Date: 2011-02-17
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

I thank the gentleman for reserving his point of order so that we can speak to this amendment offered by the gentlewoman from California. I really believe that this is about transparency. Im for widening that circle of transparency as much as we possibly can. This amendment speaks to a very important part of trying to gain transparency for the American people. You know. its a rather remarkable process how we all get here. We engage in some form of politics that is straight out of the first Congress of the United States. Its out of the first people who ran for office here. We go to our neighbors and we go to our friends and we go to town councils and we talk to people and we ask them to support us. We go into their organizations and we ask them to support us. We tell them what were going to do. we tell them what we think. we tell them what we like and dont like. maybe what we like about them and dont like about them. But its a process of interchange. Its a transparency of ideas. Youre held accountable for those ideas. And you raise money because you want to publicize your message further. You go to your friends. you go to organizations that support you. organizations you support. and you raise money to do this. And right now thats essentially all disclosed. But what weve seen now in the last few years. and especially after this Supreme Court decision. is theres two campaigns that are being runyou run one. the best you can under the rules we have. campaign contributions are all reported. and then an independent group comes in and they run a campaign either for you or against you in your district. Your constituents may never know what even hit them. They may never know where it came from. It may only be about an issue thats linked to you. It has nothing to do with disclosure. Thats their right now under the Supreme Court decision. but the question really should be: Should those expenditures be disclosed? Because very often we all know that one of the unpleasant things that happens to you in this business. I guess unless you fund your campaign out of your own pocket. is that youll cast a vote. and the newspaper will immediately go and say Congresswoman "so and so" got a contribution from this entity on this side or from this person on this side of the argument or a contribution from this person on the other side of the argument. It happens all the time. Thats disclosure. Thats the price you payexcept for these expenditures. They may come from the very same side of that argument and will be completely invisible to the press. to your neighbors. to your constituents. and that should not be allowed. The disclosure should be full and complete on people who spend money on behalf of these campaigns. You cant have a situation where people move through the night. move with secret moneyundisclosed moneyand seek to influence the outcome of the elections in this country. This isnt Egypt where secret societies move through and create a party for the purpose of diverting votes from this party over here. This isnt Russia where the oligarchs and the billionaires move around and create parties to defer one another and where people never see where the expenditures are coming from or if theyre speculated about. In this country. in a long. hard struggle. one campaign has full disclosurebe you a working person or be you a corporate chief. Whatever the source of money is in your campaign it is disclosed. But now we have a shadow campaign. and the shadow campaign threatens to dwarf what is taking place in the other campaigns. How many Members on both sides of the aisle know that they had a campaign run? Weve all listened to our friends on both sides about the independent expenditures. about the undisclosed money that came into the campaign. Think how that turns the stomachs and the hearts and the minds of our constituents when they think that this was going onan election where they in good faith maybe stood in line to vote and made sure they got in their absentee votes. and they might have asked the rest of the members of their families to vote. All of that was taken away by a tsunami of $6 million. $3 million. $9 million. $12 million that just showed up on the doorstep of your district. all of it undisclosed. now gathering the forces once again to get ready for the next cyclepeople bragging about how much money they will have. people bragging about their involvement. their success ratiosall of that to intimidate Members of Congress. to make people think about the vote. but they will never be held accountable for those actions. Thats what transparency is truly about. Transparency is as much for us as it is for our constituents. and it is important to our constituents because they do make judgments about us. they do make judgments about issues. they have expectations of us. they have hopes of us. It is only that information and that transparency that will let them act in a rational way on behalf of their votesto protect their votes. the votes they just cast and the votes they anticipate casting in the future. We have an amendment here to rip away the $3 checkoff. which is a modest effort by constituents to say. I want to make sure the elections are clean and transparent. Now we see that the undisclosed far exceeds anything that they can possibly do. I thank the gentleman again for reserving the point of order. I yield back the balance of my time.