[Congressional Record: May 22, 2000 (Senate)]

[Page S4225-S4229]

From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

[DOCID:cr22my00-98]

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The Senator from Utah.

Mr. BENNETT (R-Utah). Mr. President, I, like other Members of the body, read this morning's paper and read the comments of the Democratic leader. I have heard the comments on the floor of some of our colleagues, including the current occupant of the chair, and the Senator from Idaho. Since it is somewhat of a slow day, I decided to add my voice to the voices that have been raised here, perhaps from a slightly different perspective. . . .

We have rollcall votes around here on everything. We will have a resolution to memorialize Mother's Day, and someone will ask for the yeas and nays, and we will spend a half hour voting, 100-0, and it slows everything down. Why do we do that? Well, maybe on Mother's Day we all want to be on record saying we are for Mother's Day. I will tell you why we do it--and, again, it is something that never would have been done 30 years ago. We do it to build a record for campaign purposes, not for legislative purposes.

The Senate has become a campaign-focused organization rather than a legislative-focused organization. I will give you my own experience with this. When I ran in 1998, my opponent stood up before the crowds, on television, whatever, and said, ``Senator Bennett is pro-tobacco.'' Pardon me? ``Absolutely. Look at his record. He voted with the tobacco interests 12 different times.'' I did? I was there. I didn't remember voting with the tobacco interests once. ``No, he is lying about his record. Here it is.''

Then we go into the web site where he has all of this listed under the fetching title, ``What Senator Bennett Doesn't Want You To Know,'' and here is the list of all of my ``pro-tobacco'' votes. What were they? They were procedural votes, votes on motions to table, votes in support of the leader moving legislation forward (emphasis added).

On the one tobacco vote that counted, which was a cloture vote on Senator McCain's bill, I was in the antitobacco forces; and, indeed, I had and used, during the campaign, letters thanking me for my strong antitobacco stand from the American College of Pediatric Surgeons, et cetera, et cetera. All of the people who were involved in the tobacco fight knew I was on their side. They knew the process around here well enough to know these 12 votes about which my opponent was talking were meaningless as far as the real issue was concerned [emphasis added].

I will tell you what I said to him. We checked his FEC report, and I said to my opponent: You paid $20,000 to a computer firm to research my voting record and come up with this list. I recommend you call them and get your money back because you wasted it. They gave you wrong information.

He said I was pro-liquor. He had a voting record that said I was in favor of alcohol. Pardon me? We got into it. We found out what the vote was that I supposedly cast that made me pro-alcohol. It had to do with Federal highway funds and the rights of the States to set their own levels of alcohol tolerance, and because I am in favor of States controlling that and voted against having the Federal Government dictate it, suddenly I had cast a pro-alcohol vote. He went on and on and on in this same vein.

I understand what is going on here. Amendments are not being offered for legislative purposes. Bills are not being called up for legislative purposes. Recorded votes are not being called for because someone wants to improve the legislation. Records are being built on issues that can be misrepresented as serious challenges to incumbents. They are being brought up again and again and again so that people can stand up in a campaign and say that the incumbent voted wrong 17 times. Lyndon Johnson would not have stood for it. Everett Dirksen would have had a quip about it that would make everybody laugh. But it is now the way things are done in this institution.

I said that I am responding to the suggestion of the Democratic leader that somehow what is going on here is destructive of the institution. I agree that what is going on is destructive of the institution. But I do not put it at the feet of the majority leader. I think it has historic roots that go back beyond this majority leader and that go back before the previous majority leaders. I don't know when it started happening, but we have come a long way from the day when the Senate would vote with a rollcall vote about 50 times in a session--that is how often my father voted on rollcall votes--a day when the Chamber would fill up to hear the debate because it was a significant vote. We have come a long way from that.

The institution has become primarily a campaign platform. Let us make no mistake about it. What is going on right now in the Chamber is all geared to November and not in any sense geared toward legislation. It is not geared toward solving problems. It is not geared toward moving the Republic forward. It is all geared toward getting those multiple votes that a computer

[[Page S4229]]

can find and then put it on a web site that can be used in a campaign speech on the part of the challenger.

I agree with the Democratic leader that this cheapens the institution. I agree with the Democratic leader that it threatens the institution. But I disagree with him as to the solution.

I think all Senators need to back away from the idea that the primary purpose of being in the Senate is to give campaign speeches, and back away from the idea that the primary function of coming to the floor is to do things that will give you an advantage in November and so you can misrepresent and attack an incumbent. There is a time for partisanship, and there is a time to be very firm about the position that you take. But there is also a time to recognize that the institution is threatened if you let partisanship get out of hand.

It reminds me of the signature comment that comes to us out of the Vietnam War where, I believe, a captain was quoted as saying after a particular battle that it was ``necessary to destroy the village in order to pacify it.'' If it is necessary to destroy the institution of the Senate in order to make it part of my party's control, I want no part of that activity. In my own campaign, I have refused to engage in negative advertising. I want no part of what I call ``Carville-ism''; that is, the politics of personal destruction that has become so prevalent in the last 8 years. I want no part of it.

I remember a man saying to me: If you do not go negative, you will not win the nomination.

I said to him: The nomination is not worth it. I would rather retain my self-respect than gain a seat in the Senate. Fortunately, I have both.

I say to all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--because Republicans campaign just as vigorously as Democrats--let's stop using the Senate as an institution solely for campaign purposes. Let's stop using the rules of the Senate that can allow votes and that can call up amendments solely for the purpose of creating campaign records. Let's recognize that the purpose of the Senate is for legislation, not campaigning.

If we can do that, we will not get back to the days that I have described, but we will at least get towards them in the sense that this institution will survive, as we like to call it, ``the greatest deliberative body in the world'' and not ``the greatest campaign forum in the world.''

I thank the Chair for his patience. I thank my colleagues for their indulgence as I have taken this memory trip. But I hope that all of us will recognize that we have something to learn from the past and from the kind of institution this once was, and we have a responsibility to see to it that it does not degenerate into what it could be.

I yield the floor.