Eliminating Taxpayer Financing of Presidential Elections

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

As I listen to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I would just urge them to read the bill. It's only three pages long.

Frankly, most of the things I've heard so far don't have anything to do with this legislation. This legislation doesn't raise the legal contribution limit for anybody. This legislation doesn't allow corporate contributions. This legislation keeps in place all the disclosure requirements for Presidential campaigns that we currently have. So those of you that are concerned about those things don't need to be concerned about this bill.

H.R. 359 is really a very simple piece of legislation. It does two things: It removes taxpayer funding for Presidential campaigns, and it eliminates taxpayer funding for political party conventions by the two major parties.

Now, I have to say, if you look at whether or not these ideas have been popular, historically they, frankly, haven't. When this was put in in the 1970s, the idea was that it would spread. It hasn't. We don't fund any of our elections with taxpayer dollars, our colleagues in the other body with taxpayer dollars; and, frankly, as my friend Mr. Lungren pointed out, popular participation in this program has declined for almost 30 consecutive years, from a high of 28 percent in 1980 to barely 7 percent today. So there is not much indication that it's popular.

I need to say, for the record, that I philosophically have always been opposed to taxpayer dollars being used for political advocacy of any kind. Some of my friends on the other side have a very different point of view, and I respect that. We just have a philosophical difference. I think this is an inappropriate use of public money.

Having said that, as I think even my friends on the other side at least tactically acknowledge, this is a program that is broken beyond belief. And the current system didn't just begin to break down in 2008. I'd go back to 2000. President Bush didn't use this system during the primary campaign. He only used the public system during the general election. Four years later, neither President Bush nor Senator Kerry chose to use this system in the primary portion of the campaign.

Fast-forward another 4 years to 2008, neither President Obama nor now-Secretary Clinton chose to use this in the primary campaign. And the President, having committed to use it in the general, then chose not to use it in the general--certainly his right--but said at the time he still thought it was a great idea and that some day we ought to go back and fix it.

Now, I will say this for the President. Having said that, we haven't seen any action on that front. He has been in office for 2 years. There has not been a proposal from the White House to fix this system. In fact, as my friends on the other side of the aisle know, currently he is planning to run for reelection; he is setting up a campaign. There has been a lot of thought on how to raise the money and how to put together a campaign, but no proposal from the administration to actually fix the system that they purport to support and that they said years ago they were going to try and fix. That's not true, by the way, of every Member on the other side. There have been some that have, I think, genuinely tried to fix things, but let's recognize this system has been in decline and decay for a long time.

Now the estimates are that we could save $612 million over a 10-year period. We all know in this Chamber we have a $1.4 trillion deficit problem. Governing is choosing and prioritizing. This is $612 million that doesn't feed a single American, doesn't educate a single American, doesn't build a single mile of interstate highway or infrastructure, doesn't pay to defend the country; it simply goes to support a handful of politicians that want to run for President, many of whom are marginal.

The CHAIR. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. ROSKAM. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. COLE. So in an era where we have to make genuinely hard decisions, to me, this is a no-brainer. This is a lot less important than a lot of the things that we need to consider and a lot of the decisions that we will have to make.

There is leadership by lip service and there is leadership by example. If my friends on the other side think this is the appropriate thing--and certainly if the President thinks it, he ought to lead by example and participate in the system. If not, we ought to recognize it's broken, end it, save the money; and if somebody wants to rewrite a bill, then they ought to do that and let's introduce it and have that debate. But right now, this is money we can't afford to waste and this is a system that's broken.

I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 359. Let's get rid of this outdated system.

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