Congressional Record - Senate

September 29, 2001

This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature
deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within
itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support.

George Washington was right about that. I wonder today, as perhaps others have before me, why has the confidence and support
of the American people in this institution receded? What is causing that?

I happen to enjoy public policy. I rather like politics. I feel that it is an enormous privilege to serve here in the U.S. Senate. And,
yet, I think the political system is a system that has become distorted in a caricature of itself. The question is, what can we do
about that? What should we do about that? In answering that, we should probably answer, what is the problem? Answer the
question, what is the problem? And then define, what is the solution?

I have listened for the last hour and a half with great interest to my friend, the Senator from Kentucky, who I am sure will be back
on the floor momentarily. He made references when the Senator from Arizona was speaking that no one can nor should be
prevented from involving themselves in issue advocacy, et cetera. No one that I am aware of on the floor of the Senate has ever
proposed such a position. No one that I am aware of is suggesting that anyone under any circumstances in this country can be
prevented from speaking, or prevented from paying for a political message. No one has made that proposition.

So, to the extent that it is being represented that is so, let us say, yes, that is the case. And let's move on to what we are debating, and not create a new debate.

When the Lincoln and Douglas debates were well underway, at one point, I am told, President Lincoln was so frustrated because
he couldn't get Mr. Douglas to understand his point. And finally he said to him in great frustration, `Well, then tell me. How many
legs does a horse have?'

Douglas said, `Why, four, of course.'

Lincoln said, `Well, now if you were to call a horse's tail a leg, how many legs would the horse have?'

Douglas said, `Why, five.'

Lincoln said, `See, that is where you are wrong. Simply calling it a leg doesn't make it a leg at all.'

That is the point in this debate. One can take positions. But if they are not on point and totally relevant to what is being discussed,
what is the value of the position?

I want to describe that just a bit in terms of what I mean by that.

The Senator from Wisconsin read an advertisement. I want to read it again because I think it is at the heart of this discussion, and
it is at the heart of the mess that we find

ourselves in in campaign finance reform. This was an ad in a Senate race down South. I will just add as an aside that both political
parties did this. Independent groups did it. But here is an ad.

Senate candidate Winston Bryant's budget as attorney general increased 71 percent. Bryant has taken taxpayer-funded junkets to
the Virgin Islands, Alaska and Arizona, and spent $100,000 on new furniture. Unfortunately, as the State's top law enforcement
official, he has never opposed the parole of any convicted criminal, even rapists and murderers; and almost 4,000 Arkansas
prisoners have been sent back to prison for crimes committed while they were out on parole. `Winston Bryant: government waste,
political junkets, soft on crime. Call Winston Bryant and tell him to give the money back.'

Should there be some position that says they don't have any right to say this? No. Whoever did this has every right to put this on
television, and did. Do they have a right to put this on TV with soft money so that those who contributed are never disclosed? Do
they have a right to say this is not part of the political process; this is not part of the campaign; it is totally unrelated; this is an issue
advocacy commercial? Does that pass anybody's laugh test? Not in a million years.

That is why one Senator, when asked repeatedly by the Senator from Arizona, `Do you really think these are independent; do you
really believe these are independent expenditures?'--referencing a series of these kinds of things. It was never answered. I
suspect the answer would be no.

We all understand what is going on. The same people are involved. They hire common television producers to produce the
commercials, and the same fundraising networks. But it has become a legal form of cheating. It has taken the old tax reform law
and manipulated it and distorted it to the point that is no longer recognizable, and becomes what I think is a legal form of cheating.
And I say that we ought to stop this. Stop it by saying You can't say it? No. You can say that. But if you want to get involved in
this particular Senate campaign, then you must abide by the rules. You say it by hard dollars and disclose who donated the hard
dollars.

That is the point. It is not that they can't say it. It is that they are required to use the same hard dollars that the people involved in
the race are using, and getting it from the same sources and disclosing who made the contribution.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. I would be happy to yield for a question.

Mr. BENNETT. I hesitate to intrude when he is in full cry because I don't like to be intruded on when I am in a full cry. But I am
emboldened by the kind of words that my colleague offered at the beginning.

This is a personal observation. I agree with the Senator absolutely. That ad should be identified; that it was clearly part of the
campaign. I am not any more fooled than anybody else. However, we are driven to that kind of chicanery by the present law.

My solution--and I am speaking clearly just for myself and not for anybody else on this side--would be to repeal the present law
and allow the campaigns to go back to a degree of honesty. I do say to the Senator: I believe that under the present ruling of the
Court the statement by the Senator from Kentucky is correct. The Court would rule that since the magic words were not in that
ad it would in fact not be considered a campaign ad under the legal definition.

I agree with the Senator. The legal definition is artificial and improper.

But I would solve it in ways other than passing the McCain-Feingold.

I thank my friend.

Mr. DORGAN. I appreciate the contribution because the contribution made by the Senator from Utah is that this sort of thing is
improper, and that it is chicanery.

If that is the case--if in fact what I just described is improper and chicanery--then the question isn't whether there is a problem.
The question is, What do we do about the problem?

And there are some people, as the Senator from Utah especially knows, in this Chamber who would say, What problem? There is
no problem. The only problem we have, they say, is there is not enough money in politics.

I want to show my colleagues what is happening with campaign finance.

This line, the red line, describes what is happening with funding for political campaigns in this country.

I assume we can find people who will come to the floor and will wave their arms, and say on this floor and on the floor on the
other side of this building, Well, the American people spend x hundreds of millions of dollars on Rolaids, they spend x hundreds of
millions of dollars on Preparation H, and Oh Henry candy bars and, therefore--what? Therefore, what? It is totally irrelevant.

The point is what is happening to campaign financing is it is mushrooming and escalating out of control. Is there a problem? Or is it
just fine?

In the paper today there is a statement by one of the leaders of the other body saying there is not enough money in politics; we
need more money in politics. In fact, those who debate this issue saying there is too much money in politics are wrong. We need
more money in politics, they say.

I could not disagree more. You see what is happening. There is too much money in politics. Too much money. In State after State
after State, all of these campaigns are mushrooming out of control, and it is not just the campaigns; it is the independent
expenditures and all the groups weighing in with chicanery and with improper, in my judgment, spending, packaging up things
saying, by the way, this is independent, this is express advocacy, this is issue advertising. And all of us know that you cannot say
that any longer with a straight face. It is all connected. It is all part of the same campaign. It becomes legal cheating. If we do not
have the courage to stand up when we see this proliferation of legal cheating going on and saying, if that's the way the law is going
to be interpreted and if, after pulling the teeth of the FEC, we complain they can't chew, if we are left in that position, then let us at
least change the campaign finance law to know what we should do in this country and take at least some of the influence of
money out of campaigns.

