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�http://www.businessweek.com/1997/13/b352052.htm
03/31/97 THE BACKLASH AGAINST SOFT MONEY
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News: Analysis & Commentary
THE BACKLASH AGAINST
SOFT MONEY
Business is fed up, and it may spur
campaign-finance reform
Earlier this year. Republican fimd-raisers asked a big Wall Street investment
house for a donation to the Committee to Preserve the Eisenhower Center,
the Republican Party's Washington headquarters. It was a routine request for
the kind of "soft money" donation that has come to dominate U.S. campaign
funding. The Eisenhower Center fund, in fact, easily pulled in $1.4 million
during the last election. But when the call came this time, the CEO had had
enough. "I'm not writing any more checks to that damn building," he fumed
to his Washington lobbyist.
BOTTOM-LINE REASONS. The Wall Street CEO isn't alone. With the
Donorgate scandal shining a harsh light on campaign finance—and
Corporate America's role in funding the money machine—executives are
weighing in on how to fix the system. No, they're not talking about forgoing
political contributions—or the access to policymakers that they ensure.
For the most part, executives are joining the chorus calling for curbs on soft
money because they're tired of endless appeals for funds that may not serve
their interests. The unrestricted millions supposedly support party-building
activities, but in practice are often funneled to candidates throughout the
country. With soft money, donors still buy clout. But they don't get the
direct access that comes from making contributions to politicians. "You
don't know if the money's being spent on cocktail parties and limo rides or
on ads that benefit statehouse candidates in Minnesota," gripes a lobbyist for
a New Jersey company.
What changes does business want to see? In a BUSINESS WEEKAHarris
Poll conducted in mid-March, two thirds of the 400 top executives who
responded called for an end to soft-money donations (page 35). But most of
the executives-some 61%~would like greater freedom to make direct
contributions to campaigns in order to gain access to politicians and
influence business issues. And 74% said that the $5,000 cap on corporate
political action committee donations is fine as is.
1 of 3
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In this case, a little bit of self-interest may be just the thing to prod
Washington. If business leaders, for their own reasons, throw their weight
behind efforts to clean up the campaign-finance mess, they could roll over
congressional resistance to sweeping revisions of election-finance laws.
"We desperately need grass-roots accountability to force some of our
colleagues to realize this is a cutting-edge issue," says Senator John F. Kerry
(D-Mass.), a reform advocate.
It isn't hard to find corporate executives who are sick of soft-money
shakedowns. "Soft money is a travesty," gripes Robert Stuart, the former
chairman of Quaker Oats Co. Says Mitchell Kertzman, CEO of Sybase Inc.,
a California software maker: "I feel tapped out." He gave the Democratic
National Committee more than $100,000 last year, but he intends to give
less in the future. "The whole process is out of control."
CRUSADERS. Other top execs say they'll give less next time, too. It's easy
to see why. For the '96 election, soft-money donations shot through the roof.
The political parties raked in $262 million in soft money, triple their take
for '92. According to Common Cause, a nonprofit group that tracks
donations of $10,000 or more, corporations and executives generated 93%
of the OOP's $138 million backdoor-cash hoard and 74% of the Dems' $128
million soft-money cache.
Business donors are also wary of the spotlight the Donorgate scandals are
throwing on them. Their worst fear: being dragged into messy congressional
inquiries. Ohio Senator John Glenn, the ranking Democrat on the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee, plans to grill tax-exempt nonprofit
groups with close ties to the Republican Party. But he doesn't rule out
serving subpoenas on fat-cat donors: "We will consider bringing CEOs
before the panel," he says.
A few prominent businesspeople are joining the wider crusade for
comprehensive campaign-finance reform. A foundation controlled by
financier George Soros has pledged $3 million to Public Campaign, a
nonprofit group trying to build support for public financing of state and
federal elections. Soros is also aiding a handful of other campaign-reform
groups.
New York investment banker Jerome Kohlberg Jr. plans to spend $1 million
a year on efforts to educate voters and lobby Congress on the need to
revamp the system. Kohlberg, a co-founder of leveraged buyout pioneer
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Co., backs a bill sponsored by Senators John
McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) that would ban soft money.
"It's demeaning and insidious, and it's undermining the whole political
system," says Kohlberg.
Some leaders are focusing on public funding for TV advertising. "The
fundamental problem is that politicians have to raise all this money to buy
TV commercials," says Newton N. Minow, former chairman of the Federal
Communications Commission. Barry Diller, chairman of the Home
Shopping Network, has come out in support of a proposal to give
broadcasters no-cost licenses for new airwave spectrum in return for free air
time for candidates. That would cut campaign costs and encourage more
substantive debate, says Paul Taylor of the Free TV for Straight Talk
Coalition.
Democrats have good reason to clamor for reform. Traditionally, they've
2 of 3
03/24/97 13:30:39
�03/31/97 THE BACKLASH AGAINST SOFT MONEY
http://www.businessweek.com/1997/13/b352052.htm
been at a disadvantage with the GOP in the money-raising sweeepstakes.
Worse, the current flap about fund-raising abuses is having a chilling effect
on their donors. "Major contributors will be in a holding pattern until this
issue is resolved," says Nathan Landow, a Bethesda (Md.) real estate
developer and veteran Democratic fund-raiser.
KEEPING UP. But as soft-money kingpins, Republicans will fight an
outright ban on these donations. "That would amount to unilateral
disarmament for the GOP because unions would still be free to get out the
vote for the Democrats," says Steven Stockmeyer of the National
Association of Business PACs. Indeed, many business donors say they'll
keep giving as long as their rivals do. "Given the degree to which Federal
Express is regulated, it's absolutely necessary for us to participate in the
process," says a spokesman for FedEx, which gave $959,000 in soft money
to the two parties for '96. Adds Daniel Rappaport, chairman of the New
York Mercantile Exchange: "If everyone else is giving and we don't, our
voice won't be heard."
But with more executives emboldened to just say no, Congress may have a
tough time resisting new fund-raising curbs. The pols' success in putting the
arm on business could well turn out to have been too much of a good thing.
By Amy Borrus and Mary Beth Regan in Washington, with bureau reports
RELATED ITEMS
TABLE: The Heaviest Hitters
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3 of 3
03/24/97 13:30:40
�The Hartford Courant - Connecticut News ->
Monday
March 24
http://news.courant.com/jump/cam2.stm
Unrestricted PACs hold wild cards
By JON LENDER and ALAN LEVIN
This story ran in the Courant March 24,1997
They are called "unrestricted" political action committees - which is an
apt description, because these PACs have the ability to get around legal
restrictions that the rest of the world has to live with.
It is easy to form one: Any Tom or Dick can do it - and they don't even
need Harry.
©1997
The Hartford Courant
Only a chairman and a treasurer are required under state law to organize
an unrestricted PAC - and, partly as a result, such PACs have
proliferated in recent years in Connecticut. Now numbering more than
200, they are far more prevalent than other kinds of PACs that represent
businesses, labor unions and professional organizations.
The unrestricted PACs often have names that give little clue as to their
nature - such as Democrats for Victory during the 1980s, formed by the
inner circle of then-Gov. William A. O'Neill, or the present-day
Connecticut First Coalition, a PAC organized by close associates of Gov.
John G. Rowland that mostly promotes the political objectives of
Rowland and the state GOP.
Unrestricted PACs like these - as well as legislative "caucus PACs" put
together by Senate and House Democrats and Republicans - can, and do,
legally get around campaign-financing restrictions and throw in
unlimited amounts of cash to any candidate's campaign.
It is perhaps the closest thing in state politics to the federal "soft money"
dodge - in which individuals circumvent contribution limits by giving to
the national Democratic or Republican Party, sometimes to the tune of
hundreds of thousands of dollars. The national parties then spend the
money for what they call "party building," even though that party
building is indistinguishable from campaigning directly on behalf of a
candidate.
In Connecticut, the funneling of money through unrestricted PACs is on
a much smaller scale, but government watchdogs still think it is a
significant problem that should be rectified now.
For example, although state law says an individual can give only $2,500
to a candidate for governor during an election campaign, that individual
also can give again to a special PAC which, in turn, hands that money
over to the same candidate.
1 of 4
03/24/97 08:03:13
�The He-rtt'ord Courant - Connecticut News ->
http://news.courant.com/jump/cam2.stm
It has happened in past elections, and it already has happened in the 1998
gubernatorial campaign - which has begun, although not yet with any
formal declarations of candidacies. Here is one instance: Lobbyist Keith
Stover, who already has contributed the maximum $2,500 to the
Rowland Governor '98 committee, gave $500 in late 1994 to the
Connecticut First Coalition.
The $500 from Stover, whose major lobbying clients include HMOs and
the Mashantucket Pequots, became part of more than $125,000 raised by
Connecticut First, which itself gave $10,000 to Rowland Governor '98
last July, according to one of the periodic financial disclosures that
PACs, like candidate committees, must file with the state. Connecticut
First was co- founded by a lawyer from Rowland's hometown of
Waterbury, Gary B. O'Connor.
Connecticut First is a prominent example, but it is only one of many, and
some people believe that this situation needs fixing - chiefly, Jeffrey B.
Garfield, the state's top elections enforcement official.
"It's a big problem. It's a big loophole," said Garfield, who is executive
director and general counsel for the State Elections Enforcement
Commission.
"It's a way of avoiding the [contribution] limits because an individual
can contribute directly to a candidate and then end up being involved in a
PAC that dumps unlimited money into the same candidate's campaign,"
Garfield says. "It's so easy to avoid the existing contribution limits
through formation of these unrestricted PACs that the existing limits on
contributions have basically been rendered a nullity."
The elections commission has proposed a bill including a provision to
also make unrestricted PACs subject to contribution limitations - as
PACs formed on behalf of businesses, labor unions and professional
associations already are.
The new bill would limit unrestricted PACs' contributions to $2,000 per
candidate, no matter what state office he is running for.
The state's system of contribution limits from PACs varies, depending
upon the kind of PAC. For example, a PAC that has been formed on
behalf of a specific company is allowed to give $5,000 to a gubernatorial
candidate. A labor union's PAC or a professional association's PAC is
allowed to give $2,500.
The reason for the disparity, Garfield said, was the argument, during
legislative deliberations in the 1970s, that unions are allowed to feed
their PACs from union dues, while businesses needed to travel the harder
route of soliciting voluntary contributions from individual employees.
Chances for passage of the bill are unclear. Garfield has proposed his
reform in the past without it getting anywhere. And this year, amid
advocates' cries for campaign-financing reform, the issue of unrestricted
PACs has not received prominent mention so far. The deadline for it to
be voted out of committee is April 7.
Where money comes from
2 of 4
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�The Hartford Courant - Connecticut News ->
http://news.courant.com/jump/cam2.stm
Significantly, state lawmakers who will decide the issue have benefited
from a particular form of unrestricted PAC: "caucus PACs," so
designated because they are set up to funnel money to the groups of
sitting lawmakers of each party in the House and Senate, known as
caucuses.
When Senate Democrats, for example, target a Republican incumbent for
defeat, they pour more money into that race through their caucus PACs called the Committee for a Democratic Majority and the Committee for
Democratic Leadership - which have been heavily fed by Capitol
lobbyists, who are an essential part of the state's legislative campaign
machine.
"These PACs generally are fertile dumping grounds for lobbyist
money," says Garfield. "They are just another means of obtaining money
from registered lobbyists."
PACs had a dramatic impact on last year's tight race for control of the
state Senate. The Senate majority shifted from Republican control to a
19-17 Democratic majority, with the victories of Sens. Gary D. LeBeau
of East Hartford and Mary Ann Handley of Manchester over Republican
incumbents. LeBeau and Handley each received about $60,000 from the
Senate Democrats' three main caucus PACs.
Eight of the top 10 political action committees giving to Senate
candidates in both parties across the state were the special, or
two-or-more-person PACs - as opposed to business or labor PACs.
LeBeau, Handley and their two opponents received more money from
PACs than any other Senate candidates, according to data from the
Connecticut Money and Politics Project. LeBeau received $111,042, the
second-highest individual total in state Senate races last year.
Like the situation involving the Connecticut First Coalition PAC, the
PAC donations to LeBeau allowed individual lobbyists to exceed the
$500 limit on individual donations to Senate candidates.
Patricia R. LeShane, a lobbyist partner in the firm Sullivan & LeShane,
gave LeBeau $500 directly. She also contributed $500 to the Committee
for a Democratic Majority, which gave $45,841 to LeBeau. Her firm also
gave $250 to the PAC.
Where the money goes
Connecticut First has an unusual history. It was founded in 1994, and
most of its $125,000-plus in operating funds was raised in one shot - at a
big post- election fund-raising event in Southington in December 1994 at
which Rowland, then the governor-elect, was the draw. Rowland
supporters and lobbyists threw in amounts from $250 to $1,000.
Since then, Connecticut First has spent its money gradually. For
example, it has periodically transferred $10,000 to $15,000 at a clip to
the Republican State Central Committee for a total of at least $35,000.
Along the way, Connecticut First has spent $12,000 in connection with
unspecified polling - including $7,000 last August and, several months
earlier, two payments of $2,500 to former Rowland press secretary Paul
Green in February 1996 and April 1996 for "writing and poll analysis."
3 of 4
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http://news.courant.com/jump/cam2.stm
Garfield said if the polling was done for the benefit of any particular
candidate, it might have to be reported as a donation to the candidate.
O'Connor said in a recent interview that the polling was done " i n
conjunction with the state Republican Party," and it had to do with
"general issues . . . the state of the state, the economy, how people
perceived the economic environment, how the state was being run." He
said he also believed it dealt with the popularity of office-holders and/or
candidates.
Not everything associated with Connecticut First has been
Republican-oriented, but most has been. O'Connor, the Waterbury
co-founder, is a Democrat, although he also is a supporter of Rowland, a
Republican. The other co-founder was the late Robert McKenzie, who
was the husband of Republican National Committeewoman Jo
McKenzie. She now works in the governor's office.
A few of the PAC's expenditures have been for conservative or
Waterbury-area Democrats, including Rep. Joan V. Hartley,
D-Waterbury, but its donations to Rowland and the state Republican
Party are by far its largest.
O'Connor said that the PAC was not formed to circumvent any rules, or
to promote the fortunes of Rowland, but to promote a
moderate-to-conservative agenda. " I quite honestly am happy to say that
we're proud of the job that John Rowland has done and . . . to the extent
that we have supported him, and can do so in the future, it is in line with
our political philosophy and purpose."
But any doubts about how closely Connecticut First is aligned with
Rowland evaporated at the beginning of this year, when O'Connor was
replaced as the treasurer for Connecticut First. The new treasurer, John
C. Chapin Jr., was a campaign fund-raiser for Rowland in 1994 who
became Rowland's campaign press secretary and, after inauguration,
Rowland's first governor's office press secretary.
Email The Editor
S E A R C H C O U R A N T
4 of 4
03/24/97 08:03:17
�http://www.dallasnews.com/editorial-nf/editl7.htm
Campaign^Tioney
g j g ; Opinion
aijrflallas ^lutuiun Jfrtus
Search I
Help I Feedback I Site map
I ' Home
Campaign money
Several reforms could make a difference
Sick of hearing about all these money-and-politics
scandals? Want a road map to a new kingdom, where the
Here are some suggestions. These elements should be part
of any effort to reform campaign finance:
* Control soft money. "Soft money" is the ample loot
political parties raise from corporations, labor unions and
wealthy individuals ostensibly for "party-building
activities." Instead, the money is used surreptitiously to
bolster partisan campaigns, as many 1996 races revealed.
But how can this phenomenon be controlled? The
American Enterprise Institute's Norman Omstein suggests
a reasonable course: Prohibit corporations and labor
unions from donating to parties. But raise the amount that
individuals can give parties to $25,000 per year. Also, let
political action committees give parties up to $10,000 per
election.
C L I C K HERE
Parties still would have a ready source of money. But real
limits would be placed on donors. Mr. Ornstein also
couples his idea with reasonable suggestions about how
the parties can be freed to use their money, avoiding
hide-and-seek games.
* Full, regular disclosure of gifts. Members of Congress
should have to file regular reports on campaign donations,
perhaps every month. The filings should be done both
electronically and on paper. Full disclosure would help the
public know more about who gives to candidates. This
reform would give more Internet Age citizens access to
important information.
* Require most money be raised instate. Requiring that
a certain percent of contributions be raised within a state
could help control the "Washington fund-raiser," which
many legislators use as a way to attract special interest
dollars. With more local money flowing into campaigns,
legislators will feel less pressure to give access to
"friendly" Beltway lobbyists who use their contributions
to gain an ear. Sen. Kay Hutchison, R-Texas, offers a
proposal along these lines in her Senate campaign finance
bill.
1 of 2
03/24/97 08:08:29
�Campaignjnoney
http://www.dallasnews.com/editorial-nf/editl7.htm
* Limit fund raising to when Congress is not in session.
This could likewise help control the constant Washington
fund-raising game. Legislators could focus on their work,
and not worry about "dialing for dollars" throughout the
week. Some state legislators already play by this rule.
Another frequently mentioned reform requires
broadcasters give qualified candidates free air time. But it
would be unwise for lawmakers to try to tell broadcasters
what to put on the air, just as it would be a mistake for
politicians to tell publishers what to print.
Several broadcast organizations, including this
newspaper's parent company, volunteered free air time to
help qualified candidates gain access to the airwaves in the
1996 election. This trend toward volunteering air time
should widen within the industry because it is good
business practice and a public service.
At the moment, voters are like airline passengers in the
middle of a thunderstorm. Things are getting rocky with
campaign finance stories dominating the headlines. But
there's a way out of the storm. These reforms could help
show the way home.
03/23/97
• Back to Top
• Back to Editorial indexes
£ 3 S e a r c h [ ^ E J E 5 5 5 1 p j j g j ^ ^ g ^ J : Home £ J
© 1997 The Dallas Morning News
2 of 2
03/24/97 08:08:34
�Philadelphia Inquirer: Opinion
ggtelnquirerf
http://www2.phillynews.com/inquirer/97/Mar/27/opinion/CAMP27.htm
Opinion
Thursday, March 27, 1997
A new declaration Here's a chance for citizens to demand that
Congress reform campaign financingf
If Americans merely grump about the big money in politics, they'll keep taking the backseat to the
special interests whose contributions make members of Congress almost unbeatable.
Cozy incumbents aren't going to end this scam ~ which the top Republican in the Senate calls "the
American way" ~ until folks on Bro^d Street and Main Street demand it. That's what reformers dared the
public to do yesterday at the Liberty Bell. Help us get 1,776,000 signatures on a petition demanding a
campaign cleanup, they said, to make lawmakers give up this incumbent-protection racket.
With Project Independence, long-struggling reform groups such as Common Cause are trying to break
their losing streak by showing new oomph at the grass roots. They are asking the public to overcome
cynicism and skepticism to create a more democratic election system that would, in turn, provide less
cause for cynicism and skepticism.
It's a noble effort.
Inez Gottlieb of Philadelphia is among the 7,500-plus people around the country who have already
volunteered to collect signatures. "I've lost faith in change," she said at yesterday's kickoff, "but I feel
the compulsion to keep trying for it." So she and her friends are collecting signatures in the Center City
building where they live and other spots nearby.
These public-spirited volunteers don't want a system where the average senator has to raise $12,000 per
week for six years for a re-election race. They don't want a system where half of the House incumbents
had at least twice as much money to run on last year as their challengers did.
The problem isn't just that House and Senate incumbents are winning re-election at a rate of 95 percent.
It's that their indebtedness to the special interests that supported them tilts their positions on everything
from health care to corporate welfare to taxes. Project Independence is petitioning Congress to change
its ways by passing some version of the McCain-Feingold bill by July 4. While this falls short of some
reformers' prescriptions, McCain-Feingold would vastly improve on the status quo.
Under this bill, candidates who accepted limits on total spending would receive free and cut-rate TV
time and cheaper postage. A political action committee (PAC) could give a candidate only $1,000 per
election, rather than $5,000 currently. (The Senate version of the bill would ban PAC money entirely,
but that's probably unconstitutional.)
Another big change: Businesses, labor unions and fat cats would no longer be able to evade contribution
limits by writing huge "soft money" checks that party organizations often spend on behalf of particular
candidates. The 1996 presidential campaign, supposedly financed by the checkoff on income-tax returns,
was contaminated by more than a quarter-billion dollars of "soft money"; this bill would ban it.
Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold, who spoke by the Liberty Bell
yesterday, deserve credit for crafting a fair-minded plan to wean their colleagues from special-interest
cash and to give challengers a fighting chance. All they need are a couple million Americans to sign on
by calling toll-free 1-800-454-2634 or tapping into the Internet at www.commoncause.org
All they need are more Americans like Inez Gottlieb — who still believe that ordinary citizens can affect
the course of events and keep our democracy on track.
lof2
03/27/97 07:53:36
�Clinton will ask
FEC for limits
on 'soft money'
Reform bill
in Congress
seems stalled
From staff and wire reports
President Clinton plans to
ask the Federal Election Commission to curb the same sort
of "soft money" donations he
vigorously sought last year.
The president is preparing a
petition asking the FEC to curb
such donations, the White
By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY
House revealed Monday, even
as campaign reform efforts Fowler Wrote memo urging the
raising of $1.2 million
seem stalled in Congress.
Soft money is the catch-all
term for contributions that are was made in "response to inlarge and unregulated because formation requested" by the
they are ©ven to political par- White House about raising $4
ties rather than individual can- million for TV ads, according
to the Nov. 20,1995, memo.
didates.
"This will provide us with an
The Democratic Party, including its congressional fund- advantage to assure our projecraising divisions, attracted $122 tions an assist in raising an admillion in soft money in 1996.- ditional $1.2 million," DNC
Republicans collected $141 Chairman Donald Fowler and
million in soft money in 1996. other top party officials wrote
Legislation pending in Con- in the memo to Harold Ickes,
gress would outlaw soft money, who was then Clinton's deputy
but that reform bill is unlikely chief of staff.
to pass. Republicans have in- "Because of the short lead
sisted that any ban on unregu- time and lack of time to cultilated soft money should in- vate additional donors, we beclude labor unions. In last lieve the following represents
year's campaign, labor unions the maximum that can be
spent millions of dollars on TV raised prior to year end," the
ads designed to boost Demo- memo said.
Even though the DNC precratic candidates.
Also Monday, newly dis- pared "call sheets" to brief
closed documents show that Clinton before he talked to doDemocratic Party officials nors, "there is no indication he
urged Clinton and Vice Presi- made the calls referred to in
dent Gore to ask major donors that memo," said DNC spokesfor $1.2 million for a television woman Amy Weiss Tobe.
White House special counsel
advertising blitz.
A 1995 memo showed that Lanny Davis said that "as the
Democratic National Commit- president has previously stattee (DNC) officials suggested ed, he doesn't believe he made
that Clinton make 18 to 20 tele- any phone calls for money, but
phone calls to donors and that he can't say for sure he never
Gore speak to another 1 as did."
0
part of an effort at the end of
Gore has admitted he made
1995 to raise $3.2 million.
calls from the White House. He
The suggestion that Gore insisted he broke no laws but
and Clinton raise $1.2 million said he will not do so again.
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10,000 feet Until he
"A sense of closure,"
pops the chute, he'll
McGrath says.
have a jump master
Bush's plane was
he last time George Bush on each side holdshot down on Sept 2,
ie a memorable leap from ing a harness. Bush
1944, as he attacked
lirplane, he was a 20-year- has asked his doctor
a Japanese radio
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submarine, outdoes it again today. This McGrath, Bush's
raced a Japanese
he's not plunging into the spokesman. "He Bush: To replicate patrol to rescue him.
my territory. Flanked by didn't consult the parachute plunge
Bush was on the
mbers of the Golden Secret Service."
sub for a month.
jhts, the Army's precision The jump will be shown March The experience had a proichudng team, he'll waft 30 on CBS's Sunday Morning. found impact on him.
n to the Arizona desert at
Why would a septuagenarian
"As you grow older and try to
Yuma Proving Ground,
retiree want to relive the most retrace the steps that made you
ush will jump from about harrowing moment of his life? the person you are," he wrote in
his autobiography. Looking
Forward, "the signposts to look
for are those special times of
insight, even awakening. I remember my days and nights
aboard the USS Finback as one
of those times — maybe the
most important of all."
Marlin Fitzwater, Bush's
White House spokesman, says
Bush has a passion for physical
adventure. Fitzwater remembers being on Bush's speedboat. Fidelity, a few years ago
racing from Portsmouth to
Kennebunkpoit, Maine.
"Why do you do this?" Fitzwater asked. "He said, 'It's the
closest I can come to replicat-
ing my days as a pilot in an
open-cockpit aircraft.'
"It's a rush he has never forgotten and he tries to reclaim it
every once in a while."
Bush's family doesn't quite
know what to make of his
jump. "He's going to talk about
it when he lands," says son
George W., governor of Texas.
"At least I hope he's going to
talk about it when he lands."
Paul Costa, a psychologist at
the National Institute on Aging,
hopes Bush shatters stereotypes,
not bones: "There's no necessary decline in activity and experienc&seeking with age. If 1
1
keep his life interesting"
�http://www.msnbc.com/onair/nbc/mtp/mar2397.asp
Meet the Press: Transcript
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PLEASE CREDIT ANY QUOTES OR EXCERPTS FROM THIS NBC TELEVISION
PROGRAM TO "NBC NEWS' MEET THE PRESS."
This is a rush transcript provided for the information and convenience of the press.
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MEET THE PRESS - NBC NEWS
(202)885-4598
Sundays: (202)885-4200
NBC News
MEET THE PRESS
Sunday, Meet the Press: March 23,1997
Samuel R. (Sandy) Berger
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
Senator Laura D'Andrea Tyson
Former Chairman, National Economic Council
Former Chairman, I
Patrick Buchanan
1996 Republican Presidential Contender
Walter F. Mondale
Former Vice President
NANCY Kassebaum Baker
Former U.S. Senator
Howard H. Baker, Jr.
Former Senator, Former
White House Chief of Staff
MODERATOR/PANELIST: Jack Ford - NBC News
PANEL:
David S. Broder - The Washington Post
GUESTS:
s
MEET THE PRESS - NBC NEWS
MR. FORD: And welcome again to MEET THE PRESS. Our issues this moming: the
Clinton-Yeltsin summit-just how did it really go? We'll ask a man who was there, the
president's chief adviser on all national security matters, Sandy Berger.
Then, the controversy over U.S.-China policy. We'll hear two very different views from
former GOP presidential contender Pat Buchanan and a chief architect of the Clinton policy,
Dr. Laura Tyson.
And campaign finance reform, Washington's hottest argument. Are the scandals nowadays
and the problems worse today than ever? Well, we'll ask three top insiders, who are looking
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at the nation's capital from a distance today: former Vice President Walter Mondale, now
co-chairman of the grass-roots committee to push campaign reform; the committee's
chairwoman, former Senator Nancy Kassebaum, who just retired from the Senate and
recently married our other guest, Howard Baker, Jr.
And in our MEET THE PRESS Minute, campaign reform was also a hot issue in the
post-Watergate era.
(Videotape, December 15, 1974):
GOVERNOR JIMMY CARTER: I think the American people are very eager to see political
candidates be very modest in their acceptance of large campaign contributions.
(End of videotape)
MR. FORD: Then presidential candidate. Governor Jimmy Carter, on fund-raising and
loopholes from 22 years ago.
But first this moming, the president's national security adviser, Sandy Berger.
Mr. Berger, good moming, welcome.
MR. BERGER: Good moming. Jack.
MR. FORD: First of all, how did the president fare, physically, on this trip following his
knee surgery?
MR. BERGER: I think he fared very well. Obviously, it restricts his mobility and makes it a
little more difficult for him to move around, but he managed well. It was a very rigorous
trip. We left late on Wednesday night. We got back very late on Saturday moming. And the
president, physically, did very well.
MR. FORD: How about President Yeltsin? As you know, there had been a great deal
concern over his health. How did he appear to you?
MR. BERGER: I was very impressed by President Yeltsin's recovery. Friday, which was the
day of the summit, was a day that began at 9:00 in the moming, and ended with a press
conference that ended at 7:00 at night and then a dinner that the two presidents had. It was
an extremely rigorous, intense day. President Yeltsin operated through that day without
notes. There were—this was not two leaders talking to each other through talking points.
This was a very intense and lively discussion. President Yeltsin was extraordinarily
vigorous, and even by the end of the day when he got to face both the Russian and the
American press, he was infineform.
So I think he's fully recovered, physically. Obviously, there's still a little stiffness in his
movements, but he is absolutely 100 percent on his game.
MR. FORD: Let's talk about some of the issues that they focused on over there. The U.S.
shows up at Helsinki with a plan to expand NATO. Not at all, surprisingly, Russia is saying,
"We're not happy about that at all." The administration had downplayed any real prospects.
Was there ever any realistic hope that we could walk out of these meetings with President
Yeltsin saying, "All right, we're going to sign off on this expansion; it's OK with us"?
MR. BERGER: No. And that was not our expectation at all for Helsinki. What the two
presidents-but Helsinki, nonetheless, I think, was a pivot point in terms of the process of
building an undivided peaceful democratic Europe. President Yeltsin maintains his position
that NATO should not enlarge. And so, in that sense, the two presidents agreed to disagree.
But President Clinton made it absolutely clear that NATO enlargement will go forward
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beginning in Madrid in July, and President Yeltsin, on his part, while he's not happy about
that, has decided that he will seek-rather than to isolate himself from this new NATO-to
develop a relationship between Russia and NATO. So NATO enlargement will move
forward. NATO-Russia partnership will move forward-a very important step.
MR. FORD: Both sides walk away from this and essentially President Yeltsin is saying,
"Well, we're going to have a voice here in NATO. We're going to try to form some sort of
partnership," but, certainly, not a voting member at any of this. Is that just really window
dressing? Giving him a chance to go back to Russia saying, "Here's what I walked away
with here," when the reality is, he didn't really walk away with much at all?
MR. BERGER: Well, first of all, I think it's extremely important that NATO and Russia will
be working together in partnership as, for example, we are today in Bosnia. NATO and
Russia, alongside each other, in a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. It is a new Russia; it is a
new NATO. It is no longer a NATO that is directed against Russia, and I think the Russians
are beginning to appreciate that.
But President Yeltsin, I think, didn't walk away with nothing. I think the two leaders also
made some other very significant accomplishments. Number one, in addition to the NATO
issues we've been talking about, they decided to seek a new arms control agreement after
ratification of START II by agreeing to guidelines for START III, which would bring
strategic nuclear weapons down to the level of 2,000 or to 2,500. Jack, that means that
within a decade, strategic nuclear weapons will be 80 percent lower than they were at the
height of the Cold War, just five years ago. That's important for Russia. It's important for the
United States. It's important for the world.
MR. FORD: But to get to that START III, these proposals, they have to sign off on START
II...
MR. BERGER: That's correct.
MR. FORD: ...and that's been languishing there in the Parliament for four years now since it
was signed. The question was posed, to both presidents, about the prospect of getting that
done, getting SALT II signed so that they could move on to SALT III. And in a moment of
sort of presidential humor at the press conference, President Yeltsin said, when he was asked
can he get that through, he said, "As far as Russia's concerned, I expect that the state Duma
will make a decision based on my advice." President Clinton responded to some laughter
saying, "Boy, I wish I could give that answer."
But is that being really over optimistic here by President Yeltsin? The chairman of the
Communist Party has characterized Helsinki as a crushing defeat. Why is there any reason
now to believe after four years all of a sudden the Duma's going to say, "You know what?
You're right. We'll sign off on this thing"?
MR. BERGER: I think President Yeltsin will get a strenuous effort to get START II ratified.
And in doing do~what happened in Helsinki, in some ways, creates a strategic environment
that makes that more possible. But one of the problems under START II is the cuts, because
of the nature of the START II cuts, would have brought the Soviets down to~in destroying
weapons, where in order for parody, they actually would have had to build new missiles. By
agreeing to START III limits that are lower, they won't have to do that build-up. And so, in
a sense, START II will bear less of the costs than it would have before the two leaders
agreed on what the end will look like in START III. So he moves into this Duma ratification
process with a vision of a world in 2007 where strategic nuclear weapons are much lower
and the environment, the nuclear shadow that has hung over the world for all of our lifetime
will have receded very dramatically.
MR. FORD: Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott has proposed a bipartisan Senate
observation group here to keep an eye on this NATO expansion. Would the administration
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welcome somebody else watching this over?
MR. BERGER: I think it's a very constructive idea by Senator Lott. It's something we've
been talking about, and I hope that we can work with Senator Lott and with other members
of the Senate in a cooperative way as we move forward with NATO enlargement, as we
move forward with START III. I think Senator Lott has put forward a very constructive
proposal to do this in a bipartisan way. NATO enlargement is a bipartisan issue, both
Democrats and Republicans believe that a new NATO ought not to be static and frozen in
the Cold War lines, but ought to reflect a new, inclusive Democratic reality, and we look
forward to working with Senator Lott in getting that done.
MR. FORD: Let's change our focus a little bit here. Let's take a look at the U.S.-Chinese
relations. As you know, the vice president on his way over to China. It seems that he has
quite a dilemma here, all of this against the backdrop of the allegations we've seen of the
Chinese government attempting to funnel money into campaigns here to buy some sort of
favored treatment. It seems that the vice president, if he goes over there and he joins in and
he seems to be very friendly with the Chinese in pushing this, people are going to say, "See,
he's been bought and paid for. That's why the administration is over there doing this." If he
doesn't do that, if he backs off, then there are going to be people saying, "He's not doing his
job. He's supposed to be over there trying to foster relations and business deals between the
U.S. and China." Tough situation for him to be in.
MR. BERGER: What the vice president will do is pursue America's national interest. There
are allegations that have been raised about potential Chinese efforts to influence campaigns.
Those are serious allegations that are under investigation by the Department of Justice and
others. But let's bear in mind that they are allegations, and let's not leap to conclusions
before these investigations are over.
The fact of the matter is we have an enormously important interest as a country in the way in
which China evolves. Either China over the next 10 years will evolve in a way that
integrates it more and more into the international community, in terms of human rights, in
terms of weapons regimes, in terms of trade, or it will evolve in a more nationalistic and a
more isolated direction. By engaging with China, we can increase the areas of cooperation.
We've done a number of things together, like agreeing to end nuclear testing, reaching an
agreement to protect intellectual property, working together to diffuse the situation in the
Korean peninsula. And by engaging with China, we can have a vehicle for raising directly
with them the problems that we have, on human rights, on market access, on some of their
weapon sales policy. So engaging with China is in America's national interests. Not
something we do for China, but something we do for the American people.
MR. FORD: You talk about engaging with China and talking about these problems. The
vice president just said yesterday that he does intend to bring up these allegations of Chinese
attempts to buy favoritism here, to funnel money into campaigns. But he said he has to be
very sensitive about it, and he can't do very much about it, because of the fact that it's the
subject of a Justice Department investigation. It sounds, on the surface, as if he's just going
to, sort of, mention it and then go on to something else.
MR. BERGER: Well, this was raised by Secretary Albright when she was recently in
Beijing. Vice president has indicated that he will raise it with the Chinese. As I said before,
these are allegations. They're not proven conclusive facts. They're serious allegations. I'm
sure the vice president will raise them in a very sober way. But we, obviously, don't have
any conclusions to draw, and I think there are- it is important that he pursue the broad
agenda that we have with China. There are areas where we can cooperate with China; there
are areas where we disagree. The vice president has, for example, a very important
environmental agenda to talk to the Chinese about. That's very much in their interest and our
interest.
MR. FORD: Let's talk a little bit about the National Security Council. A comment was made
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just very recently by Secretary of Defense Cohen about the withdrawal by Anthony Lake of
his nomination to head the CIA. And, essentially, the Secretary of Defense said that he
thought it was a good thing. He said he had to withdraw because this hearing was becoming
so drawn out—the potential for being so drawn out and so divisive. Do you agree with that?
MR. BERGER: Well, I think that was a judgment that Tony made himself. He spelled out
the reasons very clearly in his letter. I think the hearings had become very protracted,
perhaps less an exercise in judgment than a test of endurance. There are enormously
important issues about the future of the intelligence agencies and intelligence community. I
wish the hearings~and I hope that the hearings with George Tenet going forward-will focus
on issues of what are the proper role of the intelligence community in today's world? What
are the proper priorities in a post-Cold War period?--intemal organizational issues. Those
issues really weren't focused in Tony's hearings. They tended to be far more personal, going
through his FBI raw data and files. He made a judgment, I regret that judgment because I
think he would have been a good director of the CIA, but I respect it.
MR. FORD: You mentioned George Tenet and his hearings, his nomination. Most think that
he's rather confirmable, but we've seen that Senator Shelby has indicated that he would like
to see his FBI file, apparently, including the raw data in the file. Should he get that?
MR. BERGER: Well, I think the tradition in that past has been that the chairman and the
vice and the ranking minority member generally have had access, but there hasn't been a
wide dissemination. Don't forget that one's raw FBI files contains, you know, every
allegation, you know that your back-door neighbor made, that you didn't take out the
garbage 34 years ago and that—all of this stuff winds up in a file. It ought not to be widely
disseminated. I think that the chairman did have a chance to see Mr. Lake's file. I assume
he'll have a chance to see Mr. Tenet's file. But I think it will be a bad precedent, quite
honestly, Jack, for people to track good people into public service if, you know, everybody
that they had a fight with in fourth grade in the schoolyard became a subject of the hearings.
MR. FORD: Last question for you. Amidst all these allegations of the politicizing in the
NSC, have you taken active steps here to attempt to insulate that from any of the
outreaching—from political factions?
MR. BERGER: Well, let me say, first of all, I'm very proud of the NSC and the
contributions made to the president's foreign policy and the extraordinarily dedicated people
that work there 14, 15, 16 hours a day. And Helsinki, for example—some our folks didn't
sleep for three or four nights in preparation for this meeting. But I think that there have been
some questions that have been raised that are fair questions that I intend to try to clarify.
How do you avoid—how do you insulate the NSC from any kind of partisan political
influence without isolating it from the outside world, from people who need—we need to talk
to, explain our foreign policy, and who may have information or ideas that are important.
Questions, for example, of, on the one hand, need to know up the line, versus not
micromanaging, but are very senior and serious people in the NSC. What the proper
relationship in between the NSC and the other aspects of the White House. I want to clarify
that because I think I owe that to the NSC staff and I've talked to former NSC advisers, like
Brent Scrowcroft, and Zbigniew Brzezinski and I intend to reach out to them and get their
best advice.
MR. FORD: I said last question. I'm going to ask you one more quick question, if I might. In
the Middle East, there are some concerns now that the peace process is unraveling. We've
seen, once again, violence exploding across the landscape there, and it all seems to be going
back towards the Israel's government decision to start new construction in that one area. Has
the American government reached out to the Israelis and expressed our concerns over this?
MR. BERGER: Well, first of all, the president spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu from
Helsinki to express our deep sympathy and outrage at the terrorist incident in Tel Aviv, and
express our condolences to the families. We have said very clearly that we think the decision
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to proceed on Har Hon, the construction there was unhelpful because it erodes confidence on
the part of both parties. But let me say that nothing justifies terrorism. Nothing justifies
blowing up innocent civilians sitting in a cafe in downtown Tel Aviv.
MR. FORD: All right. Well, Sandy Berger, I want to thank you for spending some time with
us this morning.
MR. BERGER: Thank you, jack.
MR. FORD: Take care.
And coming up next, Pat Buchanan and Laura Tyson square off on U.S.-China policy. Then
campaign finance reform with three former Washington insiders.
(Announcements)
MR. FORD: Welcome back to MEET THE PRESS. And, Pat Buchanan and Laura Tyson,
welcome to both of you. An also joining me in the questioning this morning is David Broder
from The Washington Post.
Mr. Buchanan, with a backdrop here of both the vice president and a high-level House
delegation led by Newt Gingrich on their way to China, you have been a very vocal critic of
the administration's approach here...
MR. BUCHANAN: Mm-hmm.
MR. FORD: ...this concept of constructive engagement. You called it a complete failure.
MR. BUCHANAN: Mm-hmm.
MR. FORD: If you were making this journey to China, what would you be saying to the
Chinese?
MR. BUCHANAN: Well, I would say to the Chinese that, quite candidly, if I were Newt
Gingrich, that I'm going to oppose most-favored nation treatment. I'm going to impose on
China or support the imposition on China of tariffs on their products equal to what they
impose on us. I would say constructive engagement is a policy that was noble in purpose
that has failed. Because in 1989, we had a $3 billion trade deficit and the human rights
situation was bad. Now, we've got a $40 billion trade deficit and the human rights situation
is deplorable. And, frankly, the United States is not going to become, as it is right now, the
main supplier of hard currency to the greatest tyranny on earth and the greatest potential
threat to the United States in the 21st century.
MR. FORD: Why is there any reason to believe, though, that a policy of containment and, in
fact, of confrontation would have any impact on any of the things you mentioned? Let's
focus first on human rights. Why would you think that by saying that and getting in the face
of the Chinese government...
MR. BUCHANAN: Mm-hmm.
MR. FORD: ...it would make get them to do anything to improve their human rights record?
MR. BUCHANAN: Jack, we take between 30 percent 40 percent of China's exports. Our
purchases of Chinese goods amount to 7 percent of their gross national product. They take 1
percent of our exports. If the United States simply imposed not confrontation or conflict, but
reciprocal tariffs, the Chinese would suffer a tremendous, traumatic economic experience.
And I would say to them, "We're not going to treat you as Great Britain if you don't behave
as Great Britain."
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Jack, this is holy week. We are, right now, doing business as usual to the leading persecutor
of Christians on the face of the earth, the Communist Chinese tyranny. I don't believe we
can do business as usual with people like that and still retain our own self-respect.
MR. FORD: Dr. Tyson, there are an awful lot of folks out there that agree with what Mr.
Buchanan is saying. Our own State Department's annual human rights report, just six weeks
ago, highly critical of China and even said there is apparently not a single dissident to be
found...
DR. TYSON: Mm-hmm.
MR. FORD: ...suggesting that they're either in jail or they've been silenced in some fashion.
Why then are we over there? Why are we engaging with them?
DR. TYSON: Well, first of all, I think, certainly, the United States, recognizes that we have
serious human rights issues with China. The question before us is: What is the appropriate
means for achieving what is our goal? Our goal is the transition of China, a gradual and
stable transition to a more market- oriented, more democratic society based on the rule of
law. How can the U.S. achieve that outcome? We believe that engaging with the Chinese, in
trade, for example, will, over the long run actually move China in a more open direction.
Think about what we import from China for a minute. We're importing toys; we're
importing footwear; we're importing apparel. Much of those products are actually made by
the reforming quasi private or private sector of the Chinese economy. So by engaging in
trade with China, we are actually supporting the transition, the creation of a civil society. By
engaging in trade negotiations with China, we are moving China towards enforcement of the
rule of law. China has incorporated now in its anti-crime approach around China-has
incorporated our new intellectual property rights agreement, and they really are enforcing
that against pirates, against people who are breaking commercial law.
MR. FORD: When we look at our human rights approach to China, a lot of people who are
critical of it will say, "Here's an analogy. It's sort of like the way you approach elective
surgery. It's fine to do it, unless there's some risks out there." And all of a sudden, if there's
some risks out there, then you sort of back off a little bit. And people are suggesting that's
what we're doing with human rights. We're saying, "We're going to after you," but as soon
as we perceive that there is some tension or some problems, we back off.
