the conclusion that how we elect our Federal officers, how we elect our Federal officials, is one of those things that is legitimately the business of the Federal Government. And the Federal Government, and this Congress, has passed on specific contribution limitations in times past because of this notion that we need to kind of watch that carefully, because if you go out here in the private world and you see people in positions of decisionmaking receiving money from the people whom they are making the decision with regard to, that could be a problem. It is just kind of basic common sense. And the idea that the Government has kind of been oblivious to this and not involved in this for some time is really an invalid concept. For 25 years, the system that I have just described has worked pretty well. There hasn't been a major Presidential scandal. People talk about public financing. We are clearly not talking about public financing here. But on the Presidential level, many people may not realize it but we have had public financing for a long time, and it has been scandal free. It has operated about as well for incumbents as it has challengers. It has been more of a level playing field, people have opted into it, and it has worked pretty well. All the TV advertisements were paid for within this system. With all of this money that was raised within this system, with these limitations placed on them, people managed to buy television ads and have pretty decent television campaigns--with this money, we call it hard money now, but the money within the system that was carefully thought out and allowed to be given to those of us in political office--because they were reasonable amounts and it didn't feel like they were large enough to have any influence on us, is what it boils down to. However, things began to happen in the 1970s, with later more significant developments in the 1990s, that have totally transformed that system that Congress set up. There was concern in Congress, for example, that there be adequate funding for grassroots political activities. We are all concerned about that. So, in the late 1970's, Congress amended the campaign laws and the FEC interpreted those amendments to allow national parties to send unlimited amounts, but for voter registration, voter turnout, and so forth, without these moneys counting against the limitations placed on party expenditures. Buckley, by the way, said that you could place limitations on party expenditures. That was one of the expenditure areas that Buckley said it was right and proper for Congress to place limitations on. We have limitations on party expenditures today. Congress and the FEC also allowed part of these expenditures to be funded with money that might be referred to as ``outside the system''-- outside the system that we have just been discussing, the $1,000/$5,000 limitation system that we have just been discussing. We now call this other money outside the system soft money--unlimited moneys; no limitation on these moneys from corporations, labor unions, individuals. In 1991, now, moving along, the FEC--this is the Federal Election Commission, as we all know--decided that national parties could fund 35 percent of their generic voter-drive cost from soft money and 40 percent in an election year. So, now the soft money race was on. So now, we see, we were concerned about local grassroots participation. We let the parties send in more unlimited money for that purpose. Then we said OK, we can send some soft money in that you don't have to worry about limitations on, for that particular purpose. So the soft money drive was on and the public learned, in 1992, that the major party committees raised more than $83 million in soft money, which was 4 times the amount of soft money estimated to have been spent by the parties in 1984. In 1996 the explosion in soft money continued. Soft money receipts by the Republican National Party committees increased 178 percent over 1992, to $138 million; while Democratic Party committee receipts of soft money increased 242 percent over 1992 levels to $123 million. It is almost enough to make you long for the good old days back when many people were concerned about $5,000 PAC contributions. PACs were considered to be our greatest potential problem, not too long ago by many people. So, naturally with all this new money on hand there was a tremendous desire by people in the political system to marry up that money with the largest expenditure that we were all beginning to incur at that time, and of course that's television advertising. So, in the summer of 1995, Dick Morris fervently believed television advertisements comparing the President with the Republican Congress were keys to the President's reelection. He encouraged the President to opt out of the public financing program in order to run expensive TV ads that he felt were absolutely necessary. Because he understood at the time, under the public system, if you took the public money but you couldn't go out here and raise all this money on the side, all this soft money to run these additional programs--he said, ``Mr. President, I wish you just wouldn't take the public money so we can have unlimited expenditures.'' The President decided to take the money and figure out a way to get the unlimited expenditures anyway. He told Mr. Morris to come back with plan B. So, luckily for Mr. Morris, plan B was outlined for him in an advisory opinion, once again issued by the FEC. We talk about not putting the Government in this. The Government has been in this up to its eyebrows almost from the very beginning. Congress has been involved in it. Congress set up the Federal Election Commission. The Federal Election Commission comes with all these advisory opinions. They said you can use so much soft money for this, so much hard money for that, so many percentages for this purpose, so many percentages for the other purpose--that is the system we have now. The campaign finance reform bill would almost be a deregulation bill. This is not adding additional regulations on top of anything. This is doing away with some of this Rube Goldberg system that we have now. So, continuing on with this pattern, the FEC comes in again and, in August of 1995, they issued an opinion and, despite an attempt to use careful language, the clear result of this advisory opinion was to place the FEC stamp of approval for the first time on the use of soft money by national party committees to pay for broadcast media advertisements that directly reference Federal candidates. So, by lumping this candidate-specific but issue-based TV advertising with grassroots activity which, as we discussed a moment ago, was encouraged by the 1979 amendment, the FEC handed Mr. Morris his plan B on a silver, soft-money platter. The DNC and the Clinton-Gore campaign seized on the opportunity to use the FEC's hard/soft allocation regulations to run TV ads, using the 40 percent soft money. The first ones began running in October of 1995, shortly after this opinion was rendered. And so there we go. However, it is very important to note that the