Now, there is a proposal that is being debated in the Senate called the McCain-Feingold proposal. I don't think it is perfect. If I had
written it, I would have written it differently. I cosponsored it, but I would have written it differently. But it is a proposal that deals
with a whole range of things, and it needs to deal with some more. I hope that we will add to it an amendment to restore a portion
that was not included when it was brought to the floor of the Senate but which was included when it was written. That provision is
spending limits.

Now, I want to deal just a bit with this question of spending limits and free speech. I noticed this weekend some of the columnists
talked about the speech patrol and the infringement of free speech, and so on.

Spending limits, which is not now in this bill, which I think should be--and I hope there will be an amendment we can vote on to
restore spending limits--is an attempt to say let's establish a set of rules by which campaigns are waged and let's try to see if we
can, if not establish enforceable spending limits, at least establish voluntary spending limits with sufficient incentive that most
campaigns would abide by voluntary limits. The limit might be $1.5 million in one State, $3 million in another, less than that in a
third State, in which both candidates agree here is a practical limit on spending.

As I said, there are lots of ways to do that. The Supreme Court has already ruled by a one-vote margin that enforceable spending
limits is not appropriate; it is unconstitutional. I think the Supreme Court ought to be asked to rule again on another case because, if
it is that close, I think you can make the case they might rule differently in other circumstances. Notwithstanding that, I think we
ought to try to work to achieve some approach by which we are able to get spending limits in campaigns.

The problem is campaigns cost too much. That's why money has such a corrosive influence in politics. Campaigns cost too much.
How do you get to the solution of that? Well, you try to establish some spending limits, some spending limits that are practical, that
you can make stick.

John F. Kennedy used to say that every mother kind of hoped her child might grow up to be President as long as they didn't have
to be active in politics. I suppose he was musing about how unpopular the process of politics is. I am not someone who believes
that politics is something that is underhanded or dirty. I think politics is noble and honorable. I am involved in it because I enjoy the
political process. But I do not enjoy what is going on with respect to campaign finance. I think this system is broken. No one in this
Chamber can look at this system and with a straight face say, yes, this system sure does serve America well.

This system does not serve this country well. This system is a disservice to the country. Now, do we fix it by suggesting, as one
Senator today has implied, that we prevent this group or that group from being able to speak in the political system? No. No one
has ever recommended that--no one. So if you want to have that debate, have that debate alone. You can always win a debate
that no one else is involved with. I say good for you; you just won a debate that I was advocating.

We are not suggesting, none of us, that we would infringe on the right of any group to say anything at any time. I am saying,
however, that when you take a look at advertisements like the one I described and read in the Chamber, as did Senator Feingold,
and understand that this is a pole vault over the legal definition and becomes on its face a farce and an attempt to undermine the
process, if we are not willing to decide to correct this, then there is no hope for us to deal with the issue of campaign financing.

We have a bill in the Chamber that is called a reform bill. It is cosponsored by Senator McCain from Arizona and Senator
Feingold from Wisconsin. Both of them are Senators for whom I have a great deal of respect. I do not agree with them on
everything either, but they brought a reform to the floor of the Senate. It is interesting; at least for a half-hour or so today I heard a
description of this bill that doesn't match the bill. The description was that somehow Senator McCain and Senator Feingold want
to prohibit criticism of the Congress. So I felt, well, maybe I may have missed something here. Maybe they have introduced a bill
that I hadn't read previously.

But then I realized that is simply taking the debate and moving it over here to create an issue that does not exist because one is
uncomfortable debating the issue of McCain-Feingold.

No one is suggesting there would be any manner that one could devise in McCain-Feingoldo prohibit criticism of the U.S.
Congress. Lord, read a couple hundred years of history and discover about a Congress that's been criticized. No one is suggesting
that you could not do anything that constitutionally prohibits criticism of the Congress. We have generous criticism of the
Congress, always will. The issue that Senator McCain and Senator Feingold address is not criticism of the Congress. It is the
corrosive influence of money in campaigns. And ads like this sponsored and run by organizations whose funding is secret,
undisclosed to anyone in this country, collected in soft money increments perhaps of $20,000, $50,000, maybe $100,000, could be
$1 million. We have seen 1 million chunks of money go in soft money, undisclosed secret money, through organizations used as
express advertising or express advocacy rather than declare they are not part of the campaign. What a bunch of rubbish. It does
not pass any laugh test in any cafe in this country, and that is why we must be serious about trying to find a way to thoughtfully
reform this system.

I would like to just mention two additional items before I close. One of the concerns I have about our political system is so much
of the advertising is negative. There is nothing you can do about that; I understand that. We cannot prohibit this kind of
advertisement. We can say, if you are going to put this kind of advertisement on the air, you have to play by the rules and get hard
money and disclose the donors.

There is nothing wrong with that. But we cannot prohibit any advertisement. So much of it now is negative and so much of it is a
30-second little political explosion that goes on across our country where candidates are not even hardly named, at least with
respect to the person's campaign, in financing the 30-second ad. It is a nameless, faceless, little bomb directed to destroy, tar or
feather some other candidate.

One of the small amendments that I intend to offer is the following. We now require in Federal law that television stations provide
the lowest cost for television commercials during certain

periods of the year. In other words, the lowest part of their rate card must be offered to campaigns for those political
commercials. I am going to propose that the lowest cost on their rate card be provided candidates whose commercials are at least
1 minute in length and on which the candidate appears 75 percent of the time. I am not suggesting you cannot continue the
30-second slash-and-tear ads. Everybody can do that. Why should we reward those advertisements with the bottom of the rate
card? Why don't we as a matter of law say we will provide and require the lowest rate be offered to those commercials that are
at least 1 minute in length and on which at least 75 percent of the time the candidate appears in the commercial.

Well, we will have a debate about that. I suppose some will say, well, that is interference. We interfere already by saying you
must charge the lowest rate that a television station offers for advertising for a political campaign during certain portions of the
year. Perhaps we could do so providing an incentive that the campaign commercials be somewhat instructive and somewhat
related to the candidate who is actually paying for the campaign commercial.

There are several kinds of air pollution in this country, one of which is political air pollution, and if we can do anything to in any
small, measurable way, provide a little more thoughtful approach to campaign advertising through an incentive, then I would like to
see us do it. I expect, however, that when and if I am able to offer this amendment, some will suggest it is some sort of colossal
interference. I think not. I think it is a sensible, thoughtful way to address that issue.

Finally, if the problem is there is too much money in politics and the solution is to reform our campaign financing system in one
way or another, then how will we reform our system? Well, we reform it by bringing a bill to the floor and passing it, doing the
same in the House, going to conference, agreeing in conference and getting a bill to the President he can sign.

