Senator Russ Feingold
MoveOn.org Progressive Vision Speech Series
September 25th, 2006
Philadelphia, PA
Remarks as Delivered
Senator Russ Feingold: Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Especially thank you Bob and Julia and Ben for all the kind words. Thanks to moveon.org for having this wonderful concept, of putting these things together in a progressive vision for America. And, yes, the issues that you chose, you here in the room and across the country, are exactly showing that you’re in touch with America.
And the way I test it is that I go to every one of Wisconsin’s 72 counties every single year and hold a Town Meeting. In a few weeks, because we have 72 counties and 14 years, figure out the math. I’ll be doing number 1,000 shortly after the election.
And what do people talk about? The very things that your members came up with when they decided what the most important issues were and what they wanted the speeches to be about. The number one issue I hear about from Wisconsinites is healthcare and a desire for healthcare for all Americans. One of the most important issues was your second topic: the desire to get away from dependence on foreign oil and to put real investment into alternative energy. So both of these things show me that this organization is about as in touch with America as any organization we’ve ever seen in this country and it is a wonderful opportunity for me to talk about the third topic.
And when Eli talked to me about it, I had never really heard these different issues that I work on put together this way. It’s very, very good. It’s very helpful. Because I tend to think of campaign finance reform over here, and voting over here, and civil liberties over here. You had the wisdom to help me see it as one seamless web. A seamless web of trying to restore our democracy. So I thank you for helping me with my thinking on this and giving me a chance to talk about it today.
These are many of the issues that I have worked on, both prior to 9/11 and since 9/11, but I like the opportunity of trying to help us all work together to put together a clear agenda so we can show the American people what we will focus on after our victories on November seventh.
Now, this weaving together of this democracy, this foundation of our democracy, is something that, you know, these issues are things I more or less took for granted when I was growing up. I didn’t think things like the integrity of voting would ever be an issue. But now we are actually living in an alarming time on these issues and we must work together. So as we sit here in this hall in this great city of democracy, let’s talk a bit about a few topics. The integrity of voting. Campaign finance reform. Media consolidation and the need to protect our civil liberties and our Constitution.
It has been a very rough 25 years for our democracy ever since the so-called Regan Revolution. But I am optimistic, cautiously optimistic, that a beginning of a new era will be on November 7, 2006. It has to be. We have to start it and we have to maintain it.
First, as to the integrity of the elections. I remember after the 2000 election, one of the things I’d do a lot of is to work on the issues concerning Africa. And I’ve been involved in the Foreign Relations Committee on African issues for 15 years. And shortly after the election I went to Nigeria on one of the foreign relations trips and I was explaining to a group of civic society people there how important it is that their elections in Nigeria have integrity. And they started to laugh. And I went, ‘Oh, yeah. We had some problems too, didn’t we?’ And that sort of reminded me if we’re going to be a country that goes around the world and says, ‘Look, if you really want us to support the Nigerian democracy, it better work.’ we better clean up our own act.
And I remember just prior to 9/11 when we were trying to pass campaign finance reform and we had succeeded in the Senate and we wanted support in the House there were some members of the Congressional Black Caucus who said, ‘Senator, we think you’re doing the right thing, you and Senator John McCain. But we think that we have to make sure that the elections themselves have integrity.’ And you know what I said to my friends in the Congressional Black Caucus? ‘Not only are you right; it is even more important than campaign finance reform. Because it doesn’t matter, if the elections themselves cannot be credible.’
The American people are getting really worried about this. In part, because of 2000, in part because of 2004. I like to kid people who are very worried about this. Obviously, whoever’s trying to manipulate these machines, if they are, are not completely successful or I would’ve have gotten reelected. And we wouldn’t have a Democratic Governor of New Jersey, wouldn’t have a Democratic Governor of Virginia. Nonetheless, whether this is true and to the extent it is true, the mere perception that the vote cannot be relied upon is a dampening on our democracy and people’s desire to vote and to participate. For that reason alone we need fundamental change.
The first week after we get the majority in the House and the Senate, the United States Congress in January should pass *Rushhold’s bill in the House and Hilary Clinton’s bill in the Senate to require paper ballot, a guaranteed paper trail for every single one of those machines. And I think we should even go beyond that. There are other steps that can be taken then and even before then.
