Former members of congress, and i want to say that you, we appreciate the partnership we have within the archives. It has resulted in discussions. Resulted in excellent discussions and deliberations across the political aisle. They are not part of we are nonpartisan and we hope in november this will bring us to a new time, a new time when the white house and the congress get along. We can only hope. Before elections can be one, they need to be run. And these days to run an election means one thing, finance. Bemused atight i was them New Hampshire primary, economist a panelist at the john kasich was going to be able to really give jeb bush a hard time for the establishment of a. Kasichsaid, oh no, john cannot out fund jeb bush, end of story. Theses what we deal with days, because money has become so pervasive in our system. Many individuals and organizations are taking a look at this whole situation. Our group that we are joining with tonight, the archives and with former members, is issue one. This is an important conversation. And i thank you for coming, because this is important for the future of the system. Let me quote from the website. This is a Nonprofit Organization committed to putting everyday citizens back in control of our democracy, by reducing the influence of money on politics and policy makers. His is an Important Initiative a Bipartisan Group of 120 former members and government, working together to bring attention to this issue. Lovenk you because i people who are interested in something that could hurt the whole system. I am a proud member of the reform. Very profit and all former members you will see, they are part of establishing issue one and being part of it. They are very knowledgeable. We will take a serious look at we haveg campaigns and an outstanding panel. Let me ask them to join me on stage and you can help me in welcoming them. A democrat from louisiana, senator bennett. [applause] senator bill brock from tennessee. A democrat from indiana. Who after his service in the house was our countrys ambassador to india. And meredith, the director of the Campaign Legal center in the areas of campaign finance, voter rights, political communication, and government ethics. [applause] things flowing and keeping these folks going, will be the job of the moderator, and story and, a comic strip author, western for the, and a west wing writer. I want to say thank you, because to have a place like this and the caliber of these panelists and discuss what is bothering us, the fact that money has taken over election. We cannot continue this way. I thank you for coming. [applause] thank you. I want to thank all of you for coming out on a very cold night. I want to thank the National Archives for hosting us. And the u. S. Association of former members of congress for sponsoring the event. We are very lucky to have such a distinguished panel and former members of congress with us. A group whose careers have stand eras, they have survived them all and they will be sharing experiences and insights with us. I want to thank meredith for being here. We are glad to have your expertise on hand to try to navigate the complex and changing landscape of campaign finance. I will have questions for each of you. We want to this to be a conversation, so if you want to jump in at any time, i know that members of congress are used to that. But congress roles rules do not apply tonight. And later we will take questions from the audience. In the spirit of the subject of the evening, the microphones will go to the highest bidder. Meredith, we with are marking as we all know, i say marking, not celebrating the 40th anniversary of the buckley decision in the Supreme Court. This is the decision that equated spending with speech. Can you walk us through buckley, what it decided and why it is such an important decision . Meredith i will spend a minute explaining how we got here, because it is important to see how the issue developed. I could start back with the start of the country, but i dont think i will go back that far. I think that you need to look at this through the scope of the last century, where you had the 1907 corporate ban that was passed and the aftermath of the railroad scandals, into the 1940s, where there was a ban on Campaign Contributions, this was after world war ii and the steelworkers strike. After that, in the aftermath of watergate, and a series of court cases. The one that people paid the most attention to was the buckley decision. What was critical was the differentiation between how the court interpreted the treatment of expenditures versus contributions. It really kind of fabricated the way that these were treated under constitutional law. Saying that, in terms of expenditures, we could not put limits on expenditures for candidates. You could have independent expenditures. Independent expenditures were not corrupting. You could give a small contribution, small of 2000, anything after that was corrupting. If you spent 1 million independently, that was not corrupting. Alsouckley decision touched on issues in terms of coordination versus independent spending. And it also looked at some of those areas about how you can get around spending limits. Things like contribution limits, how much you can give to a party. That you could have the ability to give money to a party, then that money would go to candidates, potentially corrupting influences in the exchange. The other notable question here in terms of Court Jurisprudence was the notion that you could not exactly equate money with speech, but that obviously the ability to spend the money had free speech implications. It was really this notable leaking of First Amendment rights. This had really not been the jurisprudence and it changed more than 200 years of how the country looked at the link between speech and money. I will move very quickly, so you can see where we got today. After buckley you had austin versus Michigan Chamber of commerce. That is important because they looked at the corporate contribution ban and the ban on that was upheld. The philosophy on