FLOOR
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOSEPH LIEBERMAN
IN SUPPORT OF SHAYS-MEEHAN/McCAIN-FEINGOLD BILL
MARCH
20, 2002
Mr.
President. With
the impending vote on final passage of the McCain-Feingold/Shays-Meehan
bill, we are fast approaching the end of an incredible
Odyssey B one that, while perhaps not so long as that of the
mythical Odysseus, has certainly been every bit as
challenging, suspenseful and epic.
Time and again, the efforts to reform our campaign
finance system have faced ruin as its proponents have been
forced to sail between their own version of Scylla and
Charybdis; required to resist their own special call of the
Sirens. But due
to the incredible commitment and tenacity of our leaders in
this struggle B Senators McCain and Feingold B the Congress
has found the strength to reach its own Ithaca, and to
finally try to clear its house of suitors seeking special
favors at the expense of the greater good.
I
joined this Odyssey in 1997, when the Governmental Affairs
Committee conducted its year-long investigation into
campaign finance abuses in the 1996 federal campaigns.
With the passage of time, the shock of that
investigation=s revelations has started to fade, but it is
critical that we remember them, because they represent
precisely what is most wrong with the system we plan to
change. We
should not forget the hustlers like Johnny Chung -- who
compared the White House to a subway, saying AYou have to
put in coins to open the gates@-- or Roger Tamraz, who told
us that he didn=t even bother to vote, because he knew that
his huge donations would get him so much more.
These men were on the margins, and they never got
what they wanted for their money.
But their stories B and the many more like them B
contributed to the cynicism too many Americans have about
their elected leaders and the skepticism they have about
their own ability to influence the system.
Johnny
Chung, Roger Tamraz, Charlie Trie and the like may have been
unusual in the unsophisticated, bull-in-a-china-shop way in
which they tried to play the system, but their essential
insight B that big dollar donations buy the access that
enables you to get what you want B is one that pervades our
political culture. That
insight is shared and acted upon daily by the mainstream
special interests whose soft money donations have
exponentially dwarfed those of 1996's most colorful
characters and who use the access they buy to try to mold
the nation=s policies and agenda in their own interests.
The
result has been a system that often leaves the average
person B whose annual income in many cases doesn=t even
approach the cost of a ticket to the political parties= most
elite fundraising events B disempowered, disinterested and
disengaged from our political process.
It causes them to continually question why their
leaders are taking the actions they take.
And it causes those of us in public life to work too
often under a cloud of suspicion B with our constituents
wondering whose interest we are serving.
The
demise of the Enron Corporation is but the most recent example
of this phenomenon. It=s
regularly stated that Enron is a corporate scandal, but not
necessarily a political one.
It=s too early to conclude whether any elected official
did anything inappropriate for Enron; I don=t know whether
that happened or not. But
I do know that a company with an ultimately shakey business
model run by individuals of even shakier business ethics
repeatedly found an open door in the offices of the
politically powerful, in no small part, I presume, because of
the millions of dollars of political donations the company
made. This is not Enron=s political scandal alone; it is all of
ours. And all of
us have been hurt by it B politicians who are under suspicion
merely because they received donations from Enron, legitimate
legislative causes that have been tarnished because Enron once
supported them, and, worst of all, the American people, whose
confidence in the integrity of our system has once again been
shaken.
Fortunately,
Congress finally, after so many years and so many scandals,
will act to make the system better.
None of us is under the delusion that the enactment of
this bill will make our system pristine or eliminate the
impact of money on politics.
Money, like water, always seems to find a new place to
flow. But this
bill will have an impact, and it will be a good one, and that
will result from the closing of the large soft-money loophole
that has been allowed to open up in the post-Watergate
campaign finance laws.
Before
yielding the floor, I would like to commend this bill for one
additional reason: it includes an amendment Senator Thompson
and I have been working on since shortly after the conclusion
of the Governmental Affairs Committee=s 1997 investigation.
That amendment resulted from our frustration that some
of the worst actors in the 1996 scandals, individuals who
clearly broke the law B and were convicted for breaking it B
escaped without significant punishment.
The reason: the criminal provisions of our campaign
finance laws just weren=t strong enough.
Our
amendment remedies that by authorizing felony charges for
violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act, extending
FECA=s statute of limitations and directing the US Sentencing
Commission to promulgate a specific guideline for sentencing
those who violate our campaign finance laws.
The combination of these changes will put teeth into
our campaign finance laws and ensure that those who willfully
violate them will not again escape without serious
consequences.
Mr.
President, for too long, we have watched as our nation=s
greatest treasure B it=s commitment to democracy B has been
pillaged by the ever escalating money chase.
It is time to say enough is enough -- to remove the
disproportionate power those with wealth have over the
political system and to restore political influence to where
our nation=s founding principles say it should be: with the
people and the voters. I
am proud that that is what the Congress is about to do. |