Another little story from my career, as I was only elected by 31 votes out of 47,000 when I ran for the state Senate in 1982. I was 29. My opponent was 83. And it was a very Republican district. He’d been in there for 50 years. Well, there were three weeks of recounts. And it was almost all paper ballots in those days. But in just a couple of communities, including my hometown, it was a voting machine. The voting machine in my hometown--they found because they checked it--had not started at zero votes for my opponent. It was uncovered the first day that it had started at 32 votes. Do the math. If that machine had not been properly checked, I would’ve lost by one vote. And I wouldn’t be here in Philadelphia or anywhere else in America doing politics. That’s important.
And so what I think, in addition to passing that key legislation to require a paper trail in all voting machines as we have in Wisconsin, is we ought to have mandatory random audits of all voting machines in this country. Not every machine all the time, but the eligibility of having these things audited to make sure these things are protected and are operating properly. I also want us to see if we can do something before the coming elections. So I’m introducing a sense in the Senate resolution this week in the United States Senate that calls on every state complete backup of paper ballots in case somebody wants to vote by paper or in case something happens as it did in Maryland in recent weeks. I think we need that kind of legislation right now.
We also have to stop this mean-spirited attempt to prevent people from voting by requiring a photo ID to vote. We should be encouraging people to vote in this country, not making it harder to do it. I’m a little embarrassed that the leading advocate of this is a Congressman from Wisconsin. But this is not something that should be required. We have the most liberal voting rules in the country in Wisconsin and it’s worked very well; it’s encouraged people to vote.
And finally in this area, we have to make sure that when people have paid their price to society--felons--when they have served their time, that they should be able to vote again. The fact is, that 4.7 million Americans are in this position; 1.7 million of them have completed their sentences. But in many states, about 15 states, they are never allowed to vote again, simply because they’ve committed a felony. I’m told that 13 percent of all African-American men are unable to vote for this reason. Senator Harry Reid has introduced a bill that would get at this problem and re-enfranchise these people after they’ve had a chance to pay their price to society. If he introduces it again next year, I’ll vote for it. If he doesn’t introduce it again next year, I’ll be introducing it. Because this is something that has to change in the United States of America. This isn’t right.
So those are some things in the area of voting integrity. I’m sure you have other ideas. But what I wanted to do was lay out some specific things that we can talk about to get behind it, to show the American people that if they elect progressives on November seventh, we’ll get right to work on that issue.
Same thing goes for something I’m a little more associated with: campaign finance reform. John McCain likes to say to the people in Wisconsin I think my first name is McCain because of McCain-Feingold. But the fact is, I always advocated campaign reform. When I was a state Senator I remember I decided I was going to run a long-shot race for the U.S. Senate that turned out well but for five years all I ever heard from people is, ‘Oh, you seem like a nice guy or maybe you’re a good state senator but Russ, where are you going to get the money?’ That was basically the most common question I ever got from anybody, rather than ‘what’s your position on this issue or that?’ Well, I was fortunate to win that election through a series of events, some of which had to do with the fact that my opponents in the primary had so much money that they decided to blow each other up and I was the last man standing. So really, in some ways, I was the exception that proved the rule. So when I got to Washington I was with a group of excellent senators, more senior senators trying to pass real campaign finance reform. It was during that period that this new practice of soft money, of unlimited campaign contributions being given to the political parties by corporations and unions and individuals grew up. It grew up in the ‘90s. And Senator McCain and I decided even though we wanted free television time and had a number of other proposals, that at a minimum we should prohibit federal office holders from calling up people and asking them for half a million or million dollar contributions. McCain-Feingold passed, it was approved by the Supreme Court, and now it is a federal crime if a federal office holder does that. And if you know anybody that’s doing that, let me know; I’ve got a place for them next to Duke Cunningham in jail.
I remember one of the many things from that battle, but I remember Edward Kangas for the Committee for Economic Development, a very conservative group of businesspeople who helped us pass campaign finance reform, who indicated that really businesspeople weren’t that excited about being asked for these unlimited contributions, surprisingly enough. He said, ‘You could almost hear the laughter coming from Board rooms and executive suites all over the country when senate opponents of campaign finance reform expressed dismay that anyone could think big political contributions are corrupting elections in government.’