DR. TYSON: Well, I really don't agree with that. Again, I would say that we are trying to
achieve an improvement in human rights, and we are trying to achieve a transition to a
market economy. But to take in acts in which would be, essentially, a unilateral economic
sanction against China, would clearly have an economic cost on us, as well as an economic
cost on China, but would not promote the evolution of human rights in China.
MR. FORD: Isn't it real easy, Mr. Buchanan, for individuals to take absolutist approaches on
human rights.
MR. BUCHANAN: Mm-hmm.
MR. FORD: And to say, "We shouldn't be dealing because of this." Much easier than a
government—I mean, the government has a difficult time being absolutist about everything.
There are a lot of other considerations the government has to look at—security, peace...
MR. BUCHANAN: You're exactly right. You're exactly right. For example, the human
rights situation in Saudi Arabia isn't what we would like it to be. But the point here, Jack, is,
it is not moving in the right direction. If it were-incidentally, I did not always oppose this
policy. I was a member of Richard Nixon's 15-man delegation to China in 1972.1 thought it
should be tried. But right now, we've got this enormous trade deficit that's $40 billion,
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David, in hard currency, much of which is going to the greatest military buildup in Asia, of
Russian planes, submarines and ships being purchased by China, and anti-ship missiles
which are being targeted on the 7th Fleet~our men and women out there in Asia.
So what I'm saying is, "Look, we've tried this, we've walked down this road. It has not
worked. We don't go to confrontation, but what we do do is we stop feeding the tiger."
DR. TYSON: Can I say that to say that-it sounds like our trade with China is, basically,
only in the interests of the Chinese, if you listen to Mr. Buchanan. First of all, it is in the
interest, not just of the Chinese, but of the United States. China is in fact our most rapidly
growing export market, and it is 20 percent of the world's consumers, and it is a market
which, if we don't stay engaged in, we are going to lose, over time, to international
competitors, first.
MR. BUCHANAN: But...
DR. TYSON: Second of all, what we are importing from China-I really want to go back
and emphasize this-we are helping in the gradual evolution or transition of China by
helping to create more prosperity and more decentralized power in China.
MR. FORD: But one quick thing here. One second.
MR. BUCHANAN: One quick point on this—sure.
MR. FORD: Recent statistics show, within the last year, a—What?—36 percent change,
decrease-or increase in the deficit between the U.S. and China. That doesn't sound like
we're doing a great deal.
DR. TYSON: Well, first of all, I think, you have to look at these things over a long period of
time. If you look from 1992 to 1996, that period of the first Clinton administration, what
you see is our exports to China growing at 13 percent or 14 percent, actually.
MR. FORD: Right.
DR. TYSON: Actually, that was our fastest-growing single export market.
MR. BUCHANAN: But, Laura, wait a minute now.
MR. FORD: Wait a second. Let me get David in on this, also.
MR. BUCHANAN: All right. Let's respond. Look, we export more to Singapore than we do
to China. China is 15th on the list to exports. They take 1 percent of our exports. Our market
last year went from $11.7 billion up to $11.9 billion. Their exports to us went from $45
billion to $52 billion. The trade deficit has gone from $3 billion, or a little more when Laura
came in, to $40 billion. It is going to be the largest trade deficit component, of America's
$200 billion merchandise trade deficit, we have this year. It is larger-it is getting larger than
Japan's. We are building up the most monstrous tyranny on Earth and, potentially, the
greatest threat to the United States.
MR. BRODER: OK. That...
MR. BUCHANAN: That's why I say, "Pause, take a look."
MR. BRODER: The essence of the Buchanan argument: The trade deficit is growing and it's
being used by the Chinese to finance arms purchases which, potentially, represent a security
threat. He's right about them-both those facts, isn't he?
DR. TYSON: The trade deficit in~is growing. It, actually-in 1996, we had, basically, a
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slowdown in our rate of growth of exports because 1995 we had a very big boom in our
exports to China.
MR. BRODER: Right.
DR. TYSON: So the trade deficit has grown, but it has been growing over the last four years
at a decreasing rate and imports have been growing at a decreasing rate. I guess I want to get
back to...
MR. BRODER: But-excuse me...
DR. TYSON: ...a trade-OK.
MR. BRODER: What about the point that this money, this hard cash, is being used by them
to purchase arms, many of them from the Soviet Union, which could represent a security
threat to our country?
DR. TYSON: Yeah, but I could also say that our trade with China is being used by them to
support the continued movement of their economy towards a market-oriented system. The
Chinese have, in the last six months, been enforcing an intellectual property agreement with
us, closing down pirated factories, adhering to international law and intellectual property.
They have just signed a textile agreement with us, and they have indicated that they're now
willing to move in a very serious way towards giving trading rights to American and foreign
companies working in China.
MR. BUCHANAN: Please, please...
DR. TYSON: So China is indicating that it's moving towards a market system.
MR. BRODER: Yeah.
MR. BUCHANAN: China is...
MR. BRODER: Moving toward a market system?
MR. BUCHANAN: It is not...
DR. TYSON: Gradually. Very gradually.
MR. BUCHANAN: What China is running, David, is a classic mercantilist system just like
the United States ran from 1865 to 1914.
DR. TYSON: It's not...
MR. BUCHANAN: In other words, "Bring in your capital, bring in your technology, but
keep your consumer goods out of our country because we're protecting our market. Now,
open your market and we'll invade it." What is happening right now is exactly what
happened to Great Britain when the United States and Germany practiced mercantilism and
invaded free trade in Great Britain.
MR. BRODER: Mr. Buchanan...
MR. BUCHANAN: And you saw them decline by World War I to the point even Germany
was larger than Great Britain. That's what's happening, David.
MR. BRODER: Mr. Buchanan, the argument that you've made this moming is one that
you've been making to your fellow Republicans as a presidential candidate and as an
advocate for many years now.
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MR. BUCHANAN: Right.
MR. BRODER: You haven't persuaded the last Republican nominees of this point. You
haven't persuaded the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress.
MR. BUCHANAN: David...
MR. BRODER: Do you want us to believe that everybody is out of step in the Republican
Party but Pat Buchanan?
MR. BUCHANAN: No. If you followed the primaries closely last year, you saw that even
free traders like Phil Gramm went silent on NAFTA, went silent on GATT. At the grass
roots, we have won the argument in the Republican Party. Check the Fabrizio poll. Every
single one of the five components in the Republican Party now believes that trade deals are
not good for the party or the country. David, we're winning the argument. It is not won.
Gephardt is moving in our direction on MFN. More Republicans are moving in our
direction, the paratistas are. Do we have the establishment of either party? No. But this
question is going to answer a question whether the Republican Party has become a wholly
owned subsidiary of the business roundtable.
MR. FORD: Mr. Buchanan, you talk about the danger here of the military expansion of the
Chinese, but isn't the argument that by embracing them, trying to bring them in the world
community and by changing the vitality of this regime by saying, "The U.S. is no longer
your enemy," by taking away an enemy for them to focus on, isn't the argument if you do
those two things, that you at least increase the prospect?
MR. BUCHANAN: Jack, I entertain that argument. I did not oppose the administration in
'94 on the MFN. I thought it was worth trying. But what have we seen? We have seen the
enormous growth of this trade deficit. The surplus is gone for weapons. The human rights
record is worse. They fire missile at Taiwan. They're belligerent toward their neighbors
where they're grabbing these islands. They're sending missiles to Iran, nuclear technology to
Pakistan. They slapped the secretary of state of the United States virtually across the face. It
is simply time to say, "Listen, our policy hasn't worked. We've treated you as a friend; we
tried to. It's not working. Therefore, we're going to change it. We're going to treat you as a
great power rival, which is what you hope to be."
MR. FORD: Dr. Tyson.
DR. TYSON: Can I just get a couple of facts out here on the table? In terms of the trade
deficit, which Pat Buchanan keeps referring to, just a couple of points. Number one, the
products we are now importing from China were not products that we were making at home
before. What's happened here is that products we used to buy from Korea, Taiwan,
Singapore, Hong Kong and other parts of Asia have essentially moved now to China. So the
increase in our trade deficit with China should be understood, essentially, to be reflected in a
decrease in our trade deficit with other countries in the region. That's number one.
Number two, most experts think that our trade numbers with China vastly overstate our
deficit with China and think that it's something like 30 percent to 40 percent less than that.
Finally, just let me say again, that I think that this issue of we tried a policy and it didn't
work is simply ill-informed. You have to have a long-term, consistent approach towards
what's happening here. We have China on the rise as a major power in the global, economic
and political system. That is going to happen. We have to have a consistent, long-term
approach to them. Our approach is based on the notion of engaging them on issues and
moving them into the mu tilateral system. We want to get them in the World Trade
Organization.
MR. BUCHANAN: Mm-hmm.
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DR. TYSON: We want to get our trading partners to work with us to set up a schedule and a
timetable and a review mechanism for moving China along year by year towards a market
system, and that's what the WTO will do. We shouldn't do unilateral economic sanctions.
They won't work. We are not powerful enough to make China behave.
MR. BUCHANAN: Mm-hmm. Well, it-wait a minute.
DR. TYSON: We are powerful enough to continue to trade with China and to work with our
international partners to get China in the international forum.
MR. FORD: Mr. Buchanan, let me ask you a question. You have said about Speaker
Gingrich and our relations with China...
MR. BUCHANAN: Right.
MR. FORD: ...that he should either lead, follow our get out of the way.
MR. BUCHANAN: Mm-hmm.
MR. FORD: He is now on the way over to China here. What is he doing in this trip? Is he
leading, is he following or is he getting out of the way?
MR. BUCHANAN: I think he's traveling on vacation right now, Jack. But look, my point
here was quite simple. This, to me, had become one of foremost issues of national security
for this country of human rights and of self-respect. I want my party to stand up and
represent something higher in the hierarchy of values than the bottom line on the balance
sheet. Now, enough evidence is in, I think, that we need leadership. I would like Newt to
lead it. I would like Senator Lott to lead it. They're the ones who can lead it. We could win.
We could get rid of MFN, or suspend it for a year. But, if the speaker's not going to lead
this, and if he's going mush around and talk with everyone, and try to work out some deal
with Mr. Clinton, then I'd like to see some younger congressman or some other congressman
step forward and lead this battle, someone in the Senate. If Mr. Gephardt wants to lead it,
that's fine. The important thing is what's good for our country here.
And to—let me correct Laura one on point. The United States—the merchandise trade deficit
we ran last year is $186 billion, merchandise trade deficit. It is the largest in history of any
country. It represents almost 30 percent of the manufactured goods we consume. This
country is selling out to future of working men and women by these gigantic trade deficits
that are sending our factories overseas.
MR. FORD: That I'm afraid is going have to be our last word. Much to talk about, never
quite enough time. Happy Purim, Laura Tyson. Thank you very much...
DR. TYSON: Thank you.
MR. FORD: ...for joining us this moming.
And next up, Washington scandals and problems through the eyes of three former political
heavyweights.
(Announcements)
MR. FORD: We're back on MEET THE PRESS. Joined now by former Vice President
Walter Mondale and former Senator Howard Baker, Jr., and former Senator Nancy
Kassebaum, now Nancy Kassebaum Baker.
And Senator Kassebaum, if you don't mind, I'm going to refer to you as Senator Kassebaum
UoflS
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so that my director doesn't experience some sort of vertigo as he jumps back and forth
between Senator Baker and Senator Baker, if you will. But thank you all for joining us this
moming. Mr. Mondale, although you recently retired from public service, you agreed to take
on this assignment to try to mobilize the American public push for campaign finance reform
here. How realistic are the prospects of getting anything done?
MR. MONDALE: Well, I think we have a good chance. I know it's difficult, but there are
several things. We've got strong sponsors in both the Senate and the House for campaign
finance reform. A few days ago. Senator Lott, the majority leader, said that he expects some
form of campaign finance legislation to be acted on this year in the Senate. We have the
support of the president of the United States, and I believe as this discussion goes forward,
the American people are going to begin to demand change. And I think that Senator
Kassebaum's co-chairmanship of this, also, is a big help, because this shows this is a
bipartisan concern. So I have long felt that we needed reform. This gives me a chance to do
my part.
MR. FORD: Senator Kassebaum, one of the ironies here is that with all this talk about the
need for reform, it doesn't seem to be reflected in the public's opinion. If we accept what we
see in the polls, many members of the public are saying, "What's the big deal? This seems to
be the business of politics as usual."
MRS. BAKER: Well, that's true. A poll I saw showed it at the bottom of the list. And yet, as
I visited around and visited around on college campuses, there isn't much till you start
talking about it. And then I think the response tends to be, "Well, nothing much has ever
happened, so why get upset about it?" I mean, we've not enacted reform; it's been talked
about. But as you walk through it, I think people do want to see something change. We've
had a hard time finding, in past Congresses, the right approach. But I think that what has
concerned all of us who've been interested in this for a long time is that through each
campaign cycle, the amounts of money just keep ratcheting up, the amount of time spent
raising money just keeps ratcheting up. And it is, I think, very debilitating to the
constmctive work of the political parties.
MR. FORD: Senator Baker, you have been both in the Senate, also inside of the White
House. There are many observers here that are taking a look at the allegations that have been
directed against this administration and have been saying, "Hey, what's new about all of
this? All of this has been taking place throughout the course of our presidential history.
Perhaps the only difference here is the dollar amount and perhaps that's attributable to
inflation." Is this different from what has happened in the past?
MR. BAKER: Well, I think it is different. I don't think it's a question o f - I think that the
principal difference is that this administration probably has pushed the envelope. I think they
have extended further in fund-raising techniques than previous administrations. Whether or
not there's a difference in kind, I guess we'll find out as the investigations go forward. But
the bottom line is that, as Senator Kassebaum said a moment ago, it's been an evolutionary
process, and it's getting more expensive and more time consuming to finance campaigns,
and it's time something happened.
MR. BRODER: Mr. Mondale, 11 years ago when the big scandal in Washington was Iran
Contra, you called for a special prosecutor in that case and you said at that point, "This idea
of self-investigating is a non-starter." Would you apply that same standard now to this
finance scandal?
MR. MONDALE: You know, I don't know what the answer is to that. I have not looked into
that as a serious question. I don't know. But it will be answered by others. And what I'm
working on is the campaign reform issue, and that's where I think I should be.
MR. BRODER: Well, let me turn to Senator Baker on that. Is there a parallel between this
need for a special prosecutor now and the special prosecutor in the Iran-Contra affair when
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you were in the White House, I believe?
MR. BAKER: Yeah, probably. It's still unfolding, and, frankly, if I were Janet Reno, I'd
want a special counsel, special prosecutor mighty fast to remove any indication of partiality
and get it off my desk. But in all candor, I must say that the American public will know
more about this sooner through the congressional route and the House and the Senate, than
they're likely to with an independent counsel, who will have to go through a grand jury and
have to abide by rules of confidentiality that will withhold it from the public for months,
maybe years. So I have mixed emotions about it. I guess there is a parallel, but I think that
the American people are likely to find out what really happened more quickly and maybe
more efficiently through the congressional route than the independent counsel route.
MR. BRODER: Senator Baker, your protege and former White—excuse me—Watergate
special counsel, Fred Thompson, is running the Senate investigation of campaign finance.
On Friday, Senator John Glenn of Ohio, the ranking Democrat on that committee, called me
and said that while 94 subpoenas have gone out from Senator Thompson, the 11 that he has
requested as the ranking Democrat on that committee have been held up because Senator
Thompson needs to get them approved by the Republican Caucus. When you were on the
Watergate Committee, did Senator Ervin subject your subpoena request decisions by the
Democratic Caucus?
MR. BAKER: Well, Sam Ervin and I got along great, but, to tell you the truth, I can't
remember a single case where he ever consulted with Republicans about the subpoenas that
were going to be issued. The only one I distinctly remember is the one to subpoena the tapes
and to file suit to try to get them. And that was my suggestion. It was not suggested to me by
anybody.
But, it is traditional that the majority runs the process. I have not seen the provisions in this
resolution for how subpoenas are issued. But I'm not surprised at that. I would like to see it
go forward on a full bipartisan basis with a willing minority and a determined majority and
in full cooperation. And I think it will work that way because I think both Senator Glenn and
Senator Thompson are that sort of person. But I'm not surprised that the majority is making
the first cut at issuing subpoenas.
MR. BRODER: Let me turn to this legislation pending campaign finance reform legislation.
Mr. Mondale, have you had a chance to look at this McCain-Feingold bill which you and the
president are supporting?
MR. MONDALE: Yes, I have looked at it.
MR. BRODER: Are you aware that the American Civil Liberties Union says that that bill is
"fatally and fundamentallyflawedwhen measured against First Amendment values"?
MR. MONDALE: I disagree with the Civil Liberties Union on this. I think the ability of the
U.S. Congress to somehow pass legislation that heads off this growing crisis of too much
money in American politics is something that the Congress should be able to do. The Civil
Liberties Union is taking the position that any restraints on the spending side is the same as
trying to restrain free speech. What this bill does is seek to put in place incentives that would
encourage people running for federal office to accept ceilings and other restraints on how
they campaign. And I think the country desperately needs it. I think it's a sensible bill. It is a
beginning. New ideas, new suggestions will undoubtedly be considered as they go along.
But it is the approach that holds the most hope now because it has strong bipartisanship
support, and so I disagree with the Civil Liberties Union. I think there is room for decent
restraint, voluntary restraint, which is what the McCain-Feingold bill does.
MR. BRODER: Senator Kassebaum, as you know, having been there very recently, the
leadership of your party in the Senate-Senator Lott, Senator McConnell and others-are
dead set against this kind of reform legislation. How do you intend to try to change their
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•
minds?
MRS. BAKER: Well, this is the legislation that's on the table, and has been. I was a
co-sponsor in the last Congress. But Senator McCain and Senator Feingold and I—the
leadership in the House with the companion bill, have all said negotiations will take place. I
think there is room for and needs to be, probably, adjustments made. But this is major
reform. It's probably the most major effort that's been put forward since 1974 when the
now-laws were enacted after the Watergate period.
I know that we always get into any limitation being a matter of equating money and capping
money with free speech. It may be that what's going to be necessary is to draft the best
legislation possible and it would be tested again in the courts. I think it's inevitable whatever
is passed will be addressed that way. But we found so many loopholes that with soft money
and independent expenditures, particularly, there needs to be a full accounting, a full
disclosure, I would say, first and foremost, of all contributions made and who made them
and how the money was spent. That's a first step forward that would be of some value.
MR. FORD: Senator Baker, we've got about a minute or so left here. Let me ask you this.
Anthony Lake, when he stepped aside as the president's nominee to head the CIA, said that,
quote, "Washington has gone haywire." He charged that his hearing was nasty and mean, as
being unfairly dragged out. The president talked about this being, quote, "political revenge."
From your perspective, having been there and now looking in from the outside, has
Washington indeed gone haywire?
MR. BAKER: No. No, Jack, it hasn't gone haywire. It's very much the same Washington I
knew when I was there and that I knew when my father was there. Washington is~being in
Congress and in national politics is tough business, and Tony Lake's a good man, I think.
And I feel sorry for him for the drubbing he took. But I can think back on half a dozen other
cases that were at least as tough as that. In a lot of ways, it's an unfair process, but it's been
there a long time. It works pretty well, and I don't agree that Washington has gone haywire.
MR. FORD: All right. Howard Baker, Nancy Kassebaum, Walter Mondale, thank you all for
joining us this moming. I'm sure we'll be talking about this a great deal in the future. And
we'll be right back with our MEET THE PRESS MINUTE with Jimmy Carter on-What
else?~campaign fund-raising, but this time from 1974.
(Announcements)
MR. FORD: In the post-Watergate days, campaign reform was also on the minds of
American voters. Twenty-two years ago, then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter spoke
about fund-raising, loopholes and violations of the spirit of the law. Let's take a look.
(Videotape, December 15, 1974):
Unidentified Man: Governor, it cost a lot of money to run for president these days. Where
are you going to get yours?
GOV. CARTER: I think the American people are very eager to see political candidates be
very modest in their acceptance of large campaign contributions. I think it's a travesty, for
instance, of the new law which will go into effect the 1 st of January in which limits
contributions to see some of the authors and supporters of that law trying to circumvent it by
raising very large sums of money before the law goes into effect. So I'll be very open, very
modest in my request for a lot of small campaign contributions and I think I'll be successful.
MR. BRODER: Governor, first a quick follow-up on something you said to Mr. Kiker
about, as I understood it, some of your rivals in this situation, I believe you said, are trying
to circumvent the intent of the law by raising large sums of money in advance of it going
into effect. Who are you speaking of?
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GOV. CARTER: I read an article in The New York Times this moming that pointed out that
two senatorial prospective candidates, Senator Jackson and Senator Benson, were attempting
to raise large sums of money before the 1 st of January when the law goes into effect. Both of
these gentlemen supported the limitation of a $1,000 contribution limit on any particular
person to a candidate. I personally believe that this is typical of the Washington bureaucracy
where they deliberately made the law effective long months after it was signed by the
president and passed by them. I think this is equivalent to the same thing that President
Nixon did back in April of 1972 when he rapidly accumulated large sums of money to
finance his campaign without revealing the identity of the contributors. So I think just the
spirit of the law is being violated, although I hasten to say that these two gentlemen are not
doing anything that's illegal.
(End of videotape)
MR. FORD: Governor Carter and his running mate, Walter Mondale, of course, made it to
the White House in 1976 and served one term. Today former President Carter continues to
be deeply involved in world affairs and social causes as head of the Carter Center in Atlanta.
We'll be right back.
(Announcements)
MR. FORD: And coming up on "Dateline" tonight...
MR. STONE PHILLIPS ("Dateline"): Thanks, Jack.
What can the ransom note tell us about the JonBenet Ramsey murder? We'll look at how
document analysts examine paper, ink and handwriting in the search for a killer. That's
tonight on "Dateline" at 7, 6 Central time. Jack.
MR. FORD: Stone, thank you. We want to remind you, start your day with Katie and Matt
tomorrow on "Today," then the "NBC Nightly News" with Tom Brokaw. And I'll be back
with you-all next weekend on "Today." That's it for now. Tim Russert will be back next
week. And it's Sunday, it's MEET THE PRESS.
Copyright (c) MSNBC, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 1997 MSNBC
TOP OF THE PAGE
15 of 15
HELP
FEEDBACK
FIND
NEXT
03/24/97 08:56:46
�Investigate the G.O.P., Too
By Fred Wertheimer
WASHINGTON
Congressional Republicans
say they are committed
to uncovering the whole
truth about campaign
finance practices in
President
Clinton's
1996 re-election effort. But Democrats
are not the only ones whose fundraising should be investigated. The
coming inquiry should examine Republican activities as well.
This is not to question the importance of documenting the unprecedented, destructive and improper
ways in which the Clinton campaign
and the Democratic National Committee raised and spent money.
A crucial question is whether Democrats were selling access for huge
"soft money" contributions, supposedly aimed at party building. It is an
issue that also applies to Republicans.
Under the G.O.P.'s "season ticket
holder" program, at least 75 corporations and individuals each reportedly
gave $250,000 or more in soft money to
the party in 1996. Whether such contributions were solicited in return for
access to Congressional Republicans
needs to be investigated.
Don't let the
Democrats off the
hook, but be fair.
Then there is the Republicans'
post-election warning to the Business
Roundtable, a group of 200 chief executive officers, to stop writing big
checks to the Democrats. Haley Bai>
bour, then the G.O.P. chairman, reportedly led an effort to let the businessmen know that they would be
denied access to Republicans if they
kept trying to have it both ways by
contributing to both parties.
Soft money poured into Congressional races as well as into the Presidential campaign. In October 1996,
the Republican National Committee
turned over some $4.6 million' to
Americans for Tax Reform. That
group, in turn, made four million
phone calls to voters and sent out 19
million mailings challenging Democratic claims about Medicare cuts.
But as a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization, Americans for Tax Reform is not permitted to engage in
partisan activities. This raises the
Fred Wertheimer is president of De- question of whether the group violatmocracy 21, a public policy group. ed campaign finance and tax laws
and whether the Republican transfer
of the money was proper.
After all, the Republicans have
been loudly protesting the propriety
of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s $35 million TV
and radio advertising campaign
aimed at defeating a number of House
Republicans. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. maintains that these ads could be legally
financed with money from union dues
because they were about issues, not
candidates. But if the labor organization coordinated its activities with
Democratic candidates in the target
districts, the money spent on the ads
would be considered an illegal contribution. This should be investigated.
Fred Thompson, the Tennessee Republican who is chairman of the Senate committee conducting the investigation of campaign finance abuses,
says he wants it to be fair and bipartisan. But already there have been partisan battles over how broad the inquiry should be and how much money
should be spent on it. And Democratic
and Republican leaders have reportedly discussed a self-serving deal to
exempt Congressional campaigns
from the investigation.
The real test of this Congress will
be whether it adopts effective campaign finance reform. If it blocks such
reform, as Republican leaders are
trying to do, Congress will be cynically ignoring the voters and further
wrecking our democratic system. •
55^e^eUr||arkSitne$
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY
18, 1997
i
�pie, has already been acknowledged
Ancestor of Ebonics
To the Editor:
Martha Burns (letter, Feb. 12)
cites the irony that James Bland, an
African-American, was the author of
the racially tainted "Carry Me Back
to Old Virginia," but I think there's
an equally interesting irony that
seems to have escaped notice.
"Old massa" and his "darkies"
are the progenitors of today's ebonies and rap. As Ms. Bums notes, the
dialect of "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers," also by Mr. Bland, and dozens
of other folk songs and spirituals
employed the jargon of the day.
It's fun to wonder how the ebonically
correct lyrics of the 1990's
will be viewed 100 years down the
road.
SAMUEL W. GELFMAN
Los Angeles, Feb. 12,1997
was uncompromising, uci^ving iiicu
Mr. Rush was the man for the job. In
standing his ground, Mr. Hicks
proved that love and creativity can
flower In the face of adversity in
front of, as well as behind, the camera
ANNIE LUBLINER LEHMANN
West Bloomfield, Mich:, Feb. 14,1997
Don't Slight Disabled for Animal Rights' Sake
To the Editor:
Re Paola Cavalieri's Feb. 10 letter
"Isn't It Time to Give Chimps Their
Due?": The Great Ape Project has a
goal that appears ennobling: extending human rights to the great apes,
with whom we form, in its terms, "a
community of equals." Regardless of
the zoological absurdity, no rational
person can be in favor of the maltreatment, torture or murder of
these species.
However, there is an ominous un-
Waterfront Project Doesn't Qualify as Park
To the Editor:
Contrary to "The Ebbing Hudson
River Park" (editorial, Feb. 13), this
is not a "$200 million project" but a
$294 million project. And as with
anything constructed by the Empire
State Development Corporation (the
former Urban Development Corporation), these figures are subject to
change — upward, of course.
The development areas are far
from 'modest," as you say. In fact,
the largest and best sites on the
water'front — the sprawling 30 acres
of Chelsea Piers and the 15-acre rectangle of Pier 40 — have been reserved for development.
The public gets what is left over: a
long, narrow esplanade abutting a
highway.
You are right to criticize Chelsea
Piers for grabbing public space. Yet
Chelsea Piers is also one of the development nodes that you applaud. As
an essential part of the so-called
park, it reveals the fatal flaw in the
entire concept.
In a public park maintained with
funds from private development, the
financial needs of the developer must
The Times welcomes letters from
readers. Letters must include the writer's name, address and telephone
number. Those selected may be shortened for space reasons. Fax letters to
(212) 556-3622 or send by electronic
mail to letters@nytimes.com, or by
regular men! to Letters to the Editor,
The New Yorfe Times, 229 West 43d
Street, New Yorfe, N.Y. J0036-3559.
always come first; otherwise there
is no money. However small the proposed public space is now, it will only
get smaller.
The Empire State Development
Corporation is asking $294 million for
an esplanade connecting a series of
private commercial developments.
Calling it a park is the spin. This is
taxpayer money we are talking
about, and contrary to your suggestion, Governor Pataki is right to wait
for all the facts before committing to
the plan.
STUART WALDMAN
New York, Feb. 13, 1997
The writer is chairman of the Federation to Preserve the Greenwich Village Waterfront and Great Port.
dercurrent to the Great Ape Project
that bears noting. In their zeal to
humanize the apes, activists have
begun to draw analogies between h u mans with disabilities and nonhu-,
man primates. Indeed, in the book •
"The Great Ape Project," which Ms.
Cavalieri co-edited, one chapter is
entitled "Profoundly Intellectually •
Disabled Humans and Great Apes: A •
Comparison."
On a television show, "The Great
Ape Trial," which aired on Dec. 26,
1995, in England, an advocate for,
great-ape rights, Robin Allen, argued
that "they can reason and communi- cate at least as well as some of the
children and disabled humans to
whom we accord human rights." Is
this relevant? Is this even true? All
too frequently individuals with disabilities have been misjudged and
their abilities underestimated.
It is a perverse sense of morality
indeed that seeks to blur the boundary between apes and people by
dehumanizing those for whom human rights are often the most pre-,
carious.
JONATHAN MARKS' •
NORA ELLEN GROCE^
New Haven, Feb. 13,1997
The writers are, respectively, an associate professor of anthropology and
an assistant professor at the School of
Public Health at Yale University.
Research Rationale
HI Times
The New York
Company
229 West 43d St., N.Y. 10036-3959
•
ARTHUR OCHS SULZBERGER. Chairman
Chief Executive Officer
RUSSELL T. LEWIS, President
Chief Operating Officer
DIANE P BAKER, Senior Vice President
Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
KATHARINE P DARROW. Senior Vice President
LEONARD P FORMAN. Senior Vice President
JOHN M. O'BRIEN, Senior Vice President
DONALD S. SCHNEIDER, Senior Vice President
SOLOMON B WATSON IV, Senior Vice President
LAURA J. CORWIN, Secretary
To the Editor:
In your review of the renaissance,
in ground-based astronomy (Science
Times, Feb. 11), you quote an astronomer who mistakenly attributes a
remark to the atomic physicist Enrico Fermi.
It was the physicist Robert W, ,
Wilson, testifying before Congress
on the construction of the Fermilab
particle accelerator, who was askedhow the accelerator would contribute,
to the development of military tech- ,
nology. He replied: "It has nothing todo directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending."
MICHAEL LIEBER
Prof, of Physics, U. of Arkansas
Fayettevj"*. Ark. "
�CQ's American Voter
Leam more about
campaign
contributions at
the FECInfo
Home Page.
http://voter.cq.com/news/wn021001 .htm
Campaign Finance: Lingering Doubts
Return to News
page.
By Rebecca Carr
CQ Staff Writer
Return to
American Voter
home page.
In his State of the Union speech, President Clinton called the overhaul of campaign
finance law "our second piece of unfinished business" and set a July Fourth deadline
for finishing it.
But many doubt the practicality of that deadline, and some wonder whether the
task will be finished at all in the 105th Congress.
New proposals are surfacing almost daily, ranging from total public financing of
campaigns to a repeal of all current rules. So many plans are in the works that some
lawmakers question whether any have a chance of becoming law.
Still, some supporters of an overhaul are quick to say that Clinton's reference was a
"shot in the arm." By mentioning the issue so early in his speech ~ right after a plea
to balance the budget ~ Clinton gave a strong indication of its priority, said Sen. John
McCain, R-Ariz.
Clinton is backing legislation from McCain and Russell D. Feingold, D-Wis., that
would ban the unregulated donations known as "soft money" as well as contributions
from political action committees.
Clinton urged Congress to pass the McCain-Feingold bill (S25) and its House
counterpart (HR493) before July 4th out of respect for the nation's Founding Fathers.
"You know and I know that delay will mean the death of reform," Clinton said.
After the speech, Republicans were quick to call it ironic that Clinton, at the center
of a campaign finance controversy involving the Democratic National Committee,
would seek such dramatic change in the law.
" I call it the campaign finance coverup," said Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas.
"It's a good old political ploy to change the subject if you want to remove the
spotlight from your misdeeds."
And Appropriations Chairman Robert L. Livingston, R-La., compared Clinton with
the former football star O.J. Simpson.
"Having Bill Clinton talk about campaign finance reform is like having O.J.
Simpson talk about the murder ofhis wife," Livingston said. "Why should we be
talking about new laws when he is not even complying with existing laws?"
Democrats, however, pointed out that the Republican National Committee has been
accused of campaign finance abuses too.
"I think McCain-Feingold is an excellent starting point," said Sen. Richard J.
Durbin, D-lll. "I'm confident that the president's message will carry through and
legislation will be passed."
Feingold said Clinton's backing all but assures passage ofhis bill. "His strong
1 of 2
03/20/97 15:18:09
�CQ's American Voter
http://voter.cq.com/news/wn021001 .htm
words and his bipartisan approach will help provide momentum needed to get the bill
passed."
But even the day after Clinton's speech another competing plan cropped up. Reps.
Vic Fazio, D-Calif., and Sam Fair, D-Calif, unveiled legislation (HR600) that would
limit spending and restrict donations from political action committees.
The problem with revamping the campaign finance law is "everyone in Congress
is an expert," Fair said. "But pressure is mounting."
One solution, said Rep. Bob Franks, R-N.J., is to create a bipartisan commission
that would evaluate all of the proposals and then come up with campaign finance
legislation that would come to the floor for an up-or-down vote with no amendments
in order.
"For over a decade, Congress played an intricate game of pingpong with campaign
finance," said Franks. "One chamber would pass a law, knowing the other would not.
It was playing politics. This is an actual desire for reform."
© 1997, Congressional Quarterly Inc. All rights reserved.
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�New Republican sees little need to reform campaign financing laws
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New Republican sees little need to reform
campaignfinancinglaws
Copyright © 1997 Nando.net
Copyright © 1997 Renter Information Service
WASHINGTON (Mar 19, 1997 11:02 a.m. EST) - Jim Nicholson, the new chairman of the Republican
Party, is adding his voice to opponents of campaign finance reform, saying he does not believe there is
too much money in American politics.
In an interview Tuesday, Nicholson said he had appointed a Republican task force to study the issue, but
he personally was skeptical about reform efforts.
"I really have a concern about infringing on the First Amendment rights of free expression," he said.
"The threshhold question is, is too much money being spent on politics in America? My view is that we
are not."
Nicholson, elected Republican chairman in January, said analysts had calculated that Americans spent
less on political campaigns than on potato chips. "We are a huge country, and if you want to take the
$500 million that's the number that's bandied around out there that Republicans raised last year, that's
two dollars a head on a per capita basis," he said.
"We spend an amount about equal to a ticket to one movie with a box of popcorn and a coke once per
election cycle. For a democracy of the size we are, I'm not convinced we're spending too much money on
it," he added.
Nicholson, 58, a real estate developer from Colorado with no previous national political experience,
succeeded Haley Barbour, a charismatic Mississippian who was highly successful at projecting his
party's message to voters.
The soft-spoken Nicholson has made a slow start, taking a low public profile at first. Some Republicans
are already muttering privately that he may not be up to the job.
He said he had been focusing on rebuilding the party organization, starting with the finance division.
While Democrats have been embroiled in a scandal that has forced the party to return some $3 million in
illegal or suspicious contributions, Republicans have largely stayed out of trouble.
The Republicans have also enjoyed a considerable fund-raising advantage over their opponents in recent
years, raising some $200 million more than the Democrats in the past two years, and Nicholson is in no
hurry to tamper with a situation that favors his party.
of 2
03/19/97 12:37:33
�New Republican sees little need to reform campaign financing laws
http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/politics/031997/politics3_14935.html
He said his main aim as chairman was to build a coalition that could win back the White House in 2000.
"Governing is just a means to an end and the end to me is to renew the moral fabric of America and
really get after restoring the American family," he said. "I want to build a new coalition, expanding our
party by reconnecting with women, minorities and young voters and then reaching out to Democrats and
unionists."
•
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TO:65709
PAGE:02
L
INSIDE CONGRESS
CAMPAIGN
FINANCE
Bipartisan Overhaul Measure
Meets an Unsurprising End
Slim hopes for changing election spending are dashed
by pressure from GOP leaders, conservative groups
T
Wi
he death of legiolation to overhaul
campaign finance practices could
give new life to efforts to change
the laws, but not before the next Congress.
Proponents of a bill the Senate effectively has scrapped for the year hope an
outraged AmericHn ttactorate will resuscitate in November the effort to revamp
the systtfrn of election hpending.
For now, pressure from the new GOP
leadership in the Senate and an 11thhour assault from two major conservative groups dashed the slim prospects for
ie bipartisan campaign finance bill (S
2
219) this year. The Senate on June 25
failed, on a 54-46 vote, to limit debate,
falling six votes short of lhe required 60
votes needed to invoke cloture. Sen.
Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.,
then withdrew the bill from the Senate
floor. (Vote 168. p. 1894)
The House may consider campaign
finance legislation the week of July 16,
but lawmakers must first push it
through the House Oversight and
Rules committees. And even if those
hurdles can be scaled. House passage
of any bill would be viewed as a largely
symbolic vote since any further Senate
action this year is highly unlikely.
Lowering their expectations, sponsors of the companion House bill proposed legislation June 27 that would ban
fundraising within 50 miles of Washington by creating a "check-free" aone.
The Oversight Committee will
mark up a separate GOP leadershipbacked bill July 10 that would increase the amount individuals may
contribute and lower the level that political action committees may donate.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court
dealt a blow to campaign finance legislation, ruling June 26 that federal
spending limits on state and national
party organizations do not apply as
long as the parties spend money independently of a candidate's campaign.
By Donna CaAsata
1856 — JUNE 29, 19%
CQ
B0XSC0RE
BIN: S 1219, HR 2566 —
Campaign finance overhaul.
Latest action: The Senate on
June 25 failed, 54-46, to Invoke
cloture, falling six votes short of
the required 60 votes to limit
debate.
Next likely action: House may
consider companion bill the week
of July 15.
Reference: Weekly Report, pp.
1741, 529; 1995 Weekly Report,
pp. 3351, 1809, 1773.
Warning of "open warfare" without spending limits, Senate Minority
Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., called
for a constitutional amendment that
would allow Congress to impose constraints on campaign dollars. (Box, p.
1857)
"This has been a pretty pathetic
week," said Rep. Christopher Shays,
R-Conn., a sponsor of campaign f i nance legislation in the House.
In defeat, proponents took solace
in public opinion polls that reflect
widespread voter disenchantment
with the current campaign finance
system. "There may be a penalty for
this, and the way the American people
obviously enact those penalties is at
the ballot box," said Sen. John
McCain, R-Ariz., a sponsor of the bill.
The campaign finance bill would
have banned political action committees (PACs) and provided incentives
such as free broadcast time and reduced mailing fees to candidates who
complied with the spending limits.
Endorsing the bill was President
Clinton, who sent a letter tn Daschle
June 24 expressing his support, and
reform groups such as Common Cause.
The legislation drew the opposition
of the National Association of Broadcasters, the American Civil Liberties
Union, the National Taxpayers Union,
the National Education Association,
the National Rifle Association and the
Direct Marketing Association.
Most damaging to the bill in the
last month has been the opposition of
the National Right to Life Committee
and the Christian Coalition.
The organizations contended that
the bill's definition and limits on express advocacy would threaten their
voting guides and education activities.
In hopes of aesuaging those concerns,
the bill's sponsorB, McCain and Sens.
Russell D. Feingold. D-Wia., and Fred
Thompson, R-Tenn., included a provision exempting guides that are "limited
to providing infonnation about votes by
elected officials on legislative matters"
from restrictions on independent expenditures.
But the effort failed after the
Christian Coalition renewed its opposition, saying in a June 24 letter to
senators that the amended bill was
flawed. The National Right to Life
Committee, in a separate letter June
22, said it would score the campaign
finance vote as a "key pro-life" vote.
The final blow to the legislation
came from the Republican leadership in
the Senate. Lott opposed the bill and
put considerable pressure on several
GOP senators U> vote against cloture.
In particular, Lott made it clear to a
number of committee chairmen that if
they wanted leadership support, they
should vote against cloture. In the final
�OCT-29 96 20:11 FROM:
TO:65709
POGE:03
•"SlOf
CONORES,
Ruling Loosens Reins on Parties
T
he Supreme Court on June 26 continued to chip
Senate seat soon to be vacated by Democrat Gary Hart.
away at Watergate-era limits that Congress placed
Under federal law, a state party can either spend
on campaign spending, giving political parties new tools
money itself to help a federal candidate or assign the
to help their congressional candidates.
right to the federal party, as the Colorado GOP did to
In Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committhe National Republican Senatorial Committee in 1986tee o. Federal Election Commission, the court threw out
When the Colorado GOP ran the ads, the FEC argued
restrictions on expenditures by political parties when
that by assigning its spending level tc the national party
they are made independent of a candidate's campaign.
the state party had sacrificed its right to spend money
But the 7-2 vote masked the vast differences of
on its own. (Weekly Report, p. 87)
opinion among the justices on whether to lift other
Seven justices, in overturning the decision of the
restrictions on party expenditures
10th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled
made when the party and the candii —
—
t
h
a
t
state and national parties are
date are working together.
free to make unlimited expenditures
" I t is a narrower decision than it
in a congressional campaign as long
"It certainly continues the
could have been," said Lisa E. Roas the party and the candidate are
trend toward weakening the
senberg, director of FEC Watch at
not working together.
the Center for Responsive Politics, a
"We do not see how a Constitucurrent law."
group that studies the relationship
tion that grants to individuals, canbetween money and campaigns. " I t
—Lisa E. Rosenberg, didates and ordinary political comcertainly continues the trend toward
director, FEC Watch mittees the right to make unlimited
weakening the current law."
independent expenditures could
In 1974, Congress revised the
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
— — d e n y
the same right to political parlandmark
197], campaign
finance
ties," wrote Justices Stephen G.
law (PL 92-225) by imposing limits on the amount of
Breyer, Sandra Day O'Connor and David H. Souter, in
money that political parties could spend on behalf of
one of two concurring opinions.
congressional candidates (PL 93-443). Parties could
While joining the majority. Chief Justice William H.
spend 2 cents times the voting-age population of a state
Rehnquist and Justices Anthony M , Kennedy and Anfor Senate elections and about $30,000 for House races.
tonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas went further. In a
(1974 Almanac, p. 611)
separate concurring opinion, Kennedy, Rehnquist and
But the Supreme Court said parties could spend
Scalia wrote that any limits on political party spending,
unlimited amounts on such things as advertising, as long
whether coordinated or not, violated the Constitution's
an they do not coordinate those expenditures with a
First Amendment free speech protection.
particular candidate's campaign. The court did, how"The party's speech, legitimate on its own behalf,
ever, continue to limit spending on party-led efforts that
cannot be separated from speech on the candidate's
are coordinated with a candidate.
behalf without constraining the party in advocating its
" I don't think this decision opens up the floodgates of
most essential positions and pursuing its most basic
unlimited spending in federal elections," said Federal Elecgoals," the justices wrote.
tion Commission General Counsel Lawrence M . Noble.
The dissenters, Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth
Still, the national political parties this fall will be able
Bader Ginsberg, argued for keeping the current law. " I t
to run unlimited ads for favored candidates, a tool previis quite wrong," the two justices wrote, "to assume that
ously denied them. "We'll have to do some independent
the net effect of limits on contributions and expendibuys," said Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, chairman of the
tures . . . will be adverse to the interest of informed
.Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
debate protected by the First Amendment."
