BRIAN LAMB, HOST, Q&A: Senator Russ Feingold, from your experience, what does money buy in politics?

U.S. SENATOR RUSS FEINGOLD, (D-WI): Well, at a minimum, based on my experience, both in the Wisconsin legislature and here in the Congress, it buys access.

But what happened in the 1990s is, it got a little bit more out of control. When you started talking about $100,000, $500,000, $1 million contributions, it was starting to cripple the political process, because there was so much money. In fact, certain corporations would give the same amount to both parties.

So, it became something more than access. It began to seem like control. And that’s where Senator and McCain I decided we had had enough, and we fought hard for eight years to get rid of at least one problem with money in the system.

I think there’ll always be money and politics involved with each other, I assume. Even in ancient Athens, there was a problem with money and politics.

But this problem – of the unlimited contributions – was too much. It was corruption, really.

LAMB: I don’t know if you’d argue with me about this, but I think in the McCain-Feingold combination, he got a lot more visibility than you did. Was that by your design?

FEINGOLD: Oh, Senator McCain was ruthless in trying to grab all the attention – no. That’s what he would say.

Senator McCain was terrific. And, of course, he’s the one that called me and said, would you like to work with me? And I thought, I’m going to work with this American hero. And the fact that my name would be associated with him at all, let alone over the course of eight years, was one of the great thrills of my life.

In fact, what he likes to say is that back in Wisconsin, people say that my first name is McCain. And he’s very proud of that. So, it’s been a wonderful working relationship.

LAMB: But did you keep your profile lower on purpose during that time?

FEINGOLD: I don’t remember it being an issue. He always included me. We went on a nationwide tour. And he picked some great locations – New Orleans, San Francisco – places to highlight our issue.

And I always felt like we were a team. And I always understood that his stature as an American hero, as somebody that is older than I am, a more senior senator, that it was a good – that it was a good mix. And I think people really enjoyed it.

I remember, when I first started working on the issue – I do town meetings in Wisconsin every year. And I said, I’m going to be working on a bill with a Republican – Senator John McCain. And they just started clapping. They didn’t even know if it was a good bill or a bad bill.

Just the fact that two people who were so different politically would cooperate, meant the world to my constituents.

LAMB: As you know, you’re being asked whether or not you’re going to run for president in 2008, wherever you go. There’s even a Web site out – Russ Feingold for President. And we have it on our screen here. It’s a blogger. And he follows your every move.

Did you consider in 2004?

FEINGOLD: Not very seriously. You know, we had a very disappointing loss in 2000. And people start casting around after a moment like that. And who’s going to – who’s going to be our standard-bearer? How do we get the party back?

And especially after 9/11/2001, I realized what an incredibly important time it was in American history.

So, I did have a chance to go around the country, and especially in college campuses. And some people said, you know, you ought to consider doing this.

I didn’t think that that was the thing for me to do. I didn’t think I was the candidate, at least at that point, who would be most likely to win for our party.

And so, I focused on my job and winning re-election, which I was fortunate enough to do this year – last year, in 2004.

This time – it’s happening again. People worked as hard as they could. John Kerry ran a great race. People are looking for how do we get the White House back after such a difficult loss? And so, I’m listening.

My focus now is how we go to all the states in the country and actually listen to people, like I do in Wisconsin, how we can actually show that as a party we could reflect the priorities of the American people, which I don’t think the president is reflecting.

When I go around Wisconsin to every county, every year, they’re talking about healthcare costs and jobs. Social Security is important, but it doesn’t compare to those two issues.

So, to me, the coming year or two is a time to have all of us in the party focus on showing the American people that we can respond to their concerns, and not be worried so much about who’s going to be the candidate. That’s really not my focus at this point.

LAMB: Just won re-election, the third time. So, you’ve got six years.

How do you approach your life now, between now and 2008? And at what point do you have to make a decision, because of all the money you have to raise?

FEINGOLD: I’m not going to worry about money as a focus any more than I have at any other point in my career.

One of the great joys of the way our system is set up is that a six-year term for a United States senator does allow you a wonderful opportunity to start a project and follow it through time – both as a member of the Congress, in terms of legislation, but also in terms of getting outside the Beltway.

If you want to get out and try to get a message around the country, it’s an opportunity to do that, just as it is in your state.

And so, what I want to do is get out there and talk about some way we could get guaranteed health care for all Americans, how we could have fairer trade agreements, to make sure we don’t lose jobs like we have in Wisconsin and other states.

And that’s – I’m going to let that drive my feelings. And these are the issues that people really are responding to. If there continues to be a leadership gap and a candor gap in Washington, which I think we have right now.

And then I think there will be – it’ll be obvious at what point it’s important for me and others to start making decisions about personalities.

This isn’t the time to worry about that, because we have people saying, should the Democrats go to the left? Should they go to the right? Should they go to the center?

I don’t think that’s the way to talk about it. I think we should listen to the American people. And then whether it’s a conservative or a liberal idea, I think we should go with the best ideas and show that we’re the party that is willing to go for the best ideas to solve the top priorities of the American people.

LAMB: Where did you grow up in Wisconsin?

FEINGOLD: In Janesville, Wisconsin. Henry Janes was a guy who was a famous frontiersman, who went across the United States founding Janesvilles – all over the country – until he finally hit California. There was nowhere else to go.

But our Janesville in Wisconsin started about 1835. I think it’s the biggest of the Janesvilles.

My family’s been there since 1917. My grandfather came there when my dad was only five years old. He had come over by himself at age 14 in a boat from Russia, into Ellis Island, and then ultimately to Janesville, Wisconsin. But we’ve been there ever since.

My mother lives there and my brother lives there. And it was a wonderful town to grow up in, in southern Wisconsin.

LAMB: Did you ever count how many Janesvilles there are in the United States?

FEINGOLD: I did at some point. I don’t remember what the figure was.

But not only was it something that we were told about in my third grade class, where I started to learn to love history, but when I went to college and took a course on the 19th century – the history of the 19th century – Henry Janes was discussed. And I was very proud.

LAMB: Now, from your bio, you can see that you did well in school. You were a Phi Beta Kappa at University of Wisconsin, a Harvard Law graduate.

Go back, though, to high school. Can you remember – you said third grade – but can you remember where you got interested in government, politics, history, social studies – all that?