rules still prohibited soft money electioneering messages and coordination between the candidate and the committee. So, in summary, the national party could now spend soft money for a portion of its State-based party building, and it could directly spend soft money for a portion of its issue advocacy, or it could transfer soft money to the State parties. Again, this is the system we have today. Does this sound like a simple free-enterprise system that we are trying to somehow improperly mess with? This is the hopelessly complex, as we will see in a minute, ridiculous system that we have allowed to be created under our very noses. However, again, under the FEC rulings and court decisions, it should be noted that none of this soft money was supposed to go for activities that were to be coordinated with individual candidates. Nevertheless, by now the system had been haphazardly and without premeditation transformed from one which limited big money for Federal candidates into an attractive opportunity for anyone willing to push the soft money game to its next level and past what the law allowed. The Clinton-Gore campaign was willing. Briefly stated, their campaign circumvented the DNC's coordinated limit and used approximately $44 million in national committee soft money to their candidates' advantage through electioneering messages that they claimed to be ``issue advertisements,'' all the while certifying under our Presidential system, that they would not spend more than the public funding system was giving them. They were receiving the taxpayer funding all at the same time they were raising the $44 million outside the system. The President and the Vice President personally raised a lot of this money, putting them right back into the campaign fundraising chase that Congress specifically intended the campaign laws to put them above. The President personally reviewed and edited TV commercial scripts that the soft money went for and helped make the decision as to where the ads would be run. Again, soft money is not permitted to go to support individual candidates, and it is not supposed to be coordinated or directed by those candidates. Nevertheless, the Attorney General, through her opinion on this matter, permits this abuse, and we can fasten our seatbelts for the next elections unless we make some changes. The second large area that was exploited in the 1996 election cycle had to do with the transfer of large amounts of soft money from the national party to the State parties, which in turn would be directed by the national parties as to how to use the funds for national party purposes. In other words, the national party is just using the State parties as a passthrough. Under FEC rules, the amount of permissible soft money expenditures by State parties depends on the ratio of Federal to non-Federal candidates that is on the State's November ballot. For example, if there are two Federal races, say a Presidential and a congressional race, and eight non-Federal local races, the State party can pay for 80 percent of their generic activities with soft dollars. Again, this is the simple, deregulated system that we have today. Given that hard dollars raised in $1,000 increments are more difficult to raise, this gives an incentive to have the State party pay for as many activities as possible using soft money. In other words, now they have a system all contorted so that States can use more soft money than the Federal can, so you game the Federal system as much as you can through the party committee. The President raises the soft money, runs it through the DNC and spends the soft money additionally to what he is allowed to spend through the public financing. Then you go to the States, and because the States can use more soft money than you can, you run the rest of it through the States and have the States run the same ads that you are running at the Federal level for the same purpose, of reelecting the President. Now, that is the system that we have today. So to take advantage of the system, the national party committees began transferring soft money to State party committees to utilize their higher soft-money allowance. In the crucial 1995 pre-election year, according to the FEC reports, the DNC transferred almost $11.4 million of soft money to State parties, followed by another $6.4 million in the first quarter of 1996. The RNC shifted a little over $2.4 million to the States in about that same period of time. Ultimately, the DNC quietly transferred at least $32 million, and perhaps as much as $64 million by some estimates, to State Democratic Party committees in the 1996 election cycle. Of course, much of this money was used for television commercials. This transfer allowed, of course, the State party committees to use national party soft money in areas to help their Federal election goals more than if the national committee had made the expenditures directly. The DNC, on its own, would have had to purchase the same air time under the guidelines requiring a high percentage of hard dollars. Our hearings demonstrated that on some occasions, the very same ad would be run by both the national party and the State party, all created by the DNC Clinton-Gore consultants, Squier, Knapp & Ochs. Reports of the receipts and expenditures of a dozen State Democratic parties from July 1, 1995, to March 31, 1996, indicate the State entities operated as a little more than passthroughs for the DNC to pay for the production and broadcasting of ads by the Squier firm. The Squier firm, of course, was in the White House consulting with the President, was the paid media consultant for the DNC, for the Clinton- Gore campaign and, at the same time, was running these ads and creating these ads for these State parties, and, in many cases, they were the same ads. As we see, the DNC and Clinton-Gore campaign found a way to use the big corporate, union and individual soft money they could raise for the direct benefit of their own campaign. They could actually raise the soft money from the DNC, which would, in turn, spend it as they were directed by the Clinton-Gore campaign in order to benefit the national campaign. So it was all an obvious ruse to anybody who took a look at it, but it could work in a world where the FEC might take 4 or 5 years to impose a modest fine and where the Attorney General was willing to adopt a tortured Clinton-Gore legal defense theory in order to justify such actions. Of course, labor unions and 501(c)(4) tax-exempt independent groups supporting both parties have kept apace of these new developments. They, too, now systematically run ads supporting or targeting specific candidates while often coordinating their activities with the candidate they support as well as with each other. As with the national parties, they claim the ads they run are ``issue ads'' and, therefore, can't be regulated. Sometimes they are and sometimes maybe they are not. We have to decide that on an individual fact-by-fact basis. However, they take the position that, in most cases, they are not coordinating factual issues. But if they are coordinated with