These effortB will be in addition to the unregulated
In a footnote, Stevens and Ginsburg noted that the
funds that state and national party committees already
Democratic and Republican national committees had
spend on advertising that enhances a particular campaign
asked the Supreme Court to change the 1974 law rather
but does not specificially urge votes for or against a
than urging Congress to do so.
candidate. These funds are known as soft money. In a 1976
But Congress has been loath to change the way camruling, Buckley v, Vaho, the high court struck down limita
paigns are funded. The latest failure occurred June 25
on independent expenditures. (Weekly Report, p. 996;
when the Senate was unable to limit debate on a bill (S
1976 Almanac, p. 459)
1219) to overhaul campaign finance laws. (Story, p.
The Supreme Court acted on an appeal by the Colo1856)
rado GOP of a June 23, 1995, decision by the 10th U.S.
"The public would expect Congress, if they changed
Circuit Court of Appeals. Then the appellate court upheld
campaign finance laws at all, to reform them to allow
in its entirety the campaign finance law imposing strict
less money, not more money, into the process," said
spending limits on parties' national and state committees.
Rosenberg of FEC Watch. " I f Congress turns to the
At issue was a $15,000 campaign ad broadcast by the
courts to interpret the laws, that perhaps is their way of
Colorado GOP in April 19$6 against then Rep. Timothy
letting the courts do their dirty work."
Wirth, a Democrat seeking his party's nomination to the
—JTonathan D. Salant
CQ
J U N E 29, 1996 — 1857
�OCT-29 9fe gg;
FO:
RM
TO:65709
PAGE:04
INSIDf COMGDESS
tally, only eight Republicans voted
with 46 Democrats to limit debate.
One Democrat, Sen. Howell Heflin of
Alabama, broke ranks with his party.
Senate efforts to invoke cloture on a
campaign finance conference report in
September 1994 failed by a similar margin. 57-43. (1994 Almanac, p. 32)
Impact on Elections
Leading the filibuster of the campaign finance bill was Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who dismissed the supporters' argument that legislation
voluntarily limiting campaign spending
would lessen the advantage the system
now gives incumbents over challengers.
"You cannot create a level playing
field; it is impoaeible." McConnell said.
Proponents of the bill bemoaned
the money chase current laws have
created for candidates and political
parties, and the public perception that
campaign contributions buy influence.
"Money has become the defining
attributes of candidates in this country." said Feingold.
Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va.,
^ ^ ^ a r n iled that without changes in the sye, Congress could become the "excluive domain of the very wealthy," pre^^Wive <
venting lawmakers such as himself —
with a common man's background —
from seeking public office.
Several opponents of the bill favored
some overhaul to the system, but feared
that the legislation was misguided. Sen.
Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said the bill
lacked provisions requiring greater discloaure <md "sunlight is the best disinfectant for the political process."
The legislation proposed voluntary
spending limits on primary and general
elections that would be calculated based
on the voting age population of a state,
which McConnell said would simply redirect the money. "Spending limit* are,
in short, like putting a rock on Jello. I t
sort of oozes out to the side in a different
direction," he said.
McConnell's decision to oppose the
bill, based largely on his belief that i t
infringes on constitutional rights of
free speech and the ability to participate in the political process, carries
certain risks for the two-term Republican, who faces re-election in a traditionally Democratic state that has
inly recently moved toward the GOP.
Campaign finance has been fodder
ir newspaper editorials and political
discussions in Kentucky. McConnell's
opponent, former L t . Gov. Steven
Beshear, has made an isnue of the senator's fight against the legislation.
"It's time to take the big money
1858 — JUNK 29, 19%
CQ,
out of politics," Beshear said in an
OBITUARY
interview following his win in the May
28 Democratic Senate p r i m a r y .
"Mitch McConnell, I'm embarrassed
to say, is the chief opponent of any
effective campaign finance reform."
But McConnell said he relishes the
prospect of Beshear taking him to task >
Missouri Republican Rep. Bill Emfor his stand on campaign finance. He
erson died June 22 at Bethesda Naval
praised the June 26 Supreme Court
Hospital from complications due to
decision.
lung cancer. He was 58.
A test of McCain's contention that
Emerson was admitted to the hosthe campaign finance vote will have an
pital June 17 for monitoring of a respiimpact on close races could come in
ratory infection that developed during
Kansas when Republicans chouse
his cancer treatments, according to a
their Senate nominee Aug. 6.
statement he released June 20. He was
diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer
Sen. Sheila Frahm, who replaced
in October 1995.
former Majority Leader Bob Dole, RKan., faces a tough challenge from
Emerson, a staunch supporter of
Rep. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., a cotraditional farm programs and federal
sponsor of the companion House camhighway projects, was first elected to
paign finance bill (HR 2566).
Congress in 1980. After he was sworn
Frahm was one of 45 Republicans
in Jan. 3, 1981, Emerson was awarded
who voted against cloture and thereby
a slot on the Agriculture Committee
helped shelve the bill for the year. The
and in 1988 won a seat on the Public
next day, Brownback's campaign seized
Works and Transportation Commiton her vote. "Here is another stark differtee, now the Transportation and Inence between Sheila Frahm and myself. I
frastructure panel.
am a strong advocate of campaign f i He worked his way up the ranks of
nance reform. She opposes i t , "
the Agriculture panel to the No. 2
Brownback said.
GOP slot and was widely considered
Frahm defended her vote, saying
the likely heir to Chairman Pat Robshe supports the concept of campaign
erts, R-Kan., who is vacating his seat
finance, but contends the Senate bill
to run for the Senate.
would impinge on free speech and creHe was at tho forefront of the reate a bureaucracy to enforce its provibellion against the Freedom to Farm
sions. " I ' m not going to vote expediAct (PL 104-127), which replaced crop
ently to hold o f f any campaign
subsidies with fixed but declining payquestions," Frahm said.
ments to farmers. Emerson, who supThe message from voter* could deported continued crop subsidies and
termine whether the next Congress acte
marketing loans for cotton, a major
to revamp campaign finance laws or
crop in his state, joined with Larry
hands the task off to an independent
Combest. R-Texas, and southern lawcommission.
makers in voting against the bill in
Just over a year ago, Clinton and
committee, leading to talk of retaliaHouse Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.,
tion by the GOP leadership. (1995
promised to form a commission on
Weekty Report, p. 3053)
campaign finance reform. The panel
Emerson ultimately voted for the
would be modeled on the base closings
legislation when it reached the House
commission, which produced an all-orfloor earlier this year after the leadernothing recommendation for the Conship agreed to retain marketing loans
gress and executive branch.
for cotton.
Dole, on his last day in the Senate,
Throughout his eight terms, Emeroffered legislation to create a bipartisan
son also supported reducing federal
commission on campaign practices.
spending and enacting a balancedSponsors of the Senate bill, however,
budget constitutional amendment,
dismiss the notion of a commission, seeprovided agriculture spending would
ing it as an unattractive last resort. "We
be protected. He consistently voted
may have to go to a commission, but that
against abortion rights legislation.
would be an admission of the inability of
Funeral services were held June 27 in
the Congress to grapple with a very sensiEmerson's hometown, Cape Girardeau.
tive and difficult issue," McCain said.
A memorial service in Washington
A pessimistic Thompson said it may
was planned for after the congrestake a scandal to force Congress to act.
sional Fourth of July recess.
•
Campaign finance laws were last rewritten in the wake of Watergate in 1974. •
By Catherine Torrance
Missouri's Emerson
Dead at 58
n
G
�Riady or not?
http://www.mojones.com/motherJones/JF97/davis.html
HI
HELLRAISER C E N T R A L
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Riady or not?
Forget Whitewater. Clinton's Indonesian money scandal may be the real thing. L.J. Davis, who
has followed Clinton's ties to billionaire Mochtar Riady since 1992, raises questions about Riady's
relationship to Indonesian dictator Suharto.
By L.J. Davis
I f you compare the scandals of the Clinton administration to the operas bouffes of the
Harding, Nixon, and even the Reagan years, they seem like small potatoes indeed.
Harding's Teapot Dome scandal was a classic example of a common Republican
delusion: Because the U.S. government is illegitimate, anything it owns is by nature the
property of any Cabinet member with the audacity to take it. In Watergate, Nixon and his
cronies extended this idea: They believed they owned the government itself and anyone
who tried to take it from them should be handled with extreme ruthlessness. During
Reagan's tenure, more than 100 administration officials were accused of illegal or
unethical acts. The Iran-Contra and HUD scandals alone brought more than two dozen
convictions.
And now we have the amiable Bill Clinton, who differs in degree but is remarkably
similar in kind. We can set aside, for the moment, Whitewater, Travelgate, and Craig
Livingstone ~ all of them matters that the Gipper, on his worst day, would have turned
away with a twinkle and a quip.
The Indonesian affair, however, is a different story. First, billionaire Mochtar Riady
conducted his businesses in Arkansas (where he first met Clinton nearly 20 years ago)
and elsewhere in a manner of dubious legality. Second, Riady's Lippo Group, his son
James, and his associate John Huang gave and/or raised large quantities of money for
Clinton and the Democrats. And third, it is possible that Riady is closely tied to the
ruthless Indonesian dictator Suharto, who seems to be getting a lot of what he wants
from the Clinton administration.
These are, as they say, deep waters.
(Continued)
1 of 2
12/18/96 18:16:24
�Riady or not?
http://www.mojones.com/niotherJones/JF97/davis.html
John Huang's wife, Jane, is No. 262 in the Mother Jones 400, a searchable database
of the nation's top 400 political contributors. Check out our itemized list of Huang's
individual contributions.
HELLRAISER CENTRAL
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2 of 2
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�PM-Dole, Bjt,0740
Dole Pushing Pocketbook Issues i n Midwestern Battleground
Eds: This serves as a p o l i t i c a l roundup. W i l l be l e d a f t e r f i r s t Dole event
ns a t l l a.m. EDT
h PM-Clinton
CURT ANDERSON= Associated Press Writer=
WASHINGTON (AP) A f t e r pounding the Democratic Party f o r t a k i n g campaign
money from abroad, Bob Dole i s switching h i s focus t o t a x cuts and the economy
as he begins a journey through Midwestern s t a t e s c r u c i a l t o h i s p r e s i d e n t i a l
e l e c t i o n hopes.
Dole attacked the Democrats over the weekend a t stops i n t r a d i t i o n a l l y
Republican s t a t e s f o r recent r e v e l a t i o n s t h a t people w i t h t i e s t o an
Indonesian business conglomerate have c o n t r i b u t e d hundreds o f thousands of
d o l l a r s t o the Democrats.
He labeled the matter a " m a j o r scandal i n v o l v i n g a flow of f o r e i g n money
i n t o the Democratic Party and attempts t o buy access t o the White House. He
proposed an overhaul of campaign finance laws, i n c l u d i n g a ban on
c o n t r i b u t i o n s from anyone who i s not a U.S. c i t i z e n and e l i g i b l e v o t e r .
Currently, f o r e i g n e r s who are permanent U.S. residents may c o n t r i b u t e .
"We simply cannot allow the p o l i t i c a l i n f l u e n c e of any American to. be
outweighed by f o r e i g n money,'' Dole said Sunday i n Nashua, N.H.
Dole today was beginning a two-day v i s i t t o Michigan and Ohio,
battleground s t a t e s where p o l l s show him t r a i l i n g President C l i n t o n and where
39 of the 270 e l e c t o r a l needed f o r v i c t o r y are a t stake.
C l i n t o n , meanwhile, was stumping the same two s t a t e s , s t a r t i n g h i s day i n
Cleveland and ending i t i n D e t r o i t as he mixed campaigning f o r h i s r e - e l e c t i o n
w i t h r a i s i n g money f o r Democratic congressional candidates.
F i r s t on Dole's schedule today was an economic forum i n D e t r o i t w i t h
r a l Republican governors, some of whom have been openly c r i t i c a l of the
g g l i n g campaign.
•
" I thought George Bush's campaign was probably the poorest-run
p r e s i d e n t i a l campaign, and I t h i n k t h i s i s a close second, Wisconsin Gov.
Tommy Thompson said l a s t week.
I n any event, the forum gave Dole and running mate Jack Kemp, who was also
attending, another chance t o persuade people t h a t the country needs a 15
percent across-the-board t a x cut coupled w i t h a balanced budget by 2002 and
cuts i n other taxes.
"Why shouldn't the f e d e r a l government pinch pennies f o r a change?' Dole
t o l d an audience i n New Castle, Del., on Sunday.
Despite the continued bad news i n p u b l i c opinion p o l l s , Dole kept a brave
face on h i s chances and urged the GOP f a i t h f u l i n New Hampshire and Delaware
not t o give up.
" I ' m the most o p t i m i s t i c man i n America, and on Nov. 6 (the day a f t e r the
e l e c t i o n ) , B i l l C l i n t o n i s going t o be the most surprised man i n America, ' he
said i n Nashua, N.H.
Kemp had the same message as he made the rounds o f Sunday t e l e v i s i o n t a l k
shows. " W w i l l win, and I believe t h a t from the bottom of my s o u l , ' ' the GOP
"e
vice p r e s i d e n t i a l nominee declared.
Vice President A l Gore, meanwhile, spent Sunday i n Chicago t r y i n g t o f i r m
up t r a d i t i o n a l Democratic constituencies, meeting w i t h Hispanic leaders and
v i s i t i n g a black church. "You can make the c r i t i c a l d i f f e r e n c e , • • he t o l d h i s
audiences.
On campaign finance reform, Dole proposed a b i p a r t i s a n commission t o
l e an issue t h a t Congress has been unable t o resolve, i n c l u d i n g another
ure t h i s year. Besides the ban on f o r e i g n c o n t r i b u t o r s , he l a i d out
r a l other ""core p r i n c i p l e s , ' ' i n c l u d i n g :
•
Abolishing so-called " " s o f t money,'' u n l i m i t e d c o n t r i b u t i o n s from
corporations, labor unions and other e n t i t i e s t o help p o l i t i c a l p a r t i e s
finance ad campaigns and other e f f o r t s .
Reducing the i n f l u e n c e of s p e c i a l - i n t e r e s t p o l i t i c a l a c t i o n committees,
«
11
11
1
1
�although he did not say how. Dole has been among p o l i t i c i a n s i n both parties
who have long benefited from PAC largesse.
' Ending the practice by some labor unions of using members' dues to pay for
lpendent efforts aimed at influencing elections. Republicans have been h i t
P t h i s year by a $35 million AFL-CIO campaign aimed at unseating GOP
shman i n Congress.
Clinton's re-election team said Dole was being hypocritical i n c a l l i n g for
campaign finance reform when he had opposed many such measures i n h i s 35-year
career i n Congress, including l a s t year when a major effort f a i l e d to limit
Senate and House campaign spending and abolish PACs.
""We agree that campaign finance reform i s long overdue and should be
dealt with i n a bipartisan fashion. But i t ' s a l i t t l e late and disingenuous
for Bob Dole to promote campaign finance reform,'' Clinton campaign spokesman
Joe Lockhart said. ""... I t ' s too bad that Sen. Bob Dole's record doesn't
match candidate Dole's r h e t o r i c .
f
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�PAGE
20TH STORY o f L e v e l 1 p r i n t e d
2
i n FULL f o r m a t .
C o p y r i g h t 1997 The W a s h i n g t o n Post
The W a s h i n g t o n Post
J a n u a r y 12, 1997, Sunday, F i n a l
SL
Edition
^ON: OUTLOOK; Pg. C03
LENGTH: 15 06 words
HEADLINE: A LOOK AT .
R o a d b l o c k s t.p Campaign Reform; The Supreme P r o b l e m ;
Why t h e C o u r t ' s P r e v i o u s R u l i n g s P r e v e n t Real Change
BYLINE: M i l t o n S. G w i r t z m a n
BODY:
The most f o r m i d a b l e o b s t a c l e t o campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m i s n o t t h e
p o l i t i c i a n s who depend upon t h e p r e s e n t s l e a z y s y s t e m t o g e t e l e c t e d . I t i s t h e
U.S. Supreme C o u r t , whose members h o l d o f f i c e f o r l i f e . U n l e s s t h e c o u r t i s
w i l l i n g t o change i t s v i e w t h a t campaign s p e n d i n g i s t h e e q u i v a l e n t o f f r e e
speech, a n y e f f e c t i v e r e f o r m l a w i s s u r e t o be s t r u c k down as u n c o n s t i t u t i o n a l .
The f i r s t a n d l a s t t i m e Congress p a s s e d c o m p r e h e n s i v e campaign f i n a n c e
r e f o r m was i n 1974, a f t e r l a r g e c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o t h e N i x o n campaign f r o m
c o r p o r a t e e x e c u t i v e s were u s e d t o s a b o t a g e o p p o s i t i o n c a n d i d a t e s and were f o u n d
i n t h e bank a c c o u n t s o f t h e W a t e r g a t e b u r g l a r s . The l a w l i m i t e d c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o
$ 1,000 p e r p e r s o n , p e r e l e c t i o n . I t s e t r e a l i s t i c c e i l i n g s on what c a n d i d a t e s
c o u l d spend f r o m t h e i r own p o c k e t s and what o t h e r s c o u l d spend on t h e i r b e h a l f .
I t w o u l d have w o r k e d . B u t k e y p a r t s o f i t were n e v e r a l l o w e d t o go i n t o e f f e c t .
I n a s e r i e s o f d e c i s i o n s f l o w i n g f r o m B u c k l e y v. V a l e o i n 1976, t h e Supreme
t u s e d t h e f r e e s p e e c h g u a r a n t e e o f t h e F i r s t Amendment t o d i s m a n t l e t h e
p i e c e b y p i e c e , u n t i l , as t h e l a s t e l e c t i o n showed, t h e r e a r e no e f f e c t i v e
r e s t r a i n t s l e f t on t h e amount o f money t h a t c a n be p o u r e d i n t o campaigns. The
B u c k l e y case was an u n u s u a l one i n t h a t t h e c o u r t was b e i n g a s k e d t o r e n d e r an
a d v i s o r y o p i n i o n on a l a w b e f o r e i t h a d a chance t o work. The d e c i s i o n r e a d s
l i k e t h e pronouncement o f P l a t o ' s p h i l o s o p h e r k i n g on campaigns i n an i d e a l
w o r l d . B u t , as J u s t i c e B y r o n W h i t e warned i n h i s d i s s e n t , t h e p o l i t i c i a n s who
w r o t e t h e l a w knew much more a b o u t campaign r e a l i t y t h a n t h e c o u r t d i d .
The r e s u l t h a s been a f u n d a m e n t a l d i s c o n n e c t between t h e way A m e r i c a n s want
campaigns t o be c o n d u c t e d a n d t h e way t h e y a r e a c t u a l l y r u n u n d e r what t h e c o u r t
c a l l s i t s "campaign f i n a n c e j u r i s p r u d e n c e . " The c o u r t c l a i m s l i m i t s on campaign
s p e n d i n g v i o l a t e t h e F i r s t Amendment's f r e e speech c l a u s e because t h e y " r e d u c e
the number o f i s s u e s d i s c u s s e d , t h e d e p t h o f t h e i r e x p l o r a t i o n a n d t h e s i z e o f
the a u d i e n c e r e a c h e d . " B u t most campaigns do n o t h i n g o f t h e s o r t . C a n d i d a t e s a n d
t h e i r s t r a t e g i s t s spend most o f t h e i r money on t e l e v i s i o n ads a t t a c k i n g t h e
r e c o r d o f opponents and d i s t o r t i n g t h e i r p o s i t i o n s . Far from o f f e r i n g a t h o r o u g h
a i r i n g o f t h e i s s u e s , t h e e x p e n s i v e ads c o n c e n t r a t e on a f e w " h o t b u t t o n " ones
p r e s e n t e d i n t h e s h a l l o w e s t a n d most s i m p l i s t i c way: "The R e p u b l i c a n s a r e g o i n g
t o c u t y o u r M e d i c a r e ! " " B i l l C l i n t o n gave us t h e l a r g e s t t a x i n c r e a s e i n
history!"
The c o u r t showed t h e same n a i v e t e when i t gave t h e g r e e n l i g h t t o t h e
u n l i m i t e d " i n d e p e n d e n t e x p e n d i t u r e s " t h a t were t h e s o u r c e o f such embarrassment
i n l a s t y e a r ' s p r e s i d e n t i a l e l e c t i o n . The c o u r t , h a v i n g i n m i n d t h e l o n e
�PAGE
3
The Washington Post, January 12, 1997
a c t i v i s t who p r i n t s f l i e r s t o hand out i n the s t r e e t , s a i d t h i s k i n d of spending
"may w e l l p r o v i d e l i t t l e assistance t o the candidate's campaign." The court d i d
not a n t i c i p a t e t h a t i n t e r e s t groups and p o l i t i c a l p a r t i e s would r a i s e hundreds
of m i l l i o n s of d o l l a r s o u t s i d e the c o n t r i b u t i o n l i m i t s and spend i t t o promote
£
.fic candidates.
;
The c o u r t has a l s o been c l u e l e s s about who c o n t r o l s modern campaigns. " I n the
f r e e s o c i e t y o r d a i n e d by our C o n s t i t u t i o n , " i t said i n Buckley, " i t i s not the
government but the people -- i n d i v i d u a l l y as c i t i z e n s and candidates and
c o l l e c t i v e l y as a s s o c i a t i o n s and p o l i t i c a l committees -- who must r e t a i n c o n t r o l
over the q u a n t i t y and range" of p o l i t i c a l debate.
But the v o t e r s have l i t t l e say i n the matter. Campaign debate i s c o n t r o l l e d
by the candidates, who want t o r a i s e and spend as much as they t h i n k they need
to get e l e c t e d , and by t h e i r media c o n s u l t a n t s , who would l i k e them t o spend as
much as p o s s i b l e since t h e i r compensation depends upon the number of t e l e v i s i o n
spots they place. I r o n i c a l l y , when v o t e r s have t r i e d t o c o n t r o l the debate, by
passing i n i t i a t i v e s and referendums l i m i t i n g campaign spending (nine s t a t e s have
done t h i s , i n c l u d i n g s i x l a s t y e a r ) , the lower c o u r t s have s t r u c k them down as
u n c o n s t i t u t i o n a l under Buckley v. Valeo.
The r e v u l s i o n t o t h i s s t a t e of a f f a i r s has spread t o every p a r t of s o c i e t y ,
i t seems, except f o r the j u d i c i a r y . I n p o l l a f t e r p o l l , by margins of up t o 8 t o
1, v o t e r s have s a i d they want more l i m i t s on spending and c o n t r i b u t i o n s . A f t e r
the l a s t e l e c t i o n , they t o l d p o l l t a k e r s t h a t the hundreds of m i l l i o n s spent
between the conventions and November had no e f f e c t on t h e i r u l t i m a t e votes, but
t h a t the way campaigns are p a i d f o r was a major reason f o r t h e i r lack of t r u s t
in public o f f i c i a l s .
For t h e i r own p a r t , scores o f e l e c t e d o f f i c i a l s express f r u s t r a t i o n a t how
constant begging f o r money saps t h e i r time, h u r t s t h e i r d i g n i t y and offends
^r sense of decency. As George M i t c h e l l s a i d on the f l o o r of the Senate i n
1993, a f t e r a t h i r d attempt t o break a f i l i b u s t e r on a campaign reform b i l l had
failed:
"Mr. President, t h i s system s t i n k s . Every senator who p a r t i c i p a t e s i n i t
knows i t s t i n k s . And the American people are r i g h t when they m i s t r u s t t h i s
system, when what m a t t e r s most i n seeking p u b l i c o f f i c e i s not i n t e g r i t y , not
a b i l i t y , not judgment, n o t reason, not r e s p o n s i b i l i t y , not experience, not
i n t e l l i g e n c e , b u t money. . . . Money dominates the system. Money i n f u s e s the
system. Money i s the system."
Just about every l e g a l s c h o l a r i n the f i e l d has c r i t i c i z e d the court on
campaign f i n a n c e . Prof. Paul Freund of the Harvard Law School wrote: "Campaign
c o n t r i b u t o r s are o p e r a t i n g v i c a r i o u s l y through the power of t h e i r purse r a t h e r
than through the power o f t h e i r ideas. I would scale t h a t r e l a t i v e l y lower i n
the h i e r a r c h y o f F i r s t Amendment values. T e l e v i s i o n ads have t h e i r value s u r e l y ,
and y e t i n terms o f t h e p h i l o s o p h y of the F i r s t Amendment seem t o be m i n i m a l l y
the k i n d of speech or communication t h a t i s t o be p r o t e c t e d . We are d e a l i n g here
not so much w i t h the r i g h t of personal expression or even a s s o c i a t i o n , but w i t h
d o l l a r s and d e c i b e l s . And j u s t as the volume of sound may be l i m i t e d by law so
may the volume o f d o l l a r s , w i t h o u t v i o l a t i n g the F i r s t Amendment."
The best way t o c o n f r o n t the court d i r e c t l y w i t h the need f o r change i s f o r
Congress t o reenact the spending l i m i t s the Buckley case found
�PAGE
4
The Washington Post, January 12, 1997
u n c o n s t i t u t i o n a l . To b u t t r e s s i t s c o n s t i t u t i o n a l i t y , the law should begin w i t h
extensive f i n d i n g s o f f a c t about the c o r r o s i v e i n f l u e n c e o f the present system
and f i r m l y d e c l a r e i t s purposes: t o prevent c o r r u p t i o n or the appearance o f
cr-^-uption; t o enhance the q u a l i t y of our system o f democratic self-government;
o e q u a l i z e the i n f l u e n c e o f a l l c i t i z e n s i n the p o l i t i c a l process, both as
vu__rs and a c t i v e p a r t i c i p a n t s .
The l i m i t s themselves should be a d j u s t e d f o r i n f l a t i o n , as could the l i m i t on
c o n t r i b u t i o n s . This would mean a nominee f o r p r e s i d e n t could spend $ 60 m i l l i o n ,
someone running f o r the House could sp.end $ 210,000 (and an equal amount i f
there i s a p r i m a r y ) , and general e l e c t i o n spending f o r a Senate campaign would
be l i m i t e d t o 36 cents per e l i g i b l e v o t e r . This would l i m i t Senate nominees t o
around $ 1.7 m i l l i o n i n a mid-size s t a t e such as Massachusetts and $ 3.2 m i l l i o n
i n a l a r g e one such as I l l i n o i s . These are reasonable amounts o f money, f a r l e s s
than has been spent i n recent years. (Each Massachusetts Senate candidate spent
more than $ 7 m i l l i o n l a s t year.)
What chance i s t h e r e , i f the c u r r e n t scandal goes deep enough and long enough
t o produce an e f f e c t i v e b i l l l i k e t h i s , t h a t the c o u r t w i l l uphold i t ? I n the
past, when the c o u r t has reversed i t s d e c i s i o n s on broad p u b l i c issues, i t was
because the p r e v i o u s d o c t r i n e was badly out o f sync w i t h the way American
s o c i e t y now views i t s s o c i a l and p o l i t i c a l requirements and, indeed, t h e
fundamental p r i n c i p l e s o f j u s t i c e .
Brown v. Board o f Education reversed the c o u r t ' s s a n c t i o n i n g of segregated
schools. U n t i l the Scottsboro Boys d e c i s i o n i n 1932, the r i g h t t o a f a i r t r i a l
i n a c r i m i n a l case d i d not n e c e s s a r i l y i n c l u d e the r i g h t t o o b t a i n a lawyer. For
most o f our h i s t o r y , s t a t e l e g i s l a t i v e d i s t r i c t s were r i g g e d t o g i v e r u r a l
v o t e r s g r e a t e r r e p r e s e n t a t i o n than c i t y people. I n i t s reapportionment d e c i s i o n s
i n 1962, the c o u r t f o r c e d s t a t e l e g i s l a t u r e s t o redraw t h e i r d i s t r i c t s so t h a t
y person's vote would have an equal weight. I n r e v e r s i n g i t s e l f those times,
court had the sense and the courage t o read the C o n s t i t u t i o n as a l i v i n g
document, whose i n t e r p r e t a t i o n could change w i t h the changing p e r c e p t i o n o f
s o c i e t y ' s needs.
The members o f the Supreme Court are i n t e l l i g e n t people. They read the same
newspapers and watch the same t e l e v i s i o n news as the r e s t of us. I would be
s u r p r i s e d i f they were not as offended by what goes on i n campaigns as we are.
What they can do w i t h i n the l i m i t s o f the C o n s t i t u t i o n i s t h e i r r e s p o n s i b i l i t y .
For the r e s t o f us, the scandals o f the 1996 e l e c t i o n campaign o f f e r a chance t o
r e v i v e the issue, and i t behooves us t o take i t as f a r as we can.
M i l t o n S. Gwirtzman i s a Washington a t t o r n e y and a member of the s e n i o r
advisory board a t Harvard U n i v e r s i t y ' s John F. Kennedy School o f Government.
GRAPHIC: I l l u s t r a t i o n , k e r r y waghorn f o r The Washington Post
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: January 12, 1997
�New Canyaign Fjnance Reform Proposals
http://www.brook.edu/GS/NEWCFR/reform.htm
Return to the Brookings Home Page
Campaign Finance Reform Site
New Campaign Finance Reform Proposal for the 105th Congress
Norman J. Omstein, The American Enterprise Institute
Thomas E. Mann, The Brookings Institution
Paul Taylor, Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition
Michael J. Malbin, State University of New York, Albany
Anthony Corrado, Jr., Coiby College
December 17,1996
The campaign finance system in America has been a problem for some time. But in 1996, it went from the political
equivalent of a low-grade fever to Code Blue- from a chronic problem needing attention sooner or later to a crisis, with a
system clearly out of control. The system needs both an immediate fix in a few important areas, and some sustained attention
to the broader problems. We need an approach that breaks us out of the unproductive framework— Democrats insisting on a
bottom line of tough spending limits and public financing, Republicans insisting on a bottom line of no spending limits and
no public financing— that has doomed any constructive change for decades. It must instead use constructive ideas to help
reduce existing problems without creating large unanticipated new ones.
And any proposal must accommodate the Supreme Court's rulings, from Buckley v. Valeo to this year's Colorado decision,
that give wide leeway to individuals and groups independently to raise and spend resources in public and political debate
under the First Amendment. If a Constitutional Amendment to alter the impact of the Court's decisions were desirable (and it
is not clear that amending the First Amendment is the appropriate course of action,) it is not practical in the near term. So
other ways must be found to reform the system within the existing constitutional context- ways that will achieve the
objectives of placing huge donations to candidates or parties off limits; leveling the playing field for outside groups and
candidates in political communications in campaigns; enhancing political discourse and dialogue in the campaign;
strengthening enforcement and disclosure; and encouraging small individual contributions.
We propose changes in five key areas:
1. "Soft" Money
The idea of "soft" money, spending by parties outside federal regulation, emerged in the reforms of the 1970s, as a way to
enhance the role and status of party organizations. Unlike the hard money that goes to campaigns, soft money can come
directly from corporate coffers and unions, and in unlimited amounts from wealthy individuals. It is harder to trace, less
systematically disclosed, and less accountable.
Over time, soft money contributions for "party-building and grass roots volunteer activities" (the language of the law) came
to be used for broader purposes, and evolved into a complex system of parties setting up many separate accounts, sometimes
funneling money from the national party to the states or vice versa, or back and forth in dizzying trails. But soft money was a
comparatively minor problem in campaign funding until 1992. Parties sharply increased their soft money fundraising and
spending for a wide range of political activities, including broadcast ads, both in and out of election season. The escalation
increased alarmingly in 1996. Both parties sought and received large sums of money, often in staggering amounts from
individuals, companies and other entities, and poured unprecedented sums of soft money into the equivalent of
party-financed campaign ads. There is now evidence that some of this money came illegally from foreign sources.
The original limited role of soft money, as a way to enable funds to be used to enhance the role and capability of the parties,
especially the state parties, has been mangled beyond recognition. Still, any change in law must recognize that state parties
are governed by state laws; that traditional party-building activities, from voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives to
sample ballots, have an inevitable overlap between campaigns for state and local offices and campaigns for federal office,
and that the goal of enhancing the role of parties is a laudable and necessary one.
What to do? We propose the following:
a. Prohibit national party committee soft money by eliminating the distinction in law between non-federal and federal party
money for funds raised by national party committees or their agents. In other words, create one pot of national party money
that has similar fund-raising qualifications to the money raised for candidates, namely, no corporate and union funds and
limits on sums from individuals. Money may only come from individuals and registered political committees, which are
given specific limitations.
b. Give parties freedom to allocate the hard resources they are able to raise among their candidates for office as they choose
and not subject to existing restrictions, in order to provide a robust role for political parties even as they lose the soft money
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�New Carripaign Finance Reform Proposals
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- resources; this in turn will move the parties away from the subterfuge, encouraged by the Colorado decision, that they can
operate independently of their own candidates.
c. Expand the existing limits on individual contributions to parties. Currently, individuals can give a total of $25,000 per year
in hard money to federal candidates and/or parties, with a sub-limit of $20,000 to a party (and with no limits on soft money
donations.) Change the limits so that individuals can give the current limit of $25,000 per year to candidates, but create a
separate limit of $25,000 per year to political parties. Index both figures to inflation.
d. Stiffen party disclosure requirements. Currently, parties can transfer unlimited sums to state parties or related entities for
use as they wish, without any federal disclosure of the state party expenditure. We propose that any monies transferred from
a federal party to a state party or state and local entity be covered by federal disclosure laws, including the source and the
nature of any expenditure of the funds, and that any transfers from state parties to federal committees come only from federal
accounts. We also encourage states to continue their own trend of strong state-based disclosure requirements.
2. Issue Advocacy
1996 saw an explosion of political ads both by outside groups, such as the AFL-CIO and business entities, and by both
political parties, with unlimited (i.e., unregulated) contributions and outlays because they were classified not as
campaign-related independent expenditures but as "issue advocacy" ads. The Court in Buckley v. Valeo defined political ads
as those that explicitly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate. This very narrow definition has allowed groups to
employ television and radio ads that were political ads in every sense except that they avoided any explicit candidate
advocacy. Thus, huge numbers of campaign ads aired that were thinly disguised- at best- as issue ads. They praised or~
more frequently attacked- specific candidates but ended with the tag line "Call Congressman
and tell him to....
(stop "raising taxes," stop "cutting Medicare", etc.)
The Supreme Court has appropriately stated that issue advocacy is protected under the First Amendment, as are independent
expenditure campaigns. However, funding for independent expenditure campaigns can be regulated as are candidate and
party funding for elections. We believe that there is room for Congress to define with more clarity what is meant by issue
advocacy and political campaigning without running afoul of the Court's real intent. Thus we propose:
Any paid communication with the general public that uses a federal candidate's name or likeness within ninety days of a
primary or of a general election- the same times used by Congress to limit lawmakers' postal patron mass mailing
communications- be considered a campaign ad, not an issue advocacy message, and be covered by the same rules that
govern independent expenditure campaigns, meaning among other things that they cannot be financed by corporate or union
funds, but can use publicly disclosed voluntary contributions in a fashion similar to funds raised by political action
committees. (An exemption would apply, as it does in current law, for candidate debates and press coverage.)
This change would not limit in any way groups' ability to communicate in a direct targeted fashion with their own members
or constituents. Nor would it limit advertising campaigns or the freedom of parties or independent groups to get their
issue-oriented messages out. What it would do is change the funding basis of campaigns that include actual federal
candidates to conform to other comparable election-related efforts. The AFL-CIO or the Chamber of Commerce, the
Christian Coalition or the Sierra Club, for example, could run whatever ads it wanted, funded as it wished, whenever it
wanted that mentioned or referred to no specific candidate for office. It could run ads that mentioned candidates or
lawmakers in a similar fashion except during the ninety days before a primary or general election. During the two ninety-day
periods, ads could run that mentioned a candidate or used the candidate's likeness— but those ads would have to be funded in
the same fashion as other independent expenditure campaigns— in other words, by publicly disclosed money raised on a
voluntary basis by a political committee.
3. Broadcast Bank.
No campaign finance reform will be effective unless it ensures adequate means for candidates and parties to get their
messages across. A positive and constructive campaign finance reform proposal will channel resources in the most beneficial
ways, empowering parties and candidates (including challengers) and encouraging small individual contributions, while
removing as much as possible the unfair advantages and subsidies available to independently wealthy, self-financed
candidates. At the same time, a constructive reform will try to encourage better debate and deliberation in campaigns by
encouraging more candidate-on-screen discourse. In that spirit we propose:
a. Creation of a "broadcast bank" consisting of minutes of television and radio time on all broadcast outlets. Some time will
be given to political parties, allocated in the same proportion as the public funding available for presidential campaigns.
Other time will be available to individual candidates, as described below. Each party will decide how to allocate the time
among its candidates. Such time can be used for ads, provided that no message is less than sixty seconds, and the candidate
must appear on screen on television messages, and the candidate's voice and identification used on radio communications.
b. Additional time will be available to candidates who raise above a threshold of $25,000 in individual, in-state contributions
of $100 or less; for each subsequent such contribution, candidates will receive a voucher for an equivalent amount of
broadcast time.
c. The broadcast bank can be financed in several ways. The first step is to make a tradeoff: the "lowest unit rate" provision,
which requires that broadcasters give discounts that average thirty percent on the advertising time they sell political
candidates, will be repealed. In return, each broadcaster will be assessed a fee, in dollars or minutes, on all advertising the
broadcaster sells, with the revenues going to the broadcast bank. In 1991, the National Association of Broadcasters itself
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suggested a trade in which broadcasters, if freed from the burden of lowest unit rate, would provide one minute of free time
for each two minutes of paid time. The second step is to provide additional revenues or broadcast minutes from one or more
of a variety of options. One approach would be to auction off whatever space the FCC determines is available in the portion
of the spectrum which includes public safety, channels 60 through 69, which is soon to be broadened or enhanced by
technological advances. A second is to take advantage of a provision of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that requires
broadcasters to pay a fee for employment of any ancillary or supplementary portions of the digital spectrum, with the fee set
by the FCC and the funds to be placed in the U.S. Treasury; Congress could direct or the FCC could require that the fee be
paid in whole or part in broadcast minutes for public purposes, or that the funds be set aside for the bank.
d. Candidates who want to purchase time outside of the broadcast bank system may do so, but must do so at market rates
(lowest unit rates would no longer be mandated for such time.)
4. Small Individual Contributions
Over the past several years, campaigns for Congress have seen sharp changes in the nature of contributions. A shrinking
share of campaign resources have come from small donations from individuals, while steadily increasing shares have come
from both larger contributions ($500 to $1,000) and political action committees. Of all the sources of private monies that go
into our political campaigns, the most desirable and least controversial is that contributed by in-state individuals in small
amounts. The more citizens are involved in the campaign process, the more stake they have in the political system; a small
contribution is a positive way, with no direct link to a legislative product, to enhance the political process.
One of the most significant goals of campaign finance reform, then, is to find ways to encourage small individual
contributions, especially in-state, and to encourage candidates to raise more of their funds in this fashion. The key to doing so
is:
a. Create a 100% tax credit for in-state contributions to federal candidates of $100 or less. The credit would apply to the first
$100 an individual gave to candidates— in other words, $25 given to each of four candidates would result in a $100 credit. It
would not apply to large contributions; it would be phased out if an individual gave more than $200 to the candidate.
b. As in #3b above, add a large incentive to candidates to raise more of their resources from small individual in-state
contributions by creating a matching voucher system for broadcast time.
c. Consider funding the tax credit for small contributions by assessing campaigns a ten percent fee for large contributions
($500 or $1,000 or more.) Consider further the tradeoff of raising the individual contribution limit of $1,000 to $2,500 or
$3,000 to take into account inflation in the two decades since it was instituted while simultaneously assessing the fee for
large contributions to pay for the tax credits.
5. Enforcement
The lack of strong enforcement of campaign laws has been a serious problem in the past, but escalated sharply in 1996. The
Federal Election Commission is poorly and erratically funded, hampering its ability to gather information, disseminate it in a
timely fashion, and use it to investigate and act on complaints of violations of the laws or regulations. The Commission's
structure, with six commissioners, three of each major party, makes inevitable frequent deadlock along partisan lines. Little if
any penalty results from blatant violations of the campaign laws. Elections are not overturned, and if there are subsequent
financial penalties, they are rarely commensurate with the severity of the violations and in any case are of little importance if
the violations made the difference between winning and losing. Candidates and parties knowingly take advantage— and never
more openly than in 1996.
It would be desirable to change the structure of the FEC, including changing the selection of its membership. Given the
Buckley decision and the attitudes of lawmakers from both parties, major structural changes are probably not practical. But
there are other ways to create a more viable disclosure and enforcement regimen. We recommend:
a. Move from the current practice of voluntary electronic filing to a mandatory one, with a de minimus threshold.
b. Move from annual appropriations for the FEC to two-year or even longer-term funding, with a bipartisan mechanism in
Congress to maintain adequate funding for the commission. Congress should also consider an independent funding source for
the FEC, such as a modest filing fee for campaigns and related committees.
c. Allow a private cause of legal action directly against the alleged wrongdoer where the FEC is a) unable to act by virtue of
a deadlock; or b) where injunctive relief would be necessary and appropriate^ high standard requiring a showing of
immediate, irreparable harm). In order to deter frivolous actions, a "loser pays" standard should apply to requests for
injunctive relief. Streamline the process for allegations of criminal violations, by creating more shared procedures between
the FEC and the Justice Department, and fast-tracking the investigation from the FEC to Justice if any significant evidence of
fraud exists.
d. Put into legislation a requirement that until a campaign has provided all the requisite contributor information to the FEC, it
cannot put a contribution into any account other than an escrow account where the money cannot be spent. In turn, the
current ten-day maximum holding period on checks would have to be waived
e. Adopt a single eight-year term for Commissioners, with no holding over upon expiration. Commissioners' terms should be
staggered, so than no two terms expire in the same year. Congress should explore ways to strengthen the office of chairman,
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' including considering creating a new position of non-voting chairman and presiding officer, as the Commission's Chief
Administrator.
These reforms are not top-to-bottom comprehensive changes in the federal campaign financing system. Comprehensive
proposals do exist— although they include radically different approaches. But no comprehensive proposal is practical at the
moment, or could in fact "cure" the problems in the system once and for all. Nor would any two of us agree on all or even
most of the elements that might be included in a comprehensive package. The changes we propose are doable and sensible,
and if enacted, would make a very positive difference in American campaigns.
Click Here to go to a discussion of this proposal
Click Here to go to articles and opinion pieces about campaign finance reform
Questions or comments? E-mail to finance97@brook.edu
Campaign Finance Reform Site
Top of the page
The Brookings Home Page
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earthli ng
Slanted
Racial prejudice is part of what
fuels the Clinton campaign
scandal.
By Robert Wright
(1,220 words; posted Wednesday, Jan. 1; to be
composted Wednesday, Jan. 8)
The New York Times runs a lot of
headlines about scandals, but rarely does it
run a headline that is a scandal. On
Saturday, Dec. 28, it came pretty close. The
headline over its lead Page One story read:
"DEMOCRATS HOPED TO RAISE $7
MILLION FROM ASIANS IN U.S." On the
inside page where the story continued, the
headline was: "DEMOCRATS' GOAL:
MILLIONS FROM ASIANS." Both
headlines were wrong. The story was
actually about a 1996 Democratic National
Committee document outlining a plan to
raise (as the lead paragraph put it) "$7
million from Asian-Americans."
