The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“POLITICAL ADVOCACY REPORTING” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H8135-H8136 on Aug. 1, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
POLITICAL ADVOCACY REPORTING
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Skaggs] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to return for a few minutes to this 13-page piece of legislation that is buried in the Labor, Health, and Education appropriation bill that the House will be taking up shortly. It is labeled political advocacy, and it is really an incredible effort at speech control and reporting, all at the hands of this new majority that made such a big deal out of wanting a less intrusive Government.
Well, let me just ask my colleagues to go through the painful exercise of actually reading this legislative provision in an appropriations bill. It is an absolutely chilling experience when you realize that this Rube Goldberg contraption that has been invented in order to get at the question of Federal funds being used to persuade Congress about public policy, how vast and really incredibly intrusive into civil liberties a proposal this is.
I spent some time yesterday explaining some of the people who would be covered as, quote, grantees under this legislative provision in the appropriations bill. I hope you will pay some attention to this; your constituents are absolutely going to hate this bill if it were to become law.
For instance, disaster victims getting emergency aid from FEMA would be a grantee, and I will tell you in a minute what grantees have to go through, researchers getting NSF research grants, probably because the definitions are so broad including anything of value coming from the Federal Government, a farmer getting emergency livestock feed in a major snowstorm, irrigators receiving subsidized Bureau of Reclamation water, and it probably even includes intangibles, so a broadcaster getting an FCC license would probably be a grantee under the provisions of this proposal, as, for instance, would many organizations, maybe your local church or YMCA, YWCA, if you are running a low-income child care program. With a Federal grant you would be brought into the provisions of this incredible proposal.
Now what happens to those who are covered? Let me just take a minute to walk you through what would happen to one very typical, if hypothetical, example, namely a pregnant woman or nursing woman getting food
vouchers under the Women, Infants and Children's program. Let us just consider the example:
We will call her Sally. She will be required to follow ``generally accepted accounting principles in keeping books and records,'' about the number and the value of the assistance that she is receiving under the WIC program. She would be required to file with the Department of Agriculture by the end of each calendar year a certified report on a standard form provided by your friendly Federal Government with her name and her ID number, description of the purposes that she put her WIC grant to, a list of all the Federal, State or local government agencies involved in administering the WIC program, and here is the real hooker in this, a description of her acts of, ``political advocacy,'' which is defined all encompassingly to include, for instance, any attempt to influence any Federal, State, or local government action, including any attempt to affect the opinions of the general public or any part of the public about any government action. This would include, for instance, Sally's coming to one of your town meetings and talking with her congressman or congresswoman, writing a letter to the editor about some issue of public policy pending in her community.
This political advocacy activity would also include ``participating in any political campaign of any candidate for public office,'' Federal, State, or local. So, marching in a candidate's parade, for instance, would be a political advocacy activity that a WIC grantee would have to report to the Department of Agriculture.
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It goes on and on and on. This would create, in some computer in Washington, DC, a master list of all political advocacy activities carried on by all Federal grantees around the country. Each Department would have to get these reports annually certified, subject to audit, subject to challenge, from all of their grantees, bring them together, and every year send their reports to the Bureau of the Census, which would then, in turn, pull all of these together to constitute a national database of political activities maintained under the force of Federal law by the Federal Government.
Mr. Chairman, why anyone that is interested in a smaller Government, much less in civil liberties, much less in the protections of the first amendment to the United States Constitution, would consider for a second endorsing this chilling Orwellian notion is beyond me, but it was stuck, buried, in the end of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill that will be before the House shortly.
Mr. Speaker, I hope all of my colleagues will take just a few minutes to read through this provision and understand exactly what it is going to mean. It is going to mean a lot in the lives of most Americans. It is an appalling exercise of overreach by the Federal Government. We should support the amendment that I will offer on the floor to strike it from the bill.
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