Now, is that likely? What is likely to be the future of campaign finance reform? I applaud Senator Lott for bringing it to the floor
of the Senate for a debate. Giving us the opportunity to discuss this issue is important. But it is the starting line, not the finish line.
The finish line for Congress will be when we have, on a bipartisan basis hopefully, achieved an agreement on a campaign finance
reform package that will give the American people some basic confidence that what we are holding are elections not auctions;
some basic confidence that we will step away from this exponential increase in spending on political campaigns.

Senator McCain and Senator Feingold have taken a first long jump here to get this legislation to the floor of the Senate, and I
hope that in the coming few days we can open up the process and allow some amendments and have a vote.

I noticed today, when the Senate opened for business, amendments were offered in a very careful way. In fact, it took, I believe,
six different amendments today in a series of maneuvers to fill the tree which, for those who don't know about our parliamentary
situation, means that no one else is allowed to do anything at this point because the parliamentary tree is full. Amendments are not
allowed. So we have had a maneuver that was accomplished today to fill the tree.

So we will see where all that leads. Every time somebody does that--and both sides have done it about a handful of
occasions--every time someone has done it, they have done it to prevent someone else from doing something later. I hope that is
not the case. I hope we can shake this tree a bit and shake it sufficiently so that we can offer some amendments and reach a
conclusion on campaign finance reform that is good for this country and restores some confidence in the American people that we
are moving in the right direction.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. ALLARD). The Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair.

This, as the tone of the debate indicates, is a critically important debate with consequences that go well beyond the subject at hand,
campaign finance reform, because the infusion of massive amounts of money into our political process affects so many other
areas in which we are supposed to govern and to legislate, and it is why this appropriately becomes a priority topic.

As I hear the seriousness of the debate in the Chamber, I must share my own disappointment that there is murmuring outside the
Chamber that nothing is going to happen this year, that there is not going to be any campaign finance reform legislation adopted,
that this is just a lot of sound and fury which, as the bard reminded us, will signify nothing.

Well, that would be an infuriating tragedy, an outrageous, in my opinion, abdication of our responsibility, a shocking refusal to face
the facts that have come out at the hearings of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, on which I am privileged to serve.
That committee's hearings show that ours is a system in crisis, and it is a crisis that affects so many aspects of our Government.

I hope these murmurings are wrong, and I hope that the debate we have begun in the Chamber will signify more than noise; it will
signify the beginning of a genuine effort to change the laws, to go back in some ways to where we were after the last great
campaign finance scandal, which was the Watergate scandal, to go back to the laws adopted after that scandal which set limits
not only on contributions but on spending in a campaign.

In my capacity as a member of the Governmental Affairs Committee, I have had what might be called a front-and-center view of
the extraordinary failures of the status quo campaign finance system, failures that routinely stem from the corrupting influence of
big money in politics. As if peeling back the layers of an onion, in this case a spoiled onion, our investigation slowly revealed story
after story of unseemly and negligent behavior that all too often seemed to cross over the line into lawlessness.

I know the Governmental Affairs Committee's hearings were controversial. Sometimes they were criticized for being partisan. In
fact, sometimes they were too partisan. But the fact is, though they were not always orderly and they weren't always neat and
they weren't always pretty, they told a story. They told a story of a system gone out of control and the consequences it has had on
our great democracy.

There was the international entrepreneur who never registered to vote because he thought his money was more influential than his
franchise. The sad fact is, he was right.

There was the story of the White House official who advised a potential contributor, whom he had never met, whom he had just
talked to over the phone, about how to effectively skirt tax liabilities on a proposed donation of somewhere between $1 million and
$5 million.

There was the Republican Party research institute that defaulted on a loan from a Hong Kong businessman and then swindled him
out of the interest he had earned on his own money, which was deposited as collateral for the loan; and the party chairman,
Democratic Party chairman, who allegedly called on the CIA--although there is doubt on this, conflicting testimony, but an
allegation that the chairman called on the CIA to help burnish the image of a questionable contributor.

In no uncertain terms, as far as I am concerned, people with fat wallets bought access at the highest levels of our Government,
executive and congressional, and some Government leaders were perfectly willing to auction off their clout.

As California entrepreneur and major Democratic donor Johnny Chung observed, `The White House is a subway: You have to put
in coins to open the gates.'

Clearly, the two parties, in their mad scramble for money, shamelessly exploited during the 1996 election cycle well-intentioned
campaign finance laws to the point of rendering them meaningless. In the end, their debased standards of the pressure-cooker
world of high-stakes election campaigns mocked one of the basic principles of our democracy, the principle that all citizens have
an equal vote, an equal voice in the governance of their country, an equal opportunity to influence its policies.

Now we have an unfettered political fundraising system that neither serves the public interest nor deserves the public trust. No
wonder the American people look on politics with a jaundiced eye. No wonder more and more of them have concluded their vote
doesn't count, so they don't vote. I saw a survey awhile ago of 165 countries in the world today who conduct elections. The United
States of America is 139th in terms of those of voting age who actually vote. Our proud democracy--we are proud to call it the
greatest democracy in the world--we are 139th among the countries of the world in the percentage of our population that can vote
that actually does vote. Don't you think part of that has to do with the conclusion that millions of our fellow Americans have made
that their vote doesn't count, not if they don't have money?

The proposal offered by Senators McCain and Feingold is, in my opinion, our best hope for changing this unacceptable status
quo and for reviving public faith in our Government.

The key to real reform, I conclude after sitting through the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearings, is less big money
and less special interest money in the election process. That is exactly what the McCain-Feingold bill would do. The central
provision of this bill is a ban on soft money; that is, a ban on unlimited contributions to the two national parties from corporations,
unions, and wealthy individuals.

It is hard to believe, but it actually was 1907 when a law was passed by this Congress that made it illegal for corporations to
contribute to political campaigns. In the 1940's a similar law was passed regarding labor unions. How is it that in the 1996 election
corporations and labor unions contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars individually, millions in some cases? It is because of this
so-called soft money, this little opening that was created in a vaguely worded law that was then interpreted by the Federal Election
Commission to allow people to give unlimited amounts of money to parties to help voter registration, get out the vote, that turned
into a loophole large enough for a fleet of trucks--not Mack trucks but Brinks trucks--to go driving through.

The explosive growth of soft money and the way it is spent represents, in my opinion, the most egregious abuse of our campaign
finance laws today. Most of the controversial donations from the 1996 campaigns were soft-money contributions. Most of the
foreign money contributions that we took evidence on at the governmental Affairs Committee hearings were soft-money
contributions.