the candidate, it is considered to be a contribution to the candidate, according to Buckley. Buckley has been quoted, of course, as limiting the regulation that Congress can place on expenditures, but in the Buckley decision, it says, if you set up a kind of a sham deal where you are supposed to be making these independent expenditures but you are really doing it at the direction of the candidate, that is not independent and that is considered a contribution to the candidate. The FEC has, in many cases, supported that proposition. There is nothing in the court cases that would indicate that that is proper. In fact, quite the contrary. In fact, the FEC takes the position that even issue ads which are coordinated are illegal. National parties and independent groups seem to be taking the position that, ``We didn't coordinate, but if we did, it may be legal anyway.'' But the DNC and the Clinton-Gore campaign kind of stand alone on that issue because their soft-money expenditures were coordinated and directed by the President so openly and clearly and blatantly that they had no choice but to just adopt the idea, in the face of court decisions and in the face of FEC rulings, that it was still legal and proper, and the Attorney General has gone along with them on it. As I said, Buckley addressed the problems of would-be contributors avoiding the contribution limits by the simple expedient of paying directly for media advertisements for a candidate when the expenditures were controlled by or coordinated with the candidate. Buckley stated-- and this is a quotation from the much-quoted Buckley--``. . . such controlled and coordinated expenditures are treated as contributions rather than expenditures under the Act's contributions ceilings [And this]. . . prevents attempts to circumvent the Act through prearranged or coordinated expenditures amounting to disguised contributions. . . .'' That is the Buckley decision. But, of course, in the present environment, it prevents no such thing. Buckley says legally it prevents it. Practically we see that it does not. It certainly makes no difference that the person who wants to purchase the TV ads runs his contributions through the political parties instead of directly. The potential corrupting influence that people have been concerned with for many, many years in this country and others is there anyway. Nevertheless, the Attorney General seems to have adopted the Clinton-Gore campaign argument. The Attorney General's position will have many ramifications, Mr. President. Her position is based on the idea that soft money contributions are not ``contributions'' within the definition of the act, and she thinks since soft-money contributions really don't fall within that definition of contributions, then they are not regulated, so that you can have unlimited soft money over here, but we won't call them contributions, so they are not regulated. Well, if that blanket position is true, then foreign soft-money contributions are not illegal either, because they came under the same definition. If soft-money contributions of any kind are not really contributions as defined by the act, then that is going to apply to domestic or foreign. Under her interpretation, you could have unlimited amounts of foreign money brought in and put by a political campaign into a soft-money account and used for so-called issue ads, and it would be perfectly legal. These are the things we are going to see in the next election cycle. If Congress does not want to be bound by this absurd interpretation, then we are going to have to act. So, in summary, we see that the 1996 elections produced some clear violations of the criminal law, and Congress' job in this area is to exercise oversight over the Justice Department to make sure the laws are enforced. We need no changes in the law with regard to these matters. However, we also see that because of the way in which soft money, issue advocacy and coordination are being used and allowed to be used, as a practical matter, we are left with no campaign finance system at all, and we must decide if that is really what we want. Because all these loopholes have been opened up now, contrary to our original intent, we find ourselves with a situation where we weren't the ones who opened up the barn door, but all the horses are rapidly leaving. Do we want to fix it or do we want to take advantage of it, because it essentially helps all incumbents, and we go through this exercise every so often and get a pretty good vote, but not quite enough, and now we can have our cake and eat it, too. If we had come to this floor and passed a piece of legislation that allowed the current system, they would have laughed us out of town, and nobody here would have had the courage to do it. So the question is whether or not, if we find ourselves with it, we are going to take advantage of it because it benefits an incumbent. Some would welcome this turn of events. Some honestly believe there is not enough money in our political system and that large corporations, unions and others should be allowed to make unlimited contributions to candidates. I believe that those who hold this opinion have won the day so far, because I think that is exactly where we are now. And I think it is tragic, and I believe that those of us in both parties who support such a system because we think it might be beneficial to us as incumbents in some way are being very shortsighted, because I believe that no system that requires us or allows us as elected officials, including the President of the United States, to spend so much time raising so much money from so many people who have interests before us that we are passing legislation on, no such system will be allowed to survive indefinitely. Where does such a system leave the average citizen with his or her $100 contribution? Is there any doubt as to why the more money we raise the fewer people vote? Throughout history, people have recognized the inherent problems associated with large amounts of money going to those who make public policy. It does not require a very smart person to see the inherent problem with that. Nineteen centuries ago, the historian Plutarch thought that that was, more than anything else, what brought down the Roman Republic. Seven centuries ago, the Venetians imposed strict limitations on what could be given public officials. If the donors had favors to ask, they were not allowed to give anything. Political influence money brought down the entire political systems in Japan and Italy. We have had our own money scandals--the corporate influence-buying scandals at the end of the last century as well as the Watergate campaign finance scandal that in large part caused the legislation of 1974. So we do not have to look very far to see the relevant historical precedence of what we are dealing with. It is unlikely that we have recently abridged the laws of human nature or the corrupting influence of power or what people are willing to do to get it. In fact, that is what the 1996 scandals are all about. When you add all of this history, the fact that we now have spent-- last time--$2.7 billion on our national elections, with all this amount of money involved, it is a virtual certainty we will have another major scandal in the not too distant future if we do nothing. There are some who would try to convince those of us who are somewhat new to these hallowed halls that campaign finance reform is somehow not conservative or it is anti-Republican. Well, I believe that the best witness on that is Mr. Republican himself, Barry Goldwater. In testifying before Congress in 1983, he said that big money ``eats at the heart of the democratic process. It feeds the growth of special interest groups created solely to channel money into political campaigns. It creates the impression that every candidate is bought and owned by the biggest givers. And it causes elected officials to devote more time to raising money than to their public duties. If present trends continue, voter participation will drop significantly''--sound familiar?