SENATE STANDSTILL September 23, 1997 NewsHour Transcript

A RealAudio version of this segment is available. NEWSHOUR LINKS: September 19, 1997 Shields and Gigot discuss campaign finance reform hearings and the McCain-Feingold bill. June 24, 1996: A background report on introduction of the McCain-Feingold reform bill. June 12, 1997: Congress and the President request the FEC to amend laws concerning soft money. March 11, 1997: Senate expands campaign finance investigation to cover all "improper" actions. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the campaign finance investigation. OUTSIDE LINKS From Sen. Fussell Feingold's Web site: The Campaign Finance Reform Bill  Tom Daschle's Web site  Don Nickles' Web site

SEN. TOM DASCHLE, Minority Leader: Thank you, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: At the end of the day, were you pleased with what you accomplished?

Two issues: campaign finance reform and the Senator Landrieu investigation.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: I was very pleased on two fronts. We were able to get the agreement to move ahead on campaign finance reform at a time certain, sometime in the next month. And then secondly, we were able to move also on the Landrieu matter. Sen. Landrieu has been languishing for eight or nine months. And I'm extremely pleased with the results of our negotiations on that today. So we have no intention of holding up any committee meetings tomorrow.

JIM LEHRER: Now, back to the campaign finance. What exactly are the terms of the agreement? When will it come up and how much debate will there be, et cetera?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, there is no understanding as to the degree to which we will have a length of time yet on the debate for campaign finance reform. It will come off at some point prior to the time we recess. My concern was that we would be bringing the bill up just days prior to the time we adjourn, not leaving adequate time to go through all of the issues that your excellent report has just discussed. We need a good amount of time to make that happen. So what the President has committed to is to ensure that we stay here, or to call us back, if needs to, to allow that kind of time. Based upon that assurance, he has a constitutional prerogative to do that, to call us back. We are prepared now to enter into the agreement, which we did this afternoon.

Senator Lott promises to schedule a debate.

JIM LEHRER: Now, is it your understanding that Sen. Lott is going to do what you asked him to do? In other words, is this going to be scheduled and at a time so there can be a long debate?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: He has given us that commitment today and reiterated it this afternoon. He has not been specific as to what day it may be, but he has indicated that it's his desire to bring it up sometime in October and to have a good debate, a good discussion about this for whatever length of time it may take. So I'm very pleased with the assurances he's given, and now with the kind of commitment we have from the President to call us back, if that may be required. I don't think it will be. But at least we have the assurance that we'll have to stay here so long as it takes to ensure that we have a good debate and hopefully finish this in a productive way.

JIM LEHRER: Do you personally support McCain-Feingold?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: I do. I support the original draft, and there is now, as you know, a slimmed down version of McCain-Feingold, which our caucus supports, as well. All 45 of us--only three Republicans so far have indicated their support for it. But all 45 Democrats have said they support it. So we have 48 votes as we speak tonight committed to McCain-Feingold, and we hope we can pick up two more Republicans.

JIM LEHRER: But isn't there also the threat of a filibuster by Sen. McConnell and others, who have--other Republicans who oppose this--don't you need 60 votes to really make this thing work?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, Senators McCain and Feingold believe that we can achieve that 60-vote threshold if it is required. Apparently, there a number of Senators who are not willing to publicly commit, but in those circumstances would be supportive of an effort to get closer, that is to stop the filibuster. If we fail that, obviously, we retain the right to come back in the form of amendments to other bills for whatever length of time it takes to get the job done the harder way.

JIM LEHRER: On the substance of McCain-Feingold you saw in our clip what Sen. Bennett said, that it restricts freedom of speech. How do you answer that?

The McCain-Feingold bill and the free speech issue.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, I don't believe it does restrict the freedom of speech. Obviously, you can equate money with speech but candidates have the opportunity to speak as clearly as they wish. People who participate in the election process have as much opportunity to speak out as they want to.

The question is whether or not in the year 2025 we're prepared to spend $145 million per Senate race. Each candidates spending $145 million, at the rate of inflation, that's what the cost of a Senate campaign will be in the year 2025. We can't afford that, Jim. There is no way that anybody other than rich people or people who are totally subject to pressures of lobbyists and others with money, are prepared at that point to enter into the political scene. We think that it's important to get some kind of opportunity to give everybody a chance to participate in the political process. And that's truly freedom of speech.

JIM LEHRER: And McCain-Feingold would do that?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: McCain-Feingold would certainly do that.

JIM LEHRER: And do you believe that if you were to press this thing even further and go beyond just closing down soft money, that you would then begin to infringe on the people's right to participate in elections by contributing to the candidates and the causes of their choice?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Not at all. In fact, we strongly endorse the opportunity for people to participate and to contribute. The question is, is too much of this money, too much of the access that you purchase through money appropriate in our political system today? We think it is. We think that some sort of constraints ought to be developed. We've seen sordid stories about what soft money has done now for the last year. We see an increasing reliance on the part of many groups to buy independent campaigns, to bring about extraordinary pressures on candidates and on Senators through their ability to distort media by the purchase of large sums of media through commercials. There is no doubt in our minds that that distorting influence, that extraordinary productive power that people have in terms of their ability to weigh-in in commercials, as well as in politics, itself, has an influence that we think has caused us to come to the point where we want to address it in a meaningful way.