that was, it had the ability to distort the process if you allowed corporations to cap treasury funds. Austin tooved from the Bipartisan Campaign reform act in which i know that some of. Ou up here lobbied on i did. It was challenged in a case, very notable that the color court upheld that. On whatry constituted corruption. And then after mcconnell, Citizens United, in which contributions were committed, followed by another case, which allowed super pacs to raise and spend unlimited money. Thethe last, in which campaign conjugations were thrown out by the court. The most important things, the differentiation between expenditures and contributions of also the court saying that the only constitutional ground to discuss these kinds of limits are the grounds of corruption and the appearance of corruption. So, that is important because when you got to this last court case, the court basically in the robert majority opinion said, unless you have a quid pro quo agreement, then you really do not have corruption. It is a reminder in the kennedy decision for Citizens United, that seeing the buying and selling of influence will not create problems of undermining Public Confidence in the government. Whether you believe that or not, that is up to you individually. Questions ismy whether you believe that and what defines corruption. Brock, you, senator like senator johnston were elected around the time that Congress Passed the federal Election Campaign act in 1971. You were in office for the , the fecaera reforms and for the buckley decision. I wonder if you can speak to the changes that you witnessed during your tenure . How did it affect you as somebody who is running for office on either side of the events . As someone who is trying to get something done, did you feel that money was playing a greater role in that time . That, myrock i think first race for the senate was 1970. And, i do not think that we thought much about it. Checks, andke cash, never got any im not sure what that meant. Idea that money was sufficient to cause a serious corruption, i do not think that most of us thought about that until watergate. Then we began to read the story of people going to jail for the ng, i guess it was we thought, well, something is going on. After that, 1974 limits were imposed and again, this do not have any effect on me. , though, one specific case which we had in up inusinessman of tennessee and he was used to tapping all the suppliers to his company, saying that if you want to do business with me, i want a piece of the business we do together. Then he would turn around and give it to cash, whether local or national. Wasnt to see him because he a political, not just a giver, but in activist. He said, have this for you. I said, jack, i know what is in there and i cannot take it. Is newspaper clippings. [laughter] i said, i do not think so. He said, trust me. I have these two guys with me and we had given about one mile. And i said, i need to open this. It was a huge stack of bills. Not newspaper clippings. And i told one of them. I said, take it back. I am not going to jail. , 5,000,ver it was whatever. I said, i will not do it. He was heartbroken. He had been doing all of his life. All of a sudden, we began to see the change of rules. And it did not work before we got there, but it was a different world. We were reacting to this kind of thing. And trying to see if there was not some way to make sure that if there was corruption, that we could stop it. Least thetop it by at campaign side. That was the hope. Host thank you. Senator johnson, can you speak to the same question . Did you see a change . Did it become a greater concern to you and constituents . 1972,r johnson iran and the first year that the federal Election Campaign was reformatted. That was the one declared unconstitutional in buckley. It was a very good act that restricted contributions of 1000 per person per election. The restricted the amount he said the amount you could spend. It really worked very well. T kept people from spending they could only spend 40,000 of their own money. Declared976, it was unconstitutional. From then on, we ran under, you expenditures. D i was very concerned about it, because you could see that every year it got worse. It started off, they did not know how to spend the money. Combineshave a huge that know exactly how to do opposition research, polls, targeting of people. , in one houseto race, 100 million. Ruinedo absurd it has ie senate as a bill brock and i was very concerned and i had a Committee Chair man and i had a bright staff. He said, what can we do about it . We researched up and down the ,ow we could solve the problem given buckley, that was before Citizens United. And we came to the conclusion that there was not much you could do. Was anr, i thought this act which i voted for and even that was declared unconstitutional. So i am convinced that the only one way to deal with expenditures, contributions, and what has corrupted the whole system, is to have a constitutional amendment, or a vote on the Supreme Court. Citizens united was 54. There are some other things that maybe you can do that would marginally help. But, you need a constitutional amendment. We should put it in now. Every candidate for president now has endorsed it. I was just reading yesterday, bush said that he would eliminate Citizens United. Donald trump, every stage he makes speech he makes, i do not want your money, i want your vote. And you know Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, they are for it. We should have a constitutional amendment. Ask every candidate, are you for it . Do you want to deal with this issue . You should do the same for every member of congress. If we did not pass it quickly, we could start a movement. Talkse me, Bernie Sanders about a revolution, we need a revolution in this issue now. Oft we will do canvassing the former members about the constitutional amendment and other ideas as you indicated, there are other possibilities that might be pursued. I would like to get to those before we go to questions from the