Memo to the New York Times:
"Asian-Americans" are Americah citizens of Asian
ancestry. "Asians," in contrast, are Asians—citizens
of some Asian nation. And "Asians in U.S." are
citizens of some Asian nation who are visiting or
residing in the United States. This is not
nit-picking. It gets at the heart of the subtle,
probably subconscious racial prejudice that has
turned a legitimately medium-sized scandal into a
journalistic blockbuster.
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• « • ould a Times headline call Polish-Americans
U U "East Europeans in U.S."? (Or, in the jump
headline, just "East Europeans"?) And the
headline was only half the problem with Saturday's
story. The story itself was wrongheaded, implying
that there's something inherently scandalous about
Asian-Americans giving money to a political
campaign. In fact, the inaccurate headline was
necessary to prevent the story from seeming absurd.
Can you imagine the Times running—over its lead
story-the headline "DEMOCRATS HOPED TO
RAISE MILLIONS FROM U.S. JEWS"?
Political parties target ethnic groups for
fund-raising all the time (as Jacob Weisberg
recently showed in these pages). They target
Hispanics, they target Jews, they pass the hat at
Polish-American dinners. To be sure, the
Asian-American fund-raising plan was, in
retrospect, no ordinary plan. It went quite awry.
Some of the projected $7 million—at least $1.2
million, according to the r/wes-wound up coming
in the form of improper or illegal donations (which,
of course, we already knew about). Foreign citizens
or companies funneled money through domestic
front men or front companies. And sometimes
foreigners thus got to rub elbows with President
Clinton. For all we know, they influenced policy.
But the truly scandalous stuff was old news by
Dec. 27. What that day's story added was news of
the existence of this document outlining a plan to
raise money from Americans of Asian descent. And
that alone was considered worthy of the
high-scandal treatment.
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(JOQA
^
3 of 5
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*•
£|Q/2o
eave aside this particular story, and consider the
"campaign-gate" scandal as a whole. What if
tne
the same thing had happened with Europeans
tning naa nappenea witn
and Americans of European descent? It would be
j
i P P and/or illegal. But would we really
be so worked up about it? Would William Safire
write a column about it every 15 minutes and use
the loaded word "aliens" to describe European
noncitizens? If Indonesian magnate James Riady
looked like John Major, would Newsweek have put
a huge, ominous, grainy black-and-white photo of
him on its cover? ("Clinton's European connection"
wouldn't pack quite the same punch as "Clinton's
Asian connection"-the phrase that Newsweek put
on its cover and Safire has used 16 times in 13
weeks.) Would the Times be billing minor
investigative twists as lead stories?
Indeed, would its reporters even write stories
like that Saturday's? The lead paragraph, which is
supposed to crystallize the story's news value, is
this: "A White House official and a leading
fiind-raiser for the Democratic National Committee
helped devise a strategy to raise an unprecedented
$7 million from Asian-Americans partly by offering
rewards to the largest donors, including special
access to the White House, the committee's records
show." You mean Democrats actually offered
White House visits to Americans who cough up big
campaign dough? I'm shocked. Wait until the
Republicans discover this tactic! The Friday after
Christmas is a slow news day, but it's not that slow.
And as for the "unprecedented" scale of the
fund-raising goal: Virtually every dimension of
Clinton's 1996 fund-raising was on an
unprecedented scale, as we've long known.
u s t
a s
m
r o
e r
01/14/97 11:44:47
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here are some interesting nuggets in the Times
story. But among them isn't the fact, repeated
in the third paragraph, that fund-raisers told
Asian-American donors that "political contributions
were the path to power." And among them isn't the
fact, repeated (again) in the fourth paragraph, that
"the quid pro quo promised" to Asian-American
donors was "in many cases a face-to-face meeting
with the President." And, anyway, none of these
nuggets is interesting enough to make this the day's
main story. The only way to do that is to first file
Asian-Americans in the "alien" section of your
brain. That's why the story's headline is so telling.
The funny thing about this scandal is that its
root cause and its mitigating circumstance are one
and the same. Its root cause is economic
globalization—the fact that more and more foreign
companies have an interest in U.S. policy. But
globalization is also the reason that the scandal's
premise—the illegality of contributions from
"foreign" interests—is increasingly meaningless.
Both the Times and the Washington Post (in its
blockbuster-lite front-page story, the next day) cited
already-reported evidence that a $185,000 donation
(since returned) may have originated ultimately
with the CP. Group. The CP. Group is "a huge
Thai conglomerate with interests in China and
elsewhere in Asia" (the Times) and is "among the
largest foreign investors in China" (the Post). But
of course, Nike, Boeing, General Motors,
Microsoft, IBM, and so on are also huge companies
with interests in China and elsewhere in Asia. They,
no less than Asian companies, at times have an
interest in low U.S. tariffs, treating oppressive
Asian dictators with kid gloves, and so on. Yet it is
perfectly legal for them to lubricate such lobbying
with big campaign donations.
I
hy no journalistic outrage about thatf Well,
for starters, try looking at a grainy
newsweekly-sized photo of Lou Gerstner and
see if it makes you remember Pearl Harbor. (By the
way, neither the Times nor the Post noted that the
ominous CP. Group is involved in joint ventures
with Ford and Nynex.)
You might think that, in an age of globalization
and with the United States' fate increasingly tied to
the fate of other nations, the United States' best
newspaper would be careful not to run articles that
needlessly feed xenophobia. Guess again. Six
weeks ago a Times op-ed piece by political scientist
Lucian Pye explored the formidable mindset that
governs China today. Current Chinese leaders have
"distinctive characteristics" that give them
"significant advantages" over the United States in
foreign policy. They "see politics as exclusively
combative contests, involving haggling,
maneuvering, bargaining and manipulating. The
W
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winner is the master of the cleverest ploys and
strategems [sic]." Moreover, Chinese leaders are
"quick to find fault in others" and try "always to
appear bold and fearless." Finally ("in a holdover
from classical Chinese political theory"), China's
leaders "insist on claiming the moral high ground,
because top leaders are supposed to be morally
superior men." In short, China's "distinctive" edge
lies in combative, Machiavellian, mud-slinging,
blustery, self-righteous politicians. Gosh, why
didn't we think of that?
These peculiar traits, Pye noted, aggravate
another disturbing feature of modem China. It
seems that the Chinese people vacillate "between
craving foreign goods and giving vent to
anti-foreign passions." In other respects, too, they
evince a "prickly xenophobic nationalism." Imagine
that.
• Links
Feel free to read the Times story that got me so
exercised (the Times Web site requires that you
register before serving you the page; registration is
free). Or, instead, you can subject yourself to my
further exegesis on appropriate ethnic terminology.
You can also view the grainy Newsweek cover
featuring Asian-American James Riady—the Oct. 28
issue, which is headlined "Candidates for Sale:
Clinton's Asia Connection." From SLATE'S "The
Compost," read Jacob Weisberg's column about the
history of fund-raising fraud in the United States
and Eric Liu's piece damning the press for painting
Asian-Americans as having dual loyalties.
PoliticsNow begins the new year with a feature,
titled "1996 Yearbook: Scandals," that covers the
fund-raising issue. Visit the DNC Web site for a
more positive portrayal of the embattled
organization.
Robert Wright is the author of The Moral Animal:
Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life.
SLATE contents
Compost contents
© 1996 Microsoft and/or its suppliers. All rights reserved.
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»
http://vvww.slate.com/StrangeBedfellow/96-12-06/StrangeBedfellow.asp
IF YOU OE ITCHING FOR
A NEW CAR, SCRATCH HERE.
<S5TOYOTATERCEL
strange
Does Everybody Do It?
Measuring the Clinton
foreign-contributions scandal. So
what's new?
By Jacob Weisberg
(2,268 words; posted Friday, Dec. 6; to be
composted Friday, Dec. 13)
Campaign finance is an arcane and
confusing subject, filled with unspoken
understandings. One of these is the
distinction between rules that must be
obeyed and rules that can be safely flouted.
In the Republican primaries, for instance,
aides to Bob Dole admitted that they were
going to exceed legal limits on how much
they could spend, an act commentators
compared at the time to running a red light.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton and his aides were
helping to develop the so-called "issue" ads
produced by state parties—ads which, in
theory, weren't supposed to be co-ordinated
with his re-election effort. And neither party
even bothered to claim that the tens of
millions being raised in so-called "soft
money," which cannot be legally used for
federal elections, was being spent on
anything other than the federal election.
None of these clear violations was deemed
to be especially scandalous, even by prudes
at places like Common Cause. Meanwhile,
though, a Dole supporter named Simon
Fireman is confined to his Boston
apartment, where he wears an electronic
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collar and ponders the $6 million fine he
must pay for enlisting his employees at
Aqua Leisure Industries, a maker o f
inflatable pool toys, in a scheme to
contribute $69,000 to the Dole campaign.
A similar invisible line separates the
campaign-finance violations that become major
media scandals and those that go unmentioned or
rate only as footnotes in the press. It is not
immediately obvious why reporters are so
fascinated by John Huang's possible use ofhis
position at the Commerce Department to raise
money for his party, while they largely ignored the
last two secretaries of commerce, Clinton's Ron
Brown and George Bush's Robert Mosbacher, who
were using the entire department as a fund-raising
vehicle. Why is Newt Gingrich's use of GOPAC to
raise undisclosed contributions a scandal being
investigated by the House Ethics Committee, while
Republican National Chairman Haley Barbour's
front for avoiding disclosure, the National Policy
Forum, rates as a nonstory?
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n fact, there is no logic to any of it. What's
considered an outrage, and even what's
considered a crime, are matters determined largely
by accident. Advocates of reform are always happy
to have a high-profile scandal, like the presently
unfolding "Indogate," to help them sensitize the
public to just how seamy the whole business of
campaign financing is. The last thing they're about
to do is explain away the latest revelations as just
an exotically textured version of what goes on every
day. And press coverage is largely driven by how
big a fuss is made by members of the
opposition-not by any barometer of relative
venality. Right now, Republicans are making an
enormous fuss about the Democrats, so the story is
huge. But we must pause and ask: Are we making
an example out of the DNC for misdeeds that
everybody commits? Or did John Huang and James
Riady-and perhaps Harold Ickes and Bill
Clinton—really do something unusually bad in the
last campaign cycle?
Much hinges, of course, on facts we don't have.
Huang may have asked all his Asian contributors
whether they were legal residents of the United
States and been misled by them. There's no hard
evidence that he did DNC business at Commerce or
government business after Clinton moved him to
the DNC in 1995. But assuming, for purposes of
argument, that most of what has been alleged by
Republicans is true, the Indonesian scandal
potentially involves three categories of wrongdoing:
1) accepting illegal contributions; 2) trading favors
for contributions; and 3) misusing a government
position to raise campaign money. Actually, there is
a fourth question-whether Huang violated federal
conflict-of-interest rules by dealing with his old
company, the Indonesian-based Lippo
conglomerate, while he was a midlevel official at
the Commerce Department. But that's a matter of
personal corruption unrelated to the Democratic
Party financing, so I won't dwell on it here, even
though it's potentially the most serious charge
against Huang.
I
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1: The
nearly
Q uestionthe $2.5 DNC hasinnow returnedraised by
half of
million soft money
Huang from Indonesian and other
Asian-American sources. Assuming that these
contributions were illegal because the contributors
weren't legal residents (something that has been
fully established only in the case of one $250,000
Korean contribution), did Huang and the DNC do
anything out of the ordinary?
Answer: Not really.
There are examples beyond number of simply
illegal contributions that the press and public just
shrugged off. Even Pat Robertson got busted in
1988 for the use of a Christian Broadcasting
Network plane—his travels were valued at
$260,000. If one focuses on the narrow category of
contributions that are illegal because they come
from foreigners (even though it is arguably no
worse than any other category of violation), there is
still little novelty to the Huang affair. Federal
Election Commission files disclose many examples
of money taken illegally from foreign nationals:
Japanese interests contributing to candidates in
local races in Hawaii, South Americans giving to
the Democratic Party of Florida, and so on. Just a
few weeks ago, the RNC returned $15,000 to a
Canadian company called Methanex after the
contribution was disclosed in Roll Call. Rupert
Murdoch's recent $1 million contribution to the
California Republican Party may fall into this
category as well. The same goes for contributions
that are illegal by virtue of their having been made
"in the name of another," an issue that has surfaced
in connection with Al Gore's Buddhist temple
fund-raiser. The FEC has frequently disallowed
contributions made to both parties under aliases.
f the Huang case is novel, it would have to be as a
deliberate and systematic violation of the laws
regarding contributions by noncitizens. In terms of
being systematic, there isn't much of a case. Both
parties have employed ethnic fund-raisers—Jewish,
Korean, Greek, Chinese—for many years. Newt
Gingrich held a Sikh fund-raising event last year in
California. George Bush's Korean fund-raiser in
1992 was Yung Soo Yoo, who makes John Huang
look like a piker when it come to sleaze. One of the
co-chairs of Asian-Americans for Bob Dole was
California Rep. Jay Kim, who is under investigation
by the FEC for taking illegal contributions from
I
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four Korean companies.
According to those with experience in fund
raising, it is often a delicate matter to establish
whether ethnic donors are eligible to give. When
someone offers to write you a check for $5,000, you
do not ask to see a green card. The reality that
neither party is in the habit of investigating its
donors is illustrated by various outrageous
incidents. In 1992, for example, Republicans got
contributions totaling $633,770 from a
Japanese-American with Hong Kong connections
named Michael Kojima. No one bothered to ask
where Kojima, a failed restaurateur with ex-wives
suing him for nonsupport, got the money. Ironically
enough, his biggest creditor turns out to have been
the Lippo Bank of Los Angeles, where he owed
$600,000.
Huang was not really an innovator; he was
simply more successful than his predecessors in
both parties in tapping ethnic subcultures for cash.
What Huang's higher-ups at the DNC can most be
faulted for is not following suspicions they should
have had about the huge sums he was reeling in.
Instead, they looked the other way. In 1994, the
DNC abandoned its own procedure for vetting
contributions for legality. We don't know exactly
why this happened, but it's a good bet that it had
something to do with the pressure coming from the
White House to raise extraordinary amounts of
money for the upcoming 1996 race. The culture of
fund-raising rewards quantity, not care. It
discourages close scrutiny and too many questions.
The less you ask, the more you get. And given that
there has been no real enforcement of these rules in
the past, fund-raisers haven't lost a lot of sleep
about contributions turning out to be tainted. If the
money goes bad, you simply return it with the
appropriate regretful noises.
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littp://www.slate.com/StrangeBedfellow/96-12-06/StrangeBedfellow.asp
scandal
Q uestion 2:ofIsathe Lippoquid pro an egregious
example
political
quo?
Answer: Definitely not.
Examples of favors in exchanges for campaign
contributions are plentiful. Consider, for instance,
the relationship between Bob Dole and Chiquita. In
1995, Dole introduced legislation to impose trade
sanctions on Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa
Rica—but not Honduras, where Dole's favorite
bananas are grown. Why was a senator from Kansas
so interested in bananas? It might have had
something to do with Chiquita giving $677,000 to
the Republican Party in the last campaign cycle or
the generous offer by its CEO, Carl Lindner, to let
Dole use the company jet. ("Sen. Dole has taken
this position because it is right for America," Dole
spokeswoman Christina Martin said earlier this
year. "To suggest any other reason is totally
absurd.") Or, there is the relationship between Newt
Gingrich and Miller Nichols.
This kind of treatment for big contributors is
quite routine. In the Indonesia case, however, there
is as yet no evidence that President Clinton did
anything about his backer James Riady's concerns
over trade with China and Indonesia beyond
listening to them. Nor is there likely to be any
evidence: Big foreign-policy decisions simply aren't
susceptible to personal favoritism the way EPA
regulations are.
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Q uestion 3: Did John Huang break new
ground in exploiting his government office
for campaign-fund-raising purposes?
•-, <M'<
Answer: No.
The honor here actually goes to Robert
Mosbacher, George Bush's secretary of commerce.
As Bush's campaign chairman in 1988, Mosbacher
invented the Team 100-a designation for the 249
corporate contributors who gave $100,000 or more
in soft money to the RNC. When Mosbacher
became secretary of commerce, members of the
team were rewarded in various ways, including
being invited by Mosbacher on trade missions
around the world and, often, being given
*
ambassadorships. ("That's part of what the system ^
,!
has been like for 160 years," Mosbacher said when
questioned about it at the time—a judgment the
press apparently agreed with.) Mosbacher's last act > -7%' '4f
as commerce secretary was a tour of 30 cities to
«„ , , ^. -v ^ ^
,
meet with business executives about how he could
help them with exports. When he left the
department shortly thereafter to run Bush's
re-election campaign, he turned to the same
executives for contributions.
In his own use of the Commerce Department to
dun corporations for campaign funds, Ron Brown
was Mosbacher's disciple, though he proved to be
an even greater talent than his master. As chairman
of the DNC in the period leading up to the 1992
election, Brown followed the path laid by Tony
Coehlo, the infamous chairman of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee. Coehlo (as
documented in Brooks Jackson's Honest Graft) was
the first to try to compete with the Republicans for
corporate soft money. Brown devised for the DNC
a "Managing Director" program to match
Mosbacher's Republican "Team 100."
^ Tt,
1
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^
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4
7 of 10
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12/09/96 11:52:20
�Slate - Strange Bedfellow 12/6/96
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hen Brown became secretary of commerce in
1993, the managing directors were not
forgotten. Fifteen DNC staff members went with
him to Commerce, and they knew who the new
administration's friends were. One of those who
went with Brown was Melissa Moss, who took over
the Office of Business Liaison at Commerce. This
was the office that selected participants for the
high-profile trade missions to such places as China
and Indonesia, which became the focus of Brown's
career at Commerce. On these trips, Brown
functioned as a personal trade representative for
companies like Boeing and AT&T. According to an
article in the Wall Street Journal by a reporter who
went along on Brown's China trip, seats on his
plane were essentially sold off in exchange for
soft-money contributions.
John Huang was merely a cog in this machine.
When he left the Lippo Group in 1994, Huang
became a deputy assistant secretary in the
International Trade Administration, the section of
the Commerce Department that handles trade
issues. Under oath, Huang has claimed he had only
a "passive role" in the foreign trade
missions—whatever that means. It all stinks to high
heaven. But that's the Commerce Department
Mosbacher created, and which Brown perfected. To
present the Huang story as something new,
reflecting the uniquely severe moral failings of
William Jefferson Clinton, is absurd.
W
8 of 10
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�Slate - Strange Bedfellow 12/6/96
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o if, in fact, both parties are equally implicated
in all the categories of campaign-financing
sleaze raised by the Lippo case, why is the Indogate
scandal such a big story? There are three reasons:
reformers, reporters, and Republicans. Reformers
are happy to have any good example to illustrate the
evils of the system. Reporters are trying to
compensate for suggestions that they are biased in
favor of the Democrats. And Republicans, who
have been the black hats of the campaign business
since Watergate, are seizing an opportunity to
finally turn the tables.
The Republican outrage may be hypocritical,
but in another sense, it is sincere. GOP leaders are
furious at losing an advantage in corporate fund
raising that dates back 100 years, to the election of
1896, when William McKinley's legendary money
man Mark Hanna mobilized American business to
stop the Democratic populist William Jennings
Bryan. In the 1980s, the Republican advantage in
total donations was still as high as 5-1 and never
less than 3-1. In the 1992 election cycle, however,
Ron Brown whittled it down to 3-2, thanks to
corporate contributions. In 1996, the Democrats
nearly caught up in the chief corporate category:
soft money. With the help of Huang and others,
they raised $102 million this year-almost as much
as the Republicans' $121 million. The way they did
it was simple: imitation.
S
9 of 10
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Links
For an overview of the campaign-finance laws,
see the Federal Election Commission Web site.
Mother Jones serves up a report on the biggest
fat-cat donors around, as well as one on Gingrich's
dealings with GOPAC. For two views on Indogate,
see CNN's report and the Republican National
Committee's briefing. Frontline jousts with
presidential hopefnls in its report titled "So You
Want to Buy the President?" Complete with a
whole page devoted to Ron Brown and his suspect
trade missions, the Center for Public Integrity
investigates "Tripping with the Secretary," and
boasts a whole database of the companies that
participated in Brown's international trips.
Jacob Weisberg is SLATE's chief political
correspondent.
Illustrations by Whitting Tennis
Previous Strange Bedfellow columns
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10 of 10
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�11/22/96
13:50
©
SENATOR BRADLEY
T H E N E W YORK TIMES O P - E D MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1996
Congress Won't Act. Will You?
suueuoas would go unnoticed.
Hierightm speak freely is our naIncremental itform^ such as tion's highest value, bat democracy
those included in the well-intenUoned *>tlso requires pmedqg aTtymaHvp
McCain-Feingpld wn are hramrf to voices from bsng drowned out by a
ie 1396 election vfn go fail became ttey are not radical fbod of cash. Unless we set limits on
duuu Infaastoryas one ortugh to change tberoleof speoal- total campaign spending, the powertn ttbidl rjmpalgn
tnterest money in oar political sys- fnl can cootmue tn broadcast thelr
money coioplCTely tem. The lifrrm^^a^ ralBS DW hi voiees, while the less powerful are
0
ovErwfaekaed
the place prove that mooey in politics is barely heard. It is nn infringement on
American political like ants in the kitchen: Without cte- anyone's rigu of expression to inprocess- Bat tbfcs casld also be resure that citizens have an oppommimeobered as (be year wbei Amenty to hear a range of messages about
cznsfinallybecame fed up eoougb to
America's fnraze.
san taking tbeir deaiocrac>- back
After 18 years ia tbe Senate, I can
from Uie power of nwoey.
say with ceiuduty that no matter
Thar can happen onlytfAmericans
what promises have been made. Condeicsnrf itai their voices be beart.
gress alone, even Congress and the
and if the proposals far change are
President, will never be willing to
bold enough to break through the
give up the system that most have
powertnl forras arrayed to preserve
mastered. Despite the increasing
be status quo.
Ballot miiiarives calling for cam- ing all tbe holes, there is always a poblic pressurefarIKTUIW arising
out of tbe last few weeks' reports
paign finance reform von in six way in.
states Izsi veeJc Now grass-roots
This year, tbe infestation «as has- about alleged abuses by Democratic
effons to adopt similar measures tened by a Supreme Court ruling in fund-raisers, there will always be a
must be launched across the oounuy. June foaf party commitifies could reason m pot it off.
And the Supreme Court dedsioo that not be held to limits on their preprevents limits OD campaign spend- election spending. The dedsioo was
A successful pushforreform
ing must be directly confronted, by based on the spurious argument in
i \
will need aggressive
[ending the Constitution to make it the Court's 1976 decision in Buckley
/ %
forces outside the
that money does not equal free v. Valeo. which equated the right to
Beltway. And it will
spend unlimited amounts of money
^Kaech.
A
V depend on whether
^ ^ ^ ^ Past enons at mmpnign reform
n —
when runningforpublic office with
conocmed citizens
7er« easiiy knocked sside, in part the right of bee speech. In that case, can hold newly elected officials to
because the bills were so complicat- the Couit in effect said thai a rich their pledgesforreform. Together,
ed (hat vmers couldn't' understand man's wallet deserved the same con- we can make 1996 go into the history
ixm and politicians knew their ob- sdnnianal protecdon as a poor per- books as the last year of the bigson's soapbox, and that limits tn
money campaign.
Q
3iil BraHey. a Democratic Senator total spending hampered free expression.
•>om Xev Jersey, is the cat'.or of
I disagree. Money is not speech.
"T-.r-.e Preserz. Time Past. "
By Bill Bradley
T
For real campaign
reform, amend the
Constitution.
12002
A15 :
�Make Clinton's Legacy Campaign Reform
By Mark Green
A
/ \
YEAR OR a month ago, who could have
predicted that the culminating issue of
X JL. the 1998 presidential campaign would he
campaign finance? Or that the proponent of
radical reform would be Bob Dole, a man so
freighted by special-interest money lhat his denunciations of Democrats over John Huang's
fund-raising are as credible as Willie Sutton
shouting "crook" at a jaywalker.
History appreciates irony. And if the failed Dole
candidacy provokes Bill Clinton into a major second-term push for campaign-finance refonn, the
Kansan's legacy will exceed that of not only failed
presidential nominees but even roost victors.
Boies Penrose, a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, once told hi& largest contributors: " I believe in
a division of labor. You send us to Congitss; we
pass laws under . . . which you make money, and
out of your profits you hirther oontribule to our
campaign funds to send us back again tft pass more
laws to enable you to make more money."
Thai statement is nearly a century old, but it
could have been made yesterday to describe a political system in which checks-and-balances has been
replaced by checks and more checks.
The cost of the current syslem is unblinkable
and dramatic: It prices out good women and men
who can't afford the high ticket of entry. It lilts
legislative results to those interests that can afford
lo gel an audience — hence billions wasted on corporate welfare expenditures; it forces elected officials to spend their time forever chasing money.
How can we make progress on environmental,
gun and defense issues as long as polluters, the
National Rifle Association and foreign lobbyists
wield so much influence in government?
Sinpe no one knows enough to be a pessimist. I
believe we're just three people awRy from cutting
the gordian knot of money that's tying up our democracy. First, Presidenl Bill Clinton needs to put
muscle behind the words in his victory speech,
Mark Green is the public
advocate for New York Ctiy
and author of "Who Runs
Congress?"
when he proposed to "make our democracy stronger by enacting real, bipartisan campaign finance
reform." He realizes that cleaning up elections can
be one of the two or three great legacies of his
presidency, and should interpret his victory as a
mandate for that cause. And when the president
challenges a Republican Congress to join him in a
bipartisan effort, can Speaker Newt Gingrich afford lo brush him oft? Not unless he wants to lose
the Republican House majority in 1998.
Then there's Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.),
whose energetic defense of the current system has
been the campaign-finance equivalent of George
Wallace in lhe schoolhouse door. His position can
be cut to shreds with a few simple questions: I f
money is speech, why do we ban blackmail? I f campaign-finance, reform is pro-incumbent, why
haven't incumbents already voted for it? If public
financing wastes taxpayers' money, why does the
public favor it 59 percent to 29 percent in a recent
Mellman Group poll?
How to convert scandal into substance? There are
three options. The pending bipartisan McCainFeingold bill is an important first step. It aels voluntary limils on spending in congressional races —
$600,000 for House candidates and a ceiling based
on stale population for Senate campaigns. Spending on a Senate primary and gpneral-election cam-
NOVEMBERS, 1996
paign would be limited lo $8.25 million in California
and $6.6 million in New York. Candidates who comply with voluntary spending limits would be eligible
for free or discounted television time. Corporations,
unions and political action committees would he barred from contributing to federal campaigns.
Should Clinton get to nominate a few Supreme
Court justices in his second term, a test case could
lead to the reversal of Buckley vs. Valeo, lhe awful
1976 decision that prohibited expenditure ceilings
and allowed millionaires to spend unlimited
amounts on themselves.
I f neither happens, reform advocates can pursue
a constitutional amendmenl on finance reform, establishing that money- is not speech and can be
regulated. Either a reversal of Buckley or a constitutional amendment would enable Congress to limit candidates from using Ibeir own money lo buy
their way into federal office.
When Clinton and then Senate Majority Leader
Bob Dole agreed on changing welfare, it happened.
It's time for them to have a postelection join I
press conference to announce "an end to money in
politics as we know i t . " Otherwise, within a decade. Congress will be largely composed of Ihe HuffingtOns, Forbes and Perots — and the election process actually will be more democratic in Russia
than in the United States.
�http://www.slate.com/Gist/96-11-01/Gist.asp
Slate-Gist 11/1/96
C^r\ Ycq /Jf tJ r h A NoW c^r?
Presidential Campaign
Finance
By Carol Beach
(1,175 words; posted Friday, Nov. I; to be composted Friday,
Nov. 8)
Campaign finance has been one of the biggest
stories of the 1996 presidential race. During the
past month, Republicans and journalists have
questioned foreign contributions to the Democratic
Party. Both parties, interest groups, political action
committees, and businesses have spent record sums
this year. According to one campaign-finance
watchdog organization, the 1996 presidential
contest will cost $800 million, nearly three times as
much as the 1992 race. What are the rules of
campaign finance? What rules, if any, have the
campaigns broken?
Under the 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act, foreign
nationals cannot make contributions or expenditures in
connection with any U.S. election-federal, state, or local.
Foreign nationals include foreign governments, political
parties, corporations, and citizens. The ban does not apply to
foreigners who are legal residents of the United States. A
domestic subsidiary of a foreign corporation may make
political contributions, but only if the foreign parent plays no
part.
1 of 4
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he Democratic Party is embroiled in controversy over
contributions from Asians and Asian-Americans.
Most of this money was raised by John Huang, the
now-suspended vice chairman of finance for the Democratic
National Committee. The DNC was forced to return $250,000
raised by Huang after it came out that the donation came from
a Korean corporation, rather than its U.S. subsidiary. The
DNC has kept a $450,000 contribution from an Indonesian
couple, Soraya and Arief Wiriadinata. Soraya and Arief are
the daughter and son-in-law of Hashim Ning, co-founder of
the Lippo Group, a $6 billion Indonesian banking
conglomerate. The DNC says that the Wiriadinatas'
contribution is valid because they were legal residents of the
United States. (Since the donation, the Wiriadinatas have
returned to Indonesia.) Many have questioned the propriety of
the donation, suggesting that the president has been unduly
influenced by a foreign corporation. Bill Clinton is a friend of
James Riady, Lippo's vice president and son of Mochtar
Riady, the firm's honorary chairman. (Clinton met James
Riady when he came to Little Rock to leam American
finance.) John Huang once worked for Lippo and is one of
James Riady's closest associates.
T
epublicans have also benefited from foreign political
contributions. In 1992, James Riady's wife, Aileen, gave
$1,000 to Bob Dole. The Republican Party also has
received more than twice as much money as the Democrats
from American subsidiaries of foreign companies. The vice
chairman of Bob Dole's primary election-finance committee
was Alfonso Fanjul, a Cuban-born sugar magnate who carries
a Spanish passport but lives legally in this country. His
company, Flo-Sun Sugar, has given $234,000 to the
Republican National Committee this campaign, as well as
thousands in direct donations to candidates.
It is against the law for corporations and labor unions
to contribute money to candidates for federal office.
However, they may sponsor political action committees which
raise money from employees, stockholders, and members, and
contribute the money to candidates. Individuals may give
$20,000 per year to a national party, $5,000 to a PAC, and
$2,000 to a candidate ($ 1,000 in the primary and $ 1,000 in
the general election)—up to a maximum of $25,000 a year. No
one may donate in another's name, or give more than $100 in
cash. The Democrats may have violated this last restriction.
In April, Al Gore appeared at a Buddhist temple, an event that
netted $140,000 for the party. The DNC gave up $5,000 of
that money after a Buddhist nun said someone gave her
$5,000 cash and asked her to write a $5,000 check to the
party.
R
2 of 4
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�Slate-Gist 1.1/1/96
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ualified presidential candidates and political parties
receive money from the federal government for
primary- and general-election expenses, and
national-party conventions. For the general-election
campaign, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole will each receive $61.82
million from the fund. Ross Perot will receive $29 million. In
exchange, Dole and Clinton cannot accept private
contributions. Perot is permitted to seek private funds up to
the $61.82 million limit. All presidential candidates may
accept private donations during the primary season.
If the two major-party candidates are restricted to
spending $61.82 million each, why the $800 million price tag
for this year's election? The cost of primaries is one reason.
But there are also three major loopholes in the spending-limit
rules.
Soft money. Individuals and groups-including
corporations and unions-can contribute unlimited amounts to
the parties for activities such as get-out-the-vote efforts that
do not directly endorse specific candidates. Without violating
the law, this money can be spent on highly partisan messages.
In 1992, the Republicans raised $52 million in soft money
and the Democrats raised $37 million. In 1996, just through
June, the Republicans collected $83.9 million and the
Democrats collected $70.3 million. Many companies and
individuals give soft money to both parties.
Under the First Amendment, individuals and
organizations can also spend unlimited amounts on political
advocacy, so long as a specific candidate is not endorsed. A
1976 Supreme Court footnote listed the "magic words" that
separate issue advocacy from campaign advocacy. They
include: "vote for" and "vote against." As long as your ads do
not include the magic words, you can spend as much as you
want on them. In 1996, the AFL-CIO plans to spend $35
million attacking the Republican "Contract With America."
Groups such as pro-term-limit organizations and the Christian
Action Network have also raised and spent millions on "issue"
ads, as have the political parties. It is often difficult to
distinguish issue ads from campaign ads.
Q
3 of 4
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he Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment
also protects independent expenditures. Individuals
and organizations can spend as much as they want on a
candidate's behalf as long as they don't coordinate their
spending with the candidate. In 1992, PACs and individuals
spent more than $11 million on independent expenditures for
presidential and congressional candidates.
Last June, the Supreme Court ruled that political parties
(as well as PACs, interest groups, and individuals) can make
unlimited independent expenditures on behalf of candidates.
This decision produced an explosion of spending by political
parties, although it is not yet clear what constitutes an
"independent" expenditure. According to Common Cause, the
political parties are spending millions of dollars as
"independent expenditures" on ads that were designed and
produced by the candidates' own campaign organizations.
Who gives? Corporations and business PACs gave
$242.2 million to candidates and political parties in 1995 and
the first half of 1996. Organized labor gave $35 million
during the same period (in addition to the $35 million spent
by the AFL-CIO on issue advocacy). The largest single
contributor to Democrats is the American Trial Lawyers
Association, which gave $1,747,725. The Republican
champion is Philip Morris, which gave $2,131,955.
T
• Links
pir The Federal Election Commission maintains a trove of
^ campaign finance databases and election law summaries.
The Center for Responsive Politics site summarizes the
organization's data and research, and posts articles on
campaign finance scandals. If you'd like to make your own
campaign contribution, you can learn how at the Republican
National Committee, the Democratic National Committee, or
the Perot campaign. For a defense of the AFL-CIO's
controversial political spending this year, see Thomas
Geoghegan's article in the current SLATE.
Carol Beach produces the Diane Rehm Show for WAMU
(88.5-FM) in Washington, DC, and National Public Radio.
Illustrations by Kathleen Kincaid
'revious Gist columns
s
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rexcn'cd
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�The Nation - One Dollar, One Vote? - 12/02/96
http://www.thenation.com/issue/961202/1202neub.htiTi
FEATURE STORY
One Dollar, One Vote?
The Supreme Court's Buckley decision virtually assures a campaign dollar chase.
By Burt Neuborne
In 1974, driven by ugly disclosures offinancialimpropriety in the Nixon White House and
by the knowledge that the Democrats behaved no better, Congress attempted its first, and
only, effort at comprehensive regulation in the area of campaignfinance.The 1974 bill was
badly flawed, making it difficult to raise and spend enough money to offset an incumbent's
built-in advantage. It was also openly hostile to third parties. A Supreme Court with a
sophisticated understanding of the democratic process might well have invalidated the law
because it favored the "ins" at the expense of the "outs." Instead, the Court delivered
Buckley v. Valeo (1976), a 294-page constitutional straitjacket that locks American
democracy into the worst of all possible campaignfinanceworlds, one that no rational
legislator would ever have chosen. And here we are two decades later, just concluding a"^
national election in which a record $1.8 billion was spent, an astonishing 95 percent of /
Congressional incumbents were returned to power and less than hfllt hf '''^"rflte'voted.»
No wonder financial reform became a hot topic yet again in the closing days.
T
The core of the Buckley opinion consists of three highly debatable assertions. First, the
Court insisted that, in the campaign context, money equals speech. Since limiting campaign
money, reasoned the Justices, necessarily decreases campaign speech, any spending limit
must be treated as though it were censorship. The Court rejected the argument that at some
point monev ceases to be an aid to speech and becomes the engine of raw power. The
Justices simply ignored the distinction between protecting everyone's right to speak and
regulating the power to dominate the conversation.
Second, the Buckley Court rejected the argument that equalizing the electoral influence of
rich and poor was a "compelling governmental interest" that could justify placing any limits /
at all on the power of the rich to use money to advance their electoral interests. In one fell /
swoop, the Buckley decision replaced the one-person, one-vote rule with a new
constitutional rule of one dollar, one vote.
Finally, the Court drew an unpersuasive - and destructive — distinction between campaign
contributions and expenditures by candidates and supporters. Expenditures, reasoned the
Court, are direct exercises in speech that are entitled to maximum First Amendment
protection. Contributions, it claimed, are more indirect, since the donor does not do the
actual speaking. Moreover, the Justices asserted, while expenditures pose no real danger of r
"corruption," contributions pose a real threat that donors will expect something in return, jj
In an already weak opinion, the Buckley Court's attempt to draw a First Amendment
distinction between contributions and expenditures stands out as particularly troubling.
Making a campaign contribution to a candidate is just as "direct" a political statement as
spending money on that person's behalf — maybe even more so because freedom of
association is involved. And openly spending a fortune on behalf of a candidate in a close
of4
[1/18/96 16:57:04
�The Nation - One Dollar, One Vote? - 12/02/96
http://\vww.thenation.com/issue/961202/1202neub.htm
race generates a far greater risk of undue influence than making a small contribution.
The net result of the Court's insistence on treating campaign contributions and expenditures
differently was the emergence of a legislative mutant. The Court struck down the portion of
the 1974 act that placed ceilings on campaign expenditures by candidates and their
supporters. Limits on how much ofhis own money a rich candidate could spend were found
to violate the First Amendment. Limits on how much of other people's money a candidate
could spend were found to violate the First Amendment. Limits on how much rich
individuals, and PACs, could spend were found to violate the First Amendment.
At the same time, the Court upheld the portion of the 1974 law that stringently limited
individual contributions to $1,000, creating the worst of all possible worlds: a constitutional
regime that bans Congress from seeking to limit the demand for campaign money, but
upholds serious restrictions on its supply. Ask any economist what happens to a market in
which demand is unlimited but supply is seriously constrained.
Whipsawed between the Supreme Court's refusal to allow Congress to put a lid on campaign
spending and the existence of onerous restrictions on raising money, candidates have been
driven into a fundraising frenzy, feeding an uncontrollable money habit wherever and
however they can. Enter special-interest PACs with the power to make contributions five
times as large as any individual's, and the ability to spend unlimited sums in support of a
candidate. Enter hundreds of millions of dollars in "soft money" to the Republican and
Democratic parties from corporations and rich donors, forbidden to contribute directly to
federal candidates but able to use the political parties as the means to buy influence. Enter
millionaire candidates who can spend unlimited amounts of their own money that other
candidates cannot match. Enter foreign businessmen who give money through U.S. fronts.
Enter so-called "issue" groups, like the Christian Coalition and the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which
operate wholly outside the campaignfinancerules because they claim to "educate," not
"campaign."
The system that Buckley built is an abomination. It maximizes the influence of wealth. It
turns decent politicians into crooks. It says to the average American, "You don't count
unless your bankbook does." Not surprisingly, the turnout for our first billion-dollar
presidential election was the lowest since 1924. Small wonder that more than half the
eligible electorate don't think that it's worth their time to vote. The good news is that
Buckley v. Valeo is ripe for overruling. The bad news is that the Court may give us
something worse. Its most recent campaignfinancedecision is this past June's Colorado
Republican Campaign Committee v. FEC. My reading of it is that six members of the Court
are poised to reject the tortured distinction between expenditures and contributions on
which Buckley rests.
In Colorado, the High Court held that spending by a political party in support of its own
candidate is a fully protected "independent expenditure," at least as long as there is no
coordination between the party and the candidate. The Court was unable to produce a
majority opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas derided the distinction between expenditures and
contributions, arguing that the First Amendment protects both from virtually all government
regulation. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens also openly rejected the
distinction between contributions and expenditures but argued that reasonable limits can be
imposed on both in the name of fostering equality and preventing corruption. Justice
Anthony Kennedy, joined by Antonin Scalia, Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist,
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argued that a party's spending on behalf of its candidate is fully protected by the First
Amendment even when it is coordinated with the candidate.
Of course, if coordinated expenditures are protected by the First Amendment, the real-world
distinction between expenditures and contributions evaporates, since any forbidden
contribution can simply be recycled as a coordinated expenditure. Thus, the Kennedy
opinion also signals the doom of the Buckley analysis.
Only Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Sandra Day O'Connor clung to a pure
Buckley analysis, holding that a party's truly independent expenditures are fully protected
but declining to pass on whether a coordinated expenditure should be treated like a de facto
contribution. But even the Breyer bloc seemed uncomfortable with the distinction. Thus, the
Court is on the verge of pushing Buckley over as though it were a rotten tree. The only
question is which way the tree will fall.
If the Breyer/Souter/O'Connor bloc jumps toward holding that neither contributions nor
expenditures can be limited, we will return to the pre-1974 laissez-faire world, where the
rich can give as much as they want as long as their contributions are disclosed. Even that
might seem an improvement on the status quo in some ways: Under a laissez-faire system,
Steve Forbes could have given his money to Jack Kemp instead of being forced to spend it
on himself. And Colin Powell could have run for President with the backing of a small
group of very wealthy patrons. The problem, of course, is that such a world simply
reinforces the massive inequality in political influence between rich and poor.
If, however, the Court's center joins Justices Ginsburg and Stevens in recognizing that both
contributions and expenditures can be limited in an effort to diminish the electoral power of
money, we will be in a position to go back to the drawing board and enact campaign finance
reform that does not favor incumbents, that is fair to third parties and that makes it
impossible for the rich to continue to dominate politics.
Of course, I may be wrong in predicting the demise of Buckley. The Court may rally to the
banner of stare decisis and refuse to overturn a precedent. What, if anything, can be done to
reform campaign finance without overturning Buckley? One obvious approach is to attempt
to curb the power of PACs by limiting their ability to contribute directly to candidates. But
curtailing PAC contributions won't solve the problem, since PACs will remain free to spend
unlimited amounts on their own. Another obvious approach is to close the soft-money
loophole that allows corporations to contribute vast sums to political parties for use in "local
party building." Buckley poses no barrier to imposing the same restrictions on contributions
to political parties that we now impose on those to political candidates. It is a fiction
bordering on a lie to pretend that local party building has nothing to do with the outcome of
federal elections. A third approach would be to demand that disclosure information be
placed online in the states, as it is for federal contributions and expenditures. State
politicians have resisted computerizing contribution and expenditure records for obvious
reasons.
Far and away the best possible option under Buckley, though, is to treat campaign expenses
as a public expense. Once we admit that running a democracy is very costly, and that the
high price of campaigns cannot be deflected to the rich without turning over political control
to them as well, public funding of elections becomes the obvious alternative. Public funding
is unquestionably constitutional under Buckley. It is even possible to attach strings to the
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campaign subsidies that would require candidates to respect spending ceilings, and to
campaign in a more responsible and informative manner. Kentucky, a state that had been
racked by campaign financing scandals, adopted a voluntary public financing scheme for
governor that provides $2 in public funds for every $1 raised privately, up to a ceiling of
$1.8 million. While the ceiling may be a trifle low, the system worked well in its first test.
Maine voters just approved a thoughtful voluntary public funding scheme that keys the
amount of the subsidy to an opponent's spending. But public funding is not a panacea. After
all, the presidential election was subsidized to the tune of more than $200 million. That did
not prevent an avalanche of at least $600 million by wealthy donors eager to buy a little
influence at the top.
The bottom line is that all the tinkering in the world won't cure the problem of money in
politics unless we can place reasonable ceilings on campaign expenditures. And that cannot
be done unless Buckley is overturned. President Clinton's future appointments to the
Supreme Court may well decide the issue.