FEINGOLD: I’m slightly embarrassed to say, it’s even earlier than third grade. When I was seven, John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States.

And I was preconditioned to think positively toward him and be excited by his candidacy, because our family violated the basic rule of the dinner table. And that rule, at least in my part of the country is, there’s two things you don’t discuss at the dinner table – religion and politics.

Well, my parents, basically, always talked about those two things.

I’m a senator, and my little sister is the first woman rabbi in the history of Wisconsin. That’s what happens when you talk about religion and politics at the table.

But that – it was that early, when I saw my father’s excitement about local judicial races, about the democratic process. He didn’t want me or family members to go into politics, but he loved it when our garage was full of those car tops for the latest judicial candidate that he was advocating for.

And he taught us an abiding passion for our system of government. And it stuck with me.

And then, you know, in my teen years, you had everything from the civil rights movement – I saw Martin Luther King speak in Chicago – to the beginning of the environmental movement. My predecessor, Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, in this seat, founded Earth Day.

The beginning of the women’s movement, the opposition to the Vietnam War – all these things sort of put meat on the bones in terms of why I would want to be involved in politics. And as everybody knows – I’d be hopeless to deny it – I’ve been talking about being in politics since I was a little kid.

LAMB: Is it La Follette in the law firm you worked in, anything to do with Bob La Follette?

FEINGOLD: Of course, yes. The original La Follette – "Fighting Bob" La Follette – is the man who became a famous progressive governor in Wisconsin, and then one of the great United States senators.

His son, Robert, Jr., and his other son, Philip La Follette, who was the youngest governor in the country for a while there in the 1930s – I believe that they were the founders, or had to do with the founding, of that law firm.

And without a doubt, one of the reasons I wanted to be at that firm, is that I am a disciple of the La Follette tradition. My father was very proud that he was a page in the Wisconsin State Assembly, under – in the time when one of the La Follettes was governor.

And there wasn’t even a Democratic Party at all when my father was a young man. There was just the Republican Party and the Progressive Party. And he was a Progressive. So, I’m a Progressive Democrat in the Wisconsin tradition.

LAMB: Go back to the politics and religion. I’m guessing that there weren’t many Jews in Wisconsin when you were growing up. Am I right?

FEINGOLD: And there still aren’t. One of the great ironies is that both of our United States senators are Jewish. I am Jewish, and Senator Kohl is Jewish.

And what a testament to the tolerance and wonderful nature of the people of our state. We have one of the smallest Jewish populations in the country, something like 30,000 people.

And there were only about 10 Jewish kids – 12 Jewish kids – in my high school. And most of them were my relatives. So, it was a very small Jewish community. We – my parents took us up to Madison every weekend to get religious education, prepare for bar mitzvah and confirmation.

And nobody expected, since my little sister was a cheerleader, that she would be the one who would end up following what is another family tradition – my uncle was a rabbi. She ended up being the one that followed that course and is a wonderful rabbi in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and has been for 20 years.

LAMB: Did you see any prejudice in growing up?

FEINGOLD: You know, I can honestly say, absolutely not. I maybe remember once in fourth grade, one child using an expression about being Jewish that was something I hadn’t heard and asked my mother about.

But I was treated wonderfully. It was an environment of – where I was encouraged, as the only Jewish kid in the class – or one of the only Jewish kids in the class – to teach the Hanukkah song along with the Christmas songs.

And I felt like, you know, I felt like I was being honored, because I was Jewish in this Christian environment.

So, I grew up in that environment. I know that hasn’t been true for every American Jew, as I’ve met others who come from other places, and they didn’t have that experience.

But I grew up in this setting where I honestly believed everybody was welcome, and if you were different, that was sort of a plus, rather than a minus.

LAMB: We get calls all the time on our call-in show that, people will say, this is a Christian nation.

Does that bother you when you hear that?

FEINGOLD: I don’t like that. I don’t think that’s right. It’s certainly one of the things it is, is a Christian nation. But it’s also Jewish and Buddhist and Islamic, and for those who don’t have, follow an organized religion.

One of the reasons that I believe so passionately in our Constitution, in our system of government, and in particular in the Bill of Rights, is that I do believe that the separation of church and state are essential for the freedom and the comfort of those of us who are minorities – those of us whose grandparents or great-grandparents came here to get away from religious persecution. That is fundamental to me and to my family.

And so, if it ever comes to the point where people say, well, you know, really this is a just a Christian nation, and others really are second-class citizens, that is not the America that I believe in. And I will fight to stop efforts to do that.

LAMB: Do you think there’s any real difference between a Christian and a Jew?

FEINGOLD: Of course not. I think, as Jimmy Carter said the other day, I heard him say on one of his wonderful interviews, he had been to all these different countries in all these different situations in his life. And he said, the lesson for him is that people are pretty much the same everywhere you go.

And in my work on the Foreign Relations Committee, where I’ve been to some 20 African countries, as difficult as the situation is for people in a place like Sierra Leone or Sudan, or wherever it might be, when you talk to them, you really do realize that people really are fundamentally the same. And that’s a pretty nice feeling.

LAMB: You were a debater. When did you start the debate stuff? In high school?

FEINGOLD: Well, my older sister Nancy would say, when she was a teenager and I was five years old – and was a pain in the neck – was when I started debating.

But, oh, I was excited about debate. My older brother David – the other, the fourth child in the family. I’ve mentioned Dena, my sister the rabbi, and Nancy.

And David was a terrific debater in high school. And he was eight years older than I am. And so, I admired the fact that he was on the debate team.

And so, when I had the chance in seventh grade, I remember that our debate topic was whether boxing should be banned in America. And so each year there was a different topic.

And by the time I was in high school, I was really interested in it, and it was a lot of fun. We had a team, and we’d go on the weekends, all to different parts of the state. Sometimes to debate the Catholic schools, which were some of the best. Sometimes to debate the private schools.

It was a very interesting process, not just to learn how to debate, but also to learn how to research, how to study a subject in depth. And I enjoyed it.

I didn’t do it in college, but I did do it in high school. And it was valuable – valuable training.

LAMB: You beat Bob Kasten, who was the United States senator and a conservative, and a fairly popular conservative in the conservative world back in ’92.

How did you beat him?

FEINGOLD: Well, I had noticed in 1986, when he ran for re-election, that he had surprisingly almost just barely won, in a year when we had elected a Republican governor.