--``public respect will fall into an all-time low''--sound familiar?--``political campaigns will be controlled by slick packaging artists''--sound familiar?--``and neglect of public duties by absentee officials will undermine government operations.'' Now, that is the man that we call ``Mr. Republican.'' Reading his ``Conscience of a Conservative'' as a college student had a lot to do with my becoming a Republican. And I do not think anybody ever accused Barry Goldwater of being an enemy of the first amendment. I would ask those who are rightfully concerned about maintaining the authority of Congress in our system of checks and balances, those of us who criticize the courts--and I am one of them--and who criticize our Federal agencies--and I am one of them--if we really want the way we elect the highest officials in our Federal system to be determined not by Congress but by the courts, and by the Federal Election Commission, and by the Attorney General, and by those running for office who have the most audacity. So while McCain-Feingold may achieve its predicted fate again this year--and maybe not--we need to realize that this overall issue is going to continue to stare Congress in the face. And as the next campaign makes the last one look like child's play, we are going to have to ultimately decide in this body, is this what we really want? And since it involves the very fundamentals of our democracy, don't we have an obligation to deal with it? Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. THOMPSON. That was scandalous in those days.

Mr. THOMPSON. Well, I think if we do not do something about it, the big difference will be that people will not have to hide that activity anymore because it would be considered permissible. You might have some limitations on cash and things of that nature, but in terms of the amounts, you know, one of the Cabinet members of the President at that time allegedly was going around and, you know, hitting up these corporations for pretty good sums of money--at that point, $50,000, increments like that, some of it cash.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I yield myself 10 minutes.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I rise in support of the nomination of Dr. David Satcher of Tennessee. I have listened to the debate. I have talked to Dr. Satcher about the issues involved. I am convinced that this is an outstanding appointment that the President has made. Whether you look at Dr. Satcher's history in terms of his commitment to his family, whether you look in terms of his commitment to his community, or whether you look in terms of his commitment to his profession, I believe he is an outstanding individual. From everyone that I have talked to, I have come away with that conclusion. Clearly there are some policy issues on which we disagree. I think we have one in terms of the debate on partial-birth abortion. Frankly, in looking at the issues and listening to the debate, I think that that is at the crux of the concern as far as Dr. Satcher's confirmation. I think a lot of these other issues are collateral issues. I have talked to him about this. I am a strong supporter of the ban on partial-birth abortions. I think there is no justification whatsoever for that onerous procedure. And, in response to questions on this issue, Dr. Satcher has said: While I support the concept of a ban on late-term abortions, like the President I feel that if there are risks of severe health consequences for the mother then that decision should not be made by the Government, but by the woman in conjunction with her family and her physician. Again, he supports the concept of a ban on late-term abortions but he believes there should be more thought given to the situation of severe health consequences for the mother. I understand what he is talking about. Personally, I have concerns about that exception and its potential for abuse. Without getting into that whole debate again, I can simply say I disagree with the President's position on that issue. However I have discussed this issue with Dr. Satcher and I have read what he has written in response to questions on this issue. I am satisfied he does not intend to use the position of Surgeon General to advocate or promote abortion in any way. In fact, he said: Let me state unequivocally that I have no intention of using the positions of Assistant Secretary for Health and Surgeon General to promote issues related to abortion. I share no one's political agenda, and I want to use the power of these positions to focus on issues that unite Americans and not divide them. He went on to say: If I am confirmed by the Senate I will strongly promote a message of abstinence and responsibility to our youth which I believe can help to reduce the number of abortions in our country. This is the commitment that he has made. Many of us have been concerned in times past that this particular position of Surgeon General would be used as a bully pulpit by individuals to promote policies that are contrary to the best interests of this country. I think it has been done in the past. I do not feel that Dr. Satcher will do this. I think he has a good concept of the good that can be done in this job. I think he understands the terrible problems that our young people have. I think he sees an opportunity to do some good for these young people. Everything in his history indicates that that would be his attitude in approaching this position, and I believe him when he says that and I respect his position on that. I believe that, generally speaking, a President has the right and should have the right to appoint the kind of nominees, the kind of people he wants to these positions. I believe that, whether the President is a Democrat or a Republican. There are some situations where the positions or the background is so out of the norm, out of the mainstream, that we as a confirming body have to take a contrary position to that of the President. I think those situations ought to be rare. I have considered Dr. Satcher's record. I do not see anything in his record where that particular result on our part should