Burt Neuborne is the John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law and program director of the
Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.
Copyright (c) 1996, The Nation Company, L.P. All rights reserved. Electronic redistribution for nonprofit
purposes is permitted, provided this notice is attached in its entirety. Unauthorized, for-profit redistribution is
prohibited. For further information regarding reprinting and syndication, please call The Nation at (212)
242-8400, ext. 226 or send e-mail to Max Block.
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1150 15™ STREET, N. W., WASHINGTON, D. C. 20071-9200
TEL: (202) 334-6375
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9
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^bc-yoder-column adv06<
"-EDWIN YODER COLUMN<
A
(Advance f o r Wednesday, November 6, 1996, and t h e r e a f t e r ) <
~ ( F o r Yoder C l i e n t s Only)<
By EDWIN M. YODER, JR.=
A
WASHINGTON—This y e a r , more t h a n ever, t h e f l i m s y system o f
campaign f i n a n c e ^ r e f o r m ' ' t h a t Congress e s t a b l i s h e d i n 1974 t o
p r e v e n t a n o t h e r Watergate'' f a i l e d t o c o n t a i n a p o l i t i c a l system
b u r s t i n g w i t h cash and energy. The l l t h - h o u r d i s c o v e r y t h a t Democratic
N a t i o n a l Committee f u n c t i o n a r i e s c o u r t e d a conglomerate i n faraway
I n d o n e s i a f o r a p o s s i b l y i l l i c i t d o n a t i o n has opened a s p i g o t o f
denunciation.
x
x v
Fred Wertheimer, former head o f t h e ^ c i t i z e n s ' l o b b y ' ' Common
Cause, w r i t e s i n The Washington Post t h a t t h e abuses ... a r e worse
even t h a n t h e i l l e g a l c o n t r i b u t i o n s g a t h e r e d by R i c h a r d Nixon's men
d u r i n g t h e Watergate e r a . ' '
Wertheimer, who i s n ' t g i v e n t o u n d e r s t a t e m e n t , l i s t s as c u l p r i t s
b o t h p r e s i d e n t i a l c a n d i d a t e s , t h e Democratic and R e p u b l i c a n n a t i o n a l
committees, c o n g r e s s i o n a l c a n d i d a t e s , u n i o n s , c o r p o r a t i o n s and
business i n t e r e s t s . I f t h i s i s c r i m e , everybody's g u i l t y ; and t h a t
might suggest t o Wertheimer and o t h e r s a fundamental f l a w i n t h e i r
assumptions about campaign f i n a n c e .
A f t e r t h e Watergate scandals (which weren't r e a l l y about money) t h e
r e f o r m e r s b u l l i e d Congress i n t o t h e 1974 r e f o r m s — a n d , as u s u a l , made
a bad s i t u a t i o n worse. Since i t appeared t h a t Nixon's infamous
r e - e l e c t i o n committee had engaged i n a s o r t o f shakedown, t h e new law
s e t up a maze o f complex l e g a l i n h i b i t i o n s under which money may
l e g a l l y be g i v e n by i n d i v i d u a l s t o c a n d i d a t e s f o r f e d e r a l o f f i c e o n l y
x x
i n t i n y $1,000 p i n c h e s . But i f c a n d i d a t e s a r e r i c h , t h e y can spend
t h e i r own f o r t u n e s w i t h o u t l i m i t — a s Ross P e r o t d i d i n 1992.
I f p r e s i d e n t i a l c a n d i d a t e s accept p u b l i c f i n a n c i n g , f o r which they
alone are e l i g i b l e , t h e y ' r e r e s t r i c t e d t o a budget t h a t s e r i o u s
(more)
�EDWIN YODER COLUMN f o r November 6, 1996
Page 2
h u c k s t e r s o f t o o t h p a s t e o r l a x a t i v e s would f i n d l a u g h a b l e . P a r t i e s
can, o f course, r e s o r t t o t h e r a i s i n g o f s o - c a l l e d s o f t money''
(upward o f $200 m i l l i o n t h i s year) as * p a r t y b u i l d i n g ' ' funds t h a t
everyone understands w i l l be devoted t o t h e e l e c t i o n o f t h e p a r t y ' s
nominees f o r o f f i c e .
We have, i t seems, loaded t h e system w i t h every i n c i t e m e n t t o t h e
s c o f f l a w i s m Wertheimer and o t h e r s denounce.
Those who f o l l o w t h e money,'' i n Deep T h r o a t ' s i m m o r t a l words,
used t o know who t h e b i g c o n t r i b u t o r s were and who g o t what from whom
and why. Now, i n s t e a d o f p e r m i t t i n g t h e f r a n k i d e n t i f i c a t i o n o f
i n t e r e s t s w i t h p r e s i d e n t i a l c a n d i d a t e s ( b i g unions w i t h t h e Democrats,
f o r i n s t a n c e , o r b i g tobacco t h i s year w i t h t h e Republicans) we
encourage t h e f a n c y d e v i c e o f h y p o c r i s y and camouflage known as PACs.
Would-be r e f o r m e r s speak o f t h i s as i f i t were infamous and even
loathsome. But a few i n s t r u c t i v e comparisons suggest a d i f f e r e n t
p e r s p e c t i v e : The major p a r t i e s each g o t something l i k e $63 m i l l i o n i n
f e d e r a l funds f o r t h i s year's p r e s i d e n t i a l campaign. I n 1989, t h e f o u r
t o p business a d v e r t i s e r s a l o n e — P h i l i p M o r r i s , P r o c t o r & Gamble,
Sears, and GM—spent n e a r l y $7 b i l l i o n on a d v e r t i s i n g , 55 t i m e s as
much as t h i s y e a r ' s o f f i c i a l campaign budget. I n 1991, t h e e s t i m a t e d
t o t a l a d v e r t i s i n g budget i n t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s was $126 b i l l i o n — s o m e
999 times t h e amount made a v a i l a b l e t o p r e s i d e n t i a l c a n d i d a t e s t h i s
year. These p r i v a t e - s e c t o r e x p e n d i t u r e s would, o f course, be f a r
l a r g e r today.
To compound t h e c o n f u s i o n , t h e Supreme Court, i n Buckley v. Valeo,
p r o m p t l y r i p p e d t h e h e a r t o u t o f t h e 1974 ^ r e f o r m s ' ' when i t d e c l a r e d
t h e e x p e n d i t u r e o f money i t s e l f t o be f r e e speech under t h e F i r s t
Amendment. A t a s t r o k e , t h e c o u r t snatched from Congress t h e power t o
guide, l i m i t o r r e g u l a t e t h e use o f money i n p o l i t i c s , r e i n f o r c i n g t h e
tendency t o e x c e s s — i f , indeed, i t i s excess. When you add t o g e t h e r
t h e c o s t o f t e l e v i s i o n , t h e nominal l i m i t s on e x p e n d i t u r e , and t h e
Supreme Court's F i r s t Amendment views, t h e sum i s mixed s i g n a l s and
nearly t o t a l confusion.
x x
x
x x
(more)
�EDWIN YODER COLUMN f o r November 6, 1996
Page 3
So l o n g as i t remains t h e Supreme Court's view t h a t money i s
speech, Congress w i l l l a c k power t o l i m i t p o l i t i c a l a d v e r t i s i n g except
t h r o u g h t h e f l i m s y and i n e f f e c t i v e d e v i c e o f p u b l i c f i n a n c i n g . I t
would be wise t o s t o p t h e i n s u l t t o law and s e t t l e f o r something more
m o d e s t — u n l i m i t e d c o n t r i b u t i o n s w i t h s t r i c t and t r u l y e n f o r c e a b l e
d i s c l o s u r e . L i k e t h e w a r on d r u g s , " t h e war on money i n p o l i t i c s i s
a war on excess and f o l l y w i t h t h e u s u a l outcome. F o l l y and excess
r a r e l y lose.
x x
(c) 1996,
Y\}
Washington Post W r i t e r s
Group
''Xydwin Yoder Column - He w r i t e s about campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m
/ e s t a b l i s h e d b y Congress i n 1974.
I n Buckley v. Valeo, t h e
I 'o^,
V Supreme Court r i p p e d the h e a r t out o f the reforms b y d e c l a r i n g
K j J j - ^ \ I t h e e x p e n d i t u r e o f money t o be f r e e speech under t h e F i r s t
/ Amendment. I t would be wise t o s t o p the i n s u l t t o law and s e t t l e
* ) f o r u n l i m i t e d c o n t r i b u t i o n s w i t h s t r i c t and e n f o r c e a b l e
(disclosure.
The war on money i n p o l i t i c s i s a war on excess and
f o l l y w i t h t h e u s u a l outcome -- f o l l y and excess r a r e l y l o s e .
�The Dirtiest Election Ever
'15£.11N[TED
internet access
...ANOTHER REASON
TO C H O O S E E K O l ' S
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The Dirtiest Election Ever
The Spending Abuses of 1996 Should Shame
Us Into Reform
By Fred Wertheimer
Sunday, November 3 1996; Page C01
The Washington Post
IN 25 YEARS of following political money, I have seen campaign
finance abuses, and I have seen campaign finance abuses.
And I say without hesitation that this election will go down as the worst
in modem times, if not in our history. In important ways, the abuses
involving hundreds of millions of dollars are worse even than the illegal
contributions gathered by Richard Nixon's men during the Watergate era.
This year we've seen a record-shattering $200 million in contributions
made outside the federal law, mostly from business interests. We've seen
huge amounts of foreign money raised by the elusive Democratic
operative John Huang from an Indonesian conglomerate and others,
hundreds of six-figure checks from corporations and business executives
to the Democrats and Republicans, afirst-ever$20-million-plus
advertising blitz funded by union dues to win back Democratic control of
Congress, Sen. Dole's finance vice chairman convicted for laundering
contributions, President Clinton personally involved in a $35 million ad
campaign circumventing the campaign finance laws, Philip Morris
contributing more than $3 million primarily to Republicans to help
protect its tobacco interests, and even the spectacle of Vice President Al
Gore participating in a fund-raiser at a Buddhist temple.
When you add it all up ~ the illegality, the cheating, the evasion, as well
as the arrogance and cynicism — what we have is a collapse of the system
on a scale we simply haven't seen before. It is a collapse that taints the
results of Tuesday's presidential and congressional elections no matter
what the outcome.
Put simply, we've seen that the attitude of our national leaders when it
comes to campaign laws is no different than that of tax evaders, deadbeat
dads and welfare cheats. The most powerful people in the country have
proved in the 1996 political season that they do not believe the law
applies to them.
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The abuses involve the Democratic president and his Republican
challenger; the Democratic and Republican national party committees;
Democrats and Republicans running for congress; labor unions,
corporations, wealthy individuals and foreign-based interests. Special
mention must be made of the incumbent president, who has led the way
in setting the tone and unleashing an escalating money war that resembles
the Cold War arms race.
As a result, in 1996 the campaign finance system put in place following
the Watergate scandals has been washed away. Though still on the books,
campaign finance laws have been replaced by the law of the jungle. The
abuses may well seriously tilt Tuesday's election results. And who knows
what they will do to the integrity of the political process.
Some will no doubt argue that this proves that campaign finance laws to
limit corruption and the appearance of corruption cannot work. They will
argue that court decisions on free speech, and the impossibility of closing
loopholes in the law, show that you cannot stem the tide of huge
corrupting contributions. The ugly reality, however, belies this argument.
The key to understanding much of what has happened in 1996 is not
loopholes, it's lawbreaking. There are laws that matter, but people are
breaking them. And no one's doing anything about it.
Whatever else we do, we have to start enforcing the laws we have.
Attorney General Janet Reno, for example, should appoint an
independent counsel to investigate whether the Clinton and Dole
campaigns have engaged in massive violations. If people are guilty of
criminal conduct, they should be prosecuted and pun ished. That's what
happened during Watergate, and it had a very sobering effect on potential
lawbreakers for years afterward.
The Watergate analogy is one we should keep in mind, both for its abuses
and the reforms it spurred. Watergate remains our nation's greatest
political scandal and involved a lot more than campaign money. It
involved obstruction of justice, criminal convictions of the top officials in
the White House and two men who served as attorney general, as well as
the resignation of the president. But while the campaign finance abuses of
Watergate were momentous and contemptible, what is happening this
year is actually larger in scope and impact. The shady dealings by Nixon's
Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), which included secret
slush funds and cash-stuffed envelopes solicited from businessmen,
focused only on one officeholder.
In 1974, following Watergate, a new system of public financing and
spending limits was established for presidential elections. Limits were
also imposed in all federal elections for contributions from individuals
and political action committees, to go with the longstanding ban on
corporate and labor union money.
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A fundamental purpose of the laws was to prevent contributions from
buying, or appearing to buy, influence over presidential and congressional
decisions. And at least for presidential elections, the system worked well
until 1988 when the "soft money" scam was used by both the Michael
Dukakis and George Bush campaigns to bring huge money back into
politics. When all efforts to fix this problem, and the similarly dangerous
problem of special interest money in congressional campaigns, were
blocked in Congress or by a presidential veto, the stage was set for this
year's fiasco.
Several things were different this time. First, all the political players
approached the 1996 election as if it were World War III ~ that is to say,
each side felt that if the other side won full control of the White House
and Congress, American civilization would come to an end. Under these
circumstances, they concluded, anything goes.
Second, everyone decided there were no real consequences to behavior
that might break the law. While this view has been growing for years
because of the failure of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to
seriously enforce the law, in 1996 a collective judgment was reached that
if you break the law no one will do anything about it, and even if they do
it will simply result in some fine being imposed literally in the next
century.
Third, the person who kicked off this ethical race to the bottom was none
other than the president of the United States. In the summer of 1995, Bill
Clinton and his political operatives designed what turned out to be an
unprecedented $35 million advertising campaign, using money that the
law said should not have been in his control, to promote the president's
re-election.
There followed in quick succession all sorts of people bending and/or
breaking the laws for their own ends, including the AFL-CIO's massive
television buy, Al D'Amato's evasive National Republican Senate
Committee schemes to pump extra money into Senate races and Dole's
$17 million ad campaign after he had reached his spending limit.
Much of what I believe to be illegal conduct centers on so-called soft
money, since 1988 a legal fiction that has served as cover for injecting
tens of millions of dollars improperly into the presidential campaigns
(and now congressional races as well). The fiction, tragically blessed and
thereby given the aura of legitimacy by the FEC, is the claim that these
funds were being raised and used for political party-building activities.
The reality is that they are used to support the presidential campaigns.
The impact of this has been to bring back into presidential campaigns
huge contributions of $100,000 or more from corporations, labor unions
and wealthy individuals that have been barred from federal elections, in
some cases ~ such as corporations - since the turn of the century.
Soft money has been a scam from the beginning. This year it will end up
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being a $200 million scam. Here's how:
The Clinton and Dole campaigns each used millions of dollars in soft
money to help finance TV ad campaigns that promoted their candidacies
and attacked their opponents. Using their political parties as conduits,
they prepared, directed and controlled the ad campaigns, raised the
money for them, and targeted them to presidential battleground states.
These expenditures were beyond the spending limits that Clinton and
Dole had agreed to abide by in return for receiving public funds to help
finance their elections.
In Clinton's case, flouting the law may well have had a major impact on
the race. Much ofhis early ad burst ran last fall and winter at a time when
he had the airwaves to himself. It allowed him to frame the national
debate to his liking for the entire campaign year that followed. This may
have affected not just the presidential race but the context in which the
congressional races have been run as well.
For the first time, the Republican and Democratic national party
committees are using millions of dollars in soft money contributions to
finance TV ad campaigns that attack and promote congressional
candidates by name.
The parties are using as a fig leaf the notion that since the ads do not say
"vote for" or "vote against" the candidate, these are "issue ads" and not
subject to federal limits. This is a ludicrous argument on its face. A
political party running ads that attack or support a specific named federal
candidate cannot seriously claim that these are just issue ads. And they
cannot use soft money to finance such ads.
Beyond soft money to the political parties, interest groups, led by the
AFL-CIO, also made unprecedented expenditures on TV ad campaigns to
attack and promote congressional candidates. The Supreme Court has
ruled in the case of independent groups that ads require express advocacy
such as "vote for" or "vote against" in order to be treated as ads covered
by the campaign finance laws rather than issue ads. The AFL-CIO
decided to use this ruling as a license to cheat, running its
$20-million-plus TV and radio ad campaign with the stated intention of
defeating Republicans in selected House districts.
The Republicans have filed complaints with the FEC charging that the
ads, financed by union dues which cannot be used to support or oppose a
federal candidate, constitute multimillion-dollar illegal campaign
expenditures. Once again we see a situation where dubious conduct could
have an impact on the balance of power in American politics.
None of this, of course, even takes into account the corrupting impact that
all of these contributions and expenditures may have on government
decisions affecting all of us, once the elections are over. A relatively few
powerful people and groups have put a lot of money on the table. What
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do they expect in return? What will they get?
If there is anything good in all this, it's the realization which should be
clear to all by now that the system is "broke" and has to be "fixed." It can
be done. We do not lack for solutions. It's a question of having the
political will to implement them. Here are five steps to take to achieve
real reform:
1. Move quickly. Beware of politicians bearing a "commission" to
examine the problems and propose the solution. Delay has always been a
principal weapon in killing campaign finance reform. And a commission
means serious delay. It also means commissioners appointed by political
leaders who for the most part have no credibility when it comes to a
demonstrated commitment to real reform. A campaign finance reform bill
should be the first one acted on in the new Congress, otherwise members
will soon turn their attention to the business of financing their next
election.
2. Fix the enforcement system. No new laws will work unless they're
seriously enforced. The terms of four of the six FEC commissioners will
be up by next May. Appoint nonpartisan commissioners, such as retired
federal judges, who see their job as representing the public, not the
politicians. Change the commission structure to eliminate deadlocks.
Provide the commission with adequate and permanent funding. Give the
commission powers to act during an election, not just years afterward.
3. Ban soft money. Prohibit national parties and federal candidates and
officeholders from raising or spending money that cannot legally be used
to directly support a federal candidate. Legislative measures to
accomplish this already exist. They are contained in the campaign finance
bills sponsored in the last Congress by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and
Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Reps. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), Linda
Smith (R-Wash.) and Martin Meehan (D-Mass.). Enact new rules to
ensure that campaign ads can't masquerade as issue ads.
4. Provide new sources of "clean" funds. We have to replace the
interested money that pervades the system. Provide public funds and free
and low-cost TV and mailings for those willing to participate in a new
system for financing congressional elections.
5. Eliminate the Washington-based professional fund-raising circuit. The
PAC/lobbyist/special interest money machine dominates congressional
campaign financing. Place tough new restrictions on contributions from
these sources. Develop legislative measures and new congressional rules
to minimize fund-raising activities in Washington.
This year's extraordinary and unprecedented abuses, ironically, have
provided us with the best chance since Watergate to fundamentally
reform the nation's campaign finance laws. Every American who cares
about democratic values should join in this battle. The only thing at stake
5 of 6
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�The Dirtiest Election Ever
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is our democracy in the 21 st century.
Fred Wertheimer is a long-time advocate of campaign finance reform and
the former president of Common Cause.
© Copyright 1996 The Washington Post Company
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�Page 3
1ST
STORY o f Level 1 p r i n t e d i n FULL f o r m a t .
C o p y r i g h t 1996 U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report
October 28, 1996
SECTION: U.S. NEWS; Pg. 24
LENGTH: 1919
words
HEADLINE: The c o l o r o f money
SERIES: E l e c t i o n '96
BYLINE: By Bruce A u s t e r ; Penny Loeb; Josh Chetwynd; Dana Coleman; Susan Dentzer;
Ted Gest; Paul G l a s t r i s ; Michael S a t c h e l l ; Thomas Toch
HIGHLIGHT:
In
t h e f i g h t f o r c o n t r o l o f Congress, i n t e r e s t groups are b e t t i n g m i l l i o n s ;
BODY:
The mansion i n B e v e r l y H i l l s , w i t h i t s f o r m a l gardens and i t s c a r o u s e l , so
c a p t u r e d t h e i m a g i n a t i o n o f d i r e c t o r F r a n c i s Ford Coppola t h a t he f i l m e d a scene
f o r h i s masterpiece t h e The Godfather t h e r e . L a t e l y , t h e s t o r i e d Hollywood home
has been h o s t t o t h e Democrats' g o d f a t h e r , B i l l C l i n t o n , who a t e l u n c h t h e r e
l a s t week and t o o k home as much as $ 1.5 m i l l i o n f o r h i s e f f o r t s . I n t h e few
days l e f t between now and November 5, C l i n t o n w i l l be d i n i n g a t a n e a r l y
unbroken s e r i e s o f f u n d - r a i s e r s designed t o r a i s e up t o $ 15 m i l l i o n f o r
Democrats r u n n i n g f o r Congress.
That's chump change nowadays. With two weeks u n t i l E l e c t i o n Day, t h e GOP
has r a i s e d $ 271 m i l l i o n and an a d d i t i o n a l $ 84 m i l l i o n i n l o o s e l y r e g u l a t e d
" s o f t money." Democrats have been somewhat l e s s s u c c e s s f u l , b u t t h e numbers are
s t i l l i m p r e s s i v e : $ 156 m i l l i o n i n d i r e c t c o n t r i b u t i o n s and $ 70 m i l l i o n i n s o f t
money. Unions have spent $ 15 m i l l i o n on r a d i o and TV ads and p l a n t o spend $ 5
m i l l i o n more i n t h e days ahead. T r i a l lawyers gave $ 1.6 m i l l i o n , m o s t l y t o
Democrats.
T h i s year, u n l i k e o t h e r e l e c t i o n seasons, much o f t h e money i s g o i n g i n t o
c o n g r e s s i o n a l races. Labor unions, teachers and e n v i r o n m e n t a l i s t s want a
Democrat t o w i e l d t h e speaker's g a v e l n e x t year. Tobacco companies and t h e gun
l o b b y don't p l a n t o l e t t h e i r Republican a l l i e s hand i t over. Says a Republican
f u n d - r a i s e r w o r k i n g t h e phones f o r cash: " I t ' s p u t - u p - o r - s h u t - u p t i m e . "
The f i e r c e s t c o n t e s t s are i n some 30 c o n g r e s s i o n a l races, where Democrats
are t a r g e t i n g Republican freshmen and Republicans are a n g l i n g f o r seats v a c a t e d
by r e t i r i n g Democrats, p a r t i c u l a r l y i n t h e South. So i n t e n s e are these c o n t e s t s
t h a t t h e GOP i s p r e p a r e d t o spend money on c o n g r e s s i o n a l races even a t t h e
expense o f h e l p i n g t h e Dole campaign.
I n t h e i r b i d f o r c o n t r o l o f C a p i t o l H i l l , Democrats, Republicans and
i n t e r e s t groups are t r a m p l i n g t h e r u l e s t h a t govern how money and p o l i t i c s
C o n t r i b u t o r s are b r e a k i n g a l l records not by v i o l a t i n g t h e law but by
mix.
�Page 4
U.S. News & World Report, October 28,
1996
s i d e s t e p p i n g i t or f i n d i n g holes i n i t .
Advocacy. One o f t h e b i g g e s t holes b e n e f i t s b i g l a b o r . T h i s year, t h e
AFL-CIO i s spending $ 35 m i l l i o n t o t a r g e t Republican c o n g r e s s i o n a l c a n d i d a t e s ,
and t h a t ' s on t o p o f t h e $ 32 m i l l i o n i t gave Democrats t h r o u g h June. Union
o r g a n i z e r s have s e t up o p e r a t i o n s i n 100 c o n g r e s s i o n a l d i s t r i c t s ; b u t t h e
AFL-CIO i s spending most o f i t s money i n j u s t 28 races, where i t i s r u n n i n g
r a d i o and TV ads. An AFL-CIO membership survey r e v e a l e d t h a t most want t o
safeguard t h e i r pensions and a v o i d tampering w i t h M e d i c a r e - - f i g h t s l i k e l y t o be
f o u g h t on t h e H i l l n e x t year.
The e l e c t i o n - e v e f i g h t s b e i n g waged now, i n e v i t a b l y , are p e r s o n a l . A
f a v o r i t e l a b o r t a r g e t , f o r i n s t a n c e , i s Republican freshman J.D. Hayworth o f
A r i z o n a . An ad p a i d f o r by t h e AFL-CIO accuses Hayworth o f p r e s e r v i n g a t a x
l o o p h o l e f o r m i l l i o n a i r e s . The u n i o n says i t i s n o t v i o l a t i n g f e d e r a l e l e c t i o n
law because i t doesn't urge c i t i z e n s t o v o t e f o r Hayworth's opponent.
Environmental i n t e r e s t s are a l s o b i g p l a y e r s t h i s year. The S i e r r a Club, f o r
example, w i l l spend about $ 7.5 m i l l i o n on d i r e c t c a n d i d a t e endorsements, on
v o t e r e d u c a t i o n and on good o l d - f a s h i o n e d l o b b y i n g t h a t , l i k e t h e u n i o n s , i t
l i k e s t o c a l l " i s s u e advocacy." I n a s p e c i a l e l e c t i o n e a r l i e r t h i s year t o f i l l
t h e Oregon Senate seat vacated by Bob Packwood, t h e S i e r r a Club spent $ 169,000
t o h e l p e l e c t Ron Wyden. The e f f o r t stands as t h e model f o r t h e o r g a n i z a t i o n ' s
f a l l s t r a t e g y , i n which i t w i l l r u n s i m i l a r ad campaigns i n t h r e e races i n
C a l i f o r n i a , Michigan and Iowa. A l l t o l d , t h e S i e r r a Club w i l l buy ads t o h e l p
i n f l u e n c e 35 House and Senate races. I n a l l but t h r e e cases, t h e o r g a n i z a t i o n i s
s u p p o r t i n g Democrats.
The e n v i r o n m e n t a l groups have a s e t o f g o a l s f o r t h e next Congress, among
them, t h e terms o f renewal o f t h e Clean A i r and Clean Water a c t s , r e f o r m o f t h e
Environmental P r o t e c t i o n Agency's t r o u b l e d Superfund program and r e a u t h o r i z a t i o n
of t h e Endangered Species A c t . " I t w i l l be a jump b a l l a f t e r t h e e l e c t i o n , " says
t h e S i e r r a Club's Dan Weiss. " I f t h e Republicans win, w e ' l l be on t h e d e f e n s i v e
a g a i n . I f t h e Democrats win, i t w i l l be p o s s i b l e t o make p r o g r e s s . "
The N a t i o n a l R i f l e A s s o c i a t i o n , which i s expected t o spend l i b e r a l l y i n t h e
coming days, has been r e l a t i v e l y q u i e t - - s o f a r . I t spent $ 1.5 m i l l i o n
i n d e p e n d e n t l y i n t h e 1994 e l e c t i o n s , a t h i r d o f such spending by a l l p o l i t i c a l
a c t i o n committees. I t may w e l l spend a l i k e amount t h i s season, much o f i t soon.
The soft-money game i s another way i n t e r e s t groups s k i r t t h e law, and
Republicans are every b i t as adept a t i t as Democrats. The concept i s b a s i c .
O r g a n i z a t i o n s can't g i v e more than $ 10,000 t o a c a n d i d a t e i n an e l e c t i o n , b u t
t h e y can g i v e a l l t h e y want t o t h e l i m i t l e s s soft-money accounts o f p o l i t i c a l
p a r t i e s . That's how P h i l i p M o r r i s Co. was a b l e t o g i v e Republicans $ 1.6 m i l l i o n
t h r o u g h J u l y . Tobacco i n t e r e s t s have g i v e n $ 4.7 m i l l i o n i n s o f t money, m o s t l y
t o t h e GOP.
Up i n smoke. I n t h e c o n t e s t t o r e p l a c e I l l i n o i s Sen. Paul Simon, f o r
i n s t a n c e , Democrat Dick D u r b i n i s a l e a d e r o f t h e a n t i s m o k i n g f o r c e s i n
Congress. H i s opponent, Republican A l S a l v i , has taken tobacco i n d u s t r y
c o n t r i b u t i o n s and c r i t i c i z e d government r e g u l a t o r y e f f o r t s t o curb tobacco use.
Races l i k e D u r b i n - S a l v i may decide the f i g h t over tobacco on C a p i t o l H i l l n e x t
year.
�Page 5
U.S. News & World Report, October 28,
1996
Tobacco d o l l a r s r e p r e s e n t j u s t a f r a c t i o n o f t h e s o f t money t h a t Republicans
and Democrats have banked f o r t h e f i n a l weeks o f t h e campaign. The h e a l t h
i n d u s t r y - - d o c t o r s , h o s p i t a l s and i n s u r e r s - - c o n t r i b u t e d $ 8.8 m i l l i o n t h r o u g h
J u l y , t h e most r e c e n t data a v a i l a b l e . The amount has i n c r e a s e d s i g n i f i c a n t l y
s i n c e . A l l p a r t i e s are i n t e r e s t e d i n r e f o r m i n g the managed-care system,
p a r t i c u l a r l y as more and more people j o i n h e a l t h maintenance o r g a n i z a t i o n s .
F i n d i n g ways t o expand h e a l t h insurance may a l s o re-emerge as a c r u c i a l i s s u e i n
Congress, g i v e n t h a t 41 m i l l i o n remain u n i n s u r e d , a p o p u l a t i o n t h a t c o u l d grow
t o 49 m i l l i o n by 2,002.
By any measure, t h e money b e i n g thrown around i s e x t r a o r d i n a r y . Republicans
had r a i s e d $ 84 m i l l i o n i n s o f t money by t h e end o f June. That's more t h a n
double t h e amount t h e y r a i s e d f o r a l l o f 1991 and 1992. Democrats r a i s e d $ 70
m i l l i o n - - f i v e times more than i n t h e l a s t p r e s i d e n t i a l e l e c t i o n .
S p l u r g i n g . W i t h a l l t h a t money f l o a t i n g around, o f course, t r o u b l e i s bound
t o happen. For t h e Democrats, i t was a soft-money d o n a t i o n t h a t b r o u g h t
c o n t r o v e r s y . The p a r t y accepted hundreds of thousands of d o l l a r s from donors
w i t h t i e s t o a major Indonesian conglomerate--prompting charges by Republicans
t h a t t h e C l i n t o n a d m i n i s t r a t i o n made f a v o r a b l e human-rights and t r a d e d e c i s i o n s
i n r e t u r n ; a d m i n i s t r a t i o n o f f i c i a l s deny t h e charge. Democrats c o u n t e r c h a r g e
t h a t i t i s GOP f u n d - r a i s e r s who are b e i n g i n v e s t i g a t e d . This week, a judge may
r u l e i n t h e case o f Simon Fireman, who agreed t o pay a f i n e of $ 6 m i l l i o n f o r
l a u n d e r i n g $ 69,000 t h r o u g h a Hong Kong bank t o f u n n e l i t t o t h e Dole campaign.
The Supreme Court r e c e n t l y opened a new avenue f o r p o l i t i c a l p a r t i e s t o g e t
around campaign-finance laws. A June r u l i n g a l l o w s t h e p a r t i e s t o r u n TV and
r a d i o ads i n c o n g r e s s i o n a l races, as l o n g as t h e y don't c o o r d i n a t e t h e i r e f f o r t s
w i t h t h e c a n d i d a t e s . These "independent e x p e n d i t u r e s , " u n t i l now e x p l o i t e d o n l y
by unions and i n t e r e s t groups, r e p r e s e n t one of t h e f a s t e s t - g r o w i n g segments o f
the campaign-finance arena. Republicans and Democrats have a l r e a d y spent
m i l l i o n s t h r o u g h independent e x p e n d i t u r e s , and b o t h p a r t i e s p l a n even b i g g e r
s p l u r g e s i n t h e n e x t two weeks.
No wonder B i l l C l i n t o n , one n i g h t a f t e r t e l l i n g a t o w n - h a l l - d e b a t e audience
t h a t he b e l i e v e s i n campaign-finance r e f o r m , a t t e n d e d a d i n n e r a t U n i v e r s a l
S t u d i o s i n Hollywood, h e a d l i n e d by a c t o r Michael Douglas, the man who p l a y e d t h e
l e a d i n t h e movie The American P r e s i d e n t . The take f o r d i n n e r : almost $ 1.5
m i l l i o n . Anyone f o r d e s s e r t ?
THE
GOP'S BIG BACKERS
Republicans are b e a t i n g Democrats, 3-2, i n the race f o r campaign cash,
some o f t h e most i m p o r t a n t p l a y e r s haven't weighed i n y e t .
and
The NRA. The gun l o b b y has m i l l i o n s of d o l l a r s on hand and i s s e t t o pump
much o f i t i n t o l a s t - m i n u t e ad b l i t z e s , as i t d i d on b e h a l f o f Republicans i n
1994.--$ 3,300,000
N a t i o n a l R i g h t t o L i f e . W i l l back p r o - l i f e c a n d i d a t e s w i t h ads from t h e
hundreds o f thousands i n cash on hand--$ 1,2 00,000
Business.*
Constant
s u p p o r t e r s who work t h r o u g h p o l i t i c a l
action
�Page 6
U.S. News & World Report, October 28, 1996
committees--$ 41,000,000
BIG DOLLARS FOR DEMOCRATS
Labor and e n v i r o n m e n t a l groups l e a d t h e l i s t o f b i g s u p p o r t e r s .
AFL-CIO. The u n i o n i s u s i n g i t s war chest t o t a r g e t Republicans,
freshman a l l i e s o f House Speaker Newt G i n g r i c h . - - $ 67,000,000
especially
The S i e r r a Club. I t w i l l spend m i l l i o n s on c a n d i d a t e endorsements and v o t e r
e d u c a t i o n . - - $ 7,500,000
* Business c o n t r i b u t i o n s are t o GOP c a n d i d a t e s and p a r t i e s . Others show a l l
money r a i s e d t o d a t e .
ZIP CODES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS
Where are p o l i t i c i a n s heading f o r ready cash t h i s e l e c t i o n season? Clues can
be found a t t h e p o s t o f f i c e . The most generous g i v e r s , ensconced i n t h e i r
h i g h - r i s e s i n midtown Manhattan, g e t t h e i r m a i l d e l i v e r e d t o ZIP code 10021.
W a l l S t r e e t leveraged-buyout k i n g Henry K r a v i s gave c a n d i d a t e s $ 125,000, w h i l e
h i s n e i g h b o r s i n t h e ZIP code o f t h e r i c h and famous gave a grand t o t a l o f $ 7.8
m i l l i o n . The second most b o u n t i f u l m a i l i n g address i s Washington, D.C.
20036--the K S t r e e t c o r r i d o r , where l o b b y i s t s and lawyers o f f e r e d up $ 7.7
m i l l i o n t o c a n d i d a t e s , p o l i t i c a l a c t i o n committees and p a r t y committees.
America's most famous ZIP code, B e v e r l y H i l l s ' 90210, dug deep f o r more t h a n $
2.3 m i l l i o n , i n c l u d i n g media mogul Rupert Murdoch and d i r e c t o r Rob Reiner, who
gave $ 20,000 a p i e c e . Candidates l o o k i n g f o r f a s t money needn't w r i t e anyone a t
t h e 05151 ZIP code f o r P e r k i n s v i l l e , V t . I t has anted up a l l o f $ 8.
TWENTY QUESTIONS: CLINTON KEEPS COUNT
P r e s i d e n t C l i n t o n ' s campaign team d i d n o t have t o w a i t f o r t h e TV networks t o
d e c l a r e him t h e v i c t o r i n l a s t week's debate. His a i d e s knew, minute-by-minute,
how t h e i r boss was f a r i n g w i t h t h e v o t e r s because C l i n t o n p o l l s t e r Mark Penn
spent t h e 90-minute debate t a k i n g t h e p u l s e o f 500 v o t e r s . A f t e r e v e r y two
q u e s t i o n s , he would ask t h e group which c a n d i d a t e had g o t t e n t h e b e s t o f t h e
exchange. C l i n t o n ' s team was g i d d y a t the r e s u l t s : The 500 c i t i z e n s t h o u g h t
C l i n t o n won e v e r y q u e s t i o n . C l i n t o n ' s b e s t showing, among t h e 20 q u e s t i o n s
asked, was a score o f 65 p e r c e n t , a judgment by 65 p e r c e n t o f t h e p a n e l t h a t he
had won. He never d i p p e d below 4 5 p e r c e n t . Bob Dole's b e s t was a query about pay
hikes f o r m i l i t a r y personnel.
POOL PARTY: DOLE COURTS THE YOUTH VOTE
Rock t h e Vote, a group t h a t g e t s out the v o t e among the younger crowd, t h r e w
a p o o l s i d e p a r t y f o r about 2,000 s t u d e n t s a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f San Diego a f t e r
l a s t week's p r e s i d e n t i a l matchup t h e r e . I t i n v i t e d t h e two c a n d i d a t e s t o t h e
p o s t d e b a t e f e s t i v i t i e s , b u t b o t h d e c l i n e d . C l i n t o n d i d send h i s y o u t h f u l s e n i o r
a d v i s e r , George Stephanopoulos, and event o r g a n i z e r s c a l l e d New York Rep. Susan
M o l i n a r i t o sub f o r Dole, b u t she never made i t . Then, a bossy advance man i n a
dark s u i t a r r i v e d . Not f a r b e h i n d was c a n d i d a t e Dole h i m s e l f , who a r r i v e d w i t h
�Page 7
U.S. News & World Report, October 28, 1996
h i s w i f e , E l i z a b e t h , and former P r e s i d e n t G e r a l d Ford i n tow. Ford, 83,
i n t r o d u c e d Dole, 73, s a y i n g , " I ' v e known Bob Dole s i n c e 1960." Or t w i c e as l o n g
as t h e average c o l l e g e freshman has been a l i v e .
GRAPHIC: Drawing, No c a p t i o n (Cartoon by Steve Benson f o r USN&WR); P i c t u r e s : No
c a p t i o n (Photos: (Top) Fox B r o a d c a s t i n g ; (Bottom) J. David Ake--AFP)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: October 24, 1996
�Page8
5TH STORY o f L e v e l 1 p r i n t e d i n FULL f o r m a t .
C o p y r i g h t 1996 The Economist Newspaper L t d .
The Economist
October 19, 1996, U.S. E d i t i o n
SECTION: World P o l i t i c s and C u r r e n t A f f a i r s ; AMERICAN SURVEY; Pg. 34
LENGTH: 4 95 words
HEADLINE: L i p p o - s u c t i o n
BODY:
WASHINGTON, DC
FOR t h e m i l l i o n s o f Americans who have never u n d e r s t o o d Whitewater, now
comes a brand new C l i n t o n scandal t o be confused by. C a l l i t W i r i a d i n a t a g a t e , o r
Indonesia-scam.
I t goes l i k e t h i s : John Huang, a former Commerce Department o f f i c i a l , r a i s e d
$ 250,000 from South Korea's Cheong Am Company f o r t h e Democratic N a t i o n a l
Committee (DNC). When a Los Angeles Times r e p o r t e r s n i f f e d o u t t h e arrangement,
the DNC r e t u r n e d t h e money, which from an American s u b s i d i a r y . F o r e i g n n a t i o n a l s
may n o t c o n t r i b u t e t o American c a n d i d a t e s o r p o l i t i c a l p a r t i e s , a l t h o u g h l e g a l
r e s i d e n t s and s u b s i d i a r i e s may.
Mr Huang had a l s o r a i s e d $ 425,000 over e i g h t months from A r i e f and Soraya
W i r i a d i n a t a , who l i v e d a modest l i f e i n suburban V i r g i n i a . The W i r i a d i n a t a s soon
r e t u r n e d t o t h e i r n a t i v e I n d o n e s i a , where Soraya's f a t h e r had been a t o p
e x e c u t i v e a t t h e Lippo Group. Lippo, which a l s o employed Mr Huang, i s c o n t r o l l e d
by t h e Riady f a m i l y , I n d o n e s i a n b i l l i o n a i r e s who are l o n g - t i m e p a t r o n s o f Mr
C l i n t o n . The Riadys l e n t t h e p r e s i d e n t money t h r o u g h a bank i n L i t t l e Rock and
employed h i s f r i e n d Webster H u b b e l l a f t e r h i s r e s i g n a t i o n i n d i s g r a c e from t h e
J u s t i c e Department. They
$ 475,000 t o t h e Democrats, met Mr C l i n t o n and h i s d e p u t i e s on many
occasions, and a p p a r e n t l y arranged a meeting between t h e p r e s i d e n t and
I n d o n e s i a ' s P r e s i d e n t Suharto.
Was t h e W i r i a d i n a t a cash laundered? Have t h e Riadys e x e r c i s e d undue i n f l u e n c e
on t h e C l i n t o n a d m i n i s t r a t i o n , such as s q u e l c h i n g a r e v i e w o f I n d o n e s i a ' s t r a d e
s t a t u s ? (Mickey Kantor, t h e former U n i t e d S t a t e s t r a d e r e p r e s e n t a t i v e ,
v i g o r o u s l y denies i t . ) And has Mr Huang g o t up t o any o t h e r m i s c h i e f ? Newt
G i n g r i c h , t h e speaker o f t h e House, wants an independent counsel t o pursue these
q u e s t i o n s , s a y i n g he s m e l l s a scandal t h a t would make Watergate " l o o k t i n y " . I t
c e r t a i n l y makes Watergate l o o k s i m p l e .
Mr G i n g r i c h i s h a r d l y one t o t a l k about p o l i t i c a l c o r r u p t i o n . He may w e l l
have broken t h e law when he t o o k c o r p o r a t e money f o r a p a r t i s a n c o l l e g e course.
But t h e j u x t a p o s i t i o n o f t h e speaker and t h e p r e s i d e n t i s f o r t u i t o u s , f o r i t
r e c a l l s t h e i r famous handshake more t h a n a year ago, when b o t h men promised t o
�Page 9
The Economist, October 19, 1996
p l o u g h ahead w i t h s e r i o u s campaign-finance r e f o r m . That, o f course, i s t h e i s s u e
at stake.
Candidates w i l l spend a s t a r t l i n g $ 1.2 b i l l i o n on f e d e r a l campaigns i n t h i s
e l e c t i o n , a c c o r d i n g t o Common Cause, a watchdog group, and p a r t i e s and i n t e r e s t
groups w i l l spend a n o t h e r $ 800m. The f l o w o f s o f t money has s w o l l e n from a
stream t o a t o r r e n t . I n 1991-92, f o r example, t h e p a r t i e s r a i s e d $ 17.1m from
f i n a n c e , i n s u r a n c e and p r o p e r t y companies. T h i s year, t h e f i g u r e so f a r i s $
31m. Lawyers and l o b b y i s t s have i n c r e a s e d t h e i r g i v i n g from $ 2.8m t o $ 6m.
Responding t o q u e s t i o n s about Mr Huang's f u n d r a i s i n g , V i c e - P r e s i d e n t A l Gore
s a i d , "There have been a b s o l u t e l y no v i o l a t i o n s o f any l a p r e c i s e l y t h e
problem.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: October 19, 1996
�BEATING THE SYSTEM
...m/@@V@gdaAUAUzt6XKzC/time/magazine/domestic/1996/961021/campaign.html
^ ^ ^ J : .Keep an.,.J ..on-youi? favorite webjiites!
