Statement to Urge Senate to Vote for Cloture on the McCain-Feingold Amendment September 10, 1998 Mr. President, I want to just take a moment of the time to point out that once again a case that the Senator from Kentucky has been discussing is a case that is appropriate in some situations but is not really applicable to the current provision of the McCain-Feingold bill that is before the body. The Senator can stand up and cite all kinds of cases about a lot of provisions, but the provisions are not in the bill at this time. So I hope those who are listening don't get confused about case law that has nothing to do with our actual amendment. Previous versions of the McCain-Feingold bill included a codification of the Furgatch decision, but with the passage of the Snowe-Jeffords amendment in February, the provision that we have before the Senate now simply doesn't include that approach. It takes a different approach to the issue advocacy problem. A number of constitutional scholars, including Dan Ortiz of Virginia Law School, believe this approach is constitutional. I understand the strategy--keep bringing up aspects of the bill that were concerns in the past, make people think those are still there and get people to be uncomfortable with the bill. I understand the strategy because we have 52 votes already for this amendment as it actually is being presented. So that everyone understands, these are arguments against a bill that is not before the Senate. I assume that is because they don't have very strong arguments against the bill that is, in fact, before the Senate. This afternoon we will vote once again on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. Twice before we have debated this issue and twice we have been blocked by filibusters--I might add, not just by filibusters conducted after an amending process has occurred, but filibusters used to prevent the legitimate and normal process of allowing Members of the Senate to amend a bill. Some may ask, Why do you keep bringing us back to vote on it? The reason, quite simply put, is that this is a crucial issue. It is a defining issue for the 105th Congress. After all, we spent an entire year investigating the campaign finance abuses of the 1996 elections. That investigation, as the distinguished Senator from Tennessee who led the investigation I am sure will tell us when he speaks today, showed beyond a shadow of doubt that reform is needed. Of course, in response to that, the House has passed a strong campaign finance reform bill, very similar to the amendment we have offered here. We owe it to the American people to finish the job. The American people elected us to be legislators, Mr. President, not just investigators. Investigations are fine and appropriate, but we will have failed in our duties as legislators if we do not enact laws to address the problems that our investigations uncover. With the House vote early last month, meaningful campaign finance reform is in sight. This Senate has an obligation to address the campaign finance issue, and the public expects us to act. We know that a majority here understands that obligation. The question is whether we can get closer now to the supermajority of 60 votes that we apparently will still need in order to end debate on this amendment and get to a vote on the merits. I hope that in the short time we have to debate this issue today we will actually debate our amendment, what is before the Senate. Again, yesterday we heard a number of opponents of the bill speak at length about cases that have nothing to do with the provisions that are actually in this bill. We heard a lengthy discussion of the history of campaign spending, with interesting, but really not very relevant, expositions about donors to an unsuccessful Presidential campaign 30 years ago. I really hope we hear an actual justification from those on the other side today, an actual justification for voting against a ban on the unlimited corporate and labor contribution to political parties known as soft money. I hope that when they wax eloquent again about the first amendment rights of citizens, they will actually direct their criticism to our bill, to the Snowe-Jeffords amendment on electioneering communications, rather than severely exaggerating the effect and intent of those provisions. To no one's surprise, the headlines this morning in the newspapers are not about campaign finance reform . The scandal that has occupied the Nation's attention for the past 8 months has reached a new and critical phase with the delivery of the Starr report to the House of Representatives. Many Senators are understandably very much concerned about how the impeachment process will play out. But for now, the report is on the other side of the Capitol. We still have a job to do here. We have many things to do here. But first on the list has got to be to somehow address the scandals that occupied our attention for much of 1997. Of course, the matters of 1998 have to be addressed, but are we just going to leave the scandals of 1996 behind, let them be washed away as if nothing wrong was done? The biggest threat to our democracy still comes from this out-of-control campaign finance system, notwithstanding the very serious news of the day. Let us not be distracted from our duty to address that threat. There are many Senators who support reform who would like to speak today, and our time is limited. So let me conclude by putting my colleagues on notice. The vote this afternoon on cloture will not be the end of the effort to pass campaign finance reform this year. I am sorry if this is an issue that is inconvenient or uncomfortable for some Senators to deal with. The American people didn't send us here for our convenience or for our comfort. They sent us to do a job, and we are going to do it. This amendment that is pending will continue to be pending. I hope it will become the subject of a legitimate legislative process. What I mean by that is, when there is an amendment that has a majority of support in this body, at the bare minimum Senators should be allowed to offer amendments, offer their ideas and their concepts about how to make it better. I understand the argument that you need 60 votes to pass it anyway. That has a lot of truth to it. But this process has repeatedly and cynically denied us the chance to simply amend the bill. That is how they passed it in the House. Everybody didn't love the bill right away. They adopted a number of amendments. They were allowed to offer their ideas and vote on them. We have been prohibited from improving this bill beyond the Snowe-Jeffords amendment. Of course, we know why. When we did Snowe-Jeffords, lo and behold, we got three more votes and we had a majority. Then the game was declared over. That is not a legitimate legislative process. That is not a fair process. That is the intentional denying of the majority of both Houses their right to fashion a bill that they can send on to the President. So I am not denying the right to filibuster. But denying the right to amend this amendment is well beyond the norm in this body, especially when we have demonstrated that 52 Senators are already committed to this amendment as it currently stands. So they continue to deny the majority even the right to make a reasonable change, to ask each other, `What change would you like in order to make this bill acceptable to you?' I think that is highly inappropriate. So the only way to avoid this discomfort is for Members to vote for cloture and let the majority do its will on this issue.

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