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   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.

   Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss moving to the Treasury-Postal appropriations bill.

   I agree with the Majority Leader and others who have come to the floor this year to insist that we do the people's business, and that the people's business means completing all of the appropriations bills.

   There are several very important amendments that will be proposed to this legislation, and we must give them the time and consideration they deserve. I may well vote against the

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   We have got to take care of the unfinished business.

   We have more appropriations bills to consider, and we have other business as well, as my colleagues are well aware.

   I find it interesting to look at some of the other measures we have considered, and still might consider, this year.

   I am talking about priorities--what we get done on this floor, and what gets ignored.

   As I said, it is essential that we pass these appropriations bills--they are the core of the people's business, because they keep the government up and running.

   But beyond bills like Treasury-Postal, what are we choosing to do?

   Recently, we chose to consider a repeal of the estate tax . As I said during that debate, the estate tax affects only the wealthiest property-holders. In 1997, only 42,901 estates paid the tax . That's the wealthiest 1.9 percent. People are already exempt from the tax in 98 out of 100 cases. Let me repeat that: Already, under current law, 98 out of 100 do not pay any estate tax .

   The Republican estate tax repeal would give the wealthiest 2,400 estates--the ones that pay now half the estate tax --an average tax cut of $3.4 million each. And remember, 98 out of 100 people would get zero, nothing, from this estate tax cut.

   Now, this doesn't sound like something most Americans are clamoring for.

   It is of no use to most Americans, in fact. But it is of use to a very small--but wealthy--group of people.

   Those who are wealthy enough to be subject to estate taxes have great political power.

   They can make unlimited political contributions, and they are represented in Washington by influential lobbyists that have pushed hard to get the estate tax bill to the floor.

   The estate tax is one of those issues where political money seems to have an impact on the legislative outcome. That's why I recently Called the Bankroll on some of the interests behind that bill, to give my colleagues and the public a sense of the huge amount of money at stake--not taxes, but political contributions.

   We considered that bill not because it affected the vast majority of Americans, but because it directly affected the pocketbooks of a wealthy few.

   A similar point can be made about another piece of legislation, the H-1B bill.

   We haven't considered it yet, but we may

   well yet, and so far a terrific effort has been made by both sides to see it taken up.

   Why? Why, when we have more appropriations bills to consider, when we have the real people's business to do, are we pushing so hard to take up H-1B?

   Because the high-tech industry wants this bill to get done.

   In the case of H-1B, I'm not addressing the merits of the legislation-- I am not necessarily opposed to raising the level of H-1B visas. Instead I want to point out what is on our agenda and why? Why is it that we have this set of legislation as part of our agenda?

   The high tech industry wants to get this bill passed, and they have the political contributions to back it up.

   American Business for Legal Immigration, a coalition which formed to fight for an increase in H-1B visas, offers a glimpse of the financial might behind proponents of H-1Bs. ABLI is chock full of big political donors, and not just from one industry, but from several different industries that have an interest in bringing more high-tech workers into the U.S.

   Price Waterhouse Coopers, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, telecommunications giant and former Baby Bell BellSouth, and software company Oracle, to name just a few.

   All have given hundreds of thousands of dollars in this election cycle alone, and they want us to pass H-1B.

   We all know this.

   This is standard procedure these days for wealthy interests --you have got to pay to play on the field of politics. You've got to pony up for quarter-million dollar soft money contributions and half-million dollar issue ad campaigns, and anyone who can't afford the price of admission is going to be left out in the cold.

   I Call the Bankroll to point out what goes on behind the scenes on various bills--the millions in PAC and soft money that wealthy donors give, and what they expect to get in return.

   And yet we don't do anything about it.

   We took a small but important step toward better disclosure of the activity of wealthy donors earlier this summer when we passed the 527 disclosure bill.

   But there is a great deal more to do.

   We are going to keep pushing until we address the other gaping loopholes in the campaign finance law.

   Right now, wealthy interests have the power to help set the political agenda.

   Wealthy interests spend unlimited amounts of money to push for bills which serve the interests of the wealthy few at the expense of most Americans.

   We have got to question why consider some bills on this floor while we ignore so many crucial issues the American people care about--like increasing the minimum wage and supporting working families.

   But instead we are left with an agenda that looks like wealthy America's ``to do'' list.

   How does it happen, Mr. President?--It's all about access, and access is all about money.