obtain. Unfortunately, I think sometimes in these confirmation debates we have a policy problem with the President, or we have a policy problem with the individual who the President nominates. But, instead of concentrating on that policy problem we begin to look for other things that we perhaps could use against this nominee. I think we get into, then, issues sometimes of credibility and veracity and character and things like that that, frankly, I think is unfortunate. I think it has happened on both sides of the aisle with regard to nominees from both sides of the aisle in times past. I think we would be well served to keep our eye on the ball. Let's look at the history of this particular individual. I don't think anybody can question his character or his veracity or his commitment to his profession. We have a policy issue here. We need to address whether or not the fact that he supports the President, as all the President's nominees for any position that comes up are going to do--whether or not his support for the President in this case is sufficient to disqualify him for this position. I think the answer to that is no. I think he will be a good Surgeon General. He does happen to be a Tennessean. That does not disqualify him either, in my estimation. And therefore I respectfully submit this gentleman should be confirmed. I thank the Chair for the opportunity to speak this morning. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senator Levin and eight of our colleagues in submitting a substitute for S. 981, the Regulatory Improvement Act. This substitute incorporates some clarifications and improvements to the bill as result of our Committee hearing, written statements and letters, and a series of discussions with the Administration, environmental and public interest groups, State and local government, scholars, and other interested parties. I ask unanimous consent that a summary of the substitute and a list of the major changes to the substitute be included in the Record following my remarks. The substitute is the text that we will use as the basis for our Committee markup. This bill is an effort by many of us who want to improve the quality of government to find a common solution. The supporters of this bill represent a real diversity of political viewpoints, but we share the same goals. We want an effective government that protects public health, well-being and the environment. We want our government to achieve those goals in the most sensible and efficient way possible. We want to do the best we can with what we've got, and to do more good at less cost if possible. The Regulatory Improvement Act will help us do just that. The Regulatory Improvement Act is based on a simple premise: that people have a right to know how and why government agencies make their most important and expensive regulatory decisions. The S. 981 not only gives people the right to know; it gives them the right to see--to see how the government works, or how it doesn't. And by providing people with information the government uses to make decisions, it gives people a real opportunity to influence those decisions. So much of what goes on right now is pretty much done in secret. We're going to change that. Second, the bill will make government more accountable to the people it serves. S. 981 is based on the idea that increased public scrutiny of government decision making--and people who make those decisions-- will lead to better and more accountable government performance. It gives people the ability to look over the Federal government's shoulder. The Regulatory Improvement Act will deliver more decisionmaking power closer to home--and into the hands of State and local governments. The bill empowers people and their State and local officials to provide input into the Federal system. It will make the Federal government more mindful of how unfunded mandates can burden communities and interfere with local priorities. When I became Chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee last year, I asked the General Accounting Office to investigate whether the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 was improving regulations, which was one of its goals. Unfortunately, the answer is ``No.'' GAO released the report today. It is entitled, Unfunded Mandates: Reform Act Has Had Little Effect on Agencies' Rulemaking Actions. I view S. 981 as really phase two of the unfunded mandates reform effort, because it will make Federal regulators--not just Congress--more sensitive to local needs. Finally, the Regulatory Improvement Act will improve the quality of government decision making--which will lead to a more effective and efficient Federal government. The Regulatory Improvement Act will require the Federal government to make better use of modern decisionmaking tools (such as risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis), which are currently under-used. Right now, these tools are simply options--options that aren't used as much or as well as they should be. The bill also will help the Federal government to set smarter priorities--to better focus money and other resources on the most serious problems. The Regulatory Improvement Act bill builds on the Clinton Administration's government-wide reinvention efforts. It codifies many of the requirements of Executive Order 12866 and the principles of other Reinventing Regulation initiatives. It will give some needed horsepower to these efforts. This will help us reach our common goal: improving the quality of government. That's why the bill has broad bipartisan support, including myself and Senator Levin, as well as Senators Glenn, Abraham, Robb, Roth, Rockefeller, Stevens, Grams, and Cochran. This is a common sense effort we all can be proud of.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to make a few brief comments with my colleague, Senator Lott, in support of H. J. Res. 95, a resolution passed by the House of Representatives which gives the consent of Congress to the Chickasaw Trail Economic Development Compact. As the U.S. Constitution requires all State compacts to be approved by Congress, Representatives Ed Bryant of Tennessee and Roger Wicker of Mississippi recently introduced this legislation in the House. This Compact will allow the States of Tennessee and Mississippi to determine the feasibility of establishing an industrial park which would straddle the border between the two States. This proposed Industrial Park would lie in both Fayette County, TN. and Marshall County, MS. Governors Sundquist and Fordice have each expressed their support for this initiative, as they believe this type of industrial park will be strengthened by taking a regional approach to industrial recruitment and development. I believe that Tennessee will benefit from this initiative by combining the competitive assets of southwest Tennessee and Northern Mississippi to create an attractive and viable business park. I ask my friend from Mississippi, Senator Lott, if he agrees that this initiative will be of significant benefit to our two States and, indeed, to much of the Southeast region?