•
TIME Magazine
October 21, 1996 Volume 148, No. 19
Return to Contents page
BEATING THE SYSTEM
THIS YEAR MORE THAN EVER, CANDIDATES GET HELP FROM SPECIAL-INTEREST
GROUPS THAT S-T-R-E-T-C-H THE RULES
JEFFREYH. B1RNBAUM/WASHINGTON
Jerry Bruno knows all about his Congressman. He can't help it. The retired college professor who lives in Portland, Maine, is
not a political junkie or even someone whose money and clout might be worth the attention. But all through the day, he is
barraged with information about Republican James Longley. A stranger calls on the phone to praise Longley as a "friend of
small business." A radio spot touts the lawmaker's "antigovemment" stands. A TV ad complains that Longley is the victim of
"cheap shots" by "Big Labor bosses." Then there's the whole series of anti-Longley commercials, which charge that the
Congressman has voted to trim student loans, reduce the security of pension funds and "cut Medicare [to] give new tax
breaks to the wealthy." Says Bruno: "It's enough to make your head spin."
What's new about this media onslaught is that none of these pitches or disparagements were paid for by Longley or his
Democratic opponent, Thomas Allen, or even their respective parties. The pro-Longley spots come courtesy of the National
Federation of Independent Business, the National Restaurant Association and a coalition of corporations led by the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce. The anti-Longley information was supplied by the AFL-CIO and, to a lesser extent, the American
Association of Retired Persons. By taking advantage of a lega loophole in campaign-finance laws that permit so-called
independent expenditures, special-interest groups are hogging the airwaves, phone lines and printshops in dozens of the most
hotly contested congressional races around the country. In districts held by G.O.P. freshmen like Longley, outsider advocacy
groups on both sides are routinely spending $500,000 to $1 million a race, amounts that often dwarf the efforts of the
Democratic challengers.
Such spending skirts campaign-finance laws, which were meant to restrict the influence wealthy individuals and powerful
groups could exert in an election. Contributors are not allowed to donate more than $2,000 a candidate, and political-action
committees are restricted to $5,000. But there are no limits on what they can spend as long as they don't coordinate with the
campaign or their message stops short of saying "Vote for Candidate X." The scandal in the latter case is that they come as
close to saying it as they can get away with. They simply invite viewers to phone Candidate X's opponent and complain
about his positions.
That's not the only trick that special-interest groups and rich people are using to stretch the laws intended to bind them. The
result is an extravagantly expensive campaign season. While the amount that candidates for President and Congress will
spend this year is estimated at $1.2 billion, the amount spent in other ways by the parties and special-interest groups may
total $800 million more. There's no end in sight. Bill Clinton and Bob Dole both promised in their first debate that they
would get serious about reforming campaign-finance laws, but they have studiously avoided the subject in the past 12
months; Congress has been stalled all year on the McCain-Feingold campaign-reform bill, its most comprehensive attempt to
close the loopholes. And the absence of any serious enforcement of the existing laws by the Federal Election Commission is
so well known that it continues to embolden Democrats and Republicans to pull their shenanigans.
Finding ways to be just barely legal has become an art form. For example, big donors can give unlimited amounts of
so-called soft money to the major parties for the purpose of "party building" efforts, even if the definition of party building
ends being, say, a biographical ad about the virtues of Dole. (The Republican Party did just that this summer.) It's this kind of
legerdemain that prompted Common Cause last week to call for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate
both parties for $31 million worth of soft-money spending that, in that organization's judgment, came across clearly as
straight-ahead electioneering. Ann McBride, president of the watchdog group, calls these kinds of activities "the most
massive violations of campaign-finance laws since the Watergate scandal."
But there's more. Powerful constituents can also exceed the per-candidate spending limits through a type of earmarking
called "tallying," which routes their big checks to the party and then back to their candidate of choice. The Washington Post
found memos from the campaign of Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, that openly asked donors to tally their extra
contributions to benefit his campaign. One letter from Levin soliciting a tallied contribution from the Chrysler Corp.'s PAC
in 1995 called it "crucial to my re-election effort next year."
Foreigners aren't supposed to contribute at all, but they do through cleverly designed U.S. subsidiaries. Last week the Wall
Street Journal and columnist William Safire of the New York Times reported that the Democratic Party had collected
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�BEATING THE SYSTEM
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hundreds of thousands of dollars from relatives and employees of the Riady family, which heads the $6 billion Lippo Group
of Indonesia. Although the party and the donors denied violating the foreign-contributors ban, Republicans on Capitol Hill
say they plan to hold hearings to examine any favors the Clinton Administration did for Lippo.
The most gaping new loophole in the campaign-finance laws is the one that allows independent expenditures. During the past
two elections, both the left and the right discovered just how effectively these loopholes can be used. The conservatives did it
first in 1994, when such Republican-leaning lobbies as the Christian Coalition, the National Rifle Association and the
tobacco industry joined forces to defeat the late Mike Synar of Oklahoma, a Clinton friend, by spending more than $1
million on billboards, radio spots, phone appeals and "voter guides" handed out in church pews and in Wal-Mart parking
lots. Similar tactics around the country were a key to producing the first Republican-controlled House in 40 years.
Two years later, liberal groups are imitating conservatives with a vengeance. Unionists, environmentalists and pro-choice
activists rehearsed earlier this year in Oregon's special election; working in tandem, they put Democrat Ron Wyden into the
Senate seat held for 26 years by Bob Packwood. Now liberal groups like these dominate the independent-expenditures game,
directing their efforts against the House G.O.P.'s most vulnerable faction, its 73-member freshman class. Philadelphia's
Annenberg School for Communication has cataloged 19 separate organizations that have taken to the airwaves this year;
60% of their messages have supported Democrats. "If the Democrats take control of the House," says congressional analyst
Charles Cook, "a lot of credit will have to go to the AFL-CIO and these other groups on the left."
The AFL-CIO divided its record-shattering $35 million war chest into $20 million for radio and TV ads and $15 million for
field operations. Most of the spending is focused on the few dozen districts where Republicans have the most tenuous hold
on their seats. In the final weeks before the election, the union will broadcast a daunting $8 million barrage of attack ads
disguised as video voter guides on issues like education and Medicare.
The environmental community has its own ambitious campaign of sneak attacks. The League of Conservation Voters has
devoted its $1.5 million kitty to defeat just 12 lawmakers (11 Republicans and one Democrat) whom the organization has
called "the Dirty Dozen." The Sierra Club has targeted 30 races with a million-dollar effort, including voter guides (on
recycled paper) that list incumbent Republicans who allegedly have damaged the ecosystems of their own districts.
The Republican Party has reacted with alarm to the left's counterattack. It has sued the AFL-CIO to stop its ads, though
nothing will be resolved until after the elections. It has unleashed millions of dollars' worth of its own commercials that
accuse the unions of trying to buy control of the House. The G.O.P. hopes to create a backlash against what one of its ads
derides as "Big Labor bosses. Big Money, big lies, big liberals." Freshmen are repeating the line like a mantra in their stump
speeches.
But the response comes late and from a weakened army. One of the Republicans' chief allies, a Chamber of Commerce-led
coalition, has struggled to raise the $4 million it has spent to help some of the most endangered freshmen Republicans. A
separate effort by the same group to go after Democratic incumbents has been truncated for lack of funding. Grouses G.O.P.
pollster Bill Mclnturff: "We're playing a game of poker with Congress: the other side has doubled its bet, and the business
community is just walking away from the table."
Part of the problem is that some of the heroes of the 1994 Republican rout have been wounded. The Christian Coalition still
plans to distribute 45 million voter guides in 100,000 churches. But a suit by the Federal Election Commission that accuses
the coalition of working in cahoots with the G.O.P. has forced the coalition to make its flyers less obviously partisan.
Meanwhile, in Professor Bruno's hometown, the left seems to have the upper hand. The AFL-CIO has set up a phone bank in
a union hall to mobilize hundreds of get-out-the-vote volunteers. Last week the organization suggested just how effective it
can be. Of the 14,000 cheering Clintonites who attended a rally for the President at the Portland Sea Dogs' stadium last
Monday night, 7,000 were recruited union members and their families. In 1994, Longley won his seat by about 9,900 votes.
For continuous campaign coverage, visit the TIME/CNN Website at AllPolitics.com
« fiMfiUfMbint «
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�The Curse of American Politics
Ronald Dworkin
and by feature reporters, whose definition of success is to become celebrities themselves, with huge salaries and
lecture fees, and public recognition
that often dwarfs lhat of the politicians
they supposedly cover.'
1.
America is worried about its democracy in this election year. The power of
money in our politics, long a scandal,
has now become a disaster. Elections
are fought mainly on television, in a
battle of endless and hugely expensive
B u t money is the biggest threat to the
political ads, and candidates are
democratic process. The time polititrapped in spiraling arms races of fund- ' cians must spend raising money in endraising, desperately trying to raise more
less party functions and in more perlhan their opponents. The New York
sonal ways—not only during an
Times estimates that the 1996 presielection campaign but while in office,
dential race will cost between $600
preparing for the next election—has
million and $1 billion, that it now takes become an increasingly large drain on
at least $5 million to run a successful
their attention. Senator Tom Harkin of
Senate campaign—in some states as
lowa complained in 1988, "As soon as a
much as $30 million—and that even a
Senator is elected here, that Senator
seat in the House can cost $2 million.
better start raising money for Ihe
Much of that money is given in large next eleciion 6 years down
the pike. Everyone here
amounts by corporations and indidoes it, and to deny
viduals, many of whom contribute to
that is to deny the
both major parties. From January 1991
obvious and to
through June 1992, Ihe Republican
Party raised $34.9 million and the
Democratic Party $13.1 million in
"soft" money—money given to parties
rather than to candidates and used for
advertising the party's message, for
voter registration, and for other activities that are exempt from legal limits
on contributions. By the same period
in 1995-1996, those numbers had exploded; the Republican Pany raised
$83.9 million in soft money and the
Democrats $70.3 million. The totals
for each party are expected to reach
between $120 and $150 million by
November.' The flow of "hard" money
—money that is subject to legal limits
—has also dramatically increased: in
the 1994 general election, for example,
Political Action Committees (PACs)
donated $172.9 million lo House and
Senate campaigns. (The total was $20.4
million in 1976, just after Congress
enacted a law, discussed below, that
was intended to curb campaign
contributions.)
The sheer volume of money raised
and spent is not t^e only defect in
contemporary Amefican politics. The
national political "(Abate" is now directed by advertising executives and
political consultants and conducted
deny what is also on the record."'
mainly through thirty-second, "sound
The great corporate contributors are
bite" television and radio commercials
nol altruists or even political ideothat are negative, witless, and condelogues—the largest of them conscending; these ads, in the view of the
authors of a recent book, Going Nega- tribute to both parlies—but businessmen anxious to influence policy or at
tive,' drive political moderates into not
least, as many corporate executives put
voting, leaving the field to partisans
it, to insure special "access" to high offiand zealots. Television newscasts,
from which most Americans now learn cials to put the case for their inleresls.
By June 30, 1996, for example,
most of whai they know about candicounting only contributions of $10,000
dates and issues, are more and more
or more, the securities and investmcnl
shaped by rating wars, in which netindustry had contributed $7,022,997 in
work and local news bureaus are
soft money lo the Republican Party
pressed lo provide entertainment
for the 1996 elections and $5,913,511
rather than information or analysis.
to the Democratic Party. The largest
single contributor io Ihe Republican
'Max Frankel, "TV Remedy for a TV Party to thai date Was Philip Morris,
Malady," The New York Times Magawhich has an enormous stake in pendzine, September 8,1996, pp. 36-38.
^
'Leslie Wayne, "Loopholes Allow
'See James Fallows's book, Breaking
Presidential Race to Set a Record,"
the News: How the Media Undermine
The New York Times, September 8,
American Democracy (Pantheon, 19%).
1996, pp. A l , A26.
'Quoted in Fred Wertheimer and
'Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto
Susan Weiss Manes, "Campaign FiIyengar, Going Negative: How Politinance Reform: A Key lo Restoring the
cal Ad erlisements Shrink and PolarHealth of our Democracy," Columbia
ize the Electorate (Free Press, 1995).
Law Review, May 1994. p. 1133.
1
October 17, 1996
ing political decisions about cigarette
advertising aimed at children; il gave
the Republicans $1,632,283 through
June 30—and, as a small insurance
premium, $350,250 to the Democrats.
Trial lawyers, on the other hand,
strongly approve of Clinton's reluctance to outlaw large damage recoveries in civil suits against corporations;
and by June 30 lawyers and lobbyists
as a group had contributed $4,816,436
to the Democrats and only $1,199,211
to the Republicans. The appearance of
corruption is inevitable and its reality,
at least in many cases, almost as
certain.
The importance of money in politics
means political inequality as well. Contributors to both parties tend to favor
congressional incumbents. In Senate
races this year, the thirteen Republican incumbents had already
raised, by June 30, $19.3
million and their Democratic opponents only
$4.2 million; the seven
incumbent Democrats
running again had
raised $12 million
and their opponents
only $6.6 million.'
(PACs are particularly discriminating
in their gifts: in the 1994 congressional
races Ihey gave an average of $1,139,222
to Senate incumbents against an averags
of $183,926 to their challengers, and
an average of $262,424 to House incumbents against $31,619 to their opponents.') There are also sharp disparities
of resources between challengers for
open seats: in New Jersey, Rep. Robert
G. Torricelli, the Republican candidate
for the seal to be vacated by Senator
Bradley, had raised $6.8 million by June
30, and his Democratic opponent, Rep.
Dick Zimmer, $4.4 million.'
These differences matter: in the
1994 Senate races, winners spent on
average $4,566,452 and losers only
$3,358,015-a ratio of 1.36 to 1-and
in House races winners spent an average of $530,031 and losers $283,431-a
ratio of 1.87 lo 1. Candidates with great
personal wealth have an obvious special advantage. In 1994, Michael Huffington, the unknown and apparently
inept Republican challenger lo the
popular Senator Diannc Feinstein in
'Charles R. Babcock, "Big Money for
Big Senate Races," The Washington
Post, August 15,1996, p. A17.
'Common Cause, "Guides to Republican and Democratic Soft Money
Donors," August-September 1996.
'Babcock, "Big Money for Big Senate
Races," p. A17.
California, spent an astonishing $28
million of his own money, and very
nearly won. Of this year's top twenty
Senate campaign fund-raisers to June
30, four are challengers who were each
able to contribute or lend over $1 million to their own campaigns: Republicans James B. Nicholson of Michigan
and Guy W. Millner of Georgia and
Democrats Charles Sanders of North
Carolina and Mark R. Warner of Virginia.' The most important effect of
financial inequality among candidates
is not captured in any of these figures,
moreover, because, as Senator Bradley recently pointed out, potential
candidates who are unable to raise or
contribute the funds needed to compete simply don't run at all. "If you've
got a good idea and $10,000," he
added, "and I've got a terrible idea
and $1 million, I can convince people
that the terrible idea is a good one.""'
2.
Money is nol only the biggest problem, but in good part the root of other
problems as well. If politicians had
much less to spend on aggressive,
simple-minded television spots, for
example, political campaigns would
have to rely more on reporters and on
events directed by non-partisan
groups, like televised debates, and
political argument might become less
negative and more constructive.
Money is, moreover, also the easiest
problem lo solve, at least in theory. A
free society cannot dictate the tone its
politicians adopt or the kind of arguments Ihey offer the public, or what
political news or scandal reporters do
or do not print, or how carefully television commentators analyze what the
candidates have offered or opposed.
But a free society can—or so it would
seem—limit the amount of money that
candidates or anyone else may spend
on political campaigns. Every Eur-:
opean democracy does this, and Europeans are amazed that we do not. But
the Supreme Court has held that we,
may not, that limiting political expen-j
ditures by law would be an unconstitutional denial of free speech, in violai
tion of the First Amendment. ' ' ' I
Following the Watergate scandals?
Congress enacted the 1974 Electoral
Reform Act, which set upper limits,;
or "caps," on any congressional candidate's expenditures. But in its 1976
decision in Buckley v. Valeo, the;
Supreme Court declared those limits;
unconstiiutional." The Court did approve other provisions of the 1974 leg-;
islation, which imposed limits on the'
amounts that individuals and groups)
can contribute to political parties and
campaigns These permitted individuals to contribute up to $1,000 per
election to a federal candidate, up to
$20,000 a year to a political party, and
up to $5,000 to a PAC. They also permitted PACs to donate $5,000 a year to
each federal candidate they support,
:
'Babcock, "Big Money for pig Senate
Races," p. A17.
"Wayne, "Loopholes Allow Presidential Race to Set a Record," p. A26.
"424 U.S. 1.
19
�States
EWorld
Winning the Peace
America and World Ordar
in tha New Era
John Gerard Ruggie
PEACE
AnK-ncii anil
World Order
" N o period In recent history has been as
t u m u l t u o u s as t h e last half-decade.
J o h n Ruggle's W i n n i n g the Peace puts
the years since t h e e n d of t h e cold war
In their proper historical context...
N o t w i t h s t a n d i n g p o p u l a r catchphrases,
w o r l d affairs are never orderly In practice. Yet, w i t h Ruggle's insight, w e can at
least b r i n g some structure t o h o w we
perceive t h e w o r l d . " — J . Robert Kerrey,
U ^ . Senator
in the N e w Era
J O H N CF.RARD RUGGIE
A nnntitth
ilBpagml
Cmtury Fund Book
S27.9S, doth
Losing Control?
Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization
Saskia Sassen
Examining t h e rise o f private transnational legal codes a n d supranational
Institutions such as t h e W o r l d Trade
Organization a n d universal h u m a n
rights covenants, Saskia Sassen argues
that sovereignty remains an I m p o r t a n t
feature of t h e international system, b u t
that It Is n o longer c o n f i n e d t o t h e
nation-state.
From t h e e c o n o m i c policy shifts forced
by the Mexico d e b t crisis t o t h e recurring battles over i m m i g r a t i o n a n d
refugees around t h e w o r l d . Losing
Control? presents an incisive review o f
t h e affairs that are radically altering t h e
landscape o f governance in t h e era o f
globalization.
128 pagts I $24.95, doth
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World Orders Old and New
Noam Chomsky
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Chomsky has parsed the main proposition of American p o w e r — w h a t they d o is
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w i t h no limit on the total n u m b e r of
candidates they choose. T h e C o u r t said
that though these constraints l i m i t the
political activity of potential c o n t r i b u tors i n one respect, they leave t h e m
free to spend as much o f their o w n
money as they wish s u p p o r t i n g the candidates or policies they favor in o t h e r
w a y s — f o r example, by publishing adverlisements for Ihem not at their request—so t h a i Ihe constraint on their
f r e e d o m o f speech is m i n i m a l . "
T h o u g h these l i m i t a t i o n s o n c o n t r i butions yfere once hailed as i m p o r t a n t
r e f o r m s , they have p r o v e d largely i n effective. T h e Federal E l e c t i o n C o m mission a p p o i n t e d t o enforce t h e m is
made u p of political appointees—three
f r o m each p a r t y — a n d has not been
zealous i n its oversight. Illegal practices can o f t e n not be detected u n t i l
l o n g after the e l e c i i o n i n w h i c h they
have f i g u r e d , a n d the most l i k e l y sanct i o n then a v a i l a b l e — f i n e s — c a n be
c o u n t e d as simply another election expense. Soft m o n e y in particular has
been used to evade regulation. A 1979
amendment to the law a l l o w e d u n l i m ited i n d i v i d u a l and corporate c o n t r i butions to p o l i t i c a l parties of money
lhat can be used to elect candidates for
state office and for so-called " p a r t y b u i l d i n g " activities, i n c l u d i n g r e n t i n g
and staffing office space, c o m p u t e r
surveys, generic (e.g., " V o l e R e p u b l i c a n " ) ads that d o not explicitly supp o r t particular federal candidates,
voter-registration campaigns-, and "get
out the v o t e " drives. Each o f these
activities has been used i n aid o f presid e n t i a l and congressional candidates,
against the spirit o f the legislation, and
the importance o f such funds to those
campaigns is shown by the huge sums
o f sofl money ihey have raised. The
New Y o r k Times recently called the
soft-money exception an e n o r m o u s
l o o p h o l e i n the system f o r regulating
contributions.
A n o t h e r i m p o r t a n t l o o p h o l e was
created by a provision in the 1974 A c t
a l l o w i n g individuals to donate u p to
$20,000 each l o p o l i t i c a l parlies. T h e
act l i m i t e d what a party might spend,
f r o m sums so raised, for direct p o l i t i cal advertising " i n connection w i t h " a
particular federal candidate's campaign, according to a f o r m u l a for each
slate based on the number of its voters. But in an i m p o r t a n t decision this
June, C o l o r a d o Republican Federal
Campaign Committee v. Federal Elect i o n C o m m i s s i o n , the Supreme C o u r t
sharply l i m i t e d the i m p o r t a n c e o f
those ceilings by i n t e r p r e t i n g the
words " i n connection w i t h " i n a surprisingly permissive w a y . "
"Some of the justices, dissenting in
part, expressed doubts about lhe sense
o f that d i s t i n c t i o n . Justice B y r o n
W h i t e , for example, illustrated the
anomaly the d i s t i n c t i o n creates. " L e t
us suppose," he said, " t h a t each o f t w o
brothers spends $1 m i l l i o n on TV spot
announcements that he has i n d i v i d u ally prepared and in w h i c h he appears,
urging the eleciion of the same named
candidate in identical words. O n e
brother has sought and o b t a i n e d the
approval of the candidate; the o t h e r
has not. T h e f o r m e r may validly be
prosecuted under [the 1974 act]; under
Ihe Court's view, the latter may not,
even though Ihe candidate c o u l d
scarcely help k n o w i n g about and appreciating the expensive f a v o r . " 424
B e f o r e candidates were officially
n o m i n a t e d in the C o l o r a d o Senate race
in 1986, T i m W i r t h was the strong
f r o n t - r u n n e r for the Democratic n o m i n a t i o n , and the C o l o r a d o Republican
Party ran a radio campaign against
h i m , using funds in excess of its l i m i l
for spending in concert w i t h a particular campaign. The Federal E l e c t i o n
C o m m i s s i o n declared that any party
e x p e n d i t u r e so f i r m l y concentrated on
a particular congressional eleciion
should be presumed to be orchest r a t e d w i t h the campaign of the party's
candidate i n that election, even
t h o u g h no campaign o f f i c i a l had requested or authorized the expense:
and t h e r e f o r e that the Republican
Party h a d b r o k e n the law. B u t t h o u g h
the T e n t h C i r c u i t C o u r t o f Appeals
agreed, the Supreme C o u r t reversed
that c o u r t ' s decision, and held that the
First A m e n d m e n t prevented the government f r o m imposing any limits on
what parties can spend of their o w n
funds when these expenditures arc not
actually discussed w i t h a candidate or
his agents. Four justices—Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Kennedy.
Scalia, and T h o m a s — w e n t f u r t h e r and
declared that in any case Congress
lacked the p o w e t to f o r b i d the party to
use any of its W e s t r i c l e d funds to
p r o m o t e its candidates, even in concert w i t h t h e i r o f f i c i a l campaigns.
Comn
nmentators have suggested a
wide variety o f reforms in an attempt
to restore some measure o f financial
sanity and equality t o the political process. Some o f these invite candidates
v o l u n t a r i l y to l i m i t total campaign expenditures i n r e t u r n for grants o f public funds for campaigning o r the provision o f free television time. Presidential elections are financed through such
grants—this year $61.8 m i l l i o n l o each
o f the t w o m a j o r candidates—in return
f o r a c o m m i t m e n t to spend no more
than that sum. A n d the major senatorial candidates in Massachusetts—the
i n c u m b e n t Senator John K e r r y and
Governor
William
Weld—agreed,
starting July 1, to l i m i t their expenditures to $6.9 m i l l i o n each. But candidates are not required to accept
these o f f e r s — R o s s Perot declined Ihe
federal grant in the 1992 presidential
election and spent more o f his own
money l h a n he w o u l d have received:
and l h e use of sofl money and independent party expenditures greatly
reduces the force of voluntary limitations anyway. A s I said, this year's
presidential campaigns are expected
actually to cost up to $1 b i l l i o n in total,
not just the $152 m i l l i o n paid in federal grants ( i n c l u d i n g $29 m i l l i o n to
Perot).
O t h e r suggestions for l i m i t i n g the
damage of Ihe Buckley decision apply
directly to television and the other
media. M a x F r a n k e l recently suggested in The New York Times Magazine, t o t example, that television netw o r k s be asked to provide free time
for personal appearances by candidates who agree nol l o purchase spot
commercials, o r for those w h o wish to
answer paid commercials that attack
t h e m . " But it is d o u b t f u l thai Congress
w o u l d require networks to donate lhat
l i m e as a c o n d i t i o n of their franchise,
or t h a i the Supreme Court w o u l d permit it to do so. Frankel hopes that the
networks w o u l d cooperate voluntar-
At bookstorts.
http://www.cotumbta.tdii/ai/cup/
"1996 U.S. Lexis 4258.
20
" T V Remedy for a T V M a l a d y , " p. 38.
The New York Review
�•
ily, but. though the Fox Broadcasting
Corporation has announced a limited
program of free time for presidential
candidates this year, il seems highly
unlikely that the networks would acplan as ambitious and expensive
iikel's. In any case, no remedy of
\ds that have been proposed is
to be nearly as effective as a
straight legal ceiling on all campaign
expenditures by candidates or parties
would be, if it were held constitutional, and one of the strongest proponents of reform. Senator Bradley,
recently proposed a constitutional
amendment to reverse the Buckley
decision.
Was Ihe Buckley decision right in
principle? If so, then il would be wrong
to amend the Constitution to reverse
it. l l would also be wrong to try to circumvent the decision in any of the
ways I have just discussed. If il really
would violate free speech for Congress
to deprive the public of everything a
rich candidate might wish to tell it in
repeated television commercials, then
it must also be wrong to induce rich
candidates, by bribing them with public money, to muzzle themselves voluntarily. So the present disposition of
most commentators t - t o accept the
Buckley decision anf,then to try to
evade it—seems untenable. If we
think the decision a mistake, we
' should explain why and attempt, in
one way or another, to reverse it. If we
think it right, we should stop what almost every politician now seems to endorse—trying to achieve what it forbade by other means.
3.
•
Was the Buckley decision right? The
Constitution's First Amendment declares that Congress "shall make
no law...abridging the freedom of
speech." These abstract words cannot
mean that government must pass no
law that prevents or punishes any form
:ch—that would rule out laws
blackmail and fraud. Free
must mean the freedom to
or publish when denying that
freedom would damage some other individual right that free speech protects, or when it would impair democracy itself." It is a premise of democ"Constitutional lawyers often put the
point the other way round: they say
that all constraints on speech are
banned in principle, and that exceptions must be justified, one by one, as
racy, for example, that the people as a
whole must have final authority over
the government, not vice versa. That
principle is compromised when official
censorship limits the character or diversity of political opinion the public
may hear or the range of information
it may consider, particularly—though
not exclusively—when the censorship
is designed to protect government
from criticism or exposure. So the
Supreme Court has ruled, as in the
Pentagon Papers case, lhat government may not prohibit the publication
of material pertinent to judging its own
performance." It is another premise of
democracy that citizens must be able,
as individuals, to participate on equal
terms in both formal politics and in the
informal cultural life that creates the
moral environment of Ihe community." That principle is compromised
when government prohibits speech on
Ihe ground that the convictions or
tastes or preferences it expresses are
unworthy or degraded or offensive, or
that they would be dangerous if others
were persuaded to embrace them. So,
particularly in recent decades, Ihe
Court has been zealous in protecting
neo-Nazis, pornographers, and flagburners from censorship inspired by
such judgments.
Neither of these two principles of
democracy is violated, however, by a
legal restriction on campaign expenditures. Expenditure limits do not protect government from criticism—incumbents, as we saw, benefit more than
challengers from unlimited spending
—and they do not presuppose that any
political opinion is less worthy or more
dangerous than any other. Nor would
such limits seriously risk keeping from
the public any argument or information it would otherwise have: media
advertising of rich candidates and campaigns is now extremely repetilive,
and the message would not change if
the repetitions were fewer.
In the Buckley decision, however,
the Court claimed another, more
general, principle of democracy. It
declared that since effective speech
requires money in the television age,
any legal limit on how much politicians
can spend necessarily diminishes the
overall quantiiy of political speech,
and violates the First Amendment for
that reason. The Court conceded that
capping expenditures would permit
poor candidates to compete more
effectively with rich ones. But, it said,
"the concept that government may
restrict the speech of some elements of
our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign
to the First Amendment." What reason might we have for accepting that
view?
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T w o arguments are often made. The
first supposes, in the spirit of John
Stuart Mill's famous defense of free
speech, that a community is more
special. But the vast range of acts of
speech that are plainly not protected
by the First Amendment makes it analytically clearer to say that it is protected speech that is special. The important point, however, is that the
protection is not automatic, but must
be connected to some general reason
for either protecting or exempting the
kind of speech in question.
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likely lo reach wise political decisions
the more political argument or appeal
its citizens are able to hear or read. It
is certainly true that expenditure caps
would limit the quantity of political
speech. If a rich politician or a wellfinanced campaign is prevented from
broadcasting as many television ads as
he or it would like, then the sum total
of political broadcasts is, by hypothesis, less than it would otherwise be.
Some citizens would indeed be prevented from hearing a message they
might have deemed pertinent.
But since the curtailed broadcasts
would almost certainly have repeated
what the candidate had said on other
occasions, it seems very unlikely that
the repetition would have improved
collective knowledge. Nothing in the
history of the many democracies that do
restrict electoral expense suggests that
they have sacrificed wisdom by doing
so. In any case, the argument that curtailing political expenditure would hinder the search for truth and justice
seems so speculative—and the potential cost in those values so meager even
if the argument isright—thatit hardly
provides a reason for forgoing the conceded gains in fairness that restricting
electoral expenses would bring.
A second familiar argument is very
different. It insists that the freedom of
speech that really is essential to
democracy—the freedom to criticize
government or to express unpopular
opinions, for example —is best protected from official abuse and evasion
by a blanket rule that condemns any
and all regulation of political speech
—except, perhaps, lo avoid immediate and serious violence or a national disaster. It is better for a community to forgo even desirable gains
than to run the risk of abuse, and the
censorship of genuinely important
speech, that a less rigid rule would
inevitably pose. But this argument
overlooks the fact that, in this case,
what we risk in accepting a rigid rule is
not just inconvenience but a serious
loss in the quality of the very democracy we supposedly thereby protect. It
seems perverse to suffer the clear unfairness of allowing rich candidates to
drown out poor ones, or powerful corporations to buy special access to
politicians by making enormous gifts,
in order to prevent speculative and
unnamed dangers to democracy that
have not actually occurred and that
no one has shown are likely to occur.
We would do better to rely on our
officials—and ultimately on our
courts—to draw lines and make distinctions of principle, as they do in all
other fields of constitutional law.
B u t though these two familiar arguments are easily countered, the Buckley decision cited another, more profound, argument —1 shall call it the
"individual-choice" argument—which
I believe has been very influential
among those who support the decision
even though it is rarely articulated in
full. "In the free society ordained by
our Constitution," the Court said, "it
is not the governmenl, but the people
individually as citizens and candidates
and collectively as associations and
political committees who must retain
control over the quantity and range of
debate on public issues in a political
campaign."" We must take some care
to appreciate the force of that argument. I said that much of First Amendment law is grounded in the ideal of
democratic self-government—that the
ultimate governors of a society should
be the people as a whole, not the officials they have elected. That principle
does not seem to apply in the case of
expenditure limitations, I said, because
those limits are designed not to prevent the public from learning any particular kind of information or hearing
any particular kind of appeal but, on
the contrary, to enhance the diversity
and fairness of the political debate.
But the individual-choice argument
insists that instead of that apparently
admirable goal justifying the constraint, it explains what is wrong with
it, because any attempt to determine
the character of the political debate by
legislation violates an important democraticright—theright of each individual citizen to make up his own mind
about what information or message is
pertinent to his decision how to use his
vote. Should he watch as much of his
favorite candidate or party as possible,
to solidify or reinforce convictions he
holds intuitively, or in order to arm
himself for political arguments with
other citizens? Or should he watch all
candidates, including those whose personality or views he knows he detests,
when he would rather do something
else? Should he take an interest in
negative ads that deride an opponent's
character? Or should he try to follow
complex political argument crammed
full of statistics he knows can be
manipulated?
Some people, including many who
now press for expenditure limits and
other reforms, have their own clear
answer to such questions. They endorse a high-minded, "civic republican" ideal of democratic discourse.
They imagine a nation of informed citizens giving equal time and care to all
sides of important issues, and deliberating thoughtfully about the common
good rather than their own selfish interests." But the individual-choice argument insists that those who accept
that ideal have no right to impose it on
others, and are therefore wrong to appeal to it as justification for coercive
measures, like expenditure caps, that
deny people the right to listen to whatever political message they want, as
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424 U.S. 57.
"For an account of the history and influence of civic republican ideas, see
Law's Republic, an article by Frank
Michaelman of the Harvard Law
School in Yale Law Journal, Volume
97 (1988). p. 1493.
often as they want. In a genuine
democracy, it insists, the structure,
character, and tone of the public political discourse must be determined
by the combined effect of individual
choices of citizens making political
decisions for themselves, not by the
edicts of self-styled arbiters of political
fairness and rationality. If we want to
bring American politics closer to civic
republican ideals, we must do so by example and persuasion, not by the coercive force of expenditure caps or other
majoritarian rules.
It might seem natural to object to
this argument lhat, in the real world
we live in, people cannot make their
own decisions about which political
messages to watch or listen to anyway,
because those decisions are made for
them by rich or well-financed candidates whose advertisements dominate
programming. But that objection is
less powerful than it might at first
seem. There is little evidence that citizens who take an active interest in politics could not discover the statements
and positions of any serious candidate—that is, of any candidate who
would have any significant chance of
winning if every voter knew his views
in great detaW— if they were willing to
make the effoit to do so. Of course it is
true, as Senator Bradley said, that voters are much more likely to be convinced by advertisements constantly
shown during commercial breaks in
popular programming than by the less
expensive campaigning that poorer
candidates can afford. If that were nol
true, then candidates who spent fortunes on such advertising would be
wasting their money. But it does not
decrease the freedom of a voter to
choose for himself which candidate to
watch when one candidate is on television constantly and another only
rarely, provided that the voter can find
the latter's message if he searches.
And it would be unacceptably paternalistic to argue that a voter should
not be allowed to watch what he wants
to because he is too likely to be convinced by it.
It is also true, as I said, that many
potential candidates decide not to run
because they are likely to lose when
money dominates politics. But we
must distinguish between two reasons
a poor candidate might have for that
decision. He might fear that voters
would not learn of his existence or
policies, because he has too little
money to spend on publicizing them,
or he might fear that even if voters did
learn, he would lose anyway, because
the weight of money and advertisement on the other side would make his
good ideas seem terrible ones.
The appropriate remedy for the first
danger, according to the individualchoice argument, is some form of
subsidy for poorer candidates—direct
grants to those whose opponents spend
more than a specified limit, for example, or free television time for
poorer candidates on special cable
channels created or used for that purpose, or in specified network slots paid
for from a national fund. (Nothing in
the Supreme Court's decisions would
bar such government subsidies.) And
according to the individual-choice argument, Ihe second danger—that even
candidates subsidized in such a way
could not match the advertising power
of those with enormous resources—is
not one that a democracy can address
�i h r o u g h expendilure l i m i t s , because
government w o u l d then be denying
citizens Ihe broadcasts Ihey wished l o
watch on Ihe ground that Ihey should
nol want to w a l c h t h e m , o r lhat they
re t o o likely to be persuaded by
Ihem. Once again, these are obviously
impermissible grounds f o r any c o n slrainls o n speech.
4.
I emphasize the apparent strength o f
the individual-choice argument not to
support lhat argument, but to make its
structure plainer, and to suggest that
we must c o n f r o n t i l at a more basic
level, by rejecting the conception o f
democratic self-government o n w h i c h
i l is based. Citizens play t w o roles in a
democracy. A s voters they are, colleclively, lhe final referees or judges o f
political contests. B u t ihey also participale, as individuals, in the contests
Ihey collectively judge: Ihey are candidales, supporters, and political activists; they lobby and demonstrate f o r
and against government measures,
and they consult and argue about
Ihem w i t h their fellow citizens. T h e
individual-choice argument concentrates exclusively o n citizens in Ihe
(irsi role and neglects them in the
second. For when wealth is unfairly
distributed and money dominates p o l itics, then, Ihough i n d i v i d u a l citizens
may be equal in their vote and their
freedom l o hear Ihe candidates they
wish to hear, they are n o l equal in
their o w n ability t o c o m m a n d the a l ^ ^ t e lre n l i o n of others for their o w n candidates, interests, and convictions.
hen the Supreme C o u r t said, in the
Buckley case, that fairness to candidates and their convictions is " f o r e i g n " t o the First A m e n d m e n t , i l denied that such fairness was required by
democracy. T h a t is a mistake because
the most fundamental characterization
of d e m o c r a c y — t h a t it provides selfgovernment by the people as a w h o l e
—supposes that citizens are equals not
only as judges but as participants as well.
Of
course n o political c o m m u n i t y
can make its citizens literally their o w n
governors one by o n e . I am n o l m y
o w n ruler when I m u h obey a law that
was enacted i n spite cfrmy fierce o p p o sition. B u t a c o m m u n i t y can supply
self-government tn a more collective
sense—it can encourage its members
l o see themselves as equal partners in
a cooperative political enterprise, t o gether governing their o w n affairs in
the way in w h i c h the members o f a
college faculty o r a fraternal society,
for example, govern themselves. T o
achieve that sense o f a national partnership in self-government, it is not
enough f o r a c o m m u n i t y t o treat c i t i zens only as i f they were shareholders
in a company, giving them votes o n l y
in periodic elections o f officials. It
must design institutions, practices, and
conventions thai allow them l o be
more engaged in public life, and l o
make a c o n t r i b u t i o n t o i l , even when
Iheir views d o not prevail. T h o u g h the
question of what that means in practice is a complex one, i l seems evidenl
lhat at least t w o conditions must be
met for any c o m m u n i t y f u l l y to succeed in the a m b i t i o n . "
Firsl, each citizen must have a fair
-
"'I discuss Ihe issue more generally in
Freedom's Law.
October 17, 1996
and reasonably equal o p p o r t u n i t y not
only t o hear the views of others as
these are published o r broadcasi, but
to c o m m a n d a t l c n t i o n for his o w n
views, either as a candidate for office
or as a member o f a politically active
group c o m m i t t e d l o some program or
conviction. N o citizen is entitled t o demand that others f i n d his opinions persuasive o r even w o r t h y o f a t t e n t i o n .
B u t each citizen is e n t i t l e d t o compete
for lhat a t t e n t i o n , and t o have a chance
at persuasion, o n fair terms, a chance
lhat is now denied almost everyone
w i t h o u t great wealth o r access l o it.
Second, the tone o f public discourse
must be appropriate t o the deliberations o f a partnership o r j o i n t venture
rather than the selfish negotiations o f
commercial rivals o r military enemies.
This means that when citizens disagree
they must present their arguments l o
one another w i t h civility, a t t e m p t i n g
rationally l o support policies they lake
l o be in Ihe c o m m o n inlcrest. nol in
manipulative, slanted, o r mendacious
pitches designed t o w i n as much of the
spoils of politics as possible by any
means. These t w o requiremenls — o f
participant equality and c i v i l i t y — a r e
parts of the civic republican ideal I
described. B u t we can now defend
them, not just as features o f an attractive society that perceptive statesmen
have the right l o impose o n everyone,
but as essential conditions o f fair political engagement, and hence of selfgovernment, f o r all.
lhe people as a w h o l e —is always a
m a i l e r o f degree. It w i l l never be perfectly f u l f i l l e d , because i l seems i n credible that Ihe politics of a pluralistic c o n t e m p o r a r y society c o u l d ever
become as egalitarian in access and as
deliberative in tone as Ihe standards I
jusl described demand. W e w o u l d then
understand democracy not as a pedigree a nation earns just by adopting
some constitutional structure o f free
elections, but as an ideal t o w a r d w h i c h
any would-be democratic society must
c o n t i n u a l l y strive.
I f we embraced that attractive
account o f the conditions o f selfgovernment, we w o u l d have t o accept
t h a i democracy—self-government by
W e w o u l d also have t o accept not
o n l y that A m e r i c a falls short o f important democratic ideals, but that in the
age o f television politics the shortfall
has steadily become worse. T h e i n f l u ence o f w e a l t h unequally distributed is
greater, a n d its consequences more
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knowledge and Ignorance
a m o n g Americans, w h y
these contours exist, and
w h y they matter."
—Jennifer L. Hochschild
J38.50
The Voice
of the People
J a m e s S. F i s h k i n
"Goldberg's admirable and
refreshingly brisk biography of Mr. Goldwater
could hardly be better
timed. Those w h o w a n t
to understand the cycles
of success and failure of
the conservative movement need t o know
Goldwaterism. Goldberg
gives a splendidly cleareyed v i e w of i t "
—Jonathan Rauch, N e w
York Times Book Review
28 illus. $27.50
" I n his newest work James
Fishkin blends his roles
as a political theorist
and a political innovator
to produce a timely
and important book.
It deserves t o be
read by everyone
Interested In
possibilities f o r
improving
democratic
Institutions."
—Robert A .
Dahl
$20.00
tie*
in
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" A n excellent, at times even
scary, read. Up-to-date,
accessible, and showing a
sure grasp of electoral
college history, this book
will be accepted as the
authoritative guide t o the
complicated workings of
our electoral college."
—David Mayhew
$15.00
Journey
of Purpose
Reflections
on
the
Presidency,
Multiculturalism,
and
Third
Parties
Paul
Tsongas
Tsongas challenges America
to renew its comqiitment
to future generatibns by''" J
replacing politics as usual
}
with a philosophy based j
on economic security
,
and social inclusion.". • S
Senator Bill Bradley
i
"A deeply felt medlj
tation o n contempo- 1
raiy American
• Ics."
—Washington
'
Post $16.00
;
23
�u
My own affections have been deeply
•wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause,
but rather than it should havefailed,
I would have seen half the earth desolated "
—Thomas Jefferson to William Short,
profound, than al any time in the past,
and our politics seem daily more rancorous, ill-spirited, and divisive. So
this analysis of democracy as selfgovernment confirms—and helps to
explain—the growing sense of despair
about American politics that I began
this essay by trying to describe. How
should we respond to that despair? We
must Understand the First Amendment as a challenge, not a barrier to
improvement. We must reject the
blanket principle the Supreme Court
relied on in Buckley, that government
should n'ever attempt to regulate the
public political discourse in any way,
in favor of a more discriminating principle that condemns the constraints
that do violate genuine principles of
democracy—that deny citizens information they need for political judgment or that deny equality of citizenship for people with unpopular beliefs
or tastes, for example—but that nevertheless permits us to try to reverse our
democracy's decline.
tices Ginzburg and Stevens made
plain, in a dissenting opinion by the
latter, their doubts that Ihe First
Amendment really does bar expenditure limits. But though Justice Thomas
even more openly announced himself
ready to revise Buckley, he would
revise it by forbidding contribution
limits as well as expenditure limits, not
by allowing limits on expenditures;
and, as 1 said, he and three other
Justices argued for an even stronger
ban on regulating expenditures than
Buckley imposed.