Soft money has played a role in Federal elections since 1980, the year after Congress tried, the way I mentioned, to enhance the
role of national parties. But in 1996 it exploded--$272 million that we know of spent by both national parties in soft money in 1996,
13 times the amount spent in 1984, an increase that has dramatically changed the landscape of campaign fundraising and of
American democracy. By the November 1996 elections, the soft-money loophole had become a cash bonanza for the two parties,
an irresistible opportunity to raise and spend money, each driving the other to keep up, and the easiest way to do it was to raise big
money. It became, for that reason, the most expedient way for an elite class of contributors to buy access; frankly, for an elite
class of contributors to be exploited, in some sense coerced, by the political class into giving contributions of unprecedented size.

The quintessential example of trading money for access was the brutally honest and now legendary Roger Tamraz. An
international banker-businessman, Tamraz donated $300,000 to the Democratic Party because he wanted to talk to President
Clinton and other high officials of our Government about his plans to finance an oil pipeline through the former Soviet Union. The
National Security Council warned against admitting Tamraz to the White House. They had already decided, in the due and diligent
exercise of Governmental decisionmaking, that his proposal was not the right proposal for a pipeline in that particular part of the
world. They understood that he was falsely claiming White House support for his projects. They warned that, if high officials of
our Government gave him even a meeting, even were seen close to him, he would trade on that proximity in the area of the world
in which he was doing business.

But Tamraz was nothing if not persistent. He said to us at one point that, `I'm the kind of person, if I can't find my way through a
door, I'll go through a window. And if that window is closed, I'll go through another window until I get in.' He went so far as to
enlist a buddy at the CIA to lobby the administration on his behalf. But what he really did was kept going to the window with his
checkbook. Eventually, he was invited to six different social gatherings.

The very troubling clincher is this. When I asked Tamraz when, not whether he registered to vote--because I then was going to
ask him what party he was in, trying to prove the fact that parties didn't matter to him, ideology didn't matter to him, he was just
buying access, he was trying to influence our Government with bucks--when I asked him when he registered to vote he shocked
me by saying he wasn't registered to vote. When you think about it, in his world, the world that soft money invites, there is no need
to register to vote. His money was more important and bought more access than any vote could. It was as if he was saying: Oh,
voting is a nostalgic exercise for those millions of people out there who don't have influence--most Americans. They are the ones
who can take the time to register and vote. I buy my way, in America, to the highest levels of power. So Mr. Tamraz seemed to
be saying.

The right to vote, which was central to the creation of our country, the right to vote, for which our founders and succeeding
generations of Americans have fought and died, didn't matter to Tamraz. He figured it out--$300,000 bought him a lot more access
in this democracy than anybody who just votes had. This standard is so well embedded in our political system that when I asked
him whether he got his money's worth, even though he never actually won White House support for his pipeline nor got a separate
private meeting with the President, Tamraz said next time he'd double that donation to $600,000.

I am not naive. People have always tried to do what Roger Tamraz did. As long as there have been governments, as long as there
have been people with any power in any human society, people have tried to seek favor by conveying items of worth, and they will
continue to do so. But, when soft money contributions open the door to unlimited contributions, when the competitive pressure of
our political campaigns raises leads to spending without limits, the temptations will be that much greater for the influence peddlers
and purchasers, for the hustlers to try to buy something big. Frankly, the temptation will be that much greater and, ultimately, for
many, irresistible, for those in power to sell what the influence purchasers are trying to buy. That is why, in short, we have to ban
soft money.

The attempt to influence Government with purchases is nothing new. Look in the Bible. There is a prohibition there against judges
or other leaders accepting gifts from anyone who comes before them for judgment, anyone who is affected by their leadership.

The wisdom there was based on an understanding of human nature and the need for those in government to set limits to protect
themselves and those they governed. People in government who exercise power are, after all is said and done, beneath their titles,
no matter how high they are, just human beings with the same frailties as everyone else. Put them in the public competitive reality
of a political campaign, and too many will not be able to say no, particularly while they see their opponents saying yes.

The Governmental Affairs Committee's hearings have built significant support for banning soft money. Just last week, John
Sweeney, the president of the AFL-CIO--his organization, in fact, contributed millions in soft money, almost all of it to the
Democratic Party in the 1996 cycle--said, soft money donations are `polluting our political system.'

Last week, a group of business leaders made essentially the same statement demanding a ban. Chief executives at Monsanto,
General Motors, and Allied Signal have already dropped out of the soft money game. Why? They said it is impossible to track
contributions to gauge their success. In other words, the payoff for five- or six- or seven-figure contributions is simply not worth
the expense.

I will tell you something else they didn't say. Members of the Senate may have heard, as I have, from people who were solicited
for soft money contributions, large contributions. They felt coerced. They felt it hard to say no. Think about it, if you are the
executive of a business and you have a lot of contact with the Government and are regulated by the Government, if you are the
executive of a business that has matters before Congress and a high official in the executive branch or the legislative branch calls
you and asks for a large soft money contribution, it is hard to say no.

If we are successful only in banning soft money, however, as important as that is, our work will still be incomplete. Although I
must say, if we could just ban soft money, I think we will have achieved enormously significant reform.

But in the best of all worlds, it is not enough, and in the best of all bills, the McCain-Feingold bill, they don't stop at banning soft
money. It is important to go on. Money is like water, it flows to the weakest point. Just as water spills through an unplugged gap in
the dike, once one hole is filled, it will find the next hole, or it will find the weakest point in the dike to make a hole. Political money
seeks unregulated gaps in our election laws.

I do not say this simply as a matter of physics or theory. I say this, again, as a result of what we heard in the hearings before our
committee. Money blocked by contribution limits to candidates flows instead into unlimited soft money contributions to parties.
Money blocked by a soft money ban will be diverted in increasingly large amounts to unregulated issue ads.

Issue ads are paid for by soft money raised by independent advocacy groups and parties. They are supposed to be about specific
policy issues, not specific candidates. That is why unlimited amounts of money may be spent. But issue ads, as we heard
discussed on this floor in the 2 days of this debate, have actually become stealth candidate ads.

Widespread abuse in the last election saw these ads hiding behind the veil of issue advocacy, even as they promoted or attacked
individual candidates.

A study by the nonpartisan independent Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 87 percent of the so-called issue
advertisements broadcast in 1996 mentioned a candidate by name--87 percent mentioned a candidate. Almost 60 percent showed
the likeness of a candidate.

The Annenberg study further found that more than 40 percent of the 1996 ads plainly attacked candidates, not issues. One of the
witnesses before our committee said last week that by his review of the ads, the issue ads were actually more negative to
candidates

than the candidate ads were. Some ads don't bother with issues at all.

One of these ads, run by opponents of a congressional candidate in Montana, simply used the air time to rehash the candidate's
marital problems. Ads broadcast by the Democratic and Republican parties ostensibly on the issues in the 1996 Presidential
campaign were little more than biography spots at best, promoting the election of President Clinton or of our former leader, Bob
Dole.