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. There is a provision in the amended version of S. 1228 that I feel needs clarification. In setting the design parameters for the new dollar coin, the legislation makes clear that the coin should be golden in color, have a distinctive edge, and include other features to ensure that the coin is not confused with any existing coins. The last design parameter within the legislation states that the coin should have anticounterfeiting properties of coinage in circulation at the time of the bill's enactment. I ask the Senator, is this provision intended to require the Mint to use clad coin technology in the new dollar coin?

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate is taking up the nomination of Ronald L. Gilman of Memphis to be United States circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. I want to thank Chairman Hatch of the Judiciary Committee for taking up and reporting this nomination so promptly and the majority leader for scheduling a vote on it so soon after the nomination was reported to the Senate. The Sixth Circuit currently has two vacancies, so it is important to my State and the others in the circuit that this vacancy get filled quickly. Ron Gilman is a native of Memphis, where he was raised. After attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Law School, he returned to Memphis in 1967 and since then has spent his entire legal career at the leading Tennessee law firm of Ferris, Mathews, Gilman, Branan and Hellen. I might point out that the Mathews in that firm name is former Senator Harlan Mathews. Mr. Gilman rapidly became established as a leader of the Memphis bar, serving as president of the Young Lawyers Division of the Memphis Bar Association and president of the Young Lawyers Conference of the Tennessee Bar Association. He subsequently served a term as president of both the Memphis and Tennessee Bar Associations. Mr. Gilman is eminently qualified to serve as a judge. His legal career has been as distinguished as it has been multifaceted. He has practiced criminal law, civil litigation, particularly commercial litigation, general business law, and estate planning. Most recently, he has spent a good deal of his practice involved in alternative means of dispute resolution, often serving as an arbitrator and mediator. From a background such as his, I think we can safely expect that Mr. Gilman will bring to the bench the legal practitioner's bent for common sense and careful application of the law rather than an ideological approach to the law. Mr. Gilman is not only one of Tennessee's most distinguished lawyers, but a leader in the Memphis community as well, having served leadership roles with the Boy Scouts, the Memphis Jewish Home, and Memphis Senior Citizens Services, among other groups. He is a recipient of the Sam A. Myar, Jr. Memorial Award for outstanding service to the legal profession and the Memphis community. This nomination enjoys widespread and bipartisan support. Both Republican Representative Ed Bryant and Democratic Representative Harold Ford, Jr., support the nomination. The entire Tennessee legal community supports the nomination. I have heard not a single negative word about Mr. Gilman's nomination, and I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this nomination. Mr. GREGG addressed the Chair.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I would like to announce for information of the Senate and the public that a hearing of the Governmental Affairs Committee will be held on Friday, October 24, 1997, at 10 a.m. The subject of the hearing is H.R. 1953, concerning State taxation of individuals working at certain Federal facilities straddling State borders.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, I intend to support final passage of H.R. 2203, the fiscal year 1998 energy and water development appropriations conference report, because it includes funding for a number of projects important to Tennessee, including the National Spallation Neutron Source in Oak Ridge. However, I want to express my deep concern about the section of the conference report dealing with the Tennessee Valley Authority [TVA]. The conference report includes $70 million for TVA's nonpower programs in fiscal year 1998, which is $36 million less than TVA received to perform these functions last year. However, the House version of the bill had zeroed out funding for TVA, so I am grateful that the conferees provided most of the Senate-passed level of $86 million for next year. Unfortunately, the conferees also stipulated that this will be the last year that they will provide funding for TVA to carry out its nonpower activities. They warned that, beginning next year, these nonpower responsibilities will either have to be transferred to some other Federal agency or paid for with revenues from TVA's self- financing power program. Mr. President, I want to be sure everyone understands what we are talking about when we discuss TVA's nonpower programs. We are talking about flood control and navigation on the Tennessee River, our Nation's fifth-largest river system. We are talking about the operation and maintenance of 14 navigational locks and 54 dams--to which the TVA power system contributes its proportionate share of funding. And we are talking about the management of 480,000 acres of recreational lakes, nearly 11,000 miles of shoreline, and 435,000 acres of public land-- including such unique national resources as the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area in Tennessee and Kentucky. During the debate on this legislation, some have claimed that the residents of the seven-State TVA region are receiving an unfair Federal subsidy that no one else in the country receives. Madam President, that is simply not true. In every other region of the country, these types of natural resource and infrastructure management activities are performed by some Federal agency, whether it is the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, the National Forest Service, or the Bureau of Reclamation. In the southeast region, they have traditionally been carried out by the TVA. But if the TVA does not perform them next year, someone else will have to. There is no question that these are Federal responsibilities. Perhaps the most disturbing suggestion that has been made in recent weeks is that the TVA power program should pick up the cost of these Federal land and water stewardship responsibilities. That is nothing less than an unfair tax on TVA ratepayers. As I said before, these are Federal responsibilities that are paid for by the Federal Government in every other region of the country. Nowhere else are utility ratepayers expected to assume the costs of these types of Federal responsibilities by paying more for their electricity. So while I appreciate the fact that the conferees agreed to provide funding for TVA to meet its Federal obligations this year, I am very concerned about what they have proposed for the future. And I want to be clear about one thing: it is not acceptable for Congress to walk away from its Federal responsibilities in one region of the country while continuing to provide for them everywhere else. Over the course of the coming year, I plan to work very hard with my colleagues to come up with a solution that is fair and equitable for the people of the Tennessee Valley.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Certainly.

