Gore Demands Group Reveal Funding

W A S H I N G T O N, July 5 -- They call themselves “Citizens for Better Medicare,” but Vice President Al Gore says they’re a front for the pharmaceutical industry and he is demanding that they reveal the source of their funding.

President Clinton signed legislation last week requiring so-called stealth political action committees to disclose the names of their donors. Citizens for Better Medicare, one of the many groups affected by the reform, is running TV, radio and print ads bashing a plan backed by Gore that would expand Medicare to include a prescription drug benefit.

“Government price controls on medicines interfere with doctors and patients,” the narrator says in one 60-second television spot. “Call Congress. Don’t let federal price controls cost you your medicines and your health.”

“Millions of dollars right now are going into a phony coalition called ‘Citizens for Better Medicare,’” Gore said at the American Federation of Teachers Convention in Philadelphia this afternoon, “which is polluting the public airwaves with special interest TV ads designed to deceive the American people about a prescription drug benefit.”

The new campaign finance law doesn’t require the shadowy organizations to reveal their past donors, so the Democratic presidential candidate is demanding that CBM do so voluntarily.

“I call on your organization to reveal the source of your million dollar campaign,” Gore wrote in a letter to Timothy C. Ryan, executive director of CBM, “so Americans can understand the real voices in this critical debate, not special interests cloaked in secrecy.

“The American people deserve to know who exactly is trying to influence this critical issue.”

After signing the campaign disclosure bill into law, Clinton made a similar plea.

“In the spirit of this law which I have signed,” the president said Saturday. “I think that Citizens for Better Medicare oughtto … open their books and disclose the sources ofthe funds which have paid for these ads — Let the American people judge ifthis organization truly is for better Medicare.”