Politics

Reformers Try Again

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

July 9, 2001 / 9:42 AM EDT / CBS

A week after a dispute over debate rules scuttled plans for a vote on campaign finance reform, supporters are trying a procedural ploy to bring the measure to the floor, reports CBS News Correspondent Bob Fuss.

The supporters are circulating a discharge petition, trying to gain enough signatures to force Republican leaders to bring the issue up for a vote.

The GOP leadership last week attached unusual rules to the bill that would have split it into 14 different parts for voting. Supporters felt that would kill any chance of passing the bill, and voted the rules down. That kept the bill itself from coming up for a vote.

Republican leaders, who oppose the reforms, have said they won't schedule another vote, but supporters have promised to defy them.

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The measure would ban soft money, the unregulated millions pouring into political parties from corporations, unions and individuals, and restrict certain political ads in the final days of an election.

The House version, sponsored by Reps. Chris Shays, R-Conn., and Marty Meehan, D-Mass., is similar to a Senate reform bill authored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis.

After the defeat last week, reform supporters said they would try to talk GOP leaders into allowing another vote. If not, they vowed to try a discharge petition.

Another option would have the Senate try to attach the legislation to a House-passed bill, which would send it back to the House for action. McCain said on Sunday that he has spoken with Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and "he's agreeable to attaching … campaign finance reform to bills that have to be passed by the House over there."

That did not sit well with the Senate's top Republican, Mississippi's Trent Lott.

"Their attitude is, you do it our way or else we're going to ram it through," Lott said on Fox News Sunday. "If they try to do that, all they're going to do is to tie up the Senate in very difficult ways."

Lott said Americans are more concerned about energy, prescription drugs and crime. "That's what people want us to work on," he said. "It's time that we move on."

Still another option cited by some supporters of Shay-Meehan would be to hold up other House action until the body revisits campaign finance reform.

While the Shays-Meehan bill passed the House in 1998 and 1999 only to die in the Senate, it was given new life this year by the Senate's passage of McCain-Feingold.

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The legislation would largely ban soft-money donations. Those are the unlimited contributions made by individuals, corporations and unions to the political parties, often used to buy television ads.

The measure also would stop unions, corporations and many independent groups from airing certain types of political advertising in the final 60 days of a campaign.

While the Senate bill sponsored by McCain and Feingold raised the limits on federally regulated, individual "hard money" donations from $1,000 to $2,000 per year, the new version of Shays-Meehan leaves the limit at $1,000 per year for House candidates and applies the higher limits only to Senate candidates.

The two parties raised nearly $500 million in soft money in the two-year period that ended on Dec., 31, and Republican figures released during the day underscored the importance of such funds.

The GOP House campaign committee reported raising $38.6 million for the first six months of this year, $21 million in regulated money and $17.6 million in unlimited soft-money donations.

The debate last week pitted reform supporters against a motley mix of opponents. The American Civil Liberties Union and National Rifle Association teamed up to oppose the legislation on the grounds that it limited free speech. Some black Democrats worried the bill might cut funding for voter registration drives.