Soft-Money Showdown

The fate of campaign finance reform will be decided in Congress within a few weeks. Either the House takes up this critical issue or it almost surely will be dead until a new Congress is seated in 2001. The decision is up to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). If he allows the measure to linger he has signed its death warrant, and American politics will be the worse for it.

A majority of House members want reform. A majority of senators also support it. And assuredly American voters do too. Hastert should allow an early vote on this key issue, but instead he has scheduled debate for mid-September. There is no doubt that the bipartisan measure sponsored by Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.) will pass in the House. A similar measure won 252 to 179 last August with backing from most House Democrats and 61 Republicans.

But the bill fell victim to a filibuster in the Senate, and that will happen again this year if Hastert delays action. That is why Democrats are sponsoring what’s called a discharge petition to force an immediate vote, a tactic employed last year, unsuccessfully. Unlike in 1998, however, moderate Republicans are reluctant to challenge the new speaker, who is trying to bring order to House operations. By the middle of last week, 195 Democrats and one independent had signed the petition. No Republicans had.

Then Shays and five fellow GOP moderates lost patience and signed the discharge. The petition now has 202 names, 16 short of the majority needed to force action. Although the reform bill itself has 32 GOP co-sponsors, only those six Republicans have signed the discharge petition. Shays put it bluntly to the non-signers: “If you do not sign the petition now, your co-sponsorship of Shays-Meehan, while laudable, will be revealed to all simply as an exercise in political cover.” Four non-signers are from California: Brian P. Bilbray of San Diego, Tom Campbell of San Jose, Elton Gallegly of Simi Valley and Stephen Horn of Long Beach.

Shays-Meehan would eliminate soft-money contributions--unlimited amounts of cash given to political committees ostensibly for party building functions such as voter registration. Loopholes now allow such money to be used to support or oppose candidates, and soft money was the culprit in the bulk of the 1996 presidential campaign fund-raising abuses.

Many in Congress expressed outrage at such abuses during investigatory hearings last year and called for stern action against the offenders. But now they resist fixing the law that’s the root of the problem, claiming that the banning of soft money would violate their constitutional right to free speech. This is a sham that is just as transparent to voters as it is to Shays and his allies.

Even Speaker Hastert must see the weakness of his position. The smart thing to do--the right thing--is to allow a vote on Shays-Meehan during the next three weeks.

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To Take Action: Rep. Brian P. Bilbray, (202) 225-2040, e-mail bilbray@hr.house.gov; Rep. Tom Campbell, (202) 225-2631, e-mail campbell@hr.house.gov; Rep. Elton Gallegly, (202) 225-5811, no direct e-mail listed; Rep. Stephen Horn, (202) 225-6676, no direct e-mail listed.