Issue ad sponsors, like the AFL-CIO or the National Rifle Association, are under no obligation to disclose the money they spend
when they do issue ads. But when the ad zeros in on specific candidates, as we all know was the case and as the Annenberg
study so brilliantly documents, clearly there is at least a violation of the spirit of the Federal spending limits. It is an end run on
what the law says can be spent on a campaign.

No one can be held accountable for the false or misleading information those ads might convey, because the public doesn't know
who paid for the ads. And yet in the 1996 election cycle, advocacy groups and the two parties spent more than $135 million on
issue ads. That is about one-third of the $400 million that was spent on broadcast advertising by all Federal candidates last year.

Kathleen Hall Jameison, director of the Annenberg center, concluded that issue ads `set an agenda different from that of either
candidate and, in some cases, drown out the voices of these who are actually running for office.'

We run the risk here, Mr. President, of the candidates becoming bit players in a contest that occurs at a higher level between
dueling interest groups spending millions of dollars running issue ads with soft money.

McCain-Feingold appropriately proposes a more precise distinction between ads supporting or opposing an issue versus those
supporting or opposing a candidate. I am convinced, based on my own reading of the Supreme Court decisions, that that provision
will withstand the constitutional test.

The soft money ban and the crackdown on illegal issue ads, which I have spoken to, are two of the most critically important and
politically realistic reforms that we can hope to make. I say politically realistic in the sense of being related to the political reality
that we all have experienced in campaigns, and it was vividly documented in the hearings that the committee held.

Other provisions in the McCain-Feingold bill--strengthening disclosure requirements, outlawing the solicitation of campaign
donations in Federal buildings and limiting the amount of personal money that candidates may contribute to their own
campaign--will also help bring our fundraising system back under control.

But, Mr. President, I regret that the bill has been stripped of the voluntary spending limits in it, because I believe that ultimately the
best way to end corruption or the appearance of corruption in campaigns is to impose spending limits on campaigns.

I know that there is a disagreement among Members on whether that would be constitutional. Under the Buckley versus Valeo
decision, mandatory spending limits would not be constitutional. If I had my druthers, as Li'l Abner used to say, personally I would
like to see that 1976 Supreme Court decision overturned, because I think the central principle established by that case, that money
equals speech, is not right, and, even if it had some validity in theory in 1976, it no longer reflects the reality of the last 20 years of
campaign raising and spending.

Money doesn't equal speech. How can speech be free if it costs money? How can speech be free if you have to spend money to
get it or, as I believe my friend and colleague from Georgia, Senator Cleland, who is on the floor, said in our committee--and I
paraphrase knowing I will not achieve the pungency that he did--if money equals speech, if you have to have big bucks to have
speech, that means the people who don't have big bucks aren't going to have any speech. Is that what the Framers of the
Constitution intended when they adopted the first amendment? I can't believe that they did.

Several times in the history of the Supreme Court, the Justices have applied principles of law that did damage to our country and
that experience ultimately proved were not realistic. That most tellingly was the case when the Court upheld segregation laws on a
theoretical basis of equal protection when the reality of equal protection was not there.

It took until 1954 when a massive amount of evidence was brought before the Supreme Court to show that separate but equal was
in fact not equal--only then did the Court strike down those discriminatory laws. In another way, this was true with some of the
labor laws adopted in the earlier part of this century.

Minimum wage laws were originally struck down as violations of employee's rights to contract until a case was built by advocates
for those laws which showed that the right to contract, though noble in theory, was not real when you had two unequal parties
negotiating the contract. So the Supreme Court reversed itself, and upheld the minimum wage laws and maximum hour laws to
protect working people from being exploited.

Respectfully, I think the same scenario is true with regard to the interpretation of the first amendment rendered by the Supreme
Court of 1976 in Buckley. Let me just point out for the record, which a lot of folks forget--I forgot myself before I went back and
read the Buckley decision--that the post-Watergate reforms, the 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act didn't just say that Mr.
Buckley, who was a part-time resident of my State and truly one of the Lord's noble people, could spend his own money and not
being restricted from doing so by the law, but the Buckley decision struck down the preexisting limits on what Members of
Congress could spend in their campaigns--the 1974 act actually had limits that Members of both the Senate and the House could
spend on their campaigns based on a certain amount per voter in the State--the Court struck that down on the theory that that was
an element of free speech.

But what is the reality? The reality is that the unlimited spending that has occurred has distorted and constricted free speech. It
has limited the free speech of those who don't have the money. It has undercut the other fundamental bedrock principle of our
Government that everybody should have equal access to Government. All people are created equal, all created in God's image.
Our rights were given to us not by Congress, but by our Creator, as it says in the first paragraph of the Declaration of
Independence. That principle clearly has been compromised by the enormous sums of money people are spending in political
campaigns today.

I must also say that the testimony we heard, and I understand we didn't hear exactly a random sample of contributors of big soft
money contributions, but it seemed to me, at least, that those generous contributions were not political speech in the way we
normally contemplate.

Roger Tamraz did not give $300,000 because he had a particular feeling that he wanted to express about an ideology, a candidate
or a party. He was buying access. He was trying to make money. It was clear that he was willing to spend $300,000, $600,000
because he would have made hundreds of millions of dollars if his pipeline proposal had been adopted.

Johnny Chung, Yogesh Ghandi, the whole range of people who were buying access through soft money, they were not interested
in political speech as we know it, the kind of political speech that the Founders of our country established in our formative
documents.

They were buying a picture with the President to take back home, as one said, `to put powder on my face so I would look better
so I could convert that into business.' They were looking to do business. They were looking to influence Government to make them
richer. That is not political speech in the traditional way in which it has been known. They were advancing their interests.

White House coffees, photo-ops with the President, breakfasts, lunches, dinners with Members of Congress--these are the things
that top-dollar contributors enjoy. These are the things that are protected by the Buckley decision. These are things that we do not
normally consider to be speech in the fullest sense of our democracy.

Jefferson, I think, would be surprised--Madison, Hamilton, Adams, no matter which side they were on, in the early debates of our
country's history, they would be surprised to see that it is the rights of Roger Tamraz and Johnny Chung that we are now using the
first amendment to protect. The Supreme Court adopted that theory in 1976, but now we have the facts. And with the facts, I
hope someday we can reverse this decision.

I know that more than 20 State attorneys general of both parties have formed a task force to see if they can find a case to take
back to the Supreme Court to relitigate the Buckley decision, because the fact is that you cannot really have contribution limits
without spending limits that are effective.

When candidates and parties are free to spend as much money as they want, they will. That is what the record shows. They will
find ways to raise that money in larger and larger amounts even if it means ignoring the results and breaking the law because the
stakes are enormous. Those who continue to argue for the Buckley decision are just not considering the realities of what has
happened under that decision. And those realities are based on the realities of human nature and the give-and-take of today's real
political world.

