Mike Levin: “on the last day in October, Senator Thompson announced that the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee was suspending its…”

“on the last day in October, Senator Thompson announced that the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee was suspending its campaign finance hearings in part because the committee did not have the caliber of witnesses and information to justify continuing the hearings. Mr. President, the Democrats on the Governmental Affairs Committee were promised 3 days of hearings during September or October on a number of unexamined issues involving important events during the 1996 elections. Had that commitment been kept, one of the days would have been spent looking at the largest single transfer from a political party to a tax-exempt organization in the history of American politics--$4.6 million, which the Republican National Committee gave to Americans for Tax Reform in October 1996, the final month before the 1996 elections. As this chart shows, over two-thirds of the money which ATR received in 1996, this tax-exempt organization, over two-thirds of that money came from the Republican National Committee. The size of this transfer is unprecedented. There is no record of an American political party giving even $1 million to a tax-exempt organization, much less four times that amount.…”