Mr. THOMPSON. As the Senator knows, much of the soft money went for those kinds of ads. I would not be supporting a provision that I did not think would pass constitutional muster. What this bill does is basically what the Senator says. It says that you look to the circumstances. If something is called an issue ad, but it is really an ad for a particular candidate, it is called such. If it walks, quacks, and acts like a duck, we are going to call it a duck. You can still say whatever you want to say. Nobody is shutting anybody off. There are no free speech implications here. But if you are really going to do a candidate ad--and in some cases, we have candidates going around coordinating with independent groups, and the groups run an attack ad on their opponent, the candidate dictates where and when that ad is going to be, and all the details and the composition of it, and it is called an independent expenditure. What this would do would be to say we have a regulatory system. Whether anybody likes it or not, we already have a regulatory system. If it is an express ad for a particular candidate, it is already regulated. What this legislation would do is say you would look at the factors, look at the given situation. If it is an express ad, if it is really for a candidate, we are just going to call it that, and it is going to be regulated under the same system express ads are regulated under now.

Mr. THOMPSON. Well, I think that is a direction that we are trying to head in. I am not for trying to sit down and detail what somebody can say or not say. That is clearly unconstitutional. You can't do that. The Buckley case made a distinction between contributions and expenditures. Basically, it said you can't regulate expenditures. Independent groups ought to be able to do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it. But we decided a long time ago that, as far as campaign finance was concerned, we were electing the judges of our society in a way--you know, when we go to elect judges in our system, they are supposed to be independent. The litigants on either side can do things and get paid large sums of money, and so forth, but what you can do with regard to a judge is highly, highly narrow, in our system, and is regulated. In a sense, we are the same way. I mean, we get elected by people-- one vote, one person; it is an equal deal. No matter how poor or rich you are, or your status in society, your vote counts as much as anybody else's. We are elected. I represent all of the people of the State of Tennessee, no matter how many votes I get. The President represents all of the people of the country. We come up here and we are supposed to represent everybody. We are supposed to pass legislation evenhanded. We have different views on different things. We have support here and opposition there. But we are supposed to try to give it our best objective shot as to representing all of the people. Given that situation in a democracy, we decided a long time ago that we were going to place some rules on it, because it didn't look good and it didn't make us feel good and didn't give us confidence in our system if we saw hundreds of thousands of dollars going into the pockets of people from interests who we were regulating or who we were passing laws on, when the people maybe on the other side of the issue didn't have the money to do that. Are you going to be able to take money out of campaigns? Of course not. But we decided once upon a time that a person ought to have a limit of $1,000--I personally think that is too low--and $5,000 for a PAC, and $25,000 overall. We have a regulated system now because we know in our democratic society there needs to be some kind of control on the amount of money that goes into the pockets of politicians. It is pretty simple and basic. The Supreme Court or nobody else has ever said otherwise. The Supreme Court, in Buckley, has recognized that we do and we can regulate on the contribution side of things--on the contribution side-- how much money we can get. There is no question in my mind that we can regulate the soft money that is now coming into our system. This is not a constitutional argument. What we have now is a system that protects incumbents. It is a system that is becoming more and more isolated, more and more specialized, making it so that only a professional politician who has been out there raising money all his life, or some wealthy individual, is going to be able to be a part of the system anymore. My friend from Utah, a few minutes ago, made a very effective case that not only do incumbents have tremendous fundraising advantages, but they have other advantages. I agree with that. But that just makes the fundraising advantages that much more. The money goes to the incumbents. Maybe I just haven't been at it long enough. I have never run for office before this one. I had never run before about 3 years ago. I have run as a challenger against a person who was a congressional incumbent, and then I have run as an incumbent. I don't think we ought to get too bogged down with our own personal war stories, but I have seen it from both sides. I have had the disadvantages and the advantages of both sides of it. But all I know is that all the PAC money goes to incumbents. It doesn't matter what anybody believes anymore; it is their likelihood of getting reelected. Incumbents get reelected 90 to 95 percent of the time. The more upset the American people get with us, the more heavily incumbents become entrenched. I wonder why that is. Well, I think that part of it is what we are dealing with here today. For those who want to make this out as some kind of new regulatory, big Government scheme that we are imposing on an otherwise pristine system that we have here now, we heard some testimony the other day in the Governmental Affairs Committee, and I had heard things like it before. This was from a businessman, a gentleman representing a bunch of businesses in this country. He said, ``We are tired of this system, tired of this soft money, tired of being hit up. We are tired of the extortion overtones of what is happening.'' What we have now is a system, and what we had in this country in this last Presidential race was people sitting in the White House--and it could have come from a Senate office or congressional office, or anyplace of power--making calls to individuals saying, ``I think it would be a good idea if you would send us $50,000 or $100,000.'' And they feel that it probably would be a pretty good idea, from their standpoint, to maybe go ahead and send it on. Now, for those who are concerned about the coercive nature of big Government, chew that one over for a little while. That is what we have now. We have gotten to the point now that, since the soft money situation is totally unlimited, any politician can call up, and as long as they go through the guise of running it through one of the parties, which, in turn, will