Campaign Reform

WASHINGTON - Before Sept. 11, one of the principal legislative objectives of congressional reformers was campaign finance reform, with advocates of both parties poised for a final push to enactment. The Senate had already passed its version of the bill banning soft money, and the House, having approved such legislation in two previous sessions, was ready to do the same. But now, with only weeks before the end of the year, the legislation appears stalled, at least until Congress comes back from the year-end holidays.

MONEY'S LIKE heroin to politicians. They want it. They need it. And as much as they flirt with quitting their habit for good, they always come slinking back for more. So even if a bill banning so-called "soft money" had passed the House and been signed by President Bush, cash would still have been a corrupting issue in American politics. Corporate pushers would have found another way to peddle their influence. Public officials would still have been able to get their finance fix. But campaign finance reform legislation (known as McCain-