Ed Whitfield

Mr. WHITFIELD

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this amendment simply defines ``express advocacy'' using the exact terms that the Supreme Court has used repeatedly in defining express advocacy. This issue goes to the very core, the very heart, of what this debate is about because the Shays-Meehan bill expands the definition of ``express advocacy''. And when we expand the definition of ``express advocacy,'' we automatically increase the opportunities for hard money to be spent and decrease the opportunities for individuals to spend money who do not have political action committees, who have not hired lawyers to file all the reports with the FEC, and I think it is going to be a chilling effect upon the participation and the political system. Now Shays-Meehan expands the definition in a number of ways way beyond what the Supreme Court has said. One way that they do it is they say if an ad refers to one or more clearly-identified candidates in a paid advertisement that is broadcast by a radio broadcast station or a television broadcast station within 60 calendar days preceding the date of an election of the candidate, that that is express advocacy. And in essence what they are doing here at a time when people focus on political campaigns, as we get closer to the election, people focus on it, and that is when we have groups like the Sierra Club, the Right to Life, Pro-choice, labor unions; all these groups take out ads, and they talk about voting records of candidates as you get within 60 days of an election. Under this bill, they will not be able to run those ads unless they had raised the money under the hard money rules. In other words, they would be totally caught up in the rules of the Federal Election Commission. They would have to meet all the requirements of the Federal Election Commission, have to meet all of the limits, all of the financial disclosures. And the courts have repeatedly said that that is a very chilling effect on the participation of people in the political process, and the courts have repeatedly said that the very core of our system is to allow participation, and this definition explicitly makes it more difficult to participate. And the thing that I find the most troubling about it in this particular section is that when we get down to the end of the campaign, the only people that are going to be talking about these campaigns are the candidates themselves, the money that they spend for our ads. Then we are going to have political action committees, that they can buy ads, and then we are going to have the news media doing editorials on who they support. But the mass of people out there who belong to organizations, they are not going to have much say-so unless they want to go through all of this trouble, all of this burden of forming a political action committee, raising money, hiring lawyers, filing reports and so forth. So I am very disappointed, I am extremely disappointed, in the way they expand the definition of ``express advocacy,'' and my amendment simply brings it down to precisely what the Supreme Court has said: a bright line test so there is no question about what is and what is not express advocacy. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, first of all, we keep talking about disclosure. As I said before, when the labor unions ran ads against me last time on television, every ad said ``Paid for by AFL-CIO.'' The Federal Communication Commission requires that on television that we know who pays for these ads. It is interesting the public campaign group is running these ads all over the country right now. We do not really know who pays for those ads either, but they have a right to do it. In closing, I would simply say the third expansion of express advocacy in this bill has already explicitly been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in FEC versus Maine Right To Life. The exact wording is in here, already been declared unconstitutional. I just think it is a shame that we spend this much time on a bill that most people that have reviewed it, that have taken cases to the Supreme Court, say will be declared unconstitutional. Also, I think it shows very clearly that this really is an incumbent protection act. I would ask for the adoption of my amendment.

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

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. WHITFIELD

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to insert extraneous material on S. 2316, the Senate bill just passed.

Mr. WHITFIELD

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I would just make one brief comment. I appreciate the acceptance of this amendment. My real purpose in introducing this amendment, offering this amendment, was to be sure that in the presidential elections the candidates for President are the only Federal candidates that receive public funds; and initially, when they agree to accept these public funds, they also agree that they will not go out and raise additional money. In recent presidential elections, that rule has really been violated by both sides. And during the hearings on the campaign finance abuses on the Senate side, Senator Thompson of Tennessee, who chaired that committee, pointed out very clearly that in the 1996 campaigns that it was not unusual that the President sat down and coordinated these ads, in fact, added the ads, in fact, decided where the ads of issue advocacy would be placed. And while the Shays-Meehan bill talks a lot about abolishment of coordination, abolishment of soft money, the fact that the presidential campaigns are included under the Internal Revenue Code, I just want to be very certain that the presidential campaigns were included in this legislation. And that was my purpose in introducing the amendment. I appreciate very much his acceptance of it. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman for agreeing to accept the amendment. And if that is the case, I would be happy to have it accepted and sit down and listen to someone else talk about their amendment.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. WHITFIELD

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Ohio's request for an explanation. Mr. Speaker, this bill requires the Secretary of Energy to submit a plan to ensure that monies already accrued by the United States Enrichment Corporation are utilized for their intended purpose, and that is the cleanup of depleted uranium hexafluoride waste. The corporation is nearing privatization. Without congressional action, there is no mechanism to ensure that monies will be available to deal with the cleanup of depleted uranium. Since the bill was passed in the Senate, the Committee on Commerce has had discussions with the Department of Energy, the Department of Treasury, and the Office of Management and Budget to discuss this legislation. It is my understanding the administration has no objection to S. 2316, and I recommend its approval by the House to ensure that the money accrued by USEC will be spent for its intended purpose.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the Senate bill (S. 2316) to require the Secretary of Energy to submit to Congress a plan to ensure that all amounts accrued on the books of the United States Enrichment Corporation for the disposition of depleted uranium hexafluoride will be used to treat and recycle depleted uranium hexafluoride, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WHITFIELD

Mr. WHITFIELD. The gentlewoman did not say coordinate it.