I saw it with my own eyes. I saw contributions being given by big companies on a Monday to the Democrats at their fundraisers, $300,000; on Tuesday to the Republicans at their fundraiser. And then on Wednesday we’d vote for something like NAFTA, which I opposed, which was blocked by special money, which was blocked by the special interests. That was the daily reality. And to me, instead of being one person, one vote, the system had become one dollar, one vote. But we got it through and what you may notice now through letters to the editor, there is a very conservative movement in this country to try to discredit what we did. It didn’t work. It didn’t do this. It didn’t do that. It restricts people’s free speech. None of that is so. It did what it was intended to do. It stopped these unlimited contributions. We never said that it was going to stop everything bad about the campaign finance system. In fact, John McCain and I would always say it was modest reform.
And so now it’s time to talk about more fundamental reform. Now it is time to talk about the things that we will do if we have a chance to reform the campaign finance system. And the first thing we should do is get rid of the Federal Elections Commission. The Federal Elections Commission does not enforce the law of the land. The Federal Elections Commission time and time again with its partisan tie, has interpreted every campaign finance things we’ve put over as being something that we didn’t really intend it to be that tough. Every time that Federal Elections Commission has been brought in to court they’ve been overruled. They are a rogue agency. We need an agency that can actually enforce the law. We need an agency with administrative law judges and the ability to actually enforce campaign finance violations. And John McCain and I have introduced legislation to do just that.
We need to fix the public financing system for the Presidential elections. You know that system worked pretty well for 40 years. I remember many elections as a kid: Kennedy, Nixon, or Regan, Carter. I don’t remember anybody ever saying, ‘Well, it’s because one guy had more money than the other guy.’ That wasn’t the issue because the system worked. It’s a proven example of something that worked, but it’s outdated. The money can’t be spent early enough. It doesn’t allow enough money to be spent in the primaries to keep up with modern times and the way things really are now, so Marty Meehan, Chris Shays, and I have introduced a bill that would update and restore integrity and value to the presidential public financing system. Help us with that.
But then let’s go to the next step. The big one. The one I’ve always believed in. The one that I was taught when we had public financing for my own first election, that one I won by 31 votes. In those days, in Wisconsin if you agreed to spend no more than $35,000 to run for the state senate and you raised half of it, $17,500 from contributions of $100 or less, you would get $17,500 in a check from voluntary contributions from the people of the state. Well, it worked just fine then but they’ve never raised the $35,000. And now we have millions in our state senate campaigns. So here’s what I think: I think we ought to follow the lead of Arizona and Maine and the efforts in California and the efforts in Massachusetts to have public financing of every single campaign in the United States of America, especially Congressional elections, where we’ve never done it before.
And, you know, my experiences in 25 years have been fortunate to win my elections, some closer than others. But it’s never been a problem that I’ve had to have as much money as my opponent. I’ve almost always been out-spent. It’s been having enough money to get your message out. That is what you need in order to connect and motivate grassroots people. And now with the wonders of the internet you can make those dollars go much farther than you used to be able to. My goal, especially when I look at people like Julia and others in the room here, is that by the time we’re done with these reforms--and you’re looking at me and saying, ‘Well, this guy sounds like he’s got an interesting job.’--I want you to feel that you were invited to the table of American politics. I want you to feel that you can do this and you don’t have to be a millionaire to do it, Julia. That’s what I want this to be.
Well, once we’ve got the votes counted right and people are able to get enough money to run their campaigns, that’s going to help. But it’s not going to be enough, to just be able to communicate and get the message out at campaign time. Politics has not only become a blood sport in this country, it has become a year-round, 24 hour a day, type of thing. And that’s where the media and the ability of people to have their voice heard in this society is so fundamental and so under threat.
The media consolidation that has happened in this country in the last ten to 15 years is one of the greatest threats to this democracy that we want to restore. I watch a lot of the cable TV. I confessed publicly that I watch Fox News all the time. There’s nothing like being in the other team’s huddle to find out--I used to say, I got in a little trouble for it, that I knew what my opponent was going to say in 2004 four days before he did. Because these talking points are put out in a very disciplined way from the White House and funneled through Fox News, and fortunately there’s Keith Olbermann and others that are sort of countering it, and it’s fun to watch that, but it is a relentless propaganda effort on some of these issues. It’s a new phenomenon. It’s a dangerous phenomenon. It has reduced the role of newspapers and other important mediums. And I remember being worried about this.
