Campaign Reform Push Hits Familiar Obstacles

Over the years, nothing has tied Congress in knots quite like campaign finance reform.

In 1988, opposition to reform legislation was so fierce that one lawmaker had to be collared by the sergeant-at-arms and carried feet-first into the Senate chamber to force him to vote. Another stab at reform set the all-time record for failed attempts to stop a filibuster. And the one bill that made it all the way to the White House did so only because Congress knew it was destined for a presidential veto.

Now, lawmakers are about to try again.

Growing disenchantment with the current system and its role in this year’s elections are giving Congress the most powerful push in decades to revamp the political money-raising system.

“This [election campaign] has shown us once again that our campaigns cost too much, they take too much time, they raise too many questions. And now is the time for bipartisan campaign finance reform legislation,” President Clinton said this week. “We clearly have a unique moment of opportunity.”

But lawmakers and others with a stake in the status quo already appear inclined to apply the brakes to any fundamental changes in the way politicians solicit and spend money.

Leading members of both parties are discussing options that reform advocates see as delaying tactics. Some want to appoint a study commission that could take the issue off the front burner until public passion has cooled. Some propose passage of a constitutional amendment that could take years to enact. Some suggest congressional hearings, which could drag on indefinitely.

“We need to lay out clearly what are the contours of campaign spending,” says House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). “There are some areas you want to look at but you want to do it very carefully and very systematically.”

“Some pretty high-ranking folks in both parties are basically trying to divert the issue by suggesting ways to solve it that won’t happen,” observes Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), co-sponsor of Clinton-endorsed legislation that would impose voluntary limits on campaign spending.

Indeed, campaign finance has proved remarkably resistant to change in the 22 years since the last major reform legislation was enacted.

This year’s effort faces many of the same political and legal obstacles that have bedeviled campaign reformers for the last generation. There is no consensus between the parties--or even within each party--about what the problem is and what the solution should be. Moreover, Supreme Court rulings have made it virtually impossible to limit campaign spending. And incumbent politicians generally do not regard it as in their self-interest to tinker with the system that has given them power.

All that may change if recent revelations about foreign contributions to political parties become a scandal of Watergate proportions. If that happens, incumbents may feel that they will pay a political price if they do not do something to clean up the system.

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But so far, that sense of urgency has not been widespread.

“No one would ever say passing this is easy,” says Ann McBride, president of Common Cause, a leading proponent of campaign finance reform. “But it would be the height of hypocrisy, after all this discussion, for Congress to come in and say: ‘Just kidding!’ ”

The current system was established in the wake of the Watergate scandal in 1974, when Congress passed a law limiting campaign spending and requiring public disclosure of contributions. The law tried to ban corporate and union contributions, limited individual contributions to $1,000 per candidate, limited overall spending and provided public financing for presidential campaigns.

This year’s legislative, legal and political developments were a parade of horrors for reformers who want to rein in campaign spending.

On the legislative front, the Senate in mid-1996 killed a bill by Feingold and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would have banned political action committees, imposed voluntary limits on campaign spending and required candidates to raise more than half their money from donors in their own states. The House failed to pass even a watered-down version.

On the legal front, the Supreme Court in June issued a landmark decision that opened the floodgates by allowing the parties to devote unlimited amounts of money to “independent expenditures”--advertising and other election-related efforts that are not coordinated with specific candidates.

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The Federal Election Commission does not yet know exactly how much the parties exploited that new avenue of political spending, but it is clear that party spending in general has skyrocketed. As of Oct. 16, the Republican Party had raised $278 million to help candidates in 1995-96, up 69% from four years earlier. The Democratic Party had raised $140 million, up 64% from 1991-92.

In addition, both parties vastly expanded their use of a loophole allowing them to accept unlimited amounts of “soft money”--contributions used for “party-building” activities that ostensibly do not benefit any particular candidate. “Soft money” contributions to both parties--which come almost entirely from corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals--totaled $223 million, a 166% increase for Republicans and a 219% increase for Democrats over 1991-92.

And that is just part of an explosion of spending outside the law’s feeble limits. Organized labor dumped $35 million into attacks on House Republicans in a brash use of a loophole allowing unlimited spending on “issue advocacy.” Business and other special interests followed suit.

Altogether, spending by candidates, parties and other outside groups mushroomed to about $2 billion during the 1995-96 election cycle, Common Cause estimates.

The whole scene, critics say, shows that the only law governing campaign finance these days is the law of the jungle.

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That message was driven home during the final weeks of the campaign, when GOP candidate Bob Dole hammered Clinton for revelations about foreign contributions to the Democratic Party. Dole called for creation of a commission to recommend campaign finance reforms, including abolition of “soft money.” Clinton fired back with his own endorsement of campaign reform, reiterating his support for the McCain-Feingold bill.

The issue was discussed at Clinton’s first meeting with congressional leaders this week. But there are already signs that the post-election stampede toward bipartisanship is being detoured by deep disagreements over what kind of reform is needed.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) opposes the McCain-Feingold bill. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who led opposition to the bill earlier this year, flatly predicts that it will go nowhere.

A Gingrich aide acknowledges that the GOP is under pressure from the public to do something but is also under pressure from incumbents not to do too much. “Both sides will want to show an effort,” the aide says. “But this is the coin of the realm for these guys.”

Lott says that he intends to begin the year with hearings into campaign finance abuses of the 1996 elections, keeping the spotlight on questionable Democratic fund-raising. Beyond hearings, Lott is thinking about setting up a task force to develop a campaign finance proposal.

The GOP agenda is likely to include a ban on contributions from foreign nationals, such as those at the center of the controversial Democratic fund-raising practices revealed before the election. Republicans also are eager to include a provision making it harder for labor unions to use members’ dues for political purposes.

Some reform advocates are encouraged by the growing consensus around the need to abolish or limit “soft money.” But the idea, endorsed by Dole and Clinton, will meet resistance from state parties that have become increasingly dependent on such funds and lawmakers like McConnell who do not want to pass laws that preempt the states.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to getting legislation through Congress is the lack of consensus about exactly what needs to be fixed.

The most common diagnosis is that campaigns cost too much. But the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that limiting candidates’ spending is an unconstitutional violation of free-speech rights, unless the limits are voluntarily embraced. Some lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), have called for a constitutional amendment to overturn the 1976 decision. But no one thinks that will happen any time soon.

Even among advocates, there is disagreement about how important it is to limit candidates’ spending. Thomas Mann, an expert on Congress at the Brookings Institution, argues that it is more important to find a way to regulate the kind of noncandidate spending that grew so explosively in this year’s campaigns.

“I don’t think unlimited spending by candidates is a big problem,” says Mann. “The real problems this time were soft money, independent party spending and issue advocacy.”

Reform advocates are encouraged by polls showing that voter support for public financing of campaigns is the highest it has been since Watergate. Voters in three states this fall--California, Colorado and Maine--easily approved ballot initiatives imposing curbs on campaign spending for state offices.

But it remains to be seen whether public frustration with the campaign finance system will translate into concerted pressure for change on the federal level. Ellen Miller, director of the Center for Responsive Politics, despairs that people may have gotten too accustomed to hearing about campaign abuses.

She quotes Thomas Paine: “The long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right. Time makes more converts than reason.”