The Moment Of Truth

The fate of campaign finance reform is about to unfold on Capitol Hill.

Starting on Monday, the Senate will hold two weeks of debate on how best to curb the influence of big money in federal campaigns.

That a debate will occur at all is a victory for the issue's two main proponents in the Senate: John McCain and Russ Feingold. In recent years, the Arizona Republican and the Wisconsin Democrat have seen their legislation stalled time and again.

But now, McCain, Feingold, and their allies say they have the necessary 60 votes this time around to overcome any such parliamentary obstacles, in part because the Senate is evenly divided between the two parties.

What's less certain is whether they will have the votes to pass a bill, whether that bill will become law, and whether that law would survive a court challenge.

"Chances are better than they've ever been before," said McCain on NBC's Meet The Press.

"I think we'll have a lot of Democratic voters and more Republican votes than you might think," Feingold said of the Senate on CBS News' Face The Nation on Sunday.

But some Senate Democrats who supported the measure in the past - knowing that enough Republicans would kill it - appear to be having second thoughts. Sen. John Breaux, D-La., said recently he opposes the bill after having "read it more carefully."

At the heart of the debate is "soft money" - unlimited contributions by unions, corporations, or individuals to political parties that can be used in ads and other activities that don't directly advocate the support or defeat of a candidate. This money is now considered separately from the limited donations that individuals may make to the candidates or the political parties. The McCain-Feingold bill would ban it.

Yet what worries some Democrats on the eve of the Senate debate is that a ban could put them at a financial disadvantage with the Republicans. In recent years, they've have caught up with the GOP in raising "soft money." However, Democrats still lag far behind Republicans in the smaller, regulated, "hard money" donations to the two parties.

On the other side of the aisle, a key Republican opponent said the McCain-Feingold approach was misguided and ultimately would hurt the nation's political process by making it harder for new candidates to come forward.

"You can't wring money out of politics. What you can do is eliminate the ability of the political parties, the one entity out there that will support challengers, to make their case," Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell said Sunday.

And another GOP senator who backed McCain in his bid for the White House last year is touting a rival alternative that would limit "soft money" without banning it and tighten certain disclosure requirements.

"What I don't want to see come out of this is that we so weaken our parties at this state level, especially because of the get ot the vote, all the things that parties do that nobody else would do. Wealthy individuals and third parties will not do that," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told Face The Nation on Sunday.

Feingold argued Hagel's alternative would be worse than "no bill at all."

"The fact is, this is a new, corrupting influence on our system that the members of the Congress have become addicted to. They were just fine without it five years ago and the parties were just fine without it five years ago, and they will be again without 'soft money,'" he told Face.

And then there's President Bush, who beat McCain for the Republican presidential nod last year after a bitter fight in the primaries. The president has sent lawmakers a list of his own preferences for campaign finance reform. Mr. Bush would outlaw unregulated "soft money" donations by companies and unions, but he disagrees with McCain's call for a ban on individual "soft money" gifts to the parties.

So far, all sides are saying kind things. McCain says he's glad the president has joined the debate. And the White House says Mr. Bush is confident Congress will pass a bill he can sign into law. Similar niceties were on display on Face The Nation on Sunday.

Hagel said McCain and Feingold "deserve great credit and acclaim for initially is pushing this to the point where we are, in fact, going to get two weeks of transparent debate, and hopefully we're going to get a bill out of the Senate that the president can sign."

Feingold called Hagel "part of the solution to the extent that he has voted for cloture and making sure whoever wins wins."

"If Chuck Hagel's bill wins by a majority, so be it. If McCain-Feingold wins, so be it. But there won't be a filibuster this time," Feingold added.

However, even if all sides can agree and a campaign finance reform bill does become law, constitutional questions are lurking, as well.

Efforts to reduce the influence of money must fit into a framework of a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld limits on certain campaign contributions.

In its ruling in Buckley vs. Valeo, the court cited "the corrupting potential of large financial contributions to candidates" as the reason for upholding limits on donations to politicians, despite its impact on the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees free speech.

At the same time, the court limited the regulations to communications that "include explicit words of advocacy of election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate for federal office." Otherwise, it ruled, the restrictions would be too vague for individuals to know what was allowed and what was not.

Critics of McCain-Feingold argue it runs afoul of that ruling, because "soft money" may not be used to directly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate.

Supporters arge otherwise: That the court upheld limits on contributions of a different sort a quarter-century ago, and would do so again.

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