Despite all of that, we have to legislate within the Buckley decision. We have to recognize that reality. Within that decision, I think
the McCain-Feingold proposal, by banning soft money and regulating issue ads, does as much as we can possibly do and does a lot
to put us back on course to protect the equal access to and founding principles of our Government.

If we do not adopt something like this, I hesitate to think about what the future is going to look like. Despite all the congressional
hearings, all the special investigations, all of the concern about foreign money and big money in the 1996 campaign, the fact is that
while all this attention has been given, Federal Election Commission records show that the two parties have actually raised $34
million in soft money in the first half of this year, which is not less than the last comparable period, it is 2 1/2 times the $13 million
raised in the 6 months after the last election.

These numbers are going to continue to escalate, Mr. President, unless we find the courage to rein in the system, to rein in
ourselves. If we face the 2000 Presidential election without any change in the law, I am afraid it is going to be the biggest auction
in American history.

What is going to be for sale is our Government. And what is going to be lost is the people's faith in public service, which will erode
at ever-alarming rates unless we give them, by our actions, reason to respect the political system. Our own integrity, human as we
are, full of frailties as we are, our own integrity will continue to be threatened by the pressure to spend big money in an unlimited
system and the need, therefore, to raise it.

Mr. President, the people are watching. They are skeptical. We can control temptations that inevitably arise when gigantic
amounts of money are available for political campaigns. Millions of them have, in fact, given up on us and our system, bringing our
great democracy I am afraid to one of the lowest points in its proud history.

We have it within our capacity to change all this, to work together across party lines to reform the status quo of the campaign
finance system, to return our politics to a higher ground and revive our citizens' trust in their Government by adopting genuine
campaign finance reform like that included in the McCain-Feingold bill.

The question remains, and it will echo throughout the debate this week and next, will we do it? Will we seize the moment or will
this debate ultimately be just a lot of sound and fury that will ultimately produce nothing?

I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to speak on campaign reform, but I also see my colleague from Georgia is here. I have kind
of come in two or three times to speak thinking maybe we are going to alternate. I do not want to impugn on his time.

Mr. CLELAND. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. NICKLES. I thank my colleague from Georgia. It is a pleasure to serve on the Governmental Affairs Committee with him.
He is one of the members, as well as the Senator from Connecticut, who spends a lot of time on the committee and does a very
good job, I will say, in really trying to find out what has happened and what the facts are.

Mr. President, just a few general comments on campaign reform. Everybody says, `Well, now we change the law. It's vitally
important for us to change the law.' I think it is more important, and maybe the best campaign reform that we could have would be
enforcement of the existing law.

Why in the world, if the statutes are very clear on the books--and some people say they are ambiguous; I think I will show in a
moment they are not that ambiguous--why in the world should we be worried about changing the law if we are not going to
enforce the law as it is written?

We have numerous cases that, I believe clearly, laws were broken, and in some cases flagrantly broken, and yet we have seen
almost no enforcement from this administration, and yet they are out there beating the drum, saying, `Change the law. Change the
law.' It reminds me of something like somebody has been robbing banks and says, `Oh, yes, let's have a tougher law against bank
robbing. Oh, yeah, I've been doing it a long time. Oh, yeah, if I get caught, I'll send the money back.' I don't think that is good
enough.

As a matter of fact, this administration has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar for millions of dollars. They have sent
millions of dollars back, and they say, `Well, that's OK.' Well, I do not think that is OK.

If the law has been broken, it should be enforced. If we would enforce the law, if we would actually indict people, if we would
arrest people, if we would seek their participation and comments before a grand jury, I think that would do more for campaign
reform than any of the bills that we have before us.

And we have a lot of bills, good bills I will say, Democrat bills, Republican bills. Before we do that, we have several statutes that
are on the books that ought to be enforced. Frankly, they have not been enforced. You might say, `Well, give me an example.'

One that has been kind of famous is 18 United States Code 607: prohibits soliciting and receiving contributions in Government
building.

I know we heard from Mr. Sandler, who is general counsel for the Democratic National Committee say--well, he interprets that to
mean that you can be in a Federal building, you can make all the phone calls you want on hard money, soft money, as long as you
are calling somebody that does not happen to be a Federal employee in a Federal building, that you can do it.

That is an absurd reading of the statute. I do not see how an intelligent person can read the statute and come to that conclusion,
but that is the Democratic National Committee's general counsel, that was his general summary. It seems to be the advice that the
Vice President has followed, to say he has broken no law.

But the law is very clear. It says it should be unlawful for any person to solicit or receive campaign contributions in a Federal
building, period. If you look further, the definition of `contribution,' is `money received to influence an election.' So I think they have
broken the law.

Maybe we will just ignore the law and say there is no controlling legal authority because that law has not been enforced. But my
guess is no other administration in history has ever broken the law like this administration, never abused the law, never pushed the
envelope. I think they pushed well beyond the envelope. I do not think it is into the gray area. I do not think it is a couple cases
where somebody called you back and, `Well, yes, we'd like for you to host something.' I think this was systematic, flagrant--`Let's
raise a lot of money.' I believe very much that the President and the Vice President were involved in it. The President had a
memo that said, `Start the overnighters at $50,000 and $100,000.' I happen to think that is the silver bullet people are talking about.

The President of the United States said, `Let's start the coffees.' He is talking about raising money. They had 103 coffees. They
raised $26.4 million. In the President's own handwriting he said, `Start them.' Guess what, they started right after he said, `Start
them.' `Start the overnighters'--they started the overnighters. They had hundreds of people spending the night, hundreds of people
spending the night in the White House, more than any other administration, a volume that they have never seen before. And a
whole lot of them were contributing $100,000. We had the FBI testify that 51 averaged over $107,000 each to spend the night in
the White House. I happen to think that is a flagrant violation of the current law, the law as it is written right now.

We could just go on and on.

And 18 United States Code 600: prohibits promising any Government benefit in return for political support. Johnny Chung is
reported to have donated $25,000 to Ms. O'Leary's favorite charity at her direction in order for Mr. Chung to obtain a meeting
with several Chinese businessmen. He contributed the money. He got the meeting. Ms. O'Leary's charity got the $25,000. He also
donated more than $360,000 to the DNC from 1994 to 1996.

And 2 United States Code 441(e): prohibits a foreign national from making a political contribution either directly or through another
person. Also prohibits anyone from accepting such contributions.

Pauline Kanchanalak contributed $135,000 which the DNC had to return when it was revealed the contribution was actually from
her mother-in-law. She visited the White House 26 times, she testified. Yet, has she been before a grand jury? Has this
administration done anything to compel her testimony for laundering funds? I do not think so.