inure to their benefit, they can ask anybody for any amount of money. So I think the American people look at that, and they don't think the system is on the level. It all gets back to pretty basic stuff for me. I think the American people look at a system where we spend so much time with our hand out for so much money from so many people who do so much business with the Federal Government who we are basically regulating and legislating on, and they look at that system and the amounts of money that are involved nowadays, and they don't have much confidence in it. We will continue to see those lists in the newspapers of the hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars of contributions and the pieces of legislation put up against those contributions, the implication being that there indeed is a quid pro quo. People look at that, and there is a very little wonder that we are now having less than half our people voting. My understanding is we only have 6 percent of the American people making political contributions. So during the last few months we have had hearings that I think have been very enlightening. I want to talk about that a little bit later in a little bit more detail in terms of some of the things that have come out that in large part have to do with the actions of individuals and the ability that we gave them to pursue unlimited amounts of soft money. I think that the first thing we have to do, of course, is have accountability for those who have violated the law, for those who engage in improper activity, as part of what we have to be about. I think the public record is developed now so that without question there needs to be an independent counsel to look at this entire mess-- not who made a phone call from what room and just focus on that--this entire mess that we have seen over the last several months. We need someone independently to take a look at that. But, my friends, if we think that accountability is going to solve our problem as far as the system we have in this country, we are making a terrible mistake because whoever is in power, if they have the right to pressure people for unlimited amounts of money, our system is constantly going to be and will remain a scandal waiting to happen. I hope that we will have learned that from this last one. I yield the floor. Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.

Mr. THOMPSON. Up until----

Mr. THOMPSON. I yield.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, proponents of campaign finance reform say it is an assault on the Constitution. I say that McCain-Feingold is an assault on an incumbent's protected system that is rapidly losing faith with the American people. These claims about government takeover, and government regulation, and big government, of course, resonate with me as well as they do many other people, because I'm against that. I'm against the more intrusive government and I'm against more and more regulation, and I'm against government doing things that it should not be doing, especially the Federal Government. However, I think we have too quickly divided up into liberal and conservative counts and Democrat and Republican counts on this issue. As I read my history, Senator Barry Goldwater, the father of modern conservatism, in many people's view, was one of the most avid proponents of campaign finance reform a few years ago. So let's go back to the basics. People who are basically conservative think that the Government ought to do the things the Government ought to do and not things that it shouldn't. What should the Government be doing? Mr. President, if the way we elect our Federal officials and the motivations that they come to Washington with is not relevant and is not something that we ought to be concerned with, then what is? That is the basis of Government. Government does a lot of things it should not be doing, but how we elect our Federal officials, who are the arbiters of everything else in society anymore, seemingly, is certainly the subject of our attention. As I listen to this debate today, it is almost like under the current system we don't have regulation and that we are trying to impose regulation on an otherwise pristine system. We have the most heavily regulated system in the area of campaign finance reform than almost any other area in the country. Under the current system, you have a Federal Election Commission with detailed rules, timeframes, limit frames and so forth. You have $1,000 limitation; you have $5,000 limitation for PACs; you have $20,000 limitation as far as committees are concerned; an overall $25,000 limitation as to how much you can contribute in 1 year. You have soft money rules, you have hard money rules, you have percentages of soft money you can do certain ads with--there has to be a certain percentage of soft and hard money. You have transfers of money going back and forth between State and national parties, all under a detailed set of rules that nobody understands. To run in a political campaign any more nowadays you have to have a team of lawyers and a team of accountants and a team of people keeping up with all the regulation. That is our current system. My friend from Utah talks about our friend Jack Kemp and Mr. Forbes and how it would be much better if we had a different kind of system in our Presidential primaries. That is our current system he is complaining about. I think he makes some good points there. I think we ought to look at limitation amounts there. I think they are somewhat ridiculous and too low. All of that is our current system. So, what we are doing here, it looks to me like in McCain-Feingold is basically two things: One is a ban on soft money; secondly, it is saying about independent expenditures, that if you have candidate expenditures, you call them that and treat them that way. Under the current law, express advocacy is regulated now. It is regulated now. This idea that we are going to cut off somebody from saying something or that we are going to shut people up and close people off is simply not true. That makes interesting rhetoric but it is not in this bill, it is not in this legislation. What it basically says is two things. In 1974 we passed a law and we went along for almost two decades, electing Presidents under that law. Not a breath of scandal as far as campaign finance reform under that law and under the rules that we set forth then, for soft money problems in that entire period of time.

Mr. THOMPSON. No, the soft money problem really rose its head in about 1988, but it really didn't become a major problem until this last election.

Mr. THOMPSON. For about two decades we did not have a soft money problem because people abided under the rules laid down in 1974. What has happened since that time is that soft money has come into the system and now we have about $262 million in soft money in the system that we didn't have back in 1974 when we laid down the rules at that time.