audience. Congressman, you were a long serving member of congress. Saw and were affected by the changing dynamics of congress that are often limited on both sides on the aisle, the spike in bipartisanship, the breakdown of what used to be a very collegial group of folks. I wonder how big a role you think money has played in that . There are a lot of things that feed into this. Lets focus on the question on hand, the role of campaign money. No question over the time i was there, increasingly for both parties, the leadership was encouraging individual members to spend a lot of time dialing for dollars. That helps to determine to some significant degree whether you will advance to the chairman and that sort of thing. In the old days, seniority was king. You do not have to can you imagine some of these guys dialing for dollars . They would not do it. And i think myself it has led to dysfunction within the congress, because so many decisions are funneled through, rather than allowing a leader of different authority and these guys were , you know, after the chairman, this was like ruling the roost. The secretary of agriculture and so on and so forth. That has changed a lot. I think that one other point i want to make on what senator johnson was saying, there are important decisions made by the court. They are supposed to be administering laws and it has been a very dysfunctional. There is a business of independent expenditures or something, this is an area where they could be aggressive. You could cut back a lot of that or make a truly independent, and they are not doing it. So as well as amending the constitution or replacing Supreme Court justices, whether this has been screwed up before, at least we ought to be looking at administering the laws we have effectively and that is not being done because we are gridlocked, we are not looking at positions and candidates come in and they are not filing a complaint. This is the law of the jungle out there as far as elections are concerned. Host ambassador, looking back, it was mentioned dialing for dollars. We are familiar with this. Im sure that you are familiar with it. Issue one shows us that 50 of people are doing this and not the peoples business. Can you talk about that pressure to raise money and how does it affect the other 50 of your day . Ambassador that is a great question. We have a republican from the midwest, a republican from tennessee, democrat from louisiana, the deep south, a midwesterner, all of us uniting and gathering together to encourage the people of our country to take back democracy. And demand the government we deserve. Lets talk about how this money is impacting the electoral process, the governing process, and the recruitment of good candidates to run for congress. And we are doing it in the appropriate place, because in the archives we have the sacred documents that have founded our country on the basis of equality for people, and opportunity. Yet the system that has dominated, the big money and billionaires and the families that have provided half of the money for campaigns that we are going to write now, are determining not only cool when, but who will not only who will win, but who will run. So i think that this is one of the most fundamental questions that we face in this president ial year. Al qaeda is importing, Foreign Policy is vital, and certainly in a quality in america and more opportunities for jobs in the 20th century, but 21st century, but this issue of our democracy and who runs and how they represent the country is a fundamental piece of solving all these other issues. Education and so when i first ran in 1989, i need to take on the incumbent had been in office for 10 years. He had spent about 1 million. I needed to raise 1 million through fish fries and other contributions, but we both knew, the republican iran against, we both knew that we needed to raise money. , buckley ands other decisions and the door started to open up. Independent expenditures outside groups, things that could add into the contribution levels. Eventually, you some members spending more and more and more of their time, dialing for dollars, raising money. They were not going to the committee, they were not talking to republican across the aisle to figure out how to balance the budget or deal with climate change, they were on the phone at headquarters, raising money. 1, 2, 3, 4 hours a day. That not only impacts who will want to run in the democracy, this impacts when you get to washington, how you do your job. And who you do it with, and how you govern, and to the work of congress. And then it impacts on top of oft, it impacts the kind people that we are going to see running for president. And where they spend their time and who they talk to, so i think that this is a critically important issue right now. And i am delighted to see that there are people who care about it and we can talk about some of the solutions. Aboutmeredith, you talk the definition of corruption as it has involved over the Supreme Court decision. I bookmarked that and i am coming back to that. To throw it open to the group, the corruption, how do you define corruption . Defining itme court to nearly as the kind that rarely happens, where you have newspaper clippings in an envelope . Is that the only kind of corruption that concerns you, or should not only the rest of us, but our justices and judges elsewhere one point, there is a difference between individual corruption, people taking money and using it for personal purposes, and corruption of the process, where you get illegitimate decision and people buying public policy. There is less individual corruption in congress than there ever has been. And i think that people, personally, by and large they are honest and conscientious. We have not had to be like this for years, they were very concerned about this. But people raise money for committees. And sometimes they are consuming because they want issues to be raised, because they have a provision there that they are trying to protect. And this weakens the ability of the process, of the system, to improv