Charlie Trie contributed $789,000 to the President's legal defense fund which we heard testimony that some of the checks were
laundered through a Taiwan-based religious sect, Suma Ching Hai. He also received a steady stream of wire transfers from
foreign sources from 1994 to 1996, totally $1.4 million, some of which came from Mr. Wu, his Macao-based business partner.

Some people said, `Well, we haven't seen any foreign money.' They have not had their eyes opened.

Mr. Trie had a lot of foreign money, $1.4 million, wired in, and he had great access. This is a person who is a Little Rock
restaurant businessman. And all of a sudden he is spending millions of dollars, had unbelievable access to the White House. He
visited the White House at least 37 times. He received a Presidential appointment to a foreign policy commission, one that the
President had to expand the number of commissioners so he could serve on it.

John Huang directed a $50,000 contribution to the DNC through Hip Hing Holdings which was reimbursed from Lippo's
Indonesian headquarters. John Huang and a DNC fundraiser, Maria Hsia `Shaw,' collected $100,000 to $140,000 from Vice
President Gore's Buddhist Temple fundraiser of which half had to be ordered returned from foreign sources. A lot of that money
was laundered as we found out through testimony. It happens to be illegal.

United States Code 201: prohibits any Federal official from receiving any benefit in return for official action. Johnny Chung
brought in six Chinese officials to hear the President's radio address and gave the First Lady's chief of staff a $50,000 check in the
same week that he was able to get them in. In exchange for $50,000, they were able to attend the radio address. That happens to
be illegal. Has Mr. Chung been indicted? Has he been brought before a grand jury? Has he testified before the Senate committee?
No.

Mr. Chung made a statement, `I see the White House like a subway; you have to put in the coins to open the gates.'

I could go on and talk about Charlie Trie getting a Chinese arms dealer into a White House coffee with President Clinton. Only 4
days before the coffee, it is reported, Mr. Huang's arms trading company received special permission to import 100,000 special
assault weapons, although there was a ban on the importation of these assault weapons.

United States Code 7201 prohibits evasion of income tax; United States Code 371 prohibits conspiracy to defraud the United
States. The Buddhist temple is a tax-exempt organization. They made contributions to Vice President Gore, they made
contributions to other colleagues in this body, they made contributions at the DNC with tax-exempt dollars. People were getting
tax deductions, writing checks to the Buddhist temple, and the Buddhist temple wrote political checks. Everybody else in the
country who writes political checks has to do it with after-tax dollars. In this case, people got a tax deduction for contributing to a
Buddhist temple, and it was the Buddhist temple who was making contributions.

That is wrong. That is against the law. That is against the IRS Code. I just quoted the IRS Code. Who has been indicted on that?
This is an egregious violation of the law. It has happened time and time again.

My point is we need campaign reform. In my opinion, one of the best steps we could take toward campaign reform would be to
enforce the existing law. Maybe we should enforce the existing law and find out where its shortcomings might be before we try to
expand the law or redefine the law or change the law.

Now, Mr. President, I want to make a couple of comments concerning the legislation that we have before the Senate, the
so-called McCain-Feingold legislation. First, let me compliment the authors of the legislation because I think they made some steps
in the right direction. They have improved it and taken off, as I can see, the spending caps. They have taken off the ban which,
incidentally, I think is clearly unconstitutional. They have taken off the ban on PAC's, political action committees. Those are steps
in the right direction.

They did a couple of things, though, that need to be improved upon, one of which is they said, well, we are going to codify Beck.
We are going to make sure union members can get their money back. That is the language I have heard bandied about on the
floor. Mr. President, that is not good enough.

I firmly believe we should make sure that all Americans have voluntary contributions to campaigns. No Americans should be
compelled to contribute to a campaign, whether they work for a business, whether they are a member of the union, or whether
they are not a member. Some say that is an antiunion provision, a killer amendment. I beg to differ. If we are going to pass
campaign reform this year, we will pass a provision that makes campaign contributions voluntary for all Americans.

I feel very, very strongly about this. You might say, where did this come from? It came from a town meeting I had in Collinsville,
OK, when an employee of American Airlines held his hand up, and one of the first questions he asked was, `Senator Nickles, I
really don't like my money being taken away from me on a monthly basis without consent to be used to elect people and support
issues I don't agree with. That is not America. That is not right.' The company the person worked for happened to be American
Airlines. He happened to be what some people

call a blue-collar, middle-income American. He is a great American. He is a union guy. He is prounion. He just wants to have a
voice on whether or not he is going to contribute to a political party or not.

I happen to agree with that. I happen to be a Republican, but I don't want anybody taking my money to spend it for political
purposes without my consent. It would be over my body. I don't think anybody should be compelled to contribute to a different
campaign or to a campaign they don't agree with. If you are going to have compulsory campaign contributions, you have lost real
freedom, you have lost your political freedom. To say, `We will give you information on how you can get a refund,' is not
satisfactory. That is after the fact. That is after your money has already been taken away from you, spent in a way you didn't like,
and, `Oh, yes, you can file for a refund. Incidentally, you have to go through a lot of trouble if you file.'

Guess what? You can't be a member of the union. Under the Beck language we have in the McCain bill and under the language
that is currently out, if you get a refund, you have to be basically a nonunion member. You can't vote in union elections. You can't
decide who would be president of that union. You can't have any impact on the collective bargaining strategy. Maybe you want to
be a member of the union. Maybe it is the thing to do, but you disagree with the union's political agenda. Right now you don't have
a choice. You can't have both. You can't be in the union and say, `No, I don't want my money going to elect liberal Democrats or
to elect people who have a social agenda that I disagree with.' You don't have that option under current law.

We will change that. If we are going to have campaign reform this year, we will have the underlining promise that all campaign
contributions will be voluntary, period. Every employee that works for any company should know his campaign contributions will
be voluntary. If he doesn't want to make them, he doesn't have to make them, period, whether they are a member of the union, not
a member of the union, whether they work for a company that doesn't have a union, they should all know, nobody should be
compelled to contribute to a political campaign against their will. Nobody.

So that is one of the amendments we have up here. I don't look at it as a killer amendment. I tell my colleagues I am willing to
negotiate. I heard Senator McCain say he is willing to negotiate. I am willing to negotiate. Senator Lott asked me to see if we
couldn't work out a bipartisan bill. I am willing to work with my colleagues.

I mentioned earlier, I think the McCain-Feingold bill took some steps in the right direction. I think it maybe has a couple of steps
further to go. This is one of them. This is one of them. If we are going to have campaign reform, in this Senator's opinion, it will
have to start with the premise that all campaign contributions will be voluntary; make sure that no one is compelled.

Then what else can we do? We can do a lot of things. Some say ban soft money, others have proposals to limit soft money. Some
say allow individuals to do more. Some people have ideas requiring that a certain percentage has to be raised within an individual's
home State or district. I think all those things are legitimate for discussion. Let's put them all on the table. Some people have a
proposal that says you can't contribute to

campaigns unless you can legally vote. I think that is a good proposal. Other people want to have free TV time. I don't happen to
agree with that. Some people want to have subsidized TV or half-rate TV for political candidates. I don't agree with that.

