1998 Ron Paul 67:2
The Chairman. The gentleman is recognized for 5 minutes.
1998 Ron Paul 67:3
Mr. PAUL.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I rise in strong support of this amendment and I want to compliment
the gentleman from California for offering it.
1998 Ron Paul 67:4
Certainly, if nothing else, we ought
to protect the rights of individuals and
groups to distribute voter guides. There is an argument here whether or
not it is actually doing this. But, obviously,
the Member from California
feels strongly that this is necessary in
order to protect this right.
1998 Ron Paul 67:5
There’s been a lot of talk here
about soft money. I just often wonder
about soft money. I know something
about hard money. But this business of
soft money and soft money automatically
being bad is something that we should
think seriously about. Because so often
when we are talking about soft money,
we are talking about the people’s
money, their money, their property. Sure, it’s a First Amendment right. But
there’s also a property rights issue
here. When people have money, they
have a right to spend it; and if they
want to spend it on a voters guide, they
certainly ought to be able to do this.
1998 Ron Paul 67:6
So I think it is a very important
amendment and we should pay close attention
to this to make sure that we
pass this amendment. The problem
with attacking big money without
knowing why there is big money involved
in politics I think is the problem
that we face. Big money is a problem. They’re spending $100 million a
month to lobby us in the Congress and
hundreds of millions of dollars in the
campaign, but nobody ever talks about
why they’re doing it.
1998 Ron Paul 67:7
There’s a tremendous incentive to
send all this money up here. Unless we
deal with the incentive, we can’t deal
with the problem. So, so far, almost all
the talk that we’ve heard on this
campaign finance reform is dealing
with the symptom. The cause is Government
is too big. Government is so
big there is a tremendous incentive for
people to invest this money. So as long
as we don’t deal with that problem,
we are going to see a tremendous
amount of money involved.
1998 Ron Paul 67:8
But what’s wrong with people spending
their own money to come here and
fight for their freedom? What if they’re
a right-to-life group? What if they’re a pro-gun-ownership group? What if
they’re a pro-property-ownership
group? Why shouldn’t they be able to
come and spend the money like the
others have?
1998 Ron Paul 67:9
It just seems like they’ve been able
to become more effective here in the
last few years, and it seems like now
we have to clamp down on them because
they have an effective way to
come here and fight for some of their
freedoms back again.
1998 Ron Paul 67:10
So I think that we’re misguided
when we talk only about the money
and not dealing with the incentive to
spend the money, and that is big government. All the rules in the world won’t change these problems. We had a
tremendous amount of rules and laws
written since the early 1970s and all it
has done is compounded our problems.
1998 Ron Paul 67:11
So I think openness and reporting requirements
to let people know where
we’re getting the money, let the people
decide if we’re taking too much
from one group. But to come down hard
and attack on individual liberty and
the right for people to spend their
money and the right for the people to
distribute voters guides, I cannot say
see how that is going to solve any problems. I mean, what are we doing here? I think it is total foolishness.
1998 Ron Paul 67:12
So I strongly endorse this amendment,
and let’s hope we can pass this
amendment.