   Both parties openly promise, and even advertise, that big donors get big access to party leaders.

   Weekend retreats and other ``special events'' where wealthy individuals have the chance to talk about what they want done--whether that might be a repeal of the estate tax , or that their company wants to see the H-1B bill passed this year.

   Needless to say, that is the kind of access most Americans can't even dream of.

   And I have to wonder why we aren't doing anything about that.

   I am all for the doing people's business, and right now the people's business should be the Treasury-Postal Appropriations bill, and that's why I support the motion to proceed, even though I may well vote against the underlying bill in the end.

   But I don't think that an issue like the repeal of the estate tax is the people's business--not 98 out of every hundred people, anyway.

   We need to get at the heart of what is wrong here.

   Our priorities are warped by the undue influence of money in this chamber.

   We have got to change our priorities, and do it now, by putting campaign finance reform back on the agenda.

   Because the best way to loosen the grip of wealthy interests is to close the loophole that swallowed the law: soft money.

   Soft money has exploded over the past few years.

   Soft money is the culprit that brought us the scandals of 1996--the selling of access and influence in the White House and to the Congress. The auction of the Lincoln Bedroom, of Air Force One. The White House coffees. All of this came from soft money because without soft money, the parties would not have to come up with ever more enticing offers to get the big contributors to open their checkbooks.

   Soft money also brings us, time and time again, questions about the integrity and the impartiality of the legislative process. Everything we do is under scrutiny and subject to question because major industries and labor organizations are giving our political parties such large amounts of money. Whether it is telecommunications legislation, the bankruptcy bill, defense spending, or health care, someone out there is

   telling the public, often with justification in my view, that the Congress cannot be trusted to do what is best for the public interest because the major affected industries are giving us money.

   For more than a year now, I have highlighted the influence of money on the legislative process through the Calling of the Bankroll. And the really big money, that many believe has a really big influence here, is soft money. We have to clean our campaign finance house and the best place to start is by getting rid of soft money. Let's play by the rules again in this country. With soft money there are no rules, no limits. But we can restore some sanity to our campaign finance

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   I will take a few minutes to describe to my colleagues the growth of soft money in recent years. It is a frightening story. Soft money first arrived on the scene of our national elections in the 1980 elections, after a 1978 FEC ruling opened the door for parties to accept contributions from corporations and unions, who are barred from contributing to federal elections. The best available estimate is that the parties raised under $20 million in soft money in that cycle. By the 1992 election, the year I was elected to this body, soft money fundraising by the two major parties had risen to $86 million. Eighty-six million dollars is clearly a lot of money; it was nearly as much as the $110 million that the two presidential candidates were given in 1992 in public financing from the U.S. Treasury. And there was real concern about how that money was spent. Despite the FEC's decision that soft money could be used for activities such as get out the vote and voter registration campaigns without violating the federal election law's prohibition on corporate and union contributions in connection with federal elections, the parties sent much of their soft money to be spent in states where the Presidential election between George Bush and Bill Clinton was close, or where there were key contested Senate races.

   Still, even then, even with that tremendous increase in the use of soft money, soft money was far from the central issue in our debate over campaign finance reform in 1993 and 1994. In 1995, when Senator MCCAIN and I first introduced the McCain-Feingold bill, our bill included a ban on soft money, but it was not particularly controversial and no one paid that much attention to it at that time.

   Then came the 1996 election, and the enormous explosion of soft money, fueled by the parties' decision to use the money on phony issue ads supporting their presidential candidates. Remember those ads that everyone thought were Clinton and Dole ads but were actually run by the parties? That was the public debut of soft money on the national scene. The total soft money fundraising skyrocketed as a result. Three times as much soft money was raised in 1996 as in 1992. Let me say that again--soft money tripled in one election cycle. The reason was the insatiable desire of the parties for money to run phony issue ads, and that desire has only increased since 1996. Both political parties are raising unprecedented amounts of soft money for ad campaigns that are already underway this year. Soft money is financing our presidential campaigns, and this Congress stands by doing nothing about it.

   Fred Wertheimer, a long time advocate of campaign finance reform said it well in an op-ed in the Washington Post on Monday: He wrote,

   Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush and their presidential campaigns are living a lie. The lie is this: that the TV ads now being run in presidential battleground states across America are political party ``issue ads.'' In fact, everyone--and I mean everyone--knows that these ads are presidential campaign ads being run for the unequivocal purpose of directly influencing the presidential election.