I am willing to talk about it. I am willing to negotiate. I am willing to negotiate everything I mentioned, but the one fundamental
thing I draw a line on is that the campaign contributions have to be voluntary.

I take issue with anybody who says that is an antiunion bill. That is a proworker provision. That is a profreedom provision. It is
basically saying no one should be compelled to contribute to a campaign against their will. That is a fundamental American
freedom. We should be ashamed of ourselves for making anybody be compelled to contribute to a campaign against their will.

We will fix that. I hope we will fix it. I believe we will fix it. I also believe that will be part of our bill, and then I will tell my
colleagues I don't look at it as a killer amendment, because I'm willing to work with them to try to pass real, substantive campaign
reform.

Keep it constitutional, do not limit speech, encourage participation, make it possible for more people to participate, do not come up
with a system that guarantees incumbents' advantage. I am more than willing to do other things that would limit incumbents'
advantage. We can say, incumbents, you can't do any mailings in an election year. That will crimp it down a little bit. Incumbents,
you cannot have carryover funds. We can do a lot of things for real campaign reform that we could pass in a bipartisan fashion.

I believe one fundamental freedom should exist that we should all agree on, Democrats and Republicans, and that is that all
campaign contributions should be voluntary. That is the reason why we have the Paycheck Protection Act. We don't want
anybody reaching into your back pocket, taking your money out, and spending it for political purposes unless you say OK. That is
your back pocket. You are the one who worked hard; you are the one who put the money in there. Nobody--no group, no
association, no employer--should be able to reach in and say, `I will take a little bit out and spend it the way I want without your
permission.' We will protect your paycheck and let you have control over it. That will be part of this bill. It will be the first
amendment I believe we will vote on.

I urge my colleagues to vote for it.

Mr. CLELAND addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia is recognized.

Mr. CLELAND. Mr. President, I enjoyed the remarks of my colleague from the great State of Oklahoma.

Mr. President, this is a day I have been waiting for since I had the great honor and privilege of taking my oath of office as a U.S.
Senator back in January: a day when we are debating pending campaign finance reform legislation on the Senate floor. It has been
a long and tortuous road since January, and on more than one occasion, we have all heard pronouncements that campaign finance
reform was dead for this session, if not for all time.

That we are here today is a great tribute to the perseverence an effectiveness of my friends and colleagues, Senators McCain
and Feingold, as well as the relentless commitment of the Democratic leader, Senator Daschle, to the cause of campaign
finance reform.

I wish also to thank the distinguished majority leader for affording us the opportunity to debate, and cast meaningful votes, on this
vital issue.

This is also a testimony to the groundswell of public opinion that is compelling us to act on a very embarrassing matter, the way we
raise political money.

Will Rogers said it best: `It takes a lot of money now days to even get beat with.' That was said over 70 years ago. It is certainly
even more true today.

But, in describing the current unremitting, unforgiving money chase which has overtaken our democratic process, especially, at the
Federal level, in such a manner as to have a `for sale sign' on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, I like the quote by W.C. Fields
to the extent, `We must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.'

As we begin this Senate debate on whether or not we should enact far-reaching restrictions on the current way money is raised
and spent for Federal office in America, we must face the situation that this current system is fatally flawed. It has enough
loopholes in it to drive a fleet of 18 wheelers through it and is rendering our democratic process and our Government, which flows
from that process, vulnerable to influence peddling, the inordinate impact of special interest pressure groups, foreign influence and
outright corruption.

It's time to take the bull by the tail.

I for one have been fighting this battle for campaign financing reform for many years.

In 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, I introduced legislation in the Georgia Senate when I was a State senator limiting
campaign expenditures and contributions. As Georgia's secretary of state in the 1980's and early 1990's, I fought for tighter limits
on campaign giving, and full disclosure of lobbying expenditures.

As a U.S. Senator sworn in this year on January 7, the first legislation I signed as a cosponsor was the McCain-Feingold

campaign financing reform bill. I am 1 of 45 of my Democratic colleagues and 4 of my Republican colleagues pledged to support
the McCain-Feingold bill in its present form when it comes to the floor of the Senate.

Also, as a new Member of the Senate, I volunteered for service on the Governmental Affairs Committee, which has been
conducting a far-reaching investigation into the multitude of alleged illegal and improper activities associated with the 1996
campaign. Just last week, the committee turned to consideration of suggested remedies for such abuses. All year long, I have
listened to numerous witnesses, sifted through countless pages of testimony, read scores of media reports, and otherwise
immersed myself in the nitty-gritty of the financing of Federal campaigns last year. I also had the personal experience of enduring
the current process in my own race for the U.S. Senate in 1996.

Sitting in these hearings and seeing the sordid tale of the money chase in 1996, has turned my stomach. I also think the American
public has viewed all this with increasing disgust. What I have witnessed, heard, and read has made me even more convinced than
ever that we must strengthen our campaign financing laws, now, and provide strong enforcement through the Federal Election
Commission of these laws, or risk seeing our elections process, which is supposed to be conducted between the candidates, the
press, and the voters, be swept away in a tidal wave of big bucks. Unless we act now, we will only see the power of special
interest groups, corporations, and unions to pedal influence grow. We will only see our system more and more vulnerable to
foreign governments and unscrupulous individuals. Unless we tighten our laws, we will see our system more and more operating
against the public interest.

I don't think our Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, had that in mind when they helped create this
Government.

Mr. President, the other day I was over in the Library of Congress and received a marvelous book by James Madison, titled `The
Search for Nationhood.' Mr. President, I am afraid that more and more candidates for Federal office are not so much in search of
fulfilling our search for nationhood as they are for fulfilling the search for money.

I certainly don't think they had that in mind when they led the effort to create the U.S. Senate. Jefferson and Madison led the way
to create the Senate to look at the long view of American government, and provide a balanced approach for the future of our
country.

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence stated in that magnificent document that the Founding Fathers
had pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor. They didn't say that in order to set up a democratic form of government that
one had to spend their lives to pursue a fortune to run for public office and jeopardize their honor in the process.

Opponents of McCain-Feingold tend to concentrate their spoken criticisms on its alleged violations of free speech. Those
criticisms mistakenly equate money with speech. It is an equation which inevitably leads to the conclusion that the paid speech of
the millionaire will have greater weight and influence than the opinions and expressions of the common man and woman.

Certainly there can be little doubt about the commitment of James Madison, Father of the Constitution, an architect of the Bill of
Rights, and President of the United States, to the great cause of free speech. But listen to what Madison wrote in The Federalist
Papers: