We talk about James Madison, and we talk about Thomas Jefferson, and I can think of the Alex de Tocqueville classic about America, the importance of mediating institutions. That is what these nonprofits are all about. They are the key to an effective civil society. They are ones who get people to participate in a democracy. They are ones who represent the interests of the middle class, of workers and poor people.

By the way, all too often they are the only voices for the voiceless.

So it does seem to me that this provision--and I have not seen exactly all that is in this modification--would make it very difficult for these groups to fully participate in the democratic purposes of this society. And to the extent that is true, I think it is a loss.

Moreover, I think it is a bit deplorable that those who are talking about these kinds of restrictions and are talking about the nonprofit sector, when it comes to others who feed the most from the public trough, the defense contractors and the big businesses, if we want to talk about people who are receiving hundreds of billions of dollars a year, do not gag them at all.

I would not be in favor of that anyway, because I think it is a violation of the first amendment to the Constitution, but it does seem to me that there is a sleight of the hand here that we ought to understand.

On the one hand, we go after these nonprofits that are all too often, as I said, the only voice for the voiceless, organizations that do wonderful work, that contribute greatly to the civil society, that do a lot of effective social service work and charity work and all of the rest. On the other hand, when it comes to big military contractors, big companies that receive all sorts of benefits, contracts, money from the Federal Government, when it comes to all sorts of large corporations which receive all of these various tax breaks, we do not have any such restrictions on them.

It seems to me that this is a double code. It is the same double code--those big contractors, they have the big bucks; they are the heavy hitters; they have the lobbyists. This is not lobbying reform. I have been involved in lobbying reform and the gift ban. This is nothing more than an effort to gag nonprofit organizations.

I must say to my colleagues that I find this even more troubling. I was at a press conference today. The Office of Management and Budget released a study--Dr. Rivlin deserves a lot of credit for her intellectual honesty--that what we passed that we called welfare reform will, in fact, on the House side, lead to over 2 million more children being impoverished in America; on the Senate side, a little over 1 million children will be impoverished as a result of legislation that we passed that we called `welfare reform.'

At the time that we do that we now want to gag these nonprofit organizations which are quite often the only voice for those citizens, including the children. It is a bit outrageous.

Finally, Madam President--and I will be relatively brief because I imagine we have a vote coming up soon--I think the definition of political advocacy is such a broad definition, and we are not talking about lobbying, which is restricted. We are not talking about narrow partisan activity. We are saying that if an organization, a nonprofit organization wants to testify before the legislature, somebody wants to write an op-ed piece, somebody wants to do an educational forum, you name it, they may not be able to do that.

I think it is transparent what this is all about. I think it has already had a chilling effect in this country. And this is an amendment that ought to be voted down.

In any case, even if I was for it--and I am not--it is a gag order. It is an absolutely outrageous double code, with no such effort focused toward military contractors, big corporations.