And I thought, well, he’s not as strong as some people would think.

And I went around the state and I asked people, you know, how do you feel about our governor, Tommy Thompson? And they said, we love him. He’s great.

And how do you feel about Bob Kasten? And people weren’t saying mean things, but they sort of – nobody seemed to be excited about him. There was this sense that he was never around, that he had sort of gone Washington.

And I realized, as a political person, that that’s something that people don’t want in my state. They want to have a sense that you feel connected.

So, what I did was, I got involved in the election almost five years out. I started running around the state while I was a state senator, visiting the very smallest counties in the state and getting the Democrats there to get to know me.

And then ultimately, I did something a little unusual. I painted a contract that I proposed to the people of Wisconsin – on my garage door. And this is when I – still, nobody knew who I was.

And the contract, basically, that I would raise the majority of my campaign contributions from Wisconsin citizens, that I would spend the majority of my time in Wisconsin if I was elected, and that I wouldn’t take a pay raise during my six-year term in office, which has come to haunt me, because of all the money I’ve had to return.

And in addition, I made a pledge – in response to this concern that I heard about Senator Kasten – that I would go to every one of Wisconsin’s 72 counties every year and hold a town meeting. And people said it sounded nutty, but at the time people didn’t think I was going to win, so they sort of shrugged it off.

But it was my way of responding to what people said to me. They’d say in Ashland or Eau Claire, oh, you seem like a nice guy, but we know how this works. You’re going to go off to Washington, and we’re never going to see you again.

And I thought, this is how you avoid that. You promise to go to every county, every year and hold an open forum, where people can come, say what they want to you – yes, for a limited period of time, so everybody gets a chance – without making a campaign contribution.

So that kind of an approach, in addition to the obvious point that I was not a well-to-do individual, that I was somebody of average means – and it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have somebody like that in the Senate – that combination of things produced a race that was a nice contrast to the incumbent, and people enjoyed.

And we even had Elvis Presley endorse me in one of my commercials, because we desperately needed attention. And even though he had been dead for 20 years, people sure responded to that advertisement.

LAMB: On the pay raise thing, as you know all too well, the way it’s done now is that there’s an automatic increase in the salaries. And it’s been every two years at the rate of about $3,000, $4,000 a year.

When did – go back to what you agreed to do. Now that you’re starting your third term, what pay are you taking?

FEINGOLD: I’ve been the leading opponent of this system. I’ve been the only person that’s offered amendments to get rid of it. And I generally try to make us have a vote on it.

My pledge was that during a six-year term I get no pay raise. So, whatever the salary was in 1992, that’s all I got for six years. And the only way I could get a raise is if people say, we want to hire you again. And then I would be hired at the new, higher rate.

But in the meantime, I’ve had to return about $50,000, in checks to the federal Treasury, in order to make up for the increases that occurred during the periods.

I basically follow what was the, what I think, the initial intent of the framers, which is that you shouldn’t be able to get a pay raise during your term of office.

And, of course, that’s exactly what’s happening, even though they say it’s just a cost of living increase. Somebody said it’s just a COLA. I said, back home we call that $3,000.

So, I send back the checks for any pay raise that occurs during the term.

LAMB: Before we go on, I just want to have you do something. That tie you’re wearing is rubbing against the microphone, and I don’t want that to be a distraction for the audience.

FEINGOLD: I thank you, sir.

LAMB: And if I see it creeping over again, I’ll just tell you to move it.

Go back to the 72 counties and your town hall meetings. What – when do you do them? And what arrangement – what do you say to your staff as you’re going in? Where do you put them, and what’s the environment?

FEINGOLD: Well, it’s wherever we feel like people want to come and visit us. We do it in town halls. We do it in libraries. We do it in high schools, sometimes, you know, with the students.

We do it in city hall rooms. It’s – we’ve gone everywhere. We’ve had them outside.

One time I showed up in Kewaunee County, and we were going to do it in the courtroom. And it was a beautiful day out, and we’re looking at the lake. And I said, let’s just do it outside.

And so, I just sat down in front of the group. And my staff hands out slips to people so that they say they want to speak. And they put down their address. And if they want to say what they want to talk about, fine. They don’t have to.

And I just let them sort of randomly fall on the table, and I get up and say a couple of words about what these are – what these meetings are. I talk about one issue for a couple of minutes, whatever the latest bill is that I’ve introduced. And then I open it up.

And that’s the key. It’s not me setting the topic. So I get an honest read on what people want to talk about.

And over the course of 12 years, 11 out of 12 years, the greatest concern that people have expressed is related to health care. One year it was campaign finance reform.

And the last couple of years, topics that have never come up in the top 10 before. Foreign policy, Iraq, terrorism – they are high on the list. But people decide what they want to talk about.

And, Brian, as I’ve said before to people, I was surprised when I went to my first listening session. I thought people would come in, they’d say their thing and they’d leave.

Nobody leaves, because there is no other forum in this country any more in communities, where people just come together and stand up and say, this is what I care about.

And so, people are – they’re far more interested in what their neighbor – who they’ve seen for 20 years, and they’ve never heard him talk – is going to say, than they are in my response.

And to me it’s frankly a beautiful moment. Sometimes they’re not beautiful. Sometimes they’re a little acrimonious.

But it’s a beautiful moment where people say, hey. We’re a community. And we’re here to listen to each other and to tell our elected representative what we think.

But it’s very informal. And we keep notes. We invite whoever comes one year gets a mailed invitation the next year. And we – sometimes we get projects out of them.

My staff goes crazy, because people will say, I need an answer to this, an answer to that. By the end I’ve come up with, you know, 15 new projects. So they dread how many times I say that.

But it’s just an open forum, and it works like a charm. It’s a really – I’ve done 864 of these.

LAMB: What is your philosophy about following up, asking for money?

FEINGOLD: In general? Or …

LAMB: No. Anybody that attends that, do you send them a letter …

FEINGOLD: No, no …

LAMB: … someday and say …

FEINGOLD: Absolutely …

LAMB: … he wants …

FEINGOLD: Absolutely not.

LAMB: What would be wrong with that, though?

FEINGOLD: Because the reason I would have that list or that awareness of that list of people, would be through my federal office. And I would consider it inappropriate to use such a list.

