Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
After challenges from the House leadership, and mixed messages from the White House, campaign reformers finally win.
Feb 14, 2002 | As befits the history of the recent campaign finance reform battle, the House debate on the bill Wednesday was a schizophrenic affair. In the morning, the GOP House leadership was furious at the White House for sounding ambivalent, if not vaguely supportive, of the Shays-Meehan bill, the leading campaign finance reform bill, offered by Reps. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Marty Meehan, D-Mass. By the afternoon, at the behest of the angry House GOP, the White House rained on the Shays-Meehan parade. Even though the Shays-Meehan team had resoundingly won three big votes, waves of panic swept through its ranks.
But finally, in the wee hours of Thursday morning, after fending off a number of amendments that GOP opponents offered in an attempt to kill the bill, Shays-Meehan emerged victorious, passing 240-189. The bill's supporters hope it will now be able to go straight to the Senate for a vote -- avoiding the often perilous conference committee -- and, should it pass, go directly to President Bush's desk.
As Wednesday drew to a close, such an outcome seemed increasingly unlikely. Momentum seemed to shift to Republican opponents, while supporters of the bill ran all over the Hill, placing phone calls and buttonholing wavering members of their coalition. The plans of even staunch supporters of the bill, like Reps. Zack Wamp, R-Tenn., and Fred Upton, R-Mich., were up in the air. Republican opponents of the bill finally found a line of attack that seemed to be working -- with the help of the White House, which had previously been keeping above the fray -- by suggesting that the latest version of Shays-Meehan had been amended to let Democrats have some last-minute fun with soft money.
Soft money, which Shays-Meehan would ban, is the unregulated, unlimited campaign cash for purported party-building activities; wealthy interests use it as a loophole to skirt the intent if not the letter of post-Watergate campaign law. With the bill closer than ever to becoming law, interesting alliances and defections emerged. Though the Enron scandal has breathed new life into the bill's chances, forcing it out onto the floor for a vote against the wishes of the GOP House leadership, there have always been Democrats who have argued that the bill is tantamount to political suicide, since Republicans have always proved superior at raising regulated, limited hard dollars.
Some of these Democratic defections first emerged during last winter's debate on the Senate version of the bill offered by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis. Some emerged when the bill hit the House in the summer and members of the Congressional Black Caucus began defecting from the reform team, despite having voted for the bill in the past.
Whether enjoying corporate largesse at swank convention parties, exploiting various campaign loopholes in the Gore for President campaign or killing off previous campaign finance reform bills, the Democratic Party has shown itself to be increasingly addicted to unlimited corporate and union cash.
So suspicions that Democrats were looking for ways to weasel around a soft-money ban, while getting credit for supporting Shays-Meehan, have a long history. The question for Shays-Meehan opponents then became: What deals did the Shays-Meehan team make with Democratic wafflers to ensure their support? And, furthermore, how do we counter them?
Wednesday morning, the bill's opponents didn't look like they'd be getting any help from the White House. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer continued to suggest that it wouldn't be a complete and utter capitulation if the president were to sign Shays-Meehan. Both the Shays-Meehan bill and its House leadership favored alternatives to "make progress and improve the system," Fleischer said. "In analyzing the bills right now, they would both -- in the president's opinion -- improve the system and that is at the end of the day what he is looking for."
"If campaign finance reform is enacted into law, I believe that you can thank President George W. Bush, because he changed the dynamic of how this phony debate has finally ended in Washington, D.C.," Fleischer said, with a straight face.
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