It’s Stop or Go for Campaign Reform

Since 1991, the auto and steel industries have given $5.7 million in campaign contributions and Congress has repeatedly voted not to impose tougher car fuel-efficiency standards.

Makers of brand-name drugs contributed $18.6 million and Congress allowed them to hold on longer to their lucrative patents.

In the 1996 election cycle, the tobacco industry gave $9.8 million, mostly to Republicans; last year, GOP leaders tucked a $50-billion tax break into the budget.

All those contributions--and millions of dollars more--were perfectly legal.

And they are nothing more than “the American way,” a simple exercise in free speech, according to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.). If anything, he would like to lift current contribution limits.

But Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) disagree. They want to reduce the influence of money in politics. To them, big contributions smack of special-interest quid pro quos that threaten to turn America into a perverse “corporate democracy.”

Those competing--and irreconcilable--views of current campaign finance laws are at the core of the debate unfolding in the Senate, where two showdown votes scheduled for today will likely settle the fate of campaign finance reform for the year.

McCain and Feingold have introduced a bill that would ban the millions of dollars of unrestricted “soft money” contributions that were at the center of congressional investigations into irregularities in the 1996 presidential campaigns.

But Lott countered with a proposal to restrict the use of union dues for political purposes, which pro-labor Democrats denounced as an unacceptable “poison pill” designed to derail campaign finance reform altogether.

Lott on Tuesday tried to kill the McCain-Feingold bill but could muster only 48 votes. Fifty-one senators, including seven Republicans, voted to keep the proposal alive. (A Democratic supporter of reform missed the vote.)

That majority support, however, is misleading because in the Senate it takes 60 votes to overcome an opposition filibuster.

But Lott’s anti-union proposal also is well short of the 60-vote requirement. All 45 Democrats and four Republicans are co-sponsors of McCain-Feingold.

Wading into that standoff, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), who is sympathetic to McCain-Feingold, has proposed a compromise amendment that would impose new restrictions on political ads by both labor unions and corporations.

Reform advocates had hoped that her amendment, if adopted as part of the McCain-Feingold bill, would win it additional support.

But in a show of strength, Lott voluntarily accepted Snowe’s amendment Wednesday night and then called for a vote to kill the McCain-Feingold bill, as amended.

Although the Senate voted, 50 to 48, against Lott, the majority leader showed that the newly amended McCain-Feingold bill still is short of the necessary 60 votes that it needs to prevail. (Two Democrats missed the vote.)

The outcome prompted Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the GOP floor leader against McCain-Feingold, to declare that his forces have 48 “rock-solid” votes against the proposal. “It’s over,” he said. After today “we’re going to move on to issues that people care about.”

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But Feingold disagreed, noting that his proposal now has for the first time “a working majority” of 52 votes, up from 49 just six months ago. “This is another important step,” he said.

The Senate today is scheduled to attempt to break the gridlock. But with both sides short of the needed 60 votes, the standoff is likely to remain.

And Lott already has signaled his intention in such an event to remove the issue from the Senate calendar and move on to other business, perhaps a much-delayed highway funding bill.

Yet Democrats have vowed to keep bringing up the McCain-Feingold bill in the form of amendments to unrelated legislation, a protest action intended to bring Senate business to a virtual halt.

“And we will pursue this and persist so long as it takes to be successful,” said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

Outside Congress, in the meantime, reform advocates already have laid plans to keep the issue alive, at least in the court of public opinion.

The leaders include Becky Cain, president of the League of Women Voters, and Ann McBride, head of Common Cause, a citizens’ lobbying group.

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Common Cause released a report highlighting apparent links between big-money contributions and congressional behavior that are detrimental to consumers.

By granting auto makers relief from tougher emission requirements, McBride said, Congress in effect “increased air pollution and aggravated global warming.” And by allowing brand-name drug-makers to hold on to their patents longer, Congress “denied the American public access” to cheaper, generic drugs, she said.

“These examples don’t begin to explore all the agendas of all special-interest political contributors, their victories on Capitol Hill and at the White House and their overall impact on the American public,” McBride added.

The debate over campaign finance reform, Cain said, “is about creating a system in which checks on the ballot carry more weight than checks from wealthy special interests.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a McCain-Feingold co-sponsor, also expressed a determination to press on--even if Lott takes down the bill today.

“Campaign finance reform is an idea that will not die,” she said. “Sooner or later, those who ignore the will of the public will pay a steep price.”