But the American public is becoming increasingly angered by the political role of money. Even in 1992, before
the new explosion in campaign contributions, a poll of registered voters
likely to vote showed that 74 percent
agreed that "Congress is largely
owned by the special interest groups,"
and that 84 percent endorsed the
statement that "special interest money
' • 5.
THE LONG AFFAIR
THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1785-1800
C O N O R CRUISE O ' B R I E N
"O'Brien ocamines two dark sides of die Jeffersonian legacy; his enthusiasm
for the French Revolution, and his supportforthe slave-based Southern
economy.... O'Brien argues that the egalitarian promise of the Declaration
of Independence and Jeffaron's many statements against slavery were partly
intended for political consumption and concealed both a deep-rooted
support for the Southern slave system and a profound racism
On
Jefferson's legacy to America, O'Brien ends by questioning the future
status of a slaveholder with racist views in America's increasingly
multicultural society."—fCirhts Reviews
"O'Brien's penetrating study illuminates how and why Jeffersonian
liberalism may be more of a burden than a blessing in Americas
political culture."—;John Patrick Diggins
"Conor Cruise O'Brien is the only contemporary writer who can be
compared to George Orwell and Andri Malraux."—Atlantic Monthly
Is it realistic to hope that Ihe Supreme
Court will soon overrule or modify the
Buckley decision? If I am right, the decision was a mistake, unsupported by
precedent and contrary lo Ihe best understanding of prior First Amendment
jurisprudence. II is internally flawed
as well: its fundamental distinction between regulating any citizen's or
group's contributions to someone
else's campaign, which the Court allowed, and regulating the expenditures of individuals or groups on their
own behalf, which it did not, is untenable. Justice Thomas remarked in his
concurring opinion in the Colorado
Republican case last June that there is
no difference in principle between
these two forms of political expression. Thomas was right—why should
Perot be free to spend a great fortune
promoting his views in the most effective way he can—by running for president and spending a fortune on television—while one of his passionate
supporters is not free to promote his
own views in the most effective way he
can—by contributing what he can
afford to Perot's campaign.
In retrospect, at least, this untenable
distinction seems a compromise designed to split the difference, allowing
Congress to achieve one of its
purposes—preventing the corruption
that almost inevitably accompanies
large-scale contributions—while still
insisting on the sanctity of political
speech. If so, the Court's compromise
has failed, because without a direct
limit on spending, any system of regulation of contributions, no matter how
elaborate, will collapse, as ours has.
When polilics desperately needs
money, and money desperately seeks
influence, money and polilics cannot
be kept far apart.
Therefore the case for overruling
Buckley is a strong one. The prospects
for doing so are much less strong. Jus-
buys the loyalty of candidates."" If
that dissatisfaction continues to grow,
and the public understands that the
Buckley decision prevents the most
direct attack on the problem, the pressure for overruling it would intensify.
If the decision were overruled, the way
might be opened for a new system of
regulation banning, for example, political commercials in breaks in ordinary
programming, as other democracies
do, and providing free television time,
out of public funds, for longer statements by the candidates themselves.
In any case, even it Buckley remains,
we should feel no compunction in
declaring the decision a mistake, and
in attempting to avoid its consequences through any reasonable and
effective device we can find or construct. The decision did not declare a
valuable principle that we should hesitate to circumvent. On the contrary, it
misunderstood not only what free
speech really is but what it really
means for free people' to govern
themselves.
D
—September 19,1996
"Reported in Wertheimer and Manes.
"Campaign Finance Reform: A Key to
Restoring the Health of Our Democracy," p. 1129.
Cloth $29.95
Available at bookstores.
THE UNIVERSITY OF C H I C A G O PRESS
Visit us at bttpS/vrwtu.frreis.utbuafp.edu
24
92 Y
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Series
Octobei 7 . 8 pm «
i V2
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1395 Lexington Avenue. New Y o * NY 10128 (212)415-5760
TTie New York Review
�6/24/96 THE BUCKS START HERE
...@@V@gdaAUAUzt6XKzC/time/magazine/domestic/1996/960624/campaign96.html
f
TIME Magazine
June 24, 1996 Volume 147, No. 26
Return to Contents page
THE BUCKS START HERE
THEY PRETEND TO FROWN ON IT, BUT CANDIDATES ARE ADDICTED TO SOFT
MONEY. NO WONDER THE RULES HAVEN'T CHANGED
JEFFREYH. BIRNBAUM
Sometimes Washington is actually as unseemly as people imagine. Take the case of John Boehner. A year ago, the Ohio
Congressman handed thousands of dollars of tobacco-industry campaign checks to half a dozen Republican colleagues right
on the House floor. And if that weren't bad enough, Democratic leaders cut short the very press conference they had called to
criticize him. Why? Reporters, knowing that Democrats had done the same, were turning their questions on them.
One reason the public is cynical about government is the belief that money buys influence in proportion to the gift. And no
type of campaign giving is larger than so-called soft money, which flows without limit from labor unions, corporations and
wealthy individuals to the national parties. Direct gifts to candidates, called hard money, is strictly limited ($1,000 per
candidate per election from individuals). But soft money, which goes to the parties, can be given with abandon. Insiders like
to say, "It's soft because it isn't hard to do."
The candidate who is benefiting most from this soft cascade is Republican-nominee-to-be Bob Dole. His campaign has
reached the legal limit of what it can raise itself before the convention, and the Democratic Party is doing its best to take
advantage of this. Last week it filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission charging Dole's operation with
violations of spending restrictions. But as Dole's operatives know, there is no need to break any laws to lubricate a cash-dry
campaign. There is always soft money.
For the past several weeks, Dole's campaign has been relying heavily on soft money given to the Republican National
Committee. Although this kind of cash is supposed to be for use by state party organizations, it benefits a presidential
candidate by funding such "party building" activities as canvassing and advertising. Already, R.N.C. ads attacking Clinton on
everything from welfare reform to his Paula Jones problems have aired across the country, with only the fact that they don't
say "Vote for Bob" as evidence that they don't emanate from Dole headquarters. The Republican Party has also hired dozens
of ex-Dole employees, who work at the R.N.C. during the day and return as volunteers to Dole Central at night. Officially,
the campaign has reduced its staff from 230 to 67. Unofficially, the place is as busy as ever and has even taken another half
floor of space.
Even Dole's road show is mapped out partly by the R.N.C. This is legitimate, according to the Dole campaign, because the
candidate, at almost every stop, either attends an R.N.C. fund raiser, helps plan future fund raising for the party or attends a
"unity rally," which, aides contend, is really different from a "Dole rally" because unity rallies focus on promoting other
Republican candidates. Dole's travel last Thursday was almost completely arranged by the party because he attended a fund
raiser on a paddle boat on the Ohio River, a "unity rally" at the landing in Louisville, Kentucky, and later another "unity"
barbecue in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
This kind of subterfuge offends Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who, despite his long-standingfriendshipwith
Dole, has sponsored a bill that would turn off the soft-money spigot. Unlike any of the growing number of campaign-finance
reform measures being floated on Capitol Hill, his bill, which is co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Russell Feingold of
Wisconsin, would stop the flow of these funds by preventing national parties from distributing the money to state parties.
After months of trying, the two sponsors have finally succeeded in getting the Senate to schedule a debate on the bill next
week, though they face daunting opposition from their colleagues.
In the meantime, the Republican Party will rush to swoop up soft money, helping make this the most expensive campaign in
history. More than $1.5 billion is expected to be spent on all federal elections this year, with soft money making up the
fastest-growing part of that lucre. The two major parties are likely to raise $125 million of it, double the amount they
collected in the last presidential cycle.
Much of that money sloshes into party coffers via soirees like the one held last Monday at the Washington convention center.
The Republican House-Senate dinner raised $8 million by offering guests different levels of access for donations of $10,000
to $100,000; benefits ranged from a photo with G.O.P. congressional leaders to lunch with House Speaker Newt Gingrich to
having "a member of Congress or a Senator seated at your table" during the dinner.
Not to be outdone, the Democrats' fund-raising gala last month was a two-day affair that raised $12.3 million, the biggest
haul in Democratic Party history. It started with intimate dinners with top Clinton appointees at the homes of such luminaries
as Ethel Kennedy and Vice President Al Gore. Those who gave $5,000 or more received a briefing by Clinton Cabinet
1of5
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officers, while the largest moneybags (those in the $250,000 category) got the best seats at the black-tie dinner on the second
night.
Lobbyist Daniel Dutko, who represents oil and communications companies and raised over $500,000 for the party, got to sit
next to the White House senior adviser on the environment and telecommunications, the Vice President. "The sense of being
involved, of helping the Administration, helps my clients," Dutko says. "There's no way to deny that."
There is evidence-disputed by the principals-that the money does produce big and nicely targeted concessions from the
parties who take it in. According to Common Cause, regional and long-distance telephone companies won concessions in the
telecommunications bill last year in tandem with their record soft-money giving. NYNEX, a huge regional Baby Bell,
contributed $100,000 to The Republican Congressional Campaign Committee the same month House G.O.P. leaders relaxed
a requirement in the bill that Baby Bells must have competition for local telephone business before being able to sell
long-distance service. Later long-distance companies gave $160,000 to the Democrats after President Clinton threatened that
he would veto the legislation. Around the time a compromise was struck, money flowed to both parties. Ann McBride,
president of Common Cause, says the result of such giving is that "the integrity of the legislative process is destroyed."
Like telecommunications, the gambling industry appears to be hedging its bets. After President Clinton considered imposing
a 4% tax on gambling receipts in 1994, Steve Wynn's Golden Nugget casino gave the Republican National Committee
$230,000, and Wynn, who had supported Clinton in 1992, played host to a nearly half-million-dollar fund raiser for Bob
Dole.
But with the possibility looming that Congress may establish a commission with subpoena power to investigate gambling,
Wynn is taking a second look at the Democrats. He recently played golf with Clinton, attended a fund raiser for the
Democrats in Las Vegas last week and, the Democrats say, pledged a substantial contribution. (Wynn's spokesman denies
this.) Now both leading Republicans and Democrats are expressing their doubts about giving the commission subpoena
power.
Despite the soft-money flow, some pundits and politicians contend that the system needs more, not less, cash. Why, they
wonder, does toothpaste get more advertising dollars than the policy debates of the day? And doesn't something need to be
done to reduce the advantage that millionaires have over candidates who are not as well heeled? On the other hand, anyone
who attended the Reform Party Convention in Los Angeles two weeks ago could have witnessed the persistent power of Ross
Perot's call for campaign-finance reform. National polls show that nearly three-quarters of Americans favor candidates for
Congress who say they support overhauling campaign-finance laws.
That's why, as a way to block the McCain-Feingold measure, Dole and a bipartisan group of otherwise reluctant reformers
want to create a commission to recommend ways to change the law. But not before Republicans plan another $10 million
fund raiser during their National Convention in San Diego this August. And not before Clinton and Gore have completed
their own frenetic party fund raising: in the 70 days between April 4 and June 14, the tally was 11 events for the Vice
President and 27 events for the President, including last week's $25,000-a-couple luncheon at the home of Las Vegas Sun
editor Brian Greenspun.
With that level of addiction to soft money, it is no wonder that the commission will be asked to report back well after
November.
-With reporting by Tamala M. Edwards/Louisville
Text Only
TIME Magazine
June 24, 1996 Volume 147, No. 26
Return to Contents page
THE BUCKS START HERE
THEY PRETEND TO FROWN ON IT, BUT CANDIDATES ARE ADDICTED TO SOFT
MONEY. NO WONDER THE RULES HAVEN'T CHANGED
2 of 5
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JEFFREY H. BIRNBA UM WITH REPORTING BY TAMALA M. EDWARDS/LOUISVILLE
Sometimes Washington is actually as unseemly as people imagine. Take the case of John Boehner. A year ago, the Ohio
Congressman handed thousands of dollars of tobacco-industry campaign checks to half a dozen Republican colleagues right
on the House floor. And if that weren't bad enough, Democratic leaders cut short the very press conference they had called to
criticize him. Why? Reporters, knowing that Democrats had done the same, were turning their questions on them.
One reason the public is cynical about government is the belief that money buys influence in proportion to the gift. And no
type of campaign giving is larger than so-called soft money, which flows without limit from labor unions, corporations and
wealthy individuals to the national parties. Direct gifts to candidates, called hard money, is strictly limited ($1,000 per
candidate per election from individuals). But soft money, which goes to the parties, can be given with abandon. Insiders like
to say, "It's soft because it isn't hard to do."
The candidate who is benefiting most from this soft cascade is Republican-nominee-to-be Bob Dole. His campaign has
reached the legal limit of what it can raise itself before the convention, and the Democratic Party is doing its best to take
advantage of this. Last week it filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission charging Dole's operation with
violations of spending restrictions. But as Dole's operatives know, there is no need to break any laws to lubricate a cash-dry
campaign. There is always soft money.
For the past several weeks, Dole's campaign has been relying heavily on soft money given to the Republican National
Committee. Although this kind of cash is supposed to be for use by state party organizations, it benefits a presidential
candidate by funding such "party building" activities as canvassing and advertising. Already, R.N.C. ads attacking Clinton on
everything from welfare reform to his Paula Jones problems have aired across the country, with only the fact that they don't
say "Vote for Bob" as evidence that they don't emanate from Dole headquarters. The Republican Party has also hired dozens
of ex-Dole employees, who work at the R.N.C. during the day and return as volunteers to Dole Central at night. Officially,
the campaign has reduced its staff from 230 to 67. Unofficially, the place is as busy as ever and has even taken another half
floor of space.
Even Dole's road show is mapped out partly by the R.N.C. This is legitimate, according to the Dole campaign, because the
candidate, at almost every stop, either attends an R.N.C. fund raiser, helps plan future fund raising for the party or attends a
"unity rally," which, aides contend, is really different from a "Dole rally" because unity rallies focus on promoting other
Republican candidates. Dole's travel last Thursday was almost completely arranged by the party because he attended a fund
raiser on a paddle boat on the Ohio River, a "unity rally" at the landing in Louisville, Kentucky, and later another "unity"
barbecue in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
This kind of subterfuge offends Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who, despite his long-standingfriendshipwith
Dole, has sponsored a bill that would turn off the soft-money spigot. Unlike any of the growing number of campaign-finance
reform measures being floated on Capitol Hill, his bill, which is co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Russell Feingold of
Wisconsin, would stop the flow of these funds by preventing national parties from distributing the money to state parties.
After months of trying, the two sponsors have finally succeeded in getting the Senate to schedule a debate on the bill next
week, though they face daunting opposition from their colleagues.
In the meantime, the Republican Party will rush to swoop up soft money, helping make this the most expensive campaign in
history. More than $1.5 billion is expected to be spent on all federal elections this year, with soft money making up the
fastest-growing part of that lucre. The two major parties are likely to raise $125 million of it, double the amount they
collected in the last presidential cycle.
Much of that money sloshes into party coffers via soirees like the one held last Monday at the Washington convention center.
The Republican House-Senate dinner raised $8 million by offering guests different levels of access for donations of $10,000
to $100,000; benefits ranged from a photo with G.O.P. congressional leaders to lunch with House Speaker Newt Gingrich to
having "a member of Congress or a Senator seated at your table" during the dinner.
Not to be outdone, the Democrats' fund-raising gala last month was a two-day affair that raised $12.3 million, the biggest
haul in Democratic Party history. It started with intimate dinners with top Clinton appointees at the homes of such luminaries
as Ethel Kennedy and Vice President Al Gore. Those who gave $5,000 or more received a briefing by Clinton Cabinet
officers, while the largest moneybags (those in the $250,000 category) got the best seats at the black-tie dinner on the second
night.
Lobbyist Daniel Dutko, who represents oil and communications companies and raised over $500,000 for the party, got to sit
next to the White House senior adviser on the environment and telecommunications, the Vice President. "The sense of being
involved, of helping the Administration, helps my clients," Dutko says. "There's no way to deny that."
There is evidence-disputed by the principals-that the money does produce big and nicely targeted concessions from the
parties who take it in. According to Common Cause, regional and long-distance telephone companies won concessions in the
telecommunications bill last year in tandem with their record soft-money giving. NYNEX, a huge regional Baby Bell,
contributed $ 100,000 to The Republican Congressional Campaign Committee the same month House G.O.P. leaders relaxed
a requirement in the bill that Baby Bells must have competition for local telephone business before being able to sell
long-distance service. Later long-distance companies gave $160,000 to the Democrats after President Clinton threatened that
he would veto the legislation. Around the time a compromise was struck, money flowed to both parties. Ann McBride,
3 of 5
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president of Common Cause, says the result of such giving is that "the integrity of the legislative process is destroyed."
Like telecommunications, the gambling industry appears to be hedging its bets. After President Clinton considered imposing
a 4% tax on gambling receipts in 1994, Steve Wynn's Golden Nugget casino gave the Republican National Committee
$230,000, and Wynn, who had supported Clinton in 1992, played host to a nearly half-million-dollar ftind raiser for Bob
Dole.
But with the possibility looming that Congress may establish a commission with subpoena power to investigate gambling,
Wynn is taking a second look at the Democrats. He recently played golf with Clinton, attended a fund raiser for the
Democrats in Las Vegas last week and, the Democrats say, pledged a substantial contribution. (Wynn's spokesman denies
this.) Now both leading Republicans and Democrats are expressing their doubts about giving the commission subpoena
power.
Despite the soft-money flow, some pundits and politicians contend that the system needs more, not less, cash. Why, they
wonder, does toothpaste get more advertising dollars than the policy debates of the day? And doesn't something need to be
done to reduce the advantage that millionaires have over candidates who are not as well heeled? On the other hand, anyone
who attended the Reform Party Convention in Los Angeles two weeks ago could have witnessed the persistent power of Ross
Perot's call for campaign-finance reform. National polls show that nearly three-quarters of Americans favor candidates for
Congress who say they support overhauling campaign-finance laws.
That's why, as a way to block the McCain-Feingold measure, Dole and a bipartisan group of otherwise reluctant reformers
want to create a commission to recommend ways to change the law. But not before Republicans plan another $10 million
fund raiser during their National Convention in San Diego this August. And not before Clinton and Gore have completed
their own frenetic party fund raising: in the 70 days between April 4 and June 14, the tally was 11 events for the Vice
President and 27 events for the President, including last week's $25,000-a-couple luncheon at the home of Las Vegas Sun
editor Brian Greenspun.
With that level of addiction to soft money, it is no wonder that the commission will be asked to report back well after
November.
-With reporting by Tamala M. Edwards/Louisville
REPUBLICAN
TOP SOFT-MONEY DONORS IN 1995
$975,149
Philip Morris Co.
$696,450
RJR Nabisco
$352,000
AT&T Corp.
$282,175
Atlantic Richfield Co.
$265,000
Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.
$255,000
Archer-Daniels-Midland Co.
Source: Common Cause
BIG TOBACCO
$2.4 MILLION TO REPUBLICANS IN 1995
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WHAT IT WANTED: To block moves by the FDA to regulate cigarettes. Last week Dole showed which side he's on: " I
don't think the FDA has the authority to do what they want to do now."
LAWYERS
$1.8 MILLION TO DEMOCRATS IN 1995
WHAT THEY WANTED: To kill a litigation-reform bill. Clinton did veto it-four days after his White House dinner with
trial-lawyer honcho Bill Lerach. Congress overrode the veto, and the bill became law anyway.
DEMOCRAT
TOP SOFT-MONEY DONORS IN 1995
$380,150
Dirk Ziff Founder, Ziff Brothers Investments
$303,480
AT&T Corp.
$294,750
MCI Communications
$276,000
Miramax Films
$240,500
Bernard Schwartz Head, Loral Corp.; defense contractor
$215,250
Anheuser-Busch Co.
Related Articles in Britannica Online
Text Only
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�Page 3
7TH
STORY o f Level 1 p r i n t e d i n FULL f o r m a t .
C o p y r i g h t 1996 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
June 16, 1996,
Sunday, Late E d i t i o n - F i n a l
SECTION: S e c t i o n 4; Page 5; Column 1; Week i n Review Desk
LENGTH: 714 words
HEADLINE: The Campaign Finance Shuffle,Time Passes. Money Flows.
BYLINE:
By ALISON MITCHELL
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
REMEMBER t h a t famous New Hampshire handshake?
I t ' s been a year s i n c e P r e s i d e n t C l i n t o n and Speaker Newt G i n g r i c h , a t a town
meeting i n Claremont, found a r a r e p i e c e o f common ground and agreed t o a
s u g g e s t i o n from t h e audience t h a t t h e y form a commission on l o b b y i n g and
campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m .
The i d e a was t h a t an independent commission c o u l d embarrass e l e c t e d
o f f i c i a l s i n t o d o i n g what t h e y have n o t been a b l e t o do themselves: l i m i t
i n f l u e n c e o f money over p o l i t i c s .
the
The two l o q u a c i o u s baby-boomer p o l i t i c i a n s , b o t h a t t h e i r c o n c i l i a t o r y b e s t
t h a t day, c o u l d n o t have sounded more e n t h u s i a s t i c . " I n a h e a r t b e a t , " Mr.
C l i n t o n s a i d t o t h e crowd on t h e lawn o f t h e E a r l M. Bourdon Senior Center. " I
accept."
"Let's shake hands r i g h t here i n f r o n t o f everybody," s a i d Mr.
Gingrich.
One year l a t e r , t h a t commission has y e t t o be formed. Each s i d e blames t h e
o t h e r . And how d i d t h e two p o l i t i c a l p a r t i e s observe t h e a n n i v e r s a r y o f t h a t
handshake on June 11, 1995?
Mr. C l i n t o n e a r l y l a s t week swept t h r o u g h t h e West from one f u n d - r a i s e r t o
another on b e h a l f o f t h e Democratic N a t i o n a l Committee. A t t h e home o f a c o l l e g e
chum i n Las Vegas, he brought i n $500,000 on Sunday, more t h a n a t h i r d o f i t
from t h e gaming i n d u s t r y , which i s f i g h t i n g l e g i s l a t i o n i n Congress t h a t would
c r e a t e a commission t o i n v e s t i g a t e t h e s o c i a l consequences o f t h e g r o w t h o f
gambling.
M i l l i o n - D o l l a r Evening
L a t e r t h a t evening Mr. C l i n t o n dropped i n t o Senator Dianne F e i n s t e i n ' s San
F r a n c i s c o home t o d i n e w i t h a group t h a t p a i d an eye-popping $100,000 per couple
t o m i n g l e w i t h t h e P r e s i d e n t . The t a k e : $1 m i l l i o n .
�Page 4
The New York Times, June 16, 1996
And Monday n i g h t , a r e d c a r p e t graced t h e s i d e w a l k i n f r o n t o f t h e
f o l i a g e - e n s h r o u d e d B e v e r l y H i l l s home o f Lew Wasserman, l o n g a major domo o f
i n d u s t r y and p o l i t i c s i n Hollywood. I n s i d e , movers, shakers and s t a r s o f t h e
e n t e r t a i n m e n t w o r l d p a i d $5,000 each t o see Mr. C l i n t o n , r a i s i n g a n o t h e r $1
million.
The Republicans were busy, t o o . On Monday n i g h t , Mr. G i n g r i c h and Bob Dole,
t h e apparent P r e s i d e n t i a l nominee, addressed 4,000 s t a l w a r t s a t t h e annual
R e p u b l i c a n House and Senate d i n n e r i n Washington, b r i n g i n g i n $8 m i l l i o n f o r t h e
p a r t y . The n e x t day, h i s v e r y l a s t day i n t h e Senate, a t t h e v e r y moment he was
g i v i n g up h i s c o n s i d e r a b l e i n f l u e n c e over t h e course o f l e g i s l a t i o n , Mr. Dole
i n t r o d u c e d a b i l l t o c r e a t e t h e commission e n v i s i o n e d i n New Hampshire a year
earlier.
I n f a c t , i f t h i s year has shown a n y t h i n g , i t ' s how i n v e n t i v e t h e P r e s i d e n t i a l
c a n d i d a t e s have become a t g e t t i n g around t h e campaign f i n a n c e law. The C l i n t o n
camp has managed t o wage a t e l e v i s i o n ad campaign c o s t i n g more t h a n $20 m i l l i o n
across t h e p a s t year -- and n o t count i t toward t h e spending c e i l i n g - - b y t y i n g
t h e commercials t o l e g i s l a t i v e i s s u e s and never a c t u a l l y u r g i n g a v o t e f o r B i l l
Clinton.
Mr. Dole, i n t h e o r y , spent r i g h t up t o t h e l e g a l l i m i t d u r i n g t h e p r i m a r i e s
and s h o u l d be f l a t o u t o f money. But t h e Republicans have been r u n n i n g a
60-second b i o g r a p h i c a l TV commercial about Mr. Dole, c o n t e n d i n g t h a t i t i s n o t
covered by t h e spending l i m i t .
" I t never says t h a t I'm r u n n i n g f o r P r e s i d e n t , " Mr. Dole e x p l a i n e d . " I hope
t h a t i t ' s f a i r l y obvious s i n c e I'm t h e o n l y one i n t h e p i c t u r e . "
D u r i n g t h e g e n e r a l e l e c t i o n p e r i o d , P r e s i d e n t i a l c a n d i d a t e s who
p u b l i c f i n a n c i n g r e c e i v e $61.8 m i l l i o n from t h e Government and a r e
l i m i t t h e i r campaign spending t o t h a t sum. But f o r years t h e y have
l o o p h o l e by h e l p i n g t h e n a t i o n a l p o l i t i c a l p a r t i e s r a i s e t h e i r own
opt f o r
supposed t o
exploited a
funds.
Since l a s t June, Congress has p u t i n p l a c e new r e s t r i c t i o n s on l o b b y i s t s . But
any meeting o f t h e minds on campaign f i n a n c e r e g u l a t i o n e v a p o r a t e d q u i c k l y l a s t
summer a f t e r Mr. C l i n t o n p u b l i c l y named two appointees t o t h e commission and
suggested how i t s h o u l d be s t r u c t u r e d . That prompted Mr. G i n g r i c h ' s a i d e s t o
charge t h a t t h e P r e s i d e n t had breached an u n d e r s t a n d i n g t o work o u t d e t a i l s i n
p r i v a t e , and t h e two s i d e s have s p o r a d i c a l l y t r a d e d blame ever s i n c e .
Last week Frank MacConnell, who proposed t h e b l u e - r i b b o n commission t o Mr.
C l i n t o n and Mr. G i n g r i c h from t h e audience a t t h e New Hampshire meeting, came t o
Washington t o make a n o t h e r p i t c h t o change t h e system. "Up i n o u r p a r t o f t h e
c o u n t r y , " he s a i d , "a handshake r e a l l y means a handshake."
GRAPHIC: Photo: The C l i n t o n - G i n g r i c h handshake o f June 1 1 , 1995, promised
campaign f i n a n c i n g r e f o r m s . But t h a t was t h e n . (Reuters)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: June 16, 1996
�Page 9
LEVEL 1 - 210 OF 233 STORIES
C o p y r i g h t 1995 The A t l a n t a C o n s t i t u t i o n
The A t l a n t a J o u r n a l and C o n s t i t u t i o n
June 16, 1995, F r i d a y ,
SECTION: NATIONAL NEWS,
ALL EDITIONS
Pg. 8A
LENGTH: 516 words
HEADLINE: C l i n t o n , G i n g r i c h team up, so campaign r e f o r m may g e t p a s t f i r s t base;
A c t i o n a t l a s t ? The b a n k r o l l i n g o f candidates has come up b e f o r e , b u t a new
panel may have b e t t e r l u c k a t r e v i s i n g r u l e s .
BYLINE: Mike C h r i s t e n s e n ;
WASHINGTON BUREAU
DATELINE: Washington
BODY:
The spur-of-the-moment handshake between P r e s i d e n t C l i n t o n and House Speaker
Newt G i n g r i c h on a g r e e i n g t o c r e a t e a b l u e - r i b b o n commission t o l o o k a t
campaign f i n a n c e and l o b b y i n g r e f o r m c o u l d mean a b r e a k t h r o u g h on two d i f f i c u l t
issues.
R e p u b l i c a n l e a d e r s i n Congress have shown no i n t e r e s t i n changing t h e
campaign f i n a n c e system, so a s p e c i a l commission might compel some a c t i o n .
But t h e House and Senate have shown some movement toward c u r b i n g g i f t s from
l o b b y i s t s and r e q u i r i n g more d i s c l o s u r e o f l o b b y i n g a c t i v i t y . The Senate has
even s e t a s i d e t i m e t o debate t h e i s s u e next month.
" I j u s t don't t h i n k you need i t (a commission) f o r t h e l o b b y r e f o r m b i l l , "
s a i d Ann McBride, p r e s i d e n t o f t h e p u b l i c i n t e r e s t group Common Cause.
R e a c t i o n t o Sunday's unprecedented p a c t between t h e p r e s i d e n t and t h e speaker
has been g e n e r a l l y p o s i t i v e .
"The p r e s i d e n t v e r y c l e a r l y gave i n s t r u c t i o n s t o h i s s t a f f t o pursue t h i s
m a t t e r w i t h t h e speaker," s a i d C l i n t o n ' s press s e c r e t a r y , Mike McCurry.
Senate M a j o r i t y Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) has backed a s i m i l a r i d e a i n t h e
p a s t and p r o b a b l y would support i t t h i s t i m e .
A s p e c i a l commission would g i v e C l i n t o n a way t o h i g h l i g h t campaign f i n a n c e
r e f o r m , a f a v o r i t e i s s u e , though one he has n o t pushed beyond m e n t i o n i n g i t i n
h i s S t a t e o f t h e Union speeches.
" I t h i n k t h i s i s a p o s i t i v e development," s a i d E l l e n M i l l e r , d i r e c t o r o f t h e
Center f o r Responsive P o l i t i c s . "To date, Republicans have slammed t h e i r f o o t i n
t h e door and s a i d no campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m o f any t y p e . "
I f G i n g r i c h wants t o s t a l l l o b b y i n g r e f o r m , a b l u e - r i b b o n commission m i g h t be
j u s t t h e t a c t i c . L a s t f a l l , he s t i r r e d up o p p o s i t i o n t o a r e f o r m measure by
�Page 10
The Atlanta Journal, June 16, 1995
s a y i n g i t would r e q u i r e f i n a n c i a l d i s c l o s u r e by g r a s s - r o o t s o r g a n i z a t i o n s . The
b i l l died.
The generous view i s t h a t C l i n t o n and G i n g r i c h see a way t o r e s o l v e i s s u e s
t h a t have b e l e a g u e r e d Congress f o r more t h a n a decade.
"There may be no c l e a r winner a t t h i s p o i n t . Maybe the American people won
one f o r a change," s a i d K e i t h B i l l i n g s l e y , a p o l i t i c a l s c i e n c e p r o f e s s o r a t t h e
U n i v e r s i t y o f Georgia.
The s p e c i a l commission on S o c i a l S e c u r i t y i n 1983 and t h e more r e c e n t Base
Closure and Realignment Commission have enabled Congress t o d e a l w i t h i s s u e s i t
was p o l i t i c a l l y i n c a p a b l e o f t a c k l i n g .
Campaign f i n a n c e
r e f o r m has
been h o p e l e s s l y deadlocked.
Democrats g e n e r a l l y have advocated some p u b l i c f i n a n c i n g o f c o n g r e s s i o n a l
campaigns as an i n c e n t i v e f o r c a n d i d a t e s t o accept c o n t r i b u t i o n l i m i t s . The
Supreme Court has r u l e d a g a i n s t o u t r i g h t l i m i t s on c o n t r i b u t i o n s as a form o f
p r o t e c t e d f r e e speech.
Republicans have advocated banning p o l i t i c a l a c t i o n committees and
encouraging more f i n a n c i a l s u p p o r t from i n d i v i d u a l s and p a r t i e s , t h e i r
f u n d - r a i s i n g s t r e n g t h . Since l a s t f a l l ' s e l e c t i o n s , however, b u s i n e s s PAC money
has s h i f t e d t o t h e GOP.
" I t ' s h a r d t o r e q u i r e members t o r e f o r m t h e way t h e y c o l l e c t and spend money,
which i s a t t h e h e a r t o f t h e i r c a r e e r s , " s a i d James Thurber, d i r e c t o r o f t h e
Center f o r C o n g r e s s i o n a l and P r e s i d e n t i a l S t u d i e s a t American U n i v e r s i t y i n
Washington.
LOAD-DATE: June 27, 1995
�1/29/96 NATION/MONEY AND POLITICS: RICH MAN'S GAM@V@gdaAUAUzt6XKzC/time/magazine/domestic/1996/960129/cover.money.html
TIME Magazine
January 29, 1996 Volume 147, No. 5
Return to Contents page
NATION/MONEY AND POLITICS
RICH MAN'S GAME
Forbes Shows The Power Of Money In Politics. Should We Change The Rules?
RICHARD LACA YO/NEW YORK
You should have been there a few weeks ago when Steve Forbes held one ofhis campaign bashes at New York City's
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Joan Rivers emceed. The $l,000-a-plate tables were flush with interested parties like Alan ("Ace")
Greenberg, head of the prominent investment firm Bear Steams, and Leonard Lauder of the Estee Lauder cosmetics family.
More than 1,400 people attended, which meant about $1.2 million for the campaign treasury. It was a big night for Forbes,
his most successful fund raiser yet.
His most successful what? To avoid becoming obligated to special interests, wasn't Forbes supposed to befinancinghis own
campaign? Not quite. He's held at least one other sizable fund raiser so far. Half a dozen others are scheduled, and as many as
15 more are being planned. His campaign manager, Bill Dal Col, says Forbes is raising money to demonstrate that he has "a
broad-based campaign." And by law his donors are limited to $1,000 a person, which is not the kind of money that makes a
millionaire beholden to anybody.
But some of Forbes' business-world friends, including Greenberg, Lauder and Philadelphia developer Richard Fox, have
served as shakers of the donor tree, persuading others to chip in. While they deny seeking personal gain, if Forbes wins, they
still might hope for special treatment from his White House. (Or if he loses, from his magazine.) Charles Lewis, author of
The Buying of the President, sees it this way: "Forbes is a millionaire who says he's not beholden to special interests who is
now beholden to special interests."
What's more, the money chase could serve Forbes in a highly personal way. Unlike Ross Perot, Forbes is not giving his own
money to his campaign. He's lending it~with the option to repay himself later from any donor funds that remain unspent at
the end ofhis campaign. If he gains the White House, he can also legally undertake postelection fund raising until he
completely pays back his lOUs to himself. Though he says they haven't discussed it, Dal Col adds, "I'm sure Forbes would
do it, pay himself back." In the meantime, by fronting himself with his own money, the thrifty Forbes can afford to decline
federal matching funds, which most ofhis Republican rivals can't do without but which saddle them with campaign-spending
limits that Forbes can ignore.
Let's concede that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. When it
comes to entering the White House, wealth still has its advantages. So many, in fact, that American politics has become a
rich person's game as never before. In addition to Forbes, the '96 G.O.P. presidential field includes Morry Taylor, a
multimillionaire tire manufacturer. And billionaire Ross Perot may run again.
With serious presidential contenders needing $20 million for the primaries alone, a candidate's most reliable friend, Phil
Gramm once quipped, is "ready money." And there's none readier than what's in your own checkbook. Forbes says he is
willing to spend $25 million. Perot shelled out more than $60 million.
Bank accounts of distinction are also muscling into Senate and House races in record numbers: 38 candidates for the Senate
and 93 for the House put at least $100,000 of their own money into their 1994 campaigns, about twice as many as eight years
earlier. The influx of the rich has many people concerned that politics is becoming a game for the well heeled only. "Money
has become the key factor in who runs for office and who wins," says Jamin B. Raskin, co-author of The Wealth Primary:
Campaign Fund Raising and the Constitution. " I would consider it a real crisis of democracy."
Some would ask, What's the big deal? The first Presidents--Washington, Adams and Jefferson-were all rich. In 1958 New
York State offered the spectacle of millionaire gridlock. Railway heir Averell Harriman lost the Governor's race to petroleum
heir Nelson Rockefeller, and investment-banking heir Corliss Lament lost the Senate race. (He was running as a Socialist, no
less.) Cash on hand also doesn't guarantee success at the polls. Ask Michael Huffington, the poster boy for thwarted
ambitions who spent his own $28 million in an unsuccessful 1994 bid for the Senate seat of California Democrat Dianne
Feinstein. Morry Taylor's spending has got him nowhere in the opinion polls.
But conditions have ripened in recent years to favor wealthy newcomers as never before. Voters are skeptical of both major
parties, and the decline of party affiliations has paralleled the rising importance of TV spots. "Party organization and the
support of party leaders are no longer as important as they were," says Tony Corrado, an expert on campaignfinanceat
Colby College in Maine. "Candidates can now appeal directly to the electorate through television." Then there are the
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,
unintended consequences of the post-Watergate attempt to reduce the role of money in politics. In 1974 Congress created the
present donor caps. It also put a $50,000 limit on what candidates could spend from personal funds. Two years later that
provision was disallowed by the Supreme Court, which held that political spending by individuals is a form offreespeech.
Signs are right for another round of reform. The anti-Washington mood among conservatives has converged with the liberals'
suspicion of big money. In both the House and Senate there are bipartisan bills to change congressional campaign-finance
rules. Supporters of the House version were inspired to fight harder last November when Speaker Newt Gingrich and
minority leader Richard Gephardt tried to derai the idea. Both bills would ban or limit contributions from political-action
committees. To discourage out-of-state contributors from swaying elections, they would also require most of a candidate's
money to come from within his or her state.
To limit the advantages enjoyed by wealthy politicians, they would require broadcasters to give 50% discounts on TV
advertising to congressional candidates who agree to accept the campaign-funding limits~a change that reformers are urging
for presidential campaigns too. For those there are also proposals to scrap state-by-state campaign-spending limits in favor of
a single cap on total spending nationwide. That acknowledges the fact that candidates must inject money disproportionately
in key early states with small populations, like Iowa and New Hampshire. Last week Senator Bill Bradley went even further,
urging a constitutional amendment imposing spending limits for Senate races. The New Jersey Democrat would permit
taxpayers to contribute additional amounts of from $1 to $5,000 to a fund that would finance Senate races in their own states.
Candidates would be forbidden to accept funds from any other source. Good luck on that one. The existing irs check-off box,
which lets taxpayers shift $3 of their payment to a similar fund, is already in trouble. With the number of taxpayers checking
the box going as low as 15%, that fund may run out of cash by the year 2000.
The easiest refonn would be a significant rise in the 22-year-old cap for individual donors, which has never been adjusted for
inflation. Make it $10,000, for instance, and you are likely to slash the time that candidates without personal wealth must
devote to the money chase. Higher caps are a notion that horrifies some liberal good-government groups. "Then politicians
will be wholly owned rather than just shared," says Ellen Miller, executive director of the Washington-based Center for
Responsive Politics.
Will they? When the average Senate campaign costs nearly $5 million, $10,000 hardly buys much special attention. Then
again, any idea popular with both candidates and rich donors probably bears some skeptical scrutiny. For the record, one of
those who support higher caps is Steve Forbes.
-Reported by Jeffrey H. Bimbaum/Washington and Charlotte Faltermayer/New York
Text Only
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�Page 3
1ST STORY o f L e v e l 1 p r i n t e d i n FULL f o r m a t .
C o p y r i g h t 1996 Newsweek
Newsweek
October 2 1 , 1996 , UNITED STATES EDITION
SECTION: NATIONAL AFFAIRS; Scandal; Pg. 40
LENGTH: 982 words
HEADLINE: S o f t Money, Easy Acess
BYLINE: BY MICHAEL ISIKOFF AND MARK HOSENBALL W i t h BILL TURQUE
HIGHLIGHT:
A money t r a i l l i n k i n g t h e Democrats w i t h w e a l t h y Indonesians r a i s e s q u e s t i o n s
about cash and power
BODY:
IT'S A GOOD BET YOU'VE NEVER HEARD o f James Riady. But he's v i r t u a l l y a
household name a t t h e White House. An I n d o n e s i a n businessman whose f a m i l y
c o n t r o l s t h e L i p p o Group, Riady i s p a r t o f a p o w e r f u l J a k a r t a - b a s e d b a n k i n g
conglomerate t h a t has c o n t r i b u t e d handsomely t o B i l l C l i n t o n ' s campaigns over
the y e a r s . So when Riady asks f o r something, t h e a d m i n i s t r a t i o n pays assiduous
a t t e n t i o n . One example: when a major L i p p o i n v e s t o r , Hasjim Ning, s u f f e r e d a
h e a r t a t t a c k w h i l e v i s i t i n g Washington i n June 1995, Riady wanted a g e t - w e l l
l e t t e r f r o m t h e p r e s i d e n t . Not o n l y d i d he g e t one, b u t i t was h a n d - c a r r i e d t o
the h o s p i t a l by an a i d e t o C l i n t o n a d v i s e r Mack McLarty. A second p r e s i d e n t i a l
note f o l l o w e d i n November. Ning's daughter and s o n - i n - l a w expressed t h e i r
a p p r e c i a t i o n w i t h a s e r i e s o f c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o t h e Democratic N a t i o n a l Committee
-- t o t a l i n g $ 425,000.
what i s t h e L i p p o Group r e a l l y a f t e r , besides t h o u g h t f u l n o t e s f r o m t h e
p r e s i d e n t ? What e v e r y big-money p o l i t i c a l c o n t r i b u t o r wants: access and
i n f l u e n c e . The Riady f a m i l y has b o t h . Republicans s n i f f a p o t e n t i a l s c a n d a l , and
are c a l l i n g f o r a s p e c i a l p r o s e c u t o r t o l o o k i n t o t h e Riady cash. ( I t ' s i l l e g a l
f o r f o r e i g n companies t o g i v e t o U.S. campaigns.) But t h i s i s n ' t j u s t an
i n t e r n a t i o n a l s c a n d a l , o r a Democratic one: t h e c o u n t r y ' s campaign-finance
system i s o u t o f c o n t r o l . Though i n d i v i d u a l s a r e l i m i t e d t o g i v i n g $ 1,000 p e r
e l e c t i o n and c o r p o r a t e p o l i t i c a l - a c t i o n groups t o $ 5,000, b o t h p a r t i e s a r e
amassing r e c o r d amounts o f " s o f t " money -- c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o p a r t i e s , n o t
c a n d i d a t e s , t h a t a r e n ' t s u b j e c t t o l e g a l l i m i t s . Common Cause charged l a s t week
t h a t b o t h p a r t i e s were engaged i n v i o l a t i o n s o f Watergate dimensions, i l l e g a l l y
u s i n g s o f t money t o promote C l i n t o n and Dole.
T h i s i s a b i p a r t i s a n h a b i t , b u t t h e C l i n t o n White House has been e s p e c i a l l y
brazen. C l i n t o n , who once r a i l e d a g a i n s t Washington's money c u l t u r e and promised
r e f o r m i n h i s 1992 campaign m a n i f e s t o " P u t t i n g People F i r s t " ("On s t r e e t s where
statesmen once s t r o l l e d , a never-ending stream o f money now changes hands . .
. " ) , has devoted an e x t r a o r d i n a r y amount o f t i m e t o r a i s i n g money, spending
hours on t h e campaign t r a i l schmoozing donors i n p r i v a t e homes and h o t e l
b a l l r o o m s . He does a l o t o f i t w i t h o u t even l e a v i n g Washington. On a t l e a s t 3 5
s e p a r a t e o c c a s i o n s , t h e DNC a r r a n g e d f o r b i g donors from key s t a t e s t o j o i n
�Page 4
Newsweek, October 21, 1996
C l i n t o n f o r 90-minute " c o f f e e s " i n t h e White House r e s i d e n c e . One g u e s t e a r l i e r
t h i s y e a r was A r i e f W i r i a n d i n a t a , Ning's s o n - i n - l a w , who a l o n g w i t h h i s w i f e
donated t h e now c o n t r o v e r s i a l $ 425,000.