For me to do that, you’d have to do it independently. So, my campaign, you know, will send out mailings to groups of people off of magazine lists or whatever you can get. And sometimes it’ll end up having the same person. Sometimes people just on their own send a check. But, of course, I would never connect (ph) it (ph).

In fact, once in a while, somebody tries to hand me a campaign check at one of these town meetings. And I say, we can’t do this here. This is – this is federal. This is paid for by the federal government. Call my campaign office.

LAMB: In ’92, how much did it cost you to run?

FEINGOLD: Well, in the primary, it was only $200,000 or $300,000. And then, I think, by the end, we spent about $1.5 million. We were outspent something like three-to-one.

LAMB: In ’99, how much did it cost?

FEINGOLD: Close to $5 million. And, again, I was outspent very significantly, because I pledged not to benefit from soft money – party soft money – because the McCain-Feingold Bill was intending to do that.

And so, that was a huge discrepancy that I didn’t like, but I’d made a pledge that I would not take soft money. And so, it put me at an enormous disadvantage. And one of the factors that made it a very close race is that, for a while there, my opponent would have – it seemed like he had 10 ads to my every one.

Because I had agreed to limit how much I was going to spend, I had to wait until late September to start running ads, and he’d already been hitting me pretty hard for weeks. And the race was getting very, very close.

LAMB: In the last election, how much did you spend?

FEINGOLD: Over 10 – a little over $10 million.

LAMB: And what kind of rules do you have now about what kind of money you’ll take?

FEINGOLD: Same rules I’ve always had. I’ve always taken the position that I would get a majority of my campaign contributions from Wisconsin individuals.

And that’s what I did in this last cycle, even though we were able to raise substantial funds. I think it’s almost unprecedented.

We raised a majority of that money from Wisconsin. And the average contribution was less than $60.

One of the reasons we spent so much more is that, to get that, to have smaller contributions and to have them be from Wisconsin, requires a heavy expenditure on direct mail, which is very expensive to pay for that, and to get that sort of return.

So, I have kept my pledge, which very few senators do, which is I get the majority of my contributions for my re-election campaign from Wisconsin.

I also have never taken a high percentage of political action committee money. I take it, but in the last two elections, it’s been less than 10 percent.

It’s dominantly Wisconsin individual money, but also the contributions of individuals, you know, smaller checks usually, from around the country, who have become interested in some of the things I do, from campaign finance reform, to the environment, to opposition to the death penalty, to my opposition to the USA Patriot Act.

LAMB: How much do you think people in the country care about the money thing?

FEINGOLD: I think if you call somebody up and they’re having dinner, if they want to talk to you, and you ask them what the big issues are, they’re going to say, you know, I’m concerned about my kids’ health care, my family’s health care, about whether they’re getting good education, across the street, or whether they’re going to get clunked over the head going a couple of blocks away because of crime.

That would be the normal thing that people would say in response to that question.

But if you get it in a conversation with people, about why they think maybe Washington doesn’t always respond to those things, why inside the Beltway it looks different from their home – they do know that the presence of huge campaign contributions, and the rush to raise money and the access that that gives, does often prevent them from getting their real priorities dealt with.

So, it’s a secondary issue. But it’s something that I think most people strongly believe affects the political process in a way that hurts them.

And so, whenever I was at a Badgers football game or a Packer game shaking hands, people would say, I don’t agree with you about anything else, but you keep working with McCain on that thing. We’ve got to do something about big money.

I think it’s very powerfully felt in the state of Bob La Follette, who was one of the original crusaders against the power of big money in politics.

LAMB: Let me go through a litany of things that you see if you live here, that the public may not see.

You see senators pick up their phone – or their staff – and call corporations and say, I need a jet. I need to go back to my district. I’ll pay the first-class ticket. But, you know, people go with them, and it’s convenience and all that.

You see fundraising going on all around us – by lobbyists, not by people from your state – where members come to a restaurant right in this building. And all the lobbyists show up with their $1,000 checks or whatever it is.

They create leadership PACs, where money is moved off of their campaign finance ledger to a leadership PAC. And then you, as a senator, can give money to others.

You see where I’m going with this. If you’re a former member of Congress or a former senator, you have access to the floor, the dining rooms, the parking lots, the gyms. And with the security being so tight, it’s easy for former members to get in and lobby.

The public can’t see all this. I know that they – you have to report all this stuff. But this seems to be getting more and more rather than less and less, in spite of McCain-Feingold.

FEINGOLD: Well, these things are very disturbing. And the combination of them create just the environment you’re talking about.

I will say that during the ‘90s, Senator McCain and I did two things that really limited this. And I think it is less in some ways.

One is, I came from Wisconsin with the idea of getting a gift ban on members of Congress. You know, when I came here, members of Congress could get anything.

I remember I got a letter saying I was invited to a Western conference on something-or-other. And all expenses paid and golf, and so on for the family. And I thought it was going to be in La Crosse – western Wisconsin.

It was in Arizona. Golf clubs were being given to members of Congress. Very lavish trips.

In Wisconsin – in the Wisconsin law – you weren’t allowed to take anything, even a cup of coffee.

I happened to go golfing with a guy who’s a lobbyist. And he’s in the cart with me and he says, don’t touch that orange drink. You can’t. I’m a lobbyist. So, we take this very seriously.

When I came here I thought, this is a cancer on the system.

And when McCain called me about other issues originally, I asked him to join me on this gift band and we passed it. That has helped significantly limit some of what you’re talking about.

The other thing is getting rid of the unlimited contributions, which we did through the McCain-Feingold Bill. But we still have problems.

This corporate jet thing really bothers me. In fact, somebody was talking to me about it yesterday. I am not aware of the scope of it, because I’ve never done it. But that to me is inappropriate.

And I think that we need further reforms.

In fact, I prefer – and I haven’t convinced Senator McCain of this – but I think we should have public financing of all congressional campaigns.

We’ve had a public financing system for the presidential that worked for 40 years. It’s falling apart now and has to be fixed.

But states like Arizona and Maine have enacted very successful public financing systems, where people can voluntarily limit their spending and get public help.

I think that’s what we ought to do here to limit the value of some of these unnecessary and inappropriate contacts that people have here in Washington.

LAMB: You talked about earlier about money and access. But, again, what’s under the radar screen are the amendments to the major bills that people can’t see and understand, that get there in the dark of night, that often people say come, because of contributions.