I was one of only five senators to vote against the telecom bill of 1996 because I was fearful that this was going to happen. Joining me were Paul Wellstone, John McCain, and Paul Simon, two of them gone, two excellent senators who could see the dangers. We were particularly concerned about what would happen with the radio. And sure enough, Clear Channel came along, bought up like 1,400 radio stations. And that concerns those of us that love music and like diversity in music and are sad about the last deejays, Tom Petty says. But it’s also crushing to democracy. Radio is an important element of not only local programming but also the opportunity to express their ideas, whether it’s on a local talk show or even across the nation.
And I want you to know that one of my biggest positive surprises in recent years, there haven’t been a lot of them, was the bi-partisan reaction when the FCC under Mr. Powell tried to make things even worse. When they tried to make it so that basically the TV stations and radio stations and newspapers in the same town could all be owned by the same company, there was a reaction. And it wasn’t just a reaction from progressives. I mean, I did a press conference with Trent Lott on this stuff. And I don’t make a practice of that and he doesn’t make a practice of that. But he didn’t want some big corporation on the West Coast or East Coast controlling Mississippi media any more than I wanted them controlling all of Wisconsin media. And we stopped that thing in the Senate and a court struck it down. So my view is there is a real grassroots feeling that people want their local radio. They want their local newspapers. They want the opportunity to be able to speak and they do not want everything homogenized through some giant corporate megaphone that they can never access.
This includes the issue of protecting the internet itself. This includes the threat that is emerging that some corporate interests in the United States would love to figure out a way to create a multi-tiered internet that I think would be analogous to the problems that have occurred with radio consolidation, where somehow, unless you have a certain status or a certain connection, you can’t access as much of the internet as you should be able to. I think that’s a mistake. And that’s why we do need provisions protecting that neutrality enacted by the United States Congress.
In the end, even after we’ve helped with the voting and the campaign financing and the media consolidation, in the end, none of this works if people still don’t feel free to exercise their freedoms. To vote. To speak. To dissent. To not feel intimidated. What good are the elections if once people are elected they feel they can just ignore the rights of the people of the country? This was well articulated by the founder of common cause, John Gardner. He said, “The simple rule is: hold power accountable.” That’s what our Constitution and our Bill of Rights is all about. I think it’s a value. I think it’s an important value. It’s the value of the rule of law. We all believe in this. It is fundamental. And it is embodied in our nation and our system in the Constitution in the concepts of limited government and checks and balances.
Now, when I talk about these things or others, the administration talk points are, ‘You know, these guys, they’re okay but they have a pre-9/11 mindset.’ Now my response to that was they have a pre-1776 mindset. And it irritates me. Now here’s what I love about the blogs. I came up with that line. And then in the blogs, ‘You know, it should’ve been 1789.’ Okay. ‘Hey, it should’ve been 1215, the Magna Carta.’ It is fun to see that. But I, you know, I’m sticking with the 1776. But everybody gets it. It is a fundamental value. In fact, it is the cornerstone of our democracy. You know, I even said once to John Ashcroft, after he came to me and said at one point, ‘You know, I get the feeling you’re happy with us.’ Right. I said, ‘Is there some way you guys could at least refer to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Even if you just say look, this is okay, could you please talk about it?’
Well, they don’t like to do that. Instead, this administration and this President has had two obsessions. And it has not been stopping those that attacked us in 9/11. He’s had two obsessions. One of them is justifying this tremendous mistake of intervention in Iraq. And I know my speech today isn’t about this subject but I take it you’re aware that I proposed a timeline a year ago to get us redeployed from Iraq so we could really focus on the terrorism issue, and I think that’s probably the most important issue of our time right now. That’s the first obsession. The second obsession is expanding executive power. They’re obsessed with it. They’re not interested in figuring out the best way to stop the terrorists when they do these things. They want to use to that as a cover to justify changing our system of government.
We saw it with the Patriot Act. They stuffed things in there that simply didn’t need to be in there. For example, this idea that your library records or medical records can be obtained in a secret court without real showing that you had anything to do with anything wrong, let alone terrorism. That’s one thing. You know I opposed that and we still need to fix it. I’ll give Arlen Specter a little credit, even though he didn’t help in the process sometimes. He’s actually introduced all the changes that I want in the Patriot Act, the main ones, as a bill. Of course, it’s not going anywhere. But even the Republican Chairman of the Judiciary Committee admits that needs to be done.
Here’s another example. You know about this signing statements game they’re playing. Seven thousand times they’ve tried to have wiggle room so if we pass a law in this country that somehow they have to follow. They even did it on this Patriot Act fix, which it wasn’t. We didn’t get the changes we needed, but we had a little bit of provisions requiring a little oversight in the report from the executive. In the signing statement they said, ‘Oh, we’re not doing that.’ You know, ‘We sign it but we don’t have to follow it.’ Arlen Specter has a bill that would allow us to go to court on that. So I’m going to give Arlen credit on that as well. We need to do that.
But the number one example is this so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program. Well, we already had a terrorist surveillance program. It’s called the law. And the law is Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. What the President did was put into affect a manifestly illegal program that thumbs its nose at the laws of the United States of America. And I’ll tell you; not only did he mislead before, he gave speeches including in Fon du Lac, Wisconsin saying point blank that they never do it without warrants. After they were caught doing this, he continued to try to intimidate people into saying that they don’t believe we should wiretap terrorists. Well, I do think we should wiretap terrorists. And so does everybody else. They say, ‘Well, look what they did in England.’ Yeah. You know what they did in England? They did it according to English law. It’s an interesting idea. You know, whatever techniques they had, they made it the law of the land. They don’t just make up their own law. In fact, it my belief that what the President did here with his attitude is right in the strike zone with what the founders meant when they spoke of high crimes and misdemeanors.
The founders weren’t interested in break ins at the Watergate Plaza, although there was much more to that. The founders were not all that interested in the personal misconduct or even the lying about personal misconduct by a President. They were interested in not having King George III reenacted in the Constitution of the United States. (Tape skips) impeachment provisions. (Tape skips) if the guy can just make up his own laws under Article II any time he wants, what difference does it make whether we have a USA Patriot Act or not? So I didn’t propose impeachment. I proposed what I thought was a very modest thing. A little different. My daughter called me up and said, ‘Dad, nobody’s done this since 1837.’ I said, ‘I don’t think anybody’s made this kind of claim since 1837, of Executive Power.’ So I proposed a simple resolution that says, ‘Mr. President, you broke the law. You are censured for that. Please stop doing it, please apologize, and please return to the law.’ I think that’s reasonable. I think we should censure the President for doing this.
People say, ‘Well, you know, is this going to pass?’ Well, it’s not going to pass in this Congress. And maybe it won’t pass in the next Congress, although I hope it will. But I think we’ve already achieved our goal. And the reason I had to do it was that I took my time. I heard about this program in December. I’m on the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee. I’m on the two key committees that listen to this. I listened for three months for some legal justification for this thing and it wasn’t there. And if you don’t believe me, ask Diane Feinstein who sits on the same committees and came to the same conclusions. And so here we are in March and all anybody’s saying, Democrat or Republican, is, ‘Gee, we better quick pass a law to make this legal.’ And I said, ‘What about the fact that he broke the law?’ There has to be something on the pages of history. And now that is that resolution introduced that will always be there in the pages of history indicating the lawlessness of this administration.
But we have an urgent crisis on this issue this week. And here’s where I’m not happy with Senator Specter. Forgive me; I’m in his town. But his NSA Fix Bill does a number of things. They’re going to try to pass it this week. And it’s a provision that basically says if the President doesn’t like our laws he can just make up his own under Article II. He completely undoes the whole understanding that is the basis of the famous Youngstown decision after the steel seizures where Harry Truman was rebuked by the United States Supreme Court and the famous opinion of Justice Jackson who was a government lawyer before he was a Justice. He sent out a test that said, ‘There are three situations relating to Executive Power and where the Congress has clearly spoken-‘, as it has here in the Foreign Intelligence Act where it says it is the exclusive means of wiretapping, he says, ‘-at that point the President’s power is at its lowest ever.’ The Supreme Court has never ruled for the President in a challenge in this situation. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito both said, ‘That is the law.’ When they came before us. This bill would undo that decision. This bill that they’re going to try to pass this week will fundamentally attack our system of government. Help us stop it. Help us defeat this effort to change our system.
And for me, it’s not only that in a way it’s a victory for those that attacked us on 9/11, if this kind of stuff is allowed, if all this hard fought effort of the last 50 or 60 years to get the balance right is harmed. It is also a dangerous thing for us because the more people fear that their own government is doing something wrong, the more suspicious they are of those that hold the power in Washington, the less focused they are on those who actually attacked us on 9/11. That hurts us. That weakens us as a country.
And the good news on this one, and all the other things that I talked about, we’ve got to get in there, we’ve got to pass a bill, we’ve got to convince Bush to sign it or get the next President to sign it, the good news on this is we just need to get the majority. Because we can stop these things in their tracks. And that’s what we need to do.
And remind folks that, as you look at all these bills I’m talking about, well, why haven’t you already done it? Well, we’ve been out of power for a long time. Republicans took over 12 years ago in the House and had it ever since. They took over the Senate 12 years ago and they had it for all but 18 months. And seems like George Bush has been President forever. So there’s plenty of self-criticism and I’ve been part of that effort to talk about the way in which we haven’t stood up as much as we should. But let’s get ready to win. Let’s get those bills out there and be ready to act. And the only way we can do that is if we, in fact, have a good result in these elections.
I’m working on it. My Progressive Patriots fund. Not only have I traveled to 17 states. We came up with the idea of a patriot’s court. And we had 100 applications; we picked 20 young people who we trained in Milwaukee on campaigns on the basis of the kind of approach I’ve used in the past. And we sent them to 20 key races around America, west, south, north, and east. Here in Pennsylvania we have a full time person paid for by our fund in the campaign of Lois Murphy against Representative Gerlach and in Joe Sestak’s campaign against Representative Weldon. So that’s some of what I’m doing.
Here’s what I would hope you would do. Support moveon.org’s call for change. This is a great program. Signing petitions and sending them to members. Getting on the phone and calling up elected officials offices. Showing up at Town Meetings. Members of Congress do notice if you do that. Talk to your neighbors and your family members and writing letters to the editor. I was with Lois Murphy this morning. She, of course we’re trying to raise funds for her campaign. She said please send letters to the editor. It matters. I’ll tell you, as a candidate when you see those letters near the end of the campaign it really helps. Let people know that you’re not just going to take whatever is thrown your way.
And so I’m excited. I said to the people this morning that I saw your Democrats are smiling again, if a little bit tentatively. We need to work so hard that we can have a full smile and in this place of our founding fathers. In this great place of our democracy and of our origins, let me just finally say as a Wisconsinite, a cheesehead if you will, a Wisconsin progressive that’s out there in those places in America where we sort of put the flesh on the bones of this great democracy, in the farms and the small towns throughout the Midwest and throughout the country. And one of the questions I get sometimes from people is, ‘Well, you always talk about progressives. What is a progressive?’ Well, I could go into a very long dissertation about this because we all grew up in Wisconsin worshipping ‘Fighting’ Bob La Follette, who was one of the great senators ever in the history of our country. But this was something he said when he talked about the need for progressives to keep fighting, no matter what happens. Fighting Bob La Follette said, ‘The essence of the Progressive movement as I see it lies in its purpose to uphold the fundamental principles of representative government. It expresses the hopes and desires of millions of common men and women who are willing to fight for their ideals, to take defeat if necessary, and still go on fighting.’ Well, let me tell you something. We’ve done the defeating part. We kind of did it in ’00. We definitely did it in ’02. We did it in ’04. We are ready to keep fighting. But let’s try winning. Let’s try winning.
And let’s win this time as progressive Democrats in a way that will not just last for two years until people get sort, ‘Well, Bush is gone. Let’s elect the Republicans again.’ Let’s win it in a way that will last. Let’s win in a way that will last for not two years, but four years, or ten years, or 20 years. So we can answer this movement that has come across our country and hurt our democracy. Let us begin on November seventh to restore our democracy. Thanks so much for having me here. Thanks very much.