JIM LEHRER: How do you reduce the demand for the money? Through McCain-Feingold and other tactics you can--or techniques you can reduce the ability of people to collect the money and spend it, but how do you reduce the demand to run--in a political campaign for a whole lot of money?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, there are no certain ways in which to reduce the demand. The demand will always be there, but there are ways with which to put parameters on the demand, to ensure the candidates, themselves, aren't asking for the kinds of sums of money that they're asking for today. If we can limit soft money, if we can limit the independent expenditure campaigns, in essence, you then limit the demand because by limiting the amount of money a candidates has to spend you're in essence limiting the ability that he or she has to produce and then buy the television time that creates the problem in the first place.

Resolving the Landrieu issue....

JIM LEHRER: Now, there were two other issues that caused you to do what you did today. One of them is you mentioned with Sen. Landrieu. Now, what kind of deal have you made on that?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, I think Sen. Warner ought to speak from the perspective of the committee itself. I don't want to speak for Sen. Warner. I will simply say that this has been a very difficult process. It's been one that, in my view, has gone on way too long and certainly in the view of our caucus, longer than any other circumstances of this kind--we found in the history of the Senate. So the time has come to bring this to an end. And I will let Sen. Warner speak for himself. We believe that we've now negotiated a reasonable agreement that will do that.

JIM LEHRER: In short-hand, her victory has been under challenge by her Republican opponent, and that is now--the Senate must now decide whether to--she's been seated, but now, that challenge remains, and there's a deal that you have struck today that will resolve this challenge?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, we believe that there is an understanding. I don't know if I'd call it a deal, but there is an understanding about how the committee will proceed that is totally satisfactory to me, and we're hopeful that this can put this sad and sordid chapter behind us.

JIM LEHRER: All right. And the Senate operates full gear tomorrow, as far as you're concerned, right?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: That's correct.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Sen. Daschle, thank you very much.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: You're welcome.

The Republican response.

JIM LEHRER: Now, a response to this from Oklahoma Senator Don Nickles, the Assistant Republican Majority Leader. Do you know anything, Senator, that would cause you to say otherwise, the Senate is fully functioning tomorrow?

SEN. DON NICKLES, Asst. Majority Leader: Well, I should hope so. I was disappointed that there's objections to the committee's meeting today. I don't think that was really very helpful. But we've got a lot of work to do, one of which you showed little clips on, showed the oversight hearings that we're having in the Finance Committee dealing with the IRS. These are very important hearings. We had guests, you know, come in from different areas across the country as a real inconvenience to them, to a lot of other committees. So I think it's unfortunate they weren't able to finish their committee work today, but I'm sure that most the committees will pick up where they left off today and go on for the rest of the week. JIM LEHRER: What is your understanding, Sen. Nickles, of what Sen. Lott has agreed to on McCain-Feingold?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Well, he basically agreed to the same thing he offered on Friday. As a matter of fact, the unanimous consent request that was agreed upon today was identical to the one that he submitted on Friday, but unfortunately, the Democrats objected to it. But basically he agreed to say we'll bring it up. And there's objections raised to it by my friend and colleague, Sen. Daschle on Friday. They agreed to it today. I think that's appropriate. Sen. Lott has conferred with me and other people and said, hey, we're going to have to face this, why don't we come up to a certain time, and we still haven't decided when to schedule it. We have other important legislative items before us. We've got the appropriation bills. We have a highway bill. So we're trying to figure out when, but we have said we'll bring it to the floor. We'll let people consider it. You had the McCain-Feingold approach, but that's not the only approach. As a matter of fact, they have a substitute that has a lot of substantive differences than their original proposal. And so we'll consider those. I think we'll have a couple of other alternatives to vote on as well that will have real substantive reform, real positive things.

Limiting contributions from organized labor.

Just to give you an example, Jim, it shocks people to find this out, but in this day and age you have a lot of Americans who are compelled to contribute to political campaigns against their will. I have an amendment or I'm going to try and make part of this package--I'm going to try and make sure that no one is forced to contribute to a political campaign or a political party against their will. I think that's a basic fundamental freedom, and it's very much my expectation to have that be part of any campaign reform that passes the Senate.

JIM LEHRER: You're referring specifically to members of labor unions, right?

SEN. DON NICKLES: That's right. Right now, organized labor compels people, frankly, to contribute to campaigns. They take money away from them and spend it as the leaders of organized labor wish without consulting their members, and many times in direct opposition to the way their members want to vote. Again, I just don't think any employee--whether it's an employee of a company, employee of a union, member of a union, no one should be compelled to contribute to a political campaign. They may not want to contribute. It may not be, wait a minute, I like the Republicans better than the Democrats. They may say, I don't want to contribute to anybody; they should have that right. And right now, they don't. Right now, that money is taken from them, significant sums, used for political purposes. Under the law they can file for a refund, but frankly, the administration does not enforce that. That's called the bank decision. And so the next result is you have a lot of people, mostly members of unions, who have significant sums taken from them against their will and spent in ways that they don't desire. I just think that's un-American and we're going to change it.