How do you – is that OK? I mean, or should they be exposed? And if it should be, how should it be exposed?

FEINGOLD: It’s not OK. And it should be exposed. In fact, again, I mention "Fighting Bob" La Follette too much, but he used to do something called the calling of the roll.

He used to come out on the floor of the Senate and just lay out what was going on, and go around the country.

And I did something called the calling of the bankroll, during my effort to pass campaign finance reform. It didn’t make people happy all the time.

But I came out to the floor and said, let’s just understand that this bill has come up now – whether it’s for the oil industry or an energy company or whatever it is – let’s just talk for a minute about the campaign contributions that are connected to it.

So one thing is to just be out there and open about what the process is.

The other thing we’ve got to do, in addition to getting rid of these unlimited contributions – which we did do, and I’ll tell you, that has made it a little bit harder for some. Somebody can’t write out a $500,000 check now to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party – the next day say I need this loophole. It’s much harder to do.

But what is also needed is something that John McCain and I have worked together on, which is process reform. In terms of bringing to the light of day these particular amendments that are buried in the middle of the night.

In the Wisconsin legislature, when we brought up a bill, there was a real rule about making sure that amendments were germane, relevant to the bill. And it was enforced.

Here, anything can happen. There are no rules.

And McCain and I are trying to figure out a way with others, to have rules that would give the president, perhaps, the ability to turn back some of these things and force these into the light of day.

We both supported the line item veto that would help with this. But it was struck down by the courts. So now we’re trying to figure out another way to do that.

LAMB: Well, then, let me go to the inauguration, though. I mean, we went through all the campaigns, and there’s a limit on how much you could give – $5,000 an election cycle and all that.

The inauguration comes along and you see large corporations write checks for $250,000. And you know – I mean, I saw competing companies in the same business write each a $250,000 check. You know that that’s access.

FEINGOLD: Absolutely. There’s no reason for it. We should crack down on that. We should also crack down on the abuse of – there’s an exception for the political conventions, that we thought was taken care of under current law. But the Federal Elections Commission, once again, allowed a loophole to exist.

These are two ways in which unlimited contributions are still happening. They’re very limited settings – once every four years. So, it’s small example of what was a huge system that was just outrageous.

Where, on a Monday night, a corporation would give a $500,000 check for the Democratic dinner. On Tuesday night they’d give a $500,000 check to the Republican dinner. And then we’d vote on the bill on Wednesday.

This was legalized bribery. Or actually, as the corporations finally said it – they got irritated – they said, senator, you know, it’s really legalized extortion. We’re not the ones that make the calls.

It was the politicians calling up and saying, give us the money. The corporations don’t usually call up and say, hey. Where can I send 500,000 bucks?

LAMB: Go to the earmarks – for instance, this recent one on the omnibus spending bill, where there are some 11,000 earmarks, which is very significantly higher than it’s ever been.

And on our network, we have run a series just to show the public where the money’s going. And you see some of these things and you can spot the members of the Appropriations Committee. They were getting $250,000 to go to some – to build a city hall in a community. Or to support the Jesuits in a community.

Why does the federal taxpayer support the building of a city hall in a small town in South Dakota?

FEINGOLD: Well, I’m sure sometimes they’re justified. And frankly …

LAMB: Why would they be?

FEINGOLD: Well, the idea itself may be justified. In other words, there may be an environmental protection aspect of it, or something. Or a very significant historical element.

But there’s really no reason not to go through the normal process of authorizing that bill. In other words, go through the committee. Have a hearing so that everybody can see it.

What the earmark is, is a way to basically bypass all that, as a favor. And there isn’t any real scrutiny. There isn’t any real consideration of whether there’s merit to this project or not. It’s just somebody – they need somebody’s vote to get on the bill.

We don’t have to have a system like that. We could have a system where these things have to be scrutinized. Where they can be forced up to a vote. And McCain and I actually did a bill last year that would force that sort of thing.

But, no. These can’t, often can’t be justified. I, frankly, get in some trouble back home. But from some people say, how come you don’t do more earmarks? Because I really don’t think that’s the way to go. If something has merit, let’s try to authorize it and do it.

For example, I wanted to make sure that we had automated external defibrillators, these – you know, save people’s lives, if they have a heart attack.

And I wanted to get those out around the country. I could have sort of put in an earmark and said, let’s do a little bit of these for Wisconsin, or whatever.

Instead, we took it before the Senate and we said, this is an important thing. And can we put $10 million out there, so that cities can apply for grants to get them?

That’s the way to do it, not by just doing a quick little amendment.

LAMB: I’m going to go back to your earlier life – high school and then to Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin.

When did you know along the way that – I don’t know you ask this – when you were smart enough to get into Harvard?

FEINGOLD: I never thought I was, even when I was there.

You know, a letter came saying that I could go. And I was – you know, I wasn’t the guy who had the highest scores on the ACT. I wasn’t a National Merit Scholar.

LAMB: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) law school, you went to Harvard.

FEINGOLD: Yes. I mean, I was thrilled to go to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is a great place. And I did better there than I thought I would. I thought I’d do fine.

But I really got into it. I remember, I came back from my classes the first couple of weeks, and I remember looking – one was Greek and Roman culture, and once was a science course.

And I remember having this reaction in my dorm room – I want to learn all this stuff.

And so, I felt this joy about learning. And so, I kind of went nuts. I just studied like crazy.

And I would – my pattern was typically to go with my friends and my sister and others. And we’d study at the new library at the University of Wisconsin, pretty much, you know, a good part of the day, till 12, from 12 noon or so till 11 o’clock.

But then we’d go out. And Madison’s a place where you can have fun. Maybe stay out till three or four in the morning. Slept in. I never took the 7:45 a.m. class in language, which I should have. But it was too early.

So, that was a pattern I kept. And I just did well, and because of it, I was able to get into a school that I never, frankly, thought I’d be able to get into. And I was thrilled to have the opportunity.

LAMB: Well, if you live here, you run into an awful lot of people that have gone to Yale, Princeton, Harvard and those schools.

Do you have any sense of why so many end up here?

FEINGOLD: Well, I think the atmosphere at those schools is that, you know, if you really want to continue your success – and, of course, a lot of people measure their success, unfortunately, by whether they get into one of the Ivy League schools.