Mr. WHITFIELD. I want to just read from the Shays-Meehan language. Their language says, ``. . . words that, in context, have no reasonable meaning other than to urge the election or defeat of one or more clearly identified candidates.'' Those are two clearly identified candidates. I think reasonable men and women could have a difference of opinion as to whether or not this is urging the election or defeat of a candidate. Many of these scorecards can. I think the gentleman would agree with me that that could be interpreted to mean you cannot issue these during campaigns. Would the gentleman agree with that?

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

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, there are two sides of this. Do the American people have the right to know about these issue advocacy ads and who pays for them? But second of all, on the other side, my colleague mentioned the point, the person who makes the contribution. And the Supreme Court has already declared that individuals have a right to privacy. In the NAACP versus Alabama case in 1958, they say that privacy and group association is indispensable to the preservation of our system of government; and so what this bill is trying to do is making these people also tell who is giving money and so forth.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. WHITFIELD. We do not have to abide by any FEC law.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, if I have not spoken before and I move to strike the last word, can Members object to that?

Mr. WHITFIELD. I thank the Chair. Mr. Chairman, I think the real concern that we have today, the crux of this issue of the debate that we are really talking about today, gets down to this definition of express advocacy. The Supreme Court has consistently and very clearly said that express advocacy is language that explicitly requests the defeat or the election of a candidate. And if it says that, if the ad says that, you must use hard money. And that is money regulated by the Federal Election Commission. The gentleman was correct. Any wealthy individual, a multimillionaire can go out any time they want to and buy an ad, and that is an independent expenditure. They can expressly advocate the defeat or the election of a candidate. What we are talking about today is issue advocacy; and these are the many organizations around our country, the thousands of organizations that may want to participate in the political system. The Supreme Court has made it very clear that that is, goes to the very core of a democracy, of the right to speak about issues in an election. What this bill does is it makes it unclear about what can and cannot be done. That is a chilling of the first amendment right of political free speech. Now, the gentleman from Massachusetts, one of the cosponsors of this bill, read from paragraph 3 of express advocacy; and he said: Expressing unmistakable and unambiguous support for or opposition to one or more clearly identified candidates when taken as a whole and with limited reference to external events such as proximity to an election. Now, reasonable people can have different views about what is and what is not, taken as a whole means this or means that. But the point that I would make, the Supreme Court has already ruled half of that language as unconstitutional in the FEC versus Maine Right to Life case. It has already been ruled unconstitutional, this language that is in this bill. Yet they still want to proceed with it. In addition to that, they go on and further complicate it by saying that if one of these voter guides urges the election, if words that are in context can have no reasonable meaning other than to urge the election or defeat of a candidate, then it cannot, it is not covered under this exception. And these voting guides have, different men and women have differences of opinion about what they are urging and what they are not urging. The thing that is so disturbing about the Shays-Meehan bill is that it does nothing about the election money spent by candidates. It does nothing about independent expenditures spent by wealthy individuals, but it shuts the door to all sorts of organizations, if they violate the definition of express advocacy as determined in this bill. Any ad run 60 days within an election is express advocacy. It has to be hard money. So, in essence, what we do with this language is that we allow the Federal Election Commission to determine who can speak, what they can say and when they can say it.

Mr. WHITFIELD. I yield to the gentleman from Connecticut.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, the reason that we are endorsing the gentleman from California's amendment is that he, in essence, returns to the original Supreme Court language here. Basically, there will not be any question about it. That is really what this is all about. I realize that Shays-Meehan is a good-intentioned bill with all the best ideas that they can come up with. But the fact is it places so many things to interpretation, and the ultimate interpretation is going to be made by a group of commissioners at the FEC who are appointed by a President, and they have their political views. And so everybody else in America may be, the door may be closed unless they want to go through all this complicated procedure of filing reports and establishing political action committees and hiring election lawyers and doing that.

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

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman has been discussing our right to know, and on any ad run on television or on the radio there is a disclaimer required, so the gentleman knows the organization that is paying for the ad.

Mr. WHITFIELD

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I think many of us feel the way the gentlewoman feels, that many of us had ads run against us in the last campaign that we did not like. But we do believe that is the right of organizations to do that. I was just curious, what were some of the organizations that ran ads against the gentlewoman in her last election?