JIM LEHRER: And that's going to be a separate vote from McCain-Feingold, an amendment to McCain-Feingold? How are you going to go about that?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Probably as an amendment. We may--we haven't totally decided. I will tell you right now that there's no real consensus yet either for McCain-Feingold or the substitute McCain-Feingold. It's a big difference. Just give you an example--the difference--most of your discussion with Sen. Daschle talked about spending limits and so on. The revised McCain-Feingold doesn't have spending limits. So if you're running for Senate you can spend any amounts you want. So there's a big difference between the proposal, the revised proposal, than the original one.

Is it constitutional to limit soft money?

JIM LEHRER: And the revised proposal still eliminates soft money. That's the key to it, right?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Well, it still eliminates soft money, and that's questionable whether or not that's constitutional or not, but that's just one piece of it. But they did say, we'll take the spending caps off. Now, frankly, I think that's a step in the right direction. So I compliment Sen. McCain, Sen. Feingold. I think they're moving in the right direction, but I still think their proposal needs some more work. And so we'll come up with either amendments to it or try and make some improvements on it to make some real reform, some reform that we think can get passed and hopefully have support, bipartisan support to get it done this year.

JIM LEHRER: What's the latest on Sen. McConnell's plans to filibuster McCain-Feingold?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Well, you'd have to ask him. I'm in the process of working with several Senators, Democrats and Republicans, trying to see if we can't come up with what I would call a good substitute or a bipartisan substitute to the McCain-Feingold proposal. Most people still consider that basically a Democrat proposal. You heard Sen. Daschle say, hey, it has forty-five Democrats; it has three Republicans. A lot of us don't think that's really a very balanced proposal. It doesn't protect, as I mentioned, doesn't make all contributions voluntary. It doesn't do some other things.

I mean, just giving another example, the White House right now is saying, wait a minute, we think everything we did in raising all this money--they had 103 coffees in the White House--raised $26.4 million--we think that that's legal. We think you can make phone calls out of the White House, out of Congress, and as long as you're not calling somebody in the federal building, I don't think the statute is that ambiguous, I don't think it's that confusing. I think they're taking a very liberal interpretation of the statute, but we're going to write it--I will tell you this--we're going to write it very clearly, that it will be prohibited, those will be prohibited actions. The statute right now says, "It shall be unlawful for any person to solicit or receive in a federal building." I think they violated that statute, but frankly they're saying, well, we don't think--there's no controlling legal authority, as Al Gore would say several times. We're going to try and make it very clear that's illegal, it's prohibited activity, and maybe put some significant penalties. You don't just have to return the illegal contributions. Maybe we'll have the illegal contributions donated to the Treasury. Maybe we'll have some fines and penalties for some of these illegal contributions as well.

JIM LEHRER: But going back to where we began, there will be a full debate on campaign finance reform in the Senate before the November recess, is that right?

SEN. DON NICKLES: We plan on bringing it up. We plan on having a consideration there be McCain-Feingold. We--under the unanimous consent agreement, Sen. McCain has a right to offer a modification. So that will be pending, and we may well come up with a total substitute, or maybe just a couple of amendments to the proposal.

"The President's letter meant nothing."

JIM LEHRER: How important was the President's letter to Sen. Lott saying, if you all do not do what you just said; I will call you back into session, or keep you in session?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Absolutely nothing. I mean, Sen. Lott agreed to do this on Friday. It didn't change today. So the President's letter might have given somebody cover or something to say, well, now, I have opposed it on Friday, now I'll do it on Tuesday, but frankly it was the same unanimous consent request. The President's letter meant nothing. You know, he's not going to call us back in for this, or at least I don't think so. We're going to bring it up on the floor. That's what we said we'd do last week. We're going to let Senators have a chance, have a crack at it. Let's find out what happens, where the votes are. Right now, I don't think any one proposal has a majority vote in Congress. Maybe in the next two or three weeks we can put something together that will. But, no, I don't think the threat of the President calling a special session had anything to do with our actions in the Senate today, at least actions on the Republican side. We basically gave them the same deal that we gave them last Friday.

JIM LEHRER: What's your understanding, finally, Senator, on the Louisiana Senate race challenge?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Probably, we ought to let Senator Warner make any announcement. I know that he was concerned about, you know, Mary Landrieu won the election by 5800 votes. There was lots of allegations of improprieties. That was never thoroughly investigated by the Senate. We had a couple of investigators and then it took months to get down there. They only spent about six weeks down there, I think, and never asked questions of people that really should have been asked. Sen. Warner personally, with a couple of investigators, went down and continued that investigation. I think he's getting closer to making recommendations to the Senate and we'll let him make those recommendations.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Sen. Nickles, thank you very much.

SEN. DON NICKLES: Thank you, Jim.

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