Campaign Reform Bid Dead Again Scandal-Ridden System Survives Another Year
Senate Republican leaders killed on Thursday a bipartisan effort to overhaul the nation’s campaign-finance laws, leaving intact a system that many senators called inherently corrupt and laced with loopholes.
Although the Senate voted 51-48 to continue debate on a proposal that would have banned unlimited “soft money” contributions and enacted many other changes, the tally was nine votes short of the 60 needed to end a filibuster engineered by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. The Mississippi Republican promptly declared the bill dead and pulled it off the Senate floor.
“Unfortunately, the Senate has once again proved that the American people’s cynicism about Congress’ ability to pass meaningful reform is well-founded,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe, the Maine Republican who led an effort for a compromise bill. In a later interview, Snowe said, “Frankly, you can’t blame Democrats. The problem has been on our side.”
Still, proponents of campaign-finance overhaul expressed satisfaction that they had cobbled together a coalition that included every Democratic senator and seven Republicans, thus disproving GOP assertions that the fight was strictly partisan. And overhaul advocates killed a Republican leadership proposal that would have limited union-backed political advertising.
Republican leaders disputed suggestions that the overhaul effort was bipartisan, saying the proposal was put together mostly by Democrats and some moderate GOP members who were protecting the interests of labor unions and ignoring free-speech concerns.
“Spending is speech,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., succinctly summing up his argument against numerous measures that would have limited political contributions.
But, in an embarrassment for Lott, the Mississippi senator failed in his effort Thursday to win support for an alternative bill he called the “Paycheck Protection Act.” That bill would have allowed union members to prevent their dues from being used for labor-sponsored political ads, which mostly help Democrats.
Lott’s proposal drew 46 votes, 14 short of the number needed to stop a filibuster against it. Nine Republicans opposed Lott’s measure, with most of them saying the bill was too narrow and did nothing to fight the biggest campaign loophole that allows soft-money contributions.
The key moment Thursday came when 51 senators indicated they favored the bill co-sponsored by Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and John McCain, R-Ariz. In addition, the lone absent senator, Thomas Harkin, D-Iowa, had been expected to vote for the bill, meaning there were 52 supporters.
That prompted senators from both parties who backed the bill to claim Lott was using parliamentary maneuvers to subvert the will of the majority.
“We have a bipartisan majority and a partisan minority,” Feingold said in a speech on the Senate floor just before the vote. “We have Republicans and Democrats together favoring the bill, and a smaller group of one party opposing the bill.”
All 44 Democrats who were present backed the measure, along with seven Republicans: Snowe, McCain, Susan Collins of Maine, James Jeffords of Vermont, John Chafee of Rhode Island, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Fred Thompson of Tennessee.
But the House could vote on a similar campaign bill in March. So far, advocates for changing the campaign finance system are far short of the votes necessary to pass a bill.
But Rep. Martin Meehan, the Massachusetts Democrat who is co-sponsoring the House bill with Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., said he hopes the public reacts to the Senate vote by putting pressure on the House to pass the bill.
“Ideally, if we could enact a soft-money ban, that would put pressure on the Senate to act,” Meehan said. McCain said the campaign finance bill was not likely to be revived this year and said joking, “It is always darkest before it turns totally black.”
But McCain said it is inevitable that a bill will be passed in coming years because there will be more indictments, as well as convictions, resulting from Congress’s fund-raising investigations.
Still, many analysts said the vote represented the best opportunity in years to pass an overhaul bill, partly because of the 17 months of publicity about Democratic campaign abuses. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, headed by Thompson, conducted 31 days of hearings on fund-raising last year and is about to issue a 1,500-page report concluding that President Clinton may have violated federal laws by using unlimited soft-money contributions to the Democratic Party to help his re-election campaign.
The soft-money donations are supposed to be used only for party-building activities and not for a specific candidate’s election.
In addition, the Democratic Party had raised millions of dollars from illegal and questionable sources for the 1996 elections, including money from foreign sources. Several people have been indicted as a result of the investigation.
Politically, the action Thursday played into the hands of Democrats who have been on the defensive for months over fund-raising scandals.
It allowed Democrats to criticize the system that allegedly was abused by the White House and blame Republicans for retaining it because the GOP receives a disproportionate share of soft-money contributions. The campaign system is “corrupting, and it ought to be changed,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.
xxxx THE VOTE The Senate’s 51-48 roll call vote failed to end a filibuster against campaign finance legislation. On this vote, a “yes” vote was a vote to end the filibuster and a “no” vote was a vote to sustain it. It requires 60 votes to end a filibuster. Voting “yes” were 44 Democrats, including Washington’s Patty Murray, and 7 Republicans. Voting “no” were 0 Democrats and 48 Republicans, including Washington’s Slade Gorton.