The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) is a federation of 50 state
right-to-life organizations. We represent millions of Americans who
believe that protection of innocent human life is a paramount public
policy issue. Few of them have great financial resources, but they pool
their efforts through our organizational structure, exercising their First
Amendment right to associate.
I will briefly illustrate why we strongly oppose both the McCain-Feingold
bill and the Shays-Meehan bill, and why we will again include roll calls
on these measures in our congressional scorecards for this Congress. You
can find far more extensive information on our objections to these bills
on our website at www.nrlc.org, under "Federal Legislation: Free Speech
and Campaign Finance Reform."
These bills are loaded with what we call "speech traps" -- that is,
provisions that are carefully crafted to do two things: One, disrupt our
ability to inform like-minded citizens regarding what their elected
officials are doing, and two, greatly impede our ability to effectively
communicate with elected representatives on our members' behalf.
Press stories on the McCain-Feingold bill often refer to the provision
that restricts ads on radio or TV that even mention the name of a member
of Congress or other "candidate" for at least four months during each
even-numbered year. It is often stated, erroneously, that the bill merely
requires "disclosure" of who is paying for such ads. In reality, this
provision completely prohibits many organizations from sponsoring such
politician-mentioning ads, and allows other groups to do so only under a
host of restrictions that are intended to greatly reduce the amount of
commentary regarding the activity of incumbent members of Congress.
But the bill contains other seldom-reported restrictions on free speech
about politicians that are more far reaching. Consider, for example, the
McCain-Feingold bill's restrictions (in Section 214) on communications
that are deemed to be "of value" to a federal politician. This
restriction applies all year round, and it applies to all communication
media, including mailings.
This sweeping restriction is directly linked to the provision of the bill
that most egregiously attacks our right to represent our members to their
elected officials, which is the extremely expansive re-definition of
"coordinated activity." If would be virtually impossible for
issue-oriented groups that communicate with elected officials regarding
pending legislation to avoid the elaborate web of "coordination" traps
crafted by this bill.
For example, under the bill, an irrevocable "coordination" relationship is
established by the mere discussion of elements of a lawmaker's "message,"
with the lawmaker or his staff, any time during a two-year period. Once
such so-called coordination is established, it triggers a total ban on
issuing any communication to the public that is deemed to be "of value"
politically to the lawmaker in question. The bill defines any "of value"
communication as an illegal corporate campaign contribution.
Moreover, even if an organization that falls into such a "coordination"
trap happens to have a connected PAC, that PAC can no longer engage in any
independent expenditure affecting that lawmaker, and thus even the PAC
would be limited to $5,000 worth of speech -- a fraction of the cost of
one full-page ad in one local newspaper.
Let's say the bill were law. Today, a member of Congress introduces a
pro-life bill we find worthy of support. Tomorrow I meet with that
lawmaker to explore the best ways in which to explain to the public the
desirability of enacting that bill. Should that lawmaker later publicly
highlight his initiative to his constituents (as he most likely would),
and should our organization also communicate to the public favorable
information about that bill (as we most likely would), then both we and
the lawmaker would be fat targets for complaints to the FEC that we had
given and he had received illegal "contributions."
We believe that the collaboration between lawmakers and citizen groups is
essential to the healthy functioning of our democracy. Consider that in
the fall of 1999, groups such as Common Cause were working very closely
with Senator John McCain regarding the promotion of the McCain-Feingold
bill, and they were also spending a lot of money to communicate with the
public to promote the McCain-Feingold bill. The McCain-Feingold bill was
also the central "message" of Senator McCain's presidential campaign,
which was then well underway.
So, should all of Common Cause's expenditures of behalf of the
McCain-Feingold bill have been regarded as illegal corporate campaign
contributions to the McCain presidential campaign? We don't think so.
But under the legal regime that these bills would create, most utterances
by policy-oriented organizations about the activities of members of
Congress and other federal politicians would become fodder for complaints
by rival politicians and debilitating investigations by agents of the
federal government.