C l i n t o n w i l l a l s o s l i p o u t o f t h e White House f o r cozy, $ 50,000-a-couple
d i n n e r s a t posh Washington h o t e l s . Sherry Rowlands, t h e p r o s t i t u t e who c l a i m s t o
have had a y e a r - l o n g a f f a i r a t t h e J e f f e r s o n w i t h former p r e s i d e n t i a l s t r a t e g i s t
D i c k M o r r i s , r e c a l l s w a t c h i n g C l i n t o n r o l l up f o r an evening w i t h donors.
The Riadys a r e a c o m p e l l i n g example o f C l i n t o n ' s l o n g t i m e knack f o r r a i s i n g
cash. C l i n t o n b e f r i e n d e d t h e f a m i l y when he was t h e a t t o r n e y g e n e r a l o f Arkansas
i n t h e l a t e 1970s. L i p p o p a t r i a r c h Mochtar Riady and son James a l s o became
co-owners o f a l o c a l bank w i t h one o f C l i n t o n ' s e a r l y p o l i t i c a l p a t r o n s ,
f i n a n c i e r Jackson Stephens. For l e g a l a d v i c e t h e Riadys t u r n e d t o t h e Rose Law
Firm and s e n i o r p a r t n e r Webster H u b b e l l .
The Riadys seldom passed up an o p p o r t u n i t y t o be u s e f u l t o C l i n t o n and h i s
f r i e n d s , d o n a t i n g more t h a n $ 175,000 t o h i s 1992 campaign and 1993 I n a u g u r a l .
When H u b b e l l r e s i g n e d i n d i s g r a c e from t h e J u s t i c e Department i n 1994, t h e
Riadys r e t a i n e d him f o r a few months b e f o r e he p l e a d e d g u i l t y t o f e d e r a l f r a u d
charges and began h i s p r i s o n sentence. NEWSWEEK has l e a r n e d t h a t Whitewater
independent counsel Kenneth S t a r r i n v e s t i g a t e d t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p t o d e t e r m i n e i f
H u b b e l l ' s f e e -- e s t i m a t e d by one knowledgeable source a t about $ 150,000 -- was
"hush money" t o ensure H u b b e l l ' s s i l e n c e about t h e C l i n t o n s , b u t n o t h i n g came o f
the i n q u i r y . White House a i d e s deny any i m p r o p r i e t y .
The Riadys have e n j o y e d C l i n t o n ' s good w i l l . Aides c o n f i r m t h a t C l i n t o n has
had t h r e e White House meetings w i t h James Riady and some o f h i s b u s i n e s s
p a r t n e r s -- most r e c e n t l y i n September, when Riady dropped by t h e Oval O f f i c e .
The v i c e chairman o f Lippo's C a l i f o r n i a b a n k i n g s u b s i d i a r y , John Huang, g o t a
top Commerce Department j o b i n 1994. And when t h e p r e s i d e n t v i s i t e d J a k a r t a f o r
an economic summit i n 1994, he a t t e n d e d a l a v i s h r e c e p t i o n l a i d on by t h e
Riadys.
Beyond p a r t y - g i v i n g : A c c o r d i n g t o a t o p a d m i n i s t r a t i o n o f f i c i a l , t h e Riadys'
i n t e r e s t i n C l i n t o n may go w e l l beyond p a r t y - g i v i n g . M a r i a L u i s a Haley, a former
Arkansas s t a t e o f f i c i a l whom C l i n t o n a p p o i n t e d t o be a d i r e c t o r o f t h e U.S.
E x p o r t - I m p o r t Bank, says she's had meetings and phone c o n v e r s a t i o n s w i t h Riady
business a s s o c i a t e and former Rose Law F i r m s e n i o r p a r t n e r Joseph G i r o i r t o
d i s c u s s government f i n a n c i n g f o r e x p o r t d e a l s -- i n c l u d i n g a $ l b i l l i o n v e n t u r e
i n v o l v i n g L i p p o and Entergy, a New Orleans company, t o b u i l d a power p l a n t i n
n o r t h e r n China. That p l a n f e l l t h r o u g h , b u t t h e bank has i s s u e d l e t t e r s o f
c r e d i t t o t a l i n g $ 900,000 f o r o t h e r d e a l s w i t h t h e Riadys' L i p p o Bank. The
Riadys d e c l i n e d r e p e a t e d r e q u e s t s f o r comment, and t h e White House says t h a t
t h e r e i s no evidence C l i n t o n ever i n t e r v e n e d t o h e l p them.
I f t h e r e i s an i n v e s t i g a t i o n , much o f t h e f o c u s w i l l l i k e l y be on Huang, t h e
former L i p p o e x e c u t i v e who went t o work a t Commerce. Now a v i c e f i n a n c e chairman
of t h e DNC, he has r a i s e d m i l l i o n s from A s i a n sources; he l a n d e d t h e $ 425,000
from t h e W i r i a n d i n a t a s , who have s i n c e moved back t o J a k a r t a . Though t h e law
g e n e r a l l y bars f o r e i g n c o n t r i b u t i o n s , they are p e r m i s s i b l e i f t h e c o n t r i b u t o r s
are l e g a l l y i n t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s a t t h e t i m e t h e y hand over t h e money. DNC
o f f i c i a l s say t h e W i r i a n d i n a t a s check o u t . What doesn't compute i s a l a r g e r
system i n d e s p e r a t e need o f r e f o r m .
�Page 5
Newsweek, October 21, 1996
GRAPHIC: P i c t u r e , Mochtar and James Riady, LIPPO GROUP, $ 175,000, T h e i r
t r a c e a b l e g i f t s d a t e t o '92; t h i s year an ex-Lippo exec has r a i s e d m i l l i o n s
more, ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT GAZETTE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: October 25, 1996
�Date: 11/12/95 Time: 15:32
PGingrich Says There'll Be No Refonn Affecting 1996 Election
WASHINGTON (AP)
House Speaker Newt Gingrich pitched h i s plan
Sunday for a commission on p o l i t i c a l reform, but said i t s findings
would come too late to affect the 1996 election.
Nothing i s going to be done before the next election and
everybody knows that,'' the Georgia Republican said on NBC's Meet
the P r e s s . " "Nothing w i l l apply to the 1996 e l e c t i o n . "
Gingrich brushed aside c r i t i c i s m s , from both parties, that the
GOP leadership has cooled on campaign and lobbying reform since
Republicans gained control of Congress and began seeing big gains
in contributions.
*The issue i s much bigger than they think i t i s , " Gingrich
said. We want to look at the t o t a l i t y of power i n America, not
j u s t a very narrow definition of campaigns."
At the urging of Republican freshmen, the House w i l l take up a
b i l l Thursday on r e s t r i c t i n g free meals, t r i p s and other g i f t s
members can accept from lobbyists.
Gingrich showed l i t t l e enthusiasm for limitations, saying that
i f Congress i s going to go that route, an outright ban on g i f t s
would be better. " I would have an automatic thing that says,
t bring T - s h i r t s , don't bring c a p s . ' "
n campaign reform, he promoted h i s idea, f i r s t proposed a week
of appointing a bipartisan commission, with eight members from
each side, to " l o o k at the t o t a l i t y of p o l i t i c s . "
Under h i s proposal, the House and Senate would automatically
have to take up any idea that i s endorsed by three-fourths of the
commission members, and review any idea that gets majority support.
He said the commission would report to Congress by May 1, and
l e g i s l a t i o n could probably be presented on the House floor by next
summer.
President Clinton and Gingrich agreed to set up such a
commission during a j o i n t appearance i n New Hampshire l a s t June,
but the idea has made l i t t l e headway since then. The White House
l a s t week suggested that at t h i s point Gingrich's proposal would
only d e r a i l r e a l reform that i s gaining steam i n Congress.
The Republican Party received more than $20 million i n so-called
soft money during the f i r s t s i x months of the year
twice the
amount collected by Democrats. Soft money i s unregulated
contributions to parties coming from corporations, unions and
wealthy individuals.
But Gingrich stressed that there i s a bigger picture involved in
p o l i t i c a l reform. He noted that Ross Perot spent $67 million of h i s
own money during h i s independent quest for the presidency i n 1992
and mentioned three Democratic senators
Frank Lautenberg of New
Jersey, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin and John D. Rockefeller of West
dnia
whose personal wealth helped i n t h e i r campaigns.
r Should Frank Lautenberg be able to write a check to buy a
SlJTate seat?'' he asked.
P o l i t i c a l reform should also look at the question of money from
foreign sources, he said, noting that there w i l l be a large inflow
of funds from Hong Kong when the B r i t i s h colony comes under Chinese
control i n two years.
xx
xx
x
xx
»
x
�Gingrich said i t was " v e r y sobering" that labor unions had
spent $22 m i l l i o n on ads t h i s f a l l attacking the Republican agenda.
APNP-ll-12-95 1528EST
�Page 2
LEVEL 1 - 26 OF 64 STORIES
Copyright 1995 The Atlanta C o n s t i t u t i o n
The A t l a n t a Journal and C o n s t i t u t i o n
August 5, 1995, Saturday,
ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: NATIONAL NEWS, Pg. 6A
LENGTH: 474 words
HEADLINE: Focus on CONGRESS: A BUSY DAY Clinton pushing f o r campaign finance
reform
BYLINE: Mike Christensen; WASHINGTON BUREAU
DATELINE: Washington
BODY:
President C l i n t o n on Friday turned up the heat on Republican leaders i n
Congress f o r p o l i t i c a l reform by ordering public disclosure f o r l o b b y i s t s i n the
executive branch.
C l i n t o n once again singled out House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) f o r
a l l e g e d l y dragging h i s feet on t h e i r agreement nearly two months ago i n New
Hampshire t o e s t a b l i s h a nonpartisan commission f o r lobbying and campaign
finance reform.
" e continue t o hope that the speaker w i l l l i v e up t o h i s handshake,"
W
Clinton said a t a news conference w i t h two people he wants t o appoint t o the
commission, Common Cause founder John Gardner and p o l i t i c a l s c i e n t i s t and author
Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Gingrich r e p l i e d t h a t he i s more i n t e r e s t e d i n r e s t r u c t u r i n g Medicare r i g h t
now. " I ' l l have a paper by sometime t h i s f a l l on how I t h i n k we ought t o
approach the whole campaign issue," Gingrich t o l d reporters on Capitol H i l l .
One reason Gingrich seems i n no hurry t o change the campaign finance system
may be t h a t h i s r e - e l e c t i o n committee has raised nearly $ 870,000 i n the past
s i x months, most o f i t from business and medical i n t e r e s t s .
Gingrich's committee has spent more than a h a l f - m i l l i o n d o l l a r s i n that time
- as much as some House members pay f o r an e n t i r e campaign - much of i t f o r h i s
t r a v e l . Credit card reports l i s t e d 47 a i r l i n e t i c k e t s , h o t e l b i l l s , and $ 1,370
to a Cadillac dealer on Long Island f o r t r a n s p o r t a t i o n .
Other Republicans also are reaping a r i c h harvest from t h e i r newly won
c o n t r o l o f the House and Senate. Lawmakers who a year ago were demanding the
a b o l i t i o n of p o l i t i c a l a c t i o n committees (PACs), which were g i v i n g more heavily
to Democrats, are now overrun w i t h PAC contributions themselves.
"They know t h a t money i s the key t o success, and they know that changing the
game w i l l disadvantage incumbents," said Ellen M i l l e r of the Center f o r
Responsive P o l i t i c s , which monitors c o n t r i b u t i o n s .
LEXIS-NEXIS
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�Page 3
The Atlanta Journal, August 5,
1995
Rep. Charlie Norwood, a Republican freshman from Georgia who wangled a seat
on the i n f l u e n t i a l Commerce Committee, raked i n j u s t over $ 267,000 i n h i s
f i r s t s i x months i n o f f i c e , almost h a l f of i t from PACs.
"My conservative b e l i e f s f i t very n i c e l y w i t h a l o t of people up there w i t h
PACs and so f o r t h , and I know they're c o n t r i b u t i n g t o us because of how I'm
v o t i n g and what I'm doing," said Norwood, a d e n t i s t , who once c o n t r i b u t e d t o a
dental PAC himself.
Rep. John Linder, another Georgian and a member of the Rules Committee,
raised $ 207,000 i n the past s i x months, close t o t r i p l e what he received h i s
f i r s t s i x months i n o f f i c e , when h i s p a r t y -was i n the m i n o r i t y .
" I never had a b i g i n c e n t i v e f o r campaign finance reform," Linder said. " I t
costs a l o t of money t o get your views out. McDonald's spent more money
a d v e r t i s i n g hamburgers l a s t year than was spent on a l l the p o l i t i c a l campaigns
throughout the country."
GRAPHIC: Photo: President C l i n t o n on Friday named Common Cause founder John
Gardner ( r i g h t ) as h i s nominee t o a commission on p o l i t i c a l reform. / Associated
Press
LOAD-DATE: August 7,
1995
LEXIS-NEXIS
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�Page 2
LEVEL 1 - 204 OF 23 3 STORIES
C o p y r i g h t 1995 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
June 18, 1995, Sunday, F i n a l E d i t i o n
SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. C02
LENGTH: 13 5 1
words
HEADLINE: L e t ' s Form a Commission! (Hee, Hee); I f B i l l and Newt A r e n ' t K i d d i n g ,
I t ' s Good Way t o Get Campaign Reform
BYLINE: Fred Wertheimer
BODY:
THREE CHEERS f o r Frank MacConnell.
He's t h e businessman who s e i z e d t h e moment l a s t Sunday i n Claremont, N.H.,
and g o t P r e s i d e n t C l i n t o n and Speaker Newt G i n g r i c h t o s u p p o r t t h e c r e a t i o n o f a
b l u e - r i b b o n commission on p o l i t i c a l r e f o r m .
They appeared w i l l i n g t o reach across p a r t i s a n , p h i l o s o p h i c a l and
i n s t i t u t i o n a l d i v i d e s . They seemed i n t e r e s t e d i n r i s i n g above our i n t e n s e l y
p o l a r i z e d p o l i t i c s t o p r o v i d e l e a d e r s h i p f o r t h e n a t i o n . They i d e n t i f i e d w i t h
the American people's l o u d l y p r o c l a i m e d d e s i r e t o change t h e way Washington
works.
For t h e i r e f f o r t , C l i n t o n and G i n g r i c h g o t a g r e a t r i d e o u t o f t h e handshake
agreement, and a d r a m a t i c photo o p p o r t u n i t y . A handshake on a d e a l i s a p o w e r f u l
symbol i n our c u l t u r e . We remember them. The l a s t g r e a t one t h a t t o o k p l a c e i n
our c o u n t r y i s s t i l l v i v i d l y e t c h e d i n our minds -- t h e handshake s e a l i n g t h e
h i s t o r i c agreement between I s r a e l i Prime M i n i s t e r Rabin and PLO Chairman A r a f a t .
So t h e o n l y r e m a i n i n g q u e s t i o n i s whether t h e p r e s i d e n t and speaker w i l l now
do something r e a l t o c a r r y o u t t h e i r commitment t o Frank MacConnell and t h e
American p e o p l e . Or w i l l t h i s t u r n o u t t o be j u s t one more game p l a y e d by our
n a t i o n a l l e a d e r s w i t h t h e c i t i z e n s o f t h i s c o u n t r y , w h i l e Washington f i d d l e s and
our p o l i t i c a l system burns?
On F r i d a y , C l i n t o n sent a l e t t e r t o G i n g r i c h o u t l i n i n g a p r o p o s a l f o r
e s t a b l i s h i n g t h e commission. But t h e r e ' s a l o n g way t o go b e f o r e t h e i r agreement
ever becomes a r e a l i t y . As someone who has been i n v o l v e d i n t h e b a t t l e f o r
campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m f o r more years t h a n I , o r anyone e l s e , would w i s h t o
count, I can g i v e you a l l o f t h e reasons f o r b e i n g c y n i c a l about t h e agreement
reached l a s t week.
But i f t h e y a r e w i l l i n g t o do t h i s r i g h t , t h e p r e s i d e n t and t h e speaker's
agreement j u s t m i g h t l e a d t o a b r e a k t h r o u g h .
The commission t h e y agreed t o would be modeled on t h e m i l i t a r y b a s e - c l o s i n g
commission e s t a b l i s h e d t o overcome t h e p o l i t i c s and g r i d l o c k t h a t had stopped
Congress from s h u t t i n g down unnecessary defense i n s t a l l a t i o n s . The g e n i u s o f i t s
�Page 3
The Washington Post, June 18, 1995
d e s i g n l a y i n t h e requirement t h a t Congress had e i t h e r t o approve o r r e j e c t t h e
commission's comprehensive p l a n .
Resistance t o such an approach t o campaign r e f o r m i s a l r e a d y s t a r t i n g . Sen.
M i t c h McConnell (R-Ky.), n o t t o be confused w i t h c i t i z e n Frank MacConnell, i s
p r e p a r e d t o go anywhere, do a n y t h i n g , take any s t e p necessary t o b l o c k
campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m . He was quoted l a s t week as c a l l i n g t h e commission "the
dumbest i d e a " he's heard i n t h i s Congress and s a i d he would l e a d a f i l i b u s t e r
a g a i n s t i t i f i t came t o t h e Senate f l o o r .
His vehemence shows us t h i s p l a n c o u l d work.
True, Senate M a j o r i t y Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) would have t o do h i s p a r t t o
ensure t h e passage o f l e g i s l a t i o n t o e s t a b l i s h t h e commission. I r o n i c a l l y , he
was t a l k i n g about e s t a b l i s h i n g p r e c i s e l y t h i s k i n d o f commission t o d e a l w i t h
campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m months b e f o r e C l i n t o n and G i n g r i c h reached t h e i r
agreement.
Thus, t h e t h r e e most p o w e r f u l i n d i v i d u a l s i n our p o l i t i c a l system are now on
r e c o r d i n s u p p o r t o f a base-closing-commission approach t o d e a l i n g w i t h
campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m .
There are a number o f reasons why people w i l l l o o k a t t h e C l i n t o n - G i n g r i c h
accord w i t h a j a u n d i c e d eye. Here are some o f them:
The f i r s t i s t h a t t h e d e c i s i o n was made on t h e spur o f t h e moment. I t i s
w o r t h n o t i n g t h a t n e i t h e r t h e p r e s i d e n t nor t h e speaker had a p p a r e n t l y g i v e n any
r e a l t h o u g h t t o such a commission u n t i l t h e y were h i t w i t h the q u e s t i o n i n New
Hampshire. W i t h t h e whole c o u n t r y w a t c h i n g t h i s j o i n t appearance, t h e two men
c l e a r l y wanted t o l o o k good.
We have seen f a r t o o many cases i n t h e p a s t o f our p o l i t i c a l l e a d e r s t e l l i n g
c i t i z e n s what t h e y want t o hear and then, when t h e moment has passed, u s i n g a l l
k i n d s o f m a n i p u l a t i v e techniques t o walk away from t h e i r commitments.
Second, n e i t h e r C l i n t o n nor G i n g r i c h has c l e a n hands i n t h i s m a t t e r o f
p o l i t i c a l r e f o r m . The p r e s i d e n t campaigned h e a v i l y on t h e i s s u e , and i n h i s
i n a u g u r a l address p r o c l a i m e d : " . . . l e t us r e s o l v e t o r e f o r m our p o l i t i c s so
t h a t power and p r i v i l e g e no l o n g e r shout down t h e v o i c e o f t h e people."
But t h e p r e s i d e n t f a i l e d t o l e a d on t h i s i s s u e , and two and a h a l f
l a t e r , n o t h i n g has changed.
years
Meanwhile, G i n g r i c h a few years ago s a i d , "The f i r s t d u t y o f our g e n e r a t i o n
i s t o r e - e s t a b l i s h i n t e g r i t y and a bond o f honesty i n t h e p o l i t i c a l process" and
c a l l e d f o r t h e passage o f " r e f o r m laws t o c l e a n up t h e e l e c t i o n and l o b b y i n g
systems."
I n t h e l a s t Congress, however, G i n g r i c h p l a y e d a c r i t i c a l r o l e i n k i l l i n g
comprehensive p o l i t i c a l r e f o r m l e g i s l a t i o n and then l e f t t h i s " f i r s t d u t y o f o u r
g e n e r a t i o n " i s s u e c o m p l e t e l y out o f t h e "Contract W i t h America."
T h i s i s n o t a t r a c k r e c o r d t o i n s p i r e c o n f i d e n c e t h a t h i s t o r i c change i s a t
hand.
�Page 4
The Washington Post, June 18, 1995
T h i r d , we s h o u l d remember t h a t commissions don't e x a c t l y have a good t r a c k
r e c o r d . Want t o k i l l an idea? Create a commission. The use o f commissions t o
serve as a g r a c e f u l way o f s i d e - s t e p p i n g problems i s a time-honored Washington
t r a d i t i o n . M e n t i o n t h e i d e a o f c r e a t i n g a commission i n t h i s c i t y and everyone
s t a r t s s m i l i n g and w i n k i n g .
D e s p i t e t h i s looming s k e p t i c i s m , under t h e r i g h t circumstances, a commission
on p o l i t i c a l r e f o r m c o u l d succeed. But t h e f o l l o w i n g steps must be t a k e n i f t h e
i d e a i s t o have a chance:
Guaranteed f i n a l a c t i o n . What makes t h e b a s e - c l o s i n g commission d i f f e r e n t
from o t h e r s i s t h e f a c t t h a t i t s p r o p o s a l s a r e c o n s i d e r e d i n whole by Congress
and members must a c t on them e i t h e r by a c c e p t i n g o r r e j e c t i n g t h e e n t i r e
package. They can't m o d i f y t h e p l a n o r c l o s e o n l y t h e bases t h a t would cause t h e
least p o l i t i c a l backfire.
T h i s process was d e v i s e d t o overcome t h e g r i d l o c k t h a t f l o w e d from i n d i v i d u a l
r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s opposing m i l i t a r y base c l o s i n g s i n t h e i r home communities and
b l o c k i n g a c t i o n by Congress t o s o l v e t h e problem.
The h i s t o r y o f campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m e f f o r t s over t h e p a s t two decades i s a
h i s t o r y o f p r o c e d u r a l r o a d b l o c k s , from f a i l u r e s t o schedule f l o o r a c t i o n t o
f i l i b u s t e r s t h a t p r e v e n t e d a f i n a l v o t e . I t i s a l s o a h i s t o r y o f incumbent and
p a r t i s a n s e l f - i n t e r e s t by members b l o c k i n g t h e a b i l i t y t o o b t a i n consensus on a
s o l u t i o n . A b a s e - c l o s i n g commission approach f o r p o l i t i c a l r e f o r m p r o v i d e s t h e
o p p o r t u n i t y t o overcome these b a r r i e r s t o change.
A c t i o n i n t h i s Congress. The process must r e q u i r e t h a t t h e p o l i t i c a l
package i s v o t e d d u r i n g t h i s Congress. Otherwise t h e r e w i l l be no r e a l
accountability.
reform
There i s no reason why a p r o p o s a l c o u l d n o t be worked o u t and v o t e d on by
n e x t summer. The v a r i o u s s o l u t i o n s f o r campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m a r e on t h e t a b l e .
So a r e t h e ways t o b r i d g e t h e d i f f e r e n c e s and achieve a consensus. What has been
m i s s i n g i s t h e p o l i t i c a l w i l l t o overcome s e l f - i n t e r e s t . Lobby and g i f t r e f o r m ,
on t h e o t h e r hand, has had broad b i p a r t s a n support and s h o u l d proceed as
scheduled i n t h e Senate n e x t month.
The r i g h t commissioners. More t h a n a n y t h i n g e l s e , t h e commission w i l l f a i l i f
i t does n o t have members w i t h t h e s k i l l , f o r t i t u d e and independence t o do t h e
job.
B l u e - r i b b o n c i t i z e n commissions i n r e c e n t years have produced i m p r e s s i v e
p o l i t i c a l r e f o r m packages f o r C a l i f o r n i a , New York and t h e c i t y o f Los Angeles.
The key t o t h e i r work has been t h e people chosen t o serve. Success r e q u i r e s
choosing q u a l i f i e d i n d i v i d u a l s who have t h e freedom t o use t h e i r own b e s t
j udgment.
As f o r C l i n t o n and G i n g r i c h , t h e y r a i s e d t h e p o l i t i c a l r e f o r m s t a k e s
d r a m a t i c a l l y l a s t week. They brought t h e i s s u e back t o c e n t e r stage. And t h e y
p u t t h e i r own c r e d i b i l i t y on t h e l i n e .
As f o r Frank MacConnell, he wasn't i n t e r e s t e d i n a l l t h e m a c h i n a t i o n s t h a t go
i n t o how Washington p l a y s t h e game. He was j u s t a concerned c i t i z e n from New
�Page5
The Washington Post, June 18, 1995
Hampshire who saw h i s o p p o r t u n i t y and took i t .
And as f o r me, I am w i l l i n g t o be a C h a r l i e Brown t o t h e Washington i n s i d e r s '
Lucy. J u s t p u t t h a t o l d p o l i t i c a l r e f o r m f o o t b a l l o u t t h e r e and I ' l l go f o r
i t . Because, one o f these days, C h a r l i e Brown i s g o i n g t o k i c k t h a t f o o t b a l l
through the goal posts.
Fred Wertheimer stepped down as p r e s i d e n t o f Common Cause e a r l i e r t h i s
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: June 18, 1995
year.
�Page 6
LEVEL 1 - 205 OF 233 STORIES
C o p y r i g h t 1995 The Times M i r r o r Company
Los Angeles Times
June 17, 1995, Saturday,
Home E d i t i o n
SECTION: P a r t A; Page 5; N a t i o n a l Desk
LENGTH: 888 words
HEADLINE: CLINTON BIPARTISAN PANEL IDEA CALLED A PLOY;
POLITICS: HOUSE SPEAKER DENOUNCES THE PROPOSAL ON CAMPAIGN, LOBBY REFORM. GOP
LEADERS SEE I T AS BID TO WREST THE ADVANTAGE AND INITIATIVE FROM THEIR PARTY.
BYLINE: By MELISSA HEALY and DOYLE McMANUS, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
P r e s i d e n t C l i n t o n moved q u i c k l y F r i d a y t o s e i z e a p o l i t i c a l o p p o r t u n i t y
p r e s e n t e d by h i s r e c e n t appearance w i t h House Speaker Newt G i n g r i c h (R-Ga.) i n
New Hampshire, o u t l i n i n g h i s v i s i o n o f a b i p a r t i s a n commission t h a t would d r a f t
p o l i t i c a l r e f o r m l e g i s l a t i o n and send i t t o Congress f o r a "yes" o r "no" v o t e .
The White House i n i t i a t i v e , which f o l l o w e d a remarkably c i v i l debate i n New
Hampshire between t h e two s p a r r i n g p o l i t i c a l l e a d e r s , was denounced i m m e d i a t e l y
by G i n g r i c h as p o l i t i c a l g r a n d s t a n d i n g .
I n a l e t t e r sent F r i d a y t o G i n g r i c h and r e l e a s e d almost s i m u l t a n e o u s l y t o t h e
press i n H a l i f a x , Canada, where C l i n t o n i s meeting w i t h l e a d e r s o f t h e w o r l d ' s
economic powers, t h e P r e s i d e n t proposed f a s h i o n i n g a commission o f Republicans
and Democrats t o "take a f r e s h l o o k " a t " a l l t h e issues o f p o l i t i c a l r e f o r m ,
i n c l u d i n g campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m and l o b b y r e f o r m . "
The commission then would submit a l e g i s l a t i v e p r o p o s a l , t h r o u g h t h e
P r e s i d e n t , t o Congress, which c o u l d v o t e i t down - - a p o l i t i c a l l y r i s k y move i n
an environment o f v o t e r d i s g r u n t l e m e n t -- o r approve i t w i t h o u t amendment.
"This p r o p o s a l o f f e r s t h e best chance i n a g e n e r a t i o n t o break t h r o u g h t h e
s t a l e m a t e between t h e p a r t i e s t h a t has b l o c k e d progress f o r r e f o r m , " C l i n t o n
wrote t o t h e House Speaker.
G i n g r i c h , who has been wary o f a commitment t o r e f o r m f i n a n c i n g o f
c o n g r e s s i o n a l campaigns j u s t as t h e GOP has won c o n t r o l o f Congress, was d e e p l y
p i q u e d by what one a i d e c a l l e d "a campaign-related s t u n t " masterminded by
C l i n t o n a d v i s e r Dick M o r r i s f o r t h e p o l i t i c a l b e n e f i t o f t h e White House.
"We're g o i n g t o t r y t o g e t t h i s process r e s t a r t e d on a b i p a r t i s a n b a s i s and
assume t h e h a n d l i n g o f t h i s was due t o t h e s t r a n g e weather i n H a l i f a x , " G i n g r i c h
spokesman Tony B l a n k l e y s a i d . " I t ' s t o o i m p o r t a n t an i s s u e t o be t u r n e d i n t o a
political football."
Senate M a j o r i t y Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who i s b e i n g i n v i t e d i n t o t h e
�Page 7
Los Angeles Times, June 17,
1995
process by thfe White House, a c c o r d i n g t o C l i n t o n Press S e c r e t a r y Mike McCurry,
had n o t seen t h e l e t t e r l a t e F r i d a y . Dole's spokesman s a i d t h a t he was n o t
a v a i l a b l e f o r comment.
White House a i d e s s a i d t h a t C l i n t o n modeled h i s i d e a f o r a b i p a r t i s a n
commission on t h e p a n e l e s t a b l i s h e d i n 1991 t o c o n s i d e r t h e p o l i t i c a l l y v o l a t i l e
i s s u e o f how many and which m i l i t a r y i n s t a l l a t i o n s t o c l o s e . L i k e t h a t
commission, members o f t h e panel proposed by C l i n t o n would be e v e n l y d i v i d e d
between Republicans and Democrats.
The P r e s i d e n t , t h e House Speaker and the Senate m a j o r i t y l e a d e r each would
name two members t o t h e p a n e l , and m i n o r i t y l e a d e r s i n t h e House and Senate each
would name one member.
Saying "the American people want t o know t h a t we w i l l a c t d u r i n g t h i s
Congress," C l i n t o n suggested t h a t t h e commission be g i v e n a f i r m d e a d l i n e o f
Feb. 1, 1996, t o draw up a d e t a i l e d l e g i s l a t i v e p r o p o s a l and send i t t o t h e
P r e s i d e n t . That, he w r o t e , would a l l o w t h e i s s u e t o be s e t t l e d " b e f o r e t h e
e l e c t o r a l season begins i n t h e summer of 1996."
But c o n g r e s s i o n a l Republicans c l e a r l y saw C l i n t o n ' s move as a p o l i t i c a l p l o y
t o w r e s t b o t h t h e advantage and t h e i n i t i a t i v e from GOP l e a d e r s on C a p i t o l H i l l .
"They f a x e d t h i s over t o us i n s t a n t a n e o u s l y w i t h i t s r e l e a s e t o t h e media,"
G i n g r i c h spokesman B l a n k l e y s a i d . "Everyone i n Washington knows t h a t i s n o t t h e
way t o l a u n c h a g o o d - f a i t h b i p a r t i s a n e f f o r t . "
N o t i n g t h a t G i n g r i c h i s i n t e r e s t e d i n a commission t h a t would e x p l o r e "the
t o t a l i t y o f p o l i t i c s and money" i n f e d e r a l e l e c t i o n s , B l a n k l e y suggested t h a t
C l i n t o n ' s narrow focus on l o b b y i n g and campaign f i n a n c e i n c o n g r e s s i o n a l
e l e c t i o n s c o u l d be designed t o p u t lawmakers -- a l r e a d y unpopular w i t h t h e
p u b l i c - - o n the defensive w h i l e l e a v i n g C l i n t o n i n the c l e a r .
GOP l e a d e r s i n t h e House and Senate have been wary o f u n d e r t a k i n g sweeping
reforms t h a t would p l a c e new r e s t r i c t i o n s on l o b b y i n g , g i f t s t o lawmakers and
campaign f i n a n c e , m o s t l y p l a c i n g those issues a t t h e end o f a l o n g l i s t o f o t h e r
more p r e s s i n g l e g i s l a t i v e p r i o r i t i e s .
But l e s s s e n i o r members o f t h e House and Senate, i n c l u d i n g a number o f
freshmen lawmakers, have c o n t i n u e d t o see such r e f o r m as c e n t r a l t o t h e mandate
t h a t t h e i r c o n s t i t u e n c i e s gave them. The r e s u l t has been a behind-the-scenes war
o f w i l l s between i n f l u e n t i a l freshmen and more s e n i o r l e g i s l a t o r s on these
issues.
I n t h e House, a b i p a r t i s a n r e f o r m team of n i n e lawmakers -- which o r g a n i z e d
i t s e l f i n February, w e l l b e f o r e l a s t Sunday's agreement between C l i n t o n and
G i n g r i c h t o form a b i p a r t i s a n commission -- a l r e a d y has begun g e n e r a t i n g
p r o p o s a l s f o r t h e commission.
Among those p r o p o s a l s i s a campaign f i n a n c e r e f o r m a c t now i n f i n a l d r a f t i n g
stage. An e a r l y d r a f t o f t h e group's p r o p o s a l would bar c a n d i d a t e s from
r e c e i v i n g more t h a n 50% o f t h e i r t o t a l c o n t r i b u t i o n s per c y c l e from p o l i t i c a l
a c t i o n committees and no more than 50% from out of s t a t e .
�Page 8
Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1995
The p r o p o s a l would make e x c e p t i o n s t o those s t r i c t u r e s o n l y i n cases where
candidates c o n t r i b u t e more than $100,000 o f p e r s o n a l funds t o t h e i r own
campaign.
The p r e l i m i n a r y v e r s i o n a l s o would p r o h i b i t " b u n d l i n g " o f campaign
c o n t r i b u t i o n s by PACs, t r a d e a s s o c i a t i o n s , l o b b y i s t s , c o r p o r a t i o n s , p o l i t i c a l
p a r t i e s , l i m i t e d p a r t n e r s and f o r e i g n agents. And i t would p r o h i b i t
c o n t r i b u t i o n s by l e a d e r s h i p PACs, i n which lawmakers i n s a f e seats p o o l t h e i r
s u r p l u s campaign funds and d i r e c t them t o o t h e r races.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: June 18, 1995
�Page 8
LEVEL 1 - 3 6 OF 64 STORIES
C o p y r i g h t 1995 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
,
June 17, 1995, Saturday, Late E d i t i o n - F i n a l
SECTION: S e c t i o n 1;
Page 9;
Column 1;
N a t i o n a l Desk
LENGTH: 762 words
HEADLINE: C l i n t o n Proposes Overhaul b u t G i n g r i c h Sees a 'Gimmick'
BYLINE:
By TODD S. PURDUM
DATELINE: HALIFAX, Nova S c o t i a , June 16
BODY:
F o l l o w i n g up on t h e i r handshake i n New Hampshire l a s t Sunday, P r e s i d e n t
C l i n t o n sent a d e t a i l e d p r o p o s a l t o Speaker Newt G i n g r i c h today f o r a b i p a r t i s a n
commission on l o b b y i n g and campaign f i n a n c e changes, b u t Mr. G i n g r i c h c o m p l a i n e d
l a t e r t h a t t h e announcement was a " p o l i t i c a l gimmick."
The P r e s i d e n t ' s p r o p o s a l c a l l e d f o r t h e commission t o make recommendations t o
Congress by Feb. 1 f o r an up-or-down v o t e , and t h e Speaker's camp was a p p a r e n t l y
annoyed t h a t t h e White House had made t h e p r o p o s a l p u b l i c w i t h o u t w a r n i n g t h e
Georgia R e p u b l i c a n .
D u r i n g a v i s i t w i t h c o n s t i t u e n t s i n t h e A t l a n t a suburbs, Mr. G i n g r i c h s a i d
of t h e C l i n t o n p r o p o s a l : " I t h i n k t h i s was j u s t a p o l i t i c a l gimmick today. B u t
we'd l i k e t o work on t h e concept o f some k i n d o f commission t o l o o k a t l o b b y i n g
and campaign s p e n d i n g and t h e whole t h i n g i n one l a r g e p i c t u r e . "
I n h i s l e t t e r t o t h e Speaker, r e l e a s e d t o r e p o r t e r s t r a v e l i n g w i t h him f o r
the summit m e e t i n g o f major i n d u s t r i a l n a t i o n s here, Mr. C l i n t o n went o u t o f h i s
way t o emphasize t h e c o n c i l i a t o r y tone o f t h e i r Sunday exchange a t a town
meeting i n Claremont, N.H. A t t h e meeting, t h e two p r o m p t l y agreed t o a
q u e s t i o n e r ' s s u g g e s t i o n t h a t a commission modeled on t h e one t h a t s e l e c t e d
m i l i t a r y bases f o r c l o s i n g m i g h t be t h e o n l y way t o break years o f d e a d l o c k i n
Congress on o v e r h a u l i n g campaign f i n a n c e laws.
"As you s t a t e d , " Mr. C l i n t o n w r o t e t o Mr. G i n g r i c h , " t h i s p r o p o s a l o f f e r s t h e
b e s t chance i n a g e n e r a t i o n t o break t h r o u g h t h e s t a l e m a t e between t h e p a r t i e s
t h a t has b l o c k e d p r o g r e s s f o r r e f o r m . " And he added t h a t he l o o k e d f o r w a r d " t o
h e a r i n g y o u r v i e w s on t h i s p r o p o s a l , o r o t h e r s you might have f o r moving ahead."
But w i t h h i s e x p l i c i t p r o p o s a l today, t h e P r e s i d e n t a l s o seemed t o be moving
t o e x p l o i t t h e p o l i t i c a l p o t e n t i a l o f t h e i s s u e , which i s p o p u l a r w i t h t h e
p u b l i c b u t anathema t o p o l i t i c a l o r g a n i z e r s .
Mr. C l i n t o n a l s o sent a copy o f t h e l e t t e r t o t h e Senate m a j o r i t y l e a d e r , Bob
Dole o f Kansas, and he n o t e d t h a t Mr. Dole had l o n g ago endorsed t h e n o t i o n o f
such a commission.
LEXIS-NEXIS
- ^ A
member of the R d E l . c v , c r p k roup
CC
f l ) LEXIS-NEXIS'
^^^A
member of the Reed Elsevier pic group
f j | LEXIS-NEXIS
- ^ A member of .he Reed Elievter pk group
�Page 9
The New York Times, June 17, 1995
Mr. C l i n t o n proposed c r e a t i o n of an eight-member commission, w i t h no more
than four members from one party. No member could be a current Federal o f f i c i a l
or member of Congress, o r o f f i c e r o r counsel t o the p o l i t i c a l p a r t i e s . The
President would o f f i c i a l l y make a l l the appointments, but two each would be made
i n c o n s u l t a t i o n w i t h the Speaker and the Senate m a j o r i t y leader, and one each i n
c o n s u l t a t i o n w i t h the House and Senate m i n o r i t y leaders.
Congress would have t o vote t o create the commission, and the panel would
then make recommendations t o Congress by Feb. 1. But u n l i k e the recommendations
of the Base Realignment and Closing Commission, whose selections f o r closings
take e f f e c t unless r e j e c t e d i n t h e i r e n t i r e t y by Congress, the recommendations
of t h i s commission would f i r s t have t o be approved by the President, and then
accepted o r r e j e c t e d by Congress, w i t h i n 3 0 days without amendments.
" I n t h i s instance I believe i t i s more appropriate t o give the Congress the
opportunity t o vote up o r down," Mr. C l i n t o n wrote.
Of course, t h a t would also put the f i n a l burden on Congress t o take a vote or
r i s k p u b l i c disapproval.
The Speaker's spokesman, Tony Blankley, said the issue was one o f
consultation.
" I don't t h i n k t h a t l e t t e r o r the substance of i t i s a f r u i t f u l ground f o r
s t a r t i n g these n e g o t i a t i o n s , " Mr. Blankley said. " I t h i n k we need t o work
together t o design a concept, and not have a series of u n i l a t e r a l t h r u s t s . "
But the White House spokesman, Michael D. McCurry, said t h a t had always been
Mr. Clinton's i n t e n t , and he c a l l e d Mr. Blankley's r e a c t i o n "enormously
disappointing."
" e were so looking forward, i n the s p i r i t of the New Hampshire handshake, t o
W
p u t t i n g forward the President's t h i n k i n g on what we should do," Mr. McCurry
added. "We're sure t h e y ' l l come forward w i t h ideas o f t h e i r own."
I n h i s l e t t e r , Mr. C l i n t o n said the commission would be charged w i t h
considering " a l l the issues of p o l i t i c a l reform, i n c l u d i n g campaign finance
reform and lobby reform." But he added that the appointment o f a commission
should not delay passage of pending Senate l e g i s l a t i o n t o t i g h t e n r e s t r i c t i o n s
on lobbying.
George Stephanopoulos, a senior P r e s i d e n t i a l adviser, said i n a telephone
i n t e r v i e w from Washington t h a t Mr. C l i n t o n was eager t o move forward t o carry
out the New Hampshire agreement. "The President and the Speaker agreed t o a
t e r r i f i c recommendation from a New Hampshire c i t i z e n on Sunday, and t h i s t r i e s
to begin the process o f t u r n i n g t h a t i n t o law," he said.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: June 18, 1995
LEXIS-NEXIS
Q i J . member of rhe Rccd Elxrv.cr pic group
Wk LEXIS-NEXIS'
member of rhe Reed El^v.er pic group
f J LEXIS-NEXIS'
A member of the Reed Elsc.er pk group
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Michael Waldman
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Michael Waldman was Assistant to the President and Director of Speechwriting from 1995-1999. His responsibilities were writing and editing nearly 2,000 speeches, which included four State of the Union speeches and two Inaugural Addresses. From 1993 -1995 he served as Special Assistant to the President for Policy Coordination.</p>
<p>The collection generally consists of copies of speeches and speech drafts, talking points, memoranda, background material, correspondence, reports, handwritten notes, articles, clippings, and presidential schedules. A large volume of this collection was for the State of the Union speeches. Many of the speech drafts are heavily annotated with additions or deletions. There are a lot of articles and clippings in this collection.</p>
<p>Due to the size of this collection it has been divided into two segments. Use links below for access to the individual segments:<br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=43&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=2006-0469-F+Segment+1">Segment One</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=43&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=2006-0469-F+Segment+2">Segment Two</a></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Michael Waldman
Office of Speechwriting
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-1999
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2006-0469-F
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Segment One contains 1071 folders in 72 boxes.
Segment Two contains 868 folders in 66 boxes.
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Format
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Adobe Acrobat Document
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
CFR [Campaign Finance Reform] - Reference [3]
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of Speechwriting
Michael Waldman
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Box 63
<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/36404"> Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7763296">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2006-0469-F Segment 2
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
White House Staff and Office Files
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Adobe Acrobat Document
Medium
The material or physical carrier of the resource.
Preservation-Reproduction-Reference
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
6/3/2015
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
7763296
42-t-7763296-20060469F-Seg2-063-005-2015