   Wertheimer goes on to say:

   The ``issue ad'' campaigns now underway blatantly promote and feature Gore and Bush, are designed and controlled by the Gore and Bush presidential campaigns and are targeted to run in key battleground states. The political parties are merely conduits for the scheme and cover for the lie.

   He continues:

   What's the significance of all of this? Well, for starters we are living this lie in the election for the most important office in the world's oldest democracy. The lie will result in some $100 million or more in huge corrupting contributions being illegally used by Gore and Bush in the 2000 presidential election. (Many millions more will be illegally used in the 2000 congressional races.)

   Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of Mr. Wertheimer's article, ``Gore, Bush, and the Big Lie'' be printed in the RECORD.

   There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

   Gore, Bush, And the Big Lie

   Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush and their presidential campaigns are living a lie. The lie is this: that the TV ads now being run in presidential battleground states across America are political party ``issue ads.'' In fact, everyone--and I mean everyone--knows that these ads are presidential campaign ads being run for the unequivocal purpose of directly influencing the presidential election.

   The presidential campaigns and political parties know it, the media know it and so do the viewers of the ads, which are indistinguishable from other presidential campaign ads being run.

   As such, the ``issue ads'' are illegal, because, among other things, they are being financed with tens of millions of dollars of soft-money contributions that the law says cannot be used to influence a federal election. The ``issue ad'' campaigns now underway blatantly promote and feature Gore and Bush, are designed and controlled by the Gore and Bush presidential campaigns are targeted to run in key battleground states. The political parties are merely conduits for the scheme and cover for the lie.

   What's the significance of all of this? Well, for starters we are living this lie in the election for the most important office in the world's oldest democracy. The lie will result in some $100 million or more in huge corrupting contributions being illegally used by Gore and Bush in the 2000 presidential election. (Many millions more will be illegally used in the 2000 congressional races.)

   The lie makes a mockery of the common-sense intelligence of voters and the honesty of the presidential race. And, to date, no one in authority is prepared to do anything about it.

   How did it happen that this lie came to rest at the core of our national elections? Well, in good part we have Presidential Clinton to thank. It was Clinton who, more than anyone else, developed and ``perfected'' the lie, and the legal fiction on which it is based.

   Soft money had been a problem prior to 1995, but no presidential candidate had ever tried to use soft money to finance a TV ad campaign promoting his candidacy. That's not because politicians weren't clever enough to think of this, but because everyone understood it was illegal.

   Then President Clinton and his staff invented a scam for the 1996 election: They would use the Democratic Party as a front for running a ``second'' presidential campaign. This $50 million second campaign would use soft money--funds that the law does not allow in a presidential campaign--to finance Clinton campaign ads that would be labeled Democratic Party ``issue ads.''

   It didn't take long for the Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, to follow suit. Today, four years later, the ``issue ads'' lie is standard political practice in presidential and congressional races.

   The lie is built on the legal fiction that under Supreme Court rulings, political party ads are not covered by federal campaign finance laws unless they contain such magic words as ``vote for'' or ``vote against'' a specific federal candidate. That's supposed to be true even if the party ads promote a specific federal candidate and even if the ads are coordinated with or controlled by the candidate.

   But the reality is that neither the Supreme Court nor any other federal court has ever said anything of the kind regarding political party ads. When the Supreme Court established the ``magic words'' test in Buckley v. Valeo, it made explicit that it was for outside groups and non-candidates only and did not apply to communications by candidates or political parties. And in any case, the ``magic words'' test is not applicable when an ad campaign is conducted in coordination with a federal candidate, as a Washington federal district court confirmed last year.

   The Justice Department, in its failure to pursue the 1996 Clinton soft-money ads, never found the ads to be legal. Instead, Attorney General Reno closed the case based on the Clinton campaign's reliance on its lawyers' advice, which she said was ``sufficient to negate any criminal intent on their part.''

   The general counsel of the Federal Election Commission did find that the 1996 soft-money ads were illegal. The commission, however, by a 3 to 3 tie vote, refused to proceed with an enforcement action. Thus we are left today with enforcement authorities that refuse to act against these soft money ads and, at the same time, refuse to say they are legal. And the lie goes on.

   Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, the big lie led to the transformation of our two great political parties into soft money machines. And what was the effect of this explosion of soft money, other than the millions of dollars available for ads supporting presidential candidates who had agreed to

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