And sort of, a lot of what you hear from people at those schools is, where are you going? To New York? Or are you going to Washington?

And to me, of course, I had the opposite reaction, because I love my state and I wanted to go home. Because I went straight back to Wisconsin after I graduated from Harvard Law School.

And I’d had some nice offers from some of the Boston law firms. And I explained that I wasn’t going to be staying. And they said, well, you know, that’s nice. You know, you’ll be so close to the Rockies.

And I went, you know, they think that Wisconsians can see the Rocky Mountains. There needs to be more attention to the center part of the country.

And so, that’s why I continue to live in Wisconsin. I enjoy my work here, but I commute home. I’ve been commuting home for 12 years. I’ve taken …

LAMB: Do you go home every weekend?

FEINGOLD: Almost every single weekend.

LAMB: Your wife live in Wisconsin?

FEINGOLD: Yes. And my children grew up there. They’re grown up now, but they were fairly – they were sort of 11, 10, eight years old when I was elected. So that was a real tough part of my first years in the Senate, was balancing that, getting home.

And I would spend the whole weekend just driving the kids around, basically, to Sunday school or to their soccer game. And then I’d come home and take naps. And my wife named me Mr. Excitement, as a result.

So, it was good to get through that phase.

LAMB: Where did you meet your wife?

FEINGOLD: I met her in Madison. She was a person who worked in the state government. And …

LAMB: You were state senator at the time?

FEINGOLD: No. I was a lawyer. And as it turned out, they were trying to recall a state senator, who – I was asked to be the lawyer to represent the state senator in that case.

I first got to know her that way. Later, she had moved to Green Bay. But years later, when she came back to Madison, we were friends. And we started dating, and after about four or five years of that, we got married 14 years ago.

LAMB: What’s she like?

FEINGOLD: She’s great. She’s absolutely the real thing.

LAMB: What’s her name?

FEINGOLD: Mary. And she thinks Bruce Springsteen is the greatest thing in the world. Brett Favre is the second-greatest thing in the world.

And what I like to say is, on a good day, I’m third, and I’m lucky to be there.

She loves the Packers. She loves Bruce Springsteen. She is a writer – a superb writer – who is trying to get the time to write her book. But her writing is beautiful.

She’s a lot of fun. And she puts up with a lot to have me gone so much. It’s a very difficult thing to have me gone so much.

LAMB: Now, had you both been married before?

FEINGOLD: Yes.

LAMB: And you both have kids from before.

FEINGOLD: That’s right. We have four kids, and they are now in their 20s. Jessica and Ellen are my daughters. Sam and Ted are her sons. And they all were out for my swearing in.

And it’s really amazing to see the difference in how they look from when they came for the first swearing in, versus the second swearing in, now the third one.

While, my one daughter is a shorter, dark-haired girl, and the other one is shorter with lighter hair and lighter eyes. One of her boys has blondish-brown hair and brown eyes. And her other son is this huge, six-foot-two, red-headed kid with 10,000 freckles.

So, when we would go into a restaurant, people couldn’t figure out what kind of an organization we were. We didn’t real look like one family.

LAMB: Now, when you go out to speak, and you’re – what kind of a – I mean, what does it take for you to accept a speaking engagement now around the country, as you kind of look around toward 2008?

FEINGOLD: Well, it doesn’t have to do with 2008. It has to do with the way I’ve always done things.

Sometimes it has to do with fundraising. But sometimes it has to do with, for example, wanting to get a message out.

After 9/11, I wanted to go to – I was asked by some students who had heard me at Brown University, would I go to other campuses, and talk about the USA Patriot Act and campaign finance reform and the death penalty?

So, I did. And we went to the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. We went to the University of Iowa. We went to University of Texas in Austin, and University of North Carolina.

And the reason I went is that there were people really excited about trying to hear about these things from a different perspective than they were hearing in Washington.

So, that was a fabulous experience. And just this past weekend, I thought – I had been told to come down to Florida. Some people wanted to help raise some funds for my campaign.

But they also asked whether I would do a whole bunch of other things. And I thought, this is a great opportunity.

So, I went to the Tiger Bay Club, which I guess is like political club in Daytona Beach. And that was a very bipartisan group where I got to talk about my views on the issues.

And then another meeting was – there’s a new political action committee that’s being formed to fight for the issues of family and children. So we did that.

Then I went to the University of Miami Law School at 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning. Seventy or 80 law students showed up, because they wanted to hear about some of the issues that are going on, on the Judiciary Committee – everything from the Constitutional amendments to the USA Patriot Act, and the like.

So, I found it very stimulating. I felt like they wanted to hear what I had to say. I got a chance to hear from them.

And a lot of what I’m trying to do now is to simply listen to what people are thinking around the country, to see how it squares with what people are thinking in Wisconsin, because I want to help put things together for our party, so that we can take back the houses in the Congress, and most importantly, win the presidency in 2008. And I want to help with that.

LAMB: What’s a progressive?

FEINGOLD: In Wisconsin, a progressive is somebody who believes firmly in individual rights, who believes that government should be used only when appropriate – not automatically, but where appropriate – to help solve our problems.

For example, if older people are inappropriately going to nursing homes prematurely, a Progressive says, maybe there’s a way we can create a home and community-based program that will help balance that. That’s a Wisconsin progressive.

But a Wisconsin progressive is also very pro-small business and pro-farmer. And also, tough as nails on spending.

Wisconsin progressives believe that if you want to do something, you should figure out a way to pay for it. So at the same time – so at the same time that I’m a person who is considered Progressive – sometimes called a Liberal – I also am known as one of the top one or two deficit hawks in the whole Senate.

I am the toughest on unnecessary spending. The Concord Coalition has put me on their honor roll. Because that’s how we look at it in Wisconsin.

It doesn’t matter what your political views are, you’ve got to pay the bills. You can’t run up debts. That isn’t about ideology, that’s about good government.

And that’s really the heart of Wisconsin progressivism. It’s about clean, good government. And part of clean, good government in my view is not running up huge bills.

LAMB: In the Senate, though, you’re touching that third rail when it comes to the United States Senate. You’re touching the money rail.

I mean, do they keep you isolated over there? How do they treat you when you after – I mean, you’re not taking the salary increase while you’re in. You’re worried – you’re a deficit hawk.

These are the – the campaign finance can’t be a happy thing for them. They don’t – I mean, the sense you get is, they don’t want it.

