July 15, 1999

Dear Senator:

We understand, from published reports, that Senators McCain and Feingold may soon attempt to place their “campaign finance reform” legislation (or major components thereof) before the Senate. Therefore, we write to reiterate the strong opposition of our organizations to that legislation.

The McCain-Feingold bill is usually described in the news media as a set of “reforms” to how “campaigns” are funded. But in reality, the bill makes only very minor changes in the laws governing the operations of candidates= campaigns. Instead, in successive incarnations of the legislation, we have seen the focus of the bill shift more and more towards imposing onerous and unconstitutional restrictions on free speech about members of Congress and other federal candidates by incorporated groups (including non-profit, issue-oriented citizen groups) and political parties.

We believe that our right to engage in unrestricted communication with the public regarding the actions and positions of government officials, or would-be government officials, is at the very core of what the First Amendment was intended to protect. Notwithstanding the largely cosmetic revisions made to the bill last year through adoption of the Snowe-Jeffords revisions, the McCain-Feingold bill remains replete with clearly unconstitutional restrictions upon such commentary.

Those who advocate such restrictions often speak in a code — advocating “stricter regulation of political activity by non-profit corporations,” “disclosure of funding sources,” “a ban on soft money,” and so forth. Behind this jargon, however, they seek to move the United States into a system in which political speech is regulated by politicians. Such speech-restrictive systems are already in force in nations such as the United Kingdom, where politicians have greatly impeded the work of citizen advocacy groups by severely restricting the amount of money that can be spent to communicate with the public regarding the positions and voting records of specific officeholders and officeseekers. Such systems endow narrow political elites — including those who own and produce the institutional news media — with nearly untrammeled power to define and shape the public policy agenda.

Our organizations are strongly opposed to any legislation that would curtail the established First Amendment rights of citizen groups and political parties to engage in unrestricted speech about political figures. Specifically, we oppose any proposal that would seek to establish government monitoring, regulation, or rationing of “issue advocacy” communications, by which we mean communications that discuss politicians’ positions on issues without utilizing words of “express advocacy.” (We use the term “express advocacy” as the Supreme Court has defined it, to refer to explicit words that expressly urge hearers to vote for or against a specific candidate.)

Under the McCain-Feingold bill, during specified time periods prior to primary and general elections, organizations such as ours would be forbidden to sponsor a broadcast communication that even mentions the name of a member of Congress (except utilizing donations generated by special segregated fundraising, with severe restrictions on permissible funding sources, a requirement that donors’ names be turned over to the government, etc.). In addition, we would be required to report to the government the names of the politicians that we wish to utter as soon as any contract is signed for any part of the production of a communication — which would be, in some cases, weeks or months in advance of the actual broadcasting of an ad. The bill also contains other sweeping restrictions on speech merely deemed, by someone, to be “of value” to a “candidate” (Section 215). We believe that Congress has no more authority to impose such a restriction on our organizations than on newspaper editorial boards.

We oppose the McCain-Feingold provisions under which communications between advocacy groups and members of Congress regarding pending public policy issues can be interpreted to establish legal “coordination” between that organization and the lawmaker. Section 215 of the bill would create a far-reaching web of “coordination” traps, under which routine communications with congressional offices on policy matters may result in later communications to the public being regarded as illegal “corporate campaign expenditures.” These provisions violate our constitutional rights to communicate with elected representatives to represent our members= interests with respect to pending legislation.

We also oppose the McCain-Feingold proposal to prohibit political parties from communicating with the public with money that is not rationed and controlled by federal law. Under the First Amendment, political parties currently enjoy the same right as our organizations to sponsor communications that discuss issues or the positions of officeholders or officeseekers on those issues, outside of the rationing restrictions that apply to “express advocacy.” Political parties would effectively lose this right if they are banned from raising non-rationed “soft money.” Our organizations’ right to engage in issue advocacy will become all the more precarious if the right of political parties is abridged in such a drastic fashion.

Under a system of unrestricted free speech about political figures, we have enjoyed a democracy that is a model for the world. We urge you to oppose the McCain-Feingold bill and any other proposal that would trade those freedoms for a system of rationing and regulation of our speech about those who hold or seek public office.

Sincerely,

National Right to Life
(202) 626-8820

Christian Coalition
(202) 547-3600

Americans for Tax Reform
(202) 785-0266