FEINGOLD: Well, there were lonely moments during the ’90s.

The deficit hawk think, actually, was sort of popular with both parties there for a while, and we got the job done. But, yes, there were some tough moments on campaign finance reform.

McCain always says that, you know, we wouldn’t win the Miss Congeniality award in either of our caucuses. And we used to kid around, because these Tuesday caucuses were the places where they’d push and shove you to raise the soft money.

And he and I probably should have just had lunch with each other, rather than with the rest of the team, because people were irritated at how hard we pushed. But …

LAMB: How did they treat you under that …

FEINGOLD: Oh, quiet. Not hostile. There were a couple of explosions here and there, even with friends in closed caucus, where they would come at me and said, you know what you’re going to do here? You’re going to destroy the Democratic Party.

And I said, look. There’s no way I would ever do that. And if – I most firmly believe that the Democrats are going to come out ahead, if we go to a more people-based fundraising system. And that’s exactly what happened.

Even Terry McAuliffe, who I didn’t agree with on this issue, on McCain-Feingold, he’s admitted that the change away from unlimited contributions, and instead going to small contributions where the Democratic Party had something like 800,000 new, small contributors. The Republican Party had 400,000 new contributors.

Money wasn’t a problem in this election. But we didn’t have these unlimited, corrupting contributions – the huge contributions to the (ph) political party.

So, there were lonely moments arguing that. But, you know, I didn’t come here to win a popularity contest. I came here to do my job.

And I firmly believe that if the system is being destroyed by corrupting contributions, that it was my obligation to try to do something about it.

And now I feel my relationships with my colleagues are great. They say to me, you know, I’m glad we got rid of that system. That was really ugly. And I don’t get a lot of nostalgia for soft money from my colleagues. It was a scary thing for them to be involved in.

LAMB: Yes, but you’ve got 527s, where people are writing big checks – $27 million on the part of Mr. Soros. Is that what you wanted out of all of this?

FEINGOLD: Well, that’s a big difference. You see, Mr. Soros can’t talk to a member of Congress about this.

This is the difference between big money and politics, which is an important issue, and corruption. Corruption. The destruction of your obligation as a duly-sworn senator. That’s the problem, when a senator can be involved in raising that money.

That’s what McCain-Feingold got rid of. And that is what we intended to do.

We intended to eliminate the situation that I actually witnessed on the floor of the Senate, where somebody had his arm up, voting on a bill, and was at the same time telling a story to another senator about how he’d raised a several hundred thousand dollar check across the street a few minutes before.

That is now a federal crime. Five twenty-seven issue is a serious issue. But the fact is, current law is supposed to make that illegal.

The 1974 law doesn’t allow that. And the Federal Elections Commission simply didn’t do its job. So, Senator McCain – actually, Congressman Shays and Congressman Meehan, who are partners on this legislation, they have a lawsuit that I think will win, that will order the FEC to do this.

And, actually, today, Senator McCain and I, and Trent Lott, will be introducing a bill to also clarify in the law that this abuse cannot happen. That they have to register as political committees. And that means they have to follow the limitations that everybody else has to.

But I do think there’s a world of difference between independent large money and that money which is directly involved in buying votes.

LAMB: So, what about the bundling thing, where you – corporations can’t give money, but the corporation executives and their family all give $2,000 in each cycle. And it comes in, it’s lots of money then. You can raise lots of money.

And the corporations pay more money to their executives, so that they can give more money to politicians. And they end up giving to both sides in all that.

FEINGOLD: Well, it’s – that also is something that is potentially abused. It is much harder to gather huge contributions that way.

And I noticed in the past cycle that, instead of somebody writing out a million-dollar check, to go through the process of trying to find, you know, 500 people willingly to give that amount. And if they coerce people, of course, that’s a crime.

So, it’s not a great part of the system, but it is nothing compared to the ability of one member of Congress calling one person and saying, I want a $500,000 check tomorrow.

So, it’s still – it’s another frontier that should be addressed, should be looked at. But I can tell from my own observations, it doesn’t compare to the danger of one corporate treasury, one union treasury or one individual writing out an enormous check.

LAMB: Could we do this briefly – because we don’t have a whole lot of time – just to get you on the record as to where you stand.

You voted against the U.S. Patriot Act. You’re the only senator that did. Why?

FEINGOLD: Because, as I like to say, I took an unusual step for a legislator – I read the bill.

I was chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee. I thought that we had to have a bill to strengthen our powers against the terrorist elements in the world, and much of the bill made sense.

But when I read that bill, I found provisions relating to business records, library records, sneak-and-seek – sneak-and-peek searches of a person’s house – that were not tailored to the terrorist threat at all. That’s not how the language read.

Even Bob Novak said on CNN a few days later – and he’s not a Feingold guy – he said, Russ Feingold was right. This was an old wish-list of the FBI.

And, you know, I feel I’ve been vindicated on this. Because my opponents came at me heavily in the last election, spending over $10 million, saying that I did the wrong thing there.

Instead, we have people like Larry Craig – NRA board member, senator from Idaho – and others joining with me in a bill called the Safe Act, which would fix those provisions that I think are frankly frightening, in terms of the power they give the government to get at people’s records without the judge having discretion to say no.

I want the judge to be able to say, you know, there’s no evidence here that this person’s done anything wrong.

So, that’s why I did it. I felt I had to send out a warning about these dangers. And, actually, there’s a very strong movement in this country, demanding that we fix the bill this year. And I think we may be able to.

LAMB: In the Senate, 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats and one Independent that votes to the Democrats.

Should the Republican president get his judicial nominees, on the floor at least, for an up-and-down vote?

FEINGOLD: Not necessarily. That would be the norm. That’s the way it usually should be, and that’s exactly what George Bush has received.

I personally have voted for something like 90 percent of George Bush’s judicial appointments, even though many of their philosophical views are very different from mine.

When somebody isn’t qualified, when somebody isn’t responding to the questions from the committee, when somebody shows a complete lack of judicial temperament – in those cases, not only is it appropriate to question the nomination, but I think that person, if we choose to resist it, should have to get 60 votes. That’s the way the Senate has always been.

Senator McCain and I had over 50 votes for McCain-Feingold for years. We didn’t say, hey, no fair. We said, we’ve got to get our 60 votes. That’s how the Senate works.

LAMB: What would you do if the Republicans – and it’s complicated – figured out a way to do the 51-vote business with nominations?

FEINGOLD: Well, that’s what’s called the nuclear option. We need to resist this with every fiber in our body.

LAMB: How do you resist it?

FEINGOLD: By winning the vote when they try to change the rule. And that’s where we’re going to – we have to rely on Republicans who have a conscience, and who care about the Senate as an institution.

And I am confident that we will have those people. I’ve seen a number of them, time and again, even though they don’t agree with us on the issues. They care about the institution.

They know that the Senate is supposed to be, as Thomas Jefferson apparently said, the cooling saucer for the balance in the Congress.

And if you go just to a strict, 50-vote rule, you have destroyed the very character of the Senate, which is a place where there’s supposed to be extensive debate. And the only way to cut off debate is through cloture, which is 60 votes.

I do not think it’s appropriate to gut that rule for a situation where we’ve basically approved the overwhelming majority of Bush appointees.

LAMB: People who are liberals and progressives today often call and say on our call-in show, this is not a democracy. It’s not even a good republic.

I mean, they are very critical of the way it’s set up with the Electoral College and the money and the system, and all that.

What would you say to a group of anybody, I mean, people watching now, about the strength of this so-called democracy?

FEINGOLD: Well, I think we’re still going strong.

The fact that we were able to identify a system that grew up in the 1990s, of unlimited contributions – half a million, million-dollar contributions – which had not been allowed for 100 years – the fact that they became, had completely infected the political process, and that against all the odds – under a Republican president, under a Republican House and Republican Senate – that we were able to stop that practice and get the Supreme Court to say it’s constitutional, gives me heart and belief that the system can be fixed.

There’s much more to be done.

Another example is, I campaigned in ’92 on trying to get rid of the federal deficit. I thought, let’s get out there and see what we can do. I didn’t dream that we could get rid of the deficit, but we did, because public pressure was saying, get rid of the deficit.

It’s very regrettable that this president sent us back into the largest deficit in American history. But we showed it can be done.

So, those are a couple of things that give me heart, that if we keep fighting, if we go for more reforms of the campaign finance system, of the budgeting system, of the whole problem with pork projects – I think, with proper public support and even outrage, I still believe these things can get done here, because that’s been what I’ve experienced in these last 12 years.

It’s been difficult, but we’ve gotten the job done.

LAMB: You like the Electoral College?

FEINGOLD: Not really. I understand that the framers put it there. I understand it’s almost impossible to change, because the small states may never agree to the change.

But it does trouble me that one person can get the most votes and the other one becomes president. I never thought I’d see the day that it would happen, but it did.

LAMB: Can somebody with your views be elected president of the United States in the four to eight years?

FEINGOLD: I think it’s possible. It would be a very unusual change in our country. But, you know, people sort of said to me when I was a state senator, that somebody with my views couldn’t be elected to the United States Senate.

So, I think, to assume that there’s never going to be change, that we won’t ever have a different perspective, I think is a defeatist attitude.

It would be tough, because I really do believe in a progressive agenda. I do not believe in a stick our head in the sand and just let the healthcare system go, just let the jobs go overseas.

The people of the country would have to want a candidate, a person, who is going to really move for real reform.

LAMB: Should gays be allowed to marry?

FEINGOLD: You know, I don’t believe that’s something that is up to me to have a strong opinion on.

I grew up believing that marriage is between a man and a woman. That’s the way I understood it. But I don’t think it’s my job to sit in judgment on people on that issue.

I believe this is up to the states. And I generally think a society where people who are monogamous, where people who love each other come together and form stable families is better than the opposite.

And so, I don’t think it’s my job as a United States senator to pass judgment on who should be married.

LAMB: Some liberal columnists have been writing since the Iraqi elections that, whoops, we were wrong.

FEINGOLD: Well, I don’t know if they think they were wrong about it. To not be happy about the fact that the Iraqi people voted in a democratic election – that’s a great thing. Nobody in their right mind would be against that.

But people weren’t wrong who voted against the Iraq war, who thought it wasn’t the best move in terms of the fight against terrorism. The president was dead wrong about that.

Iraq wasn’t even on the list of the 45 countries – his own list – of the 45 countries that he said al Qaeda was operating in. Now it is the leading training ground – Iraq is – for terrorists in the world. We have created, in some ways, a monster in terms of terrorism.

So, you can be happy and pleased that Iraq has the potential for a democracy, and still at the same time believe it wasn’t the right move at the right time, in terms of fighting the number one threat to Americans, which is the al Qaeda network.

I supported the Afghanistan action, because I thought that was necessary.

So, no. The critics weren’t wrong, and there are still very, very serious problems with this whole concept, the lack of planning, which was really quite pitiful, the lack of planning for the future.

And they still don’t have a good plan for the future of Iraq. It’s sort of being made up as it goes. And that troubles me a great deal.

LAMB: So, somebody’s watching this saying, you know, I’d kind of like to have Senator Feingold out to speak to our group. What do you say to them? What do you require when somebody’s inviting you to come, other than to a place in Wisconsin?

FEINGOLD: Well, it sort of depends on what it sounds like. My first responsibility is for the people of my state. And I do 72 listening sessions every year in Wisconsin. So I’ve got to make sure we do that. And there are many other appearances to be made there.

I have family commitments. I have my job here.

But subject to all that, if there’s an interesting speech opportunity somewhere in the country, where I could do a variety of things in a state, I very much want to get around the country and hear what people say.

Because I think we make a big mistake when we write off states as red states, or whatever – Alabama. I think that’s a way to lose. Because if you don’t go into those states and make sure the Democrats – Democrats like me, from other parts of the country – come in and say, especially to the Democrats there, you know, we care about you. You still matter.

So, for example, I’m going to be going to Alabama in a few weeks, and talk to some of the Democrats there.

LAMB: Do you have a committee set up to allow you to raise money to do this?

FEINGOLD: I am setting up a leadership committee that would allow me to do that sort of thing and support other candidates, yes.

And, of course, I’d be permitted to do it through my own personal campaign committee, within certain limits.

But I want to have a separate entity that allows me to go and, you know, pay for the airfare and go to these places, yes.

LAMB: Senator Feingold, we’re out of time. Thank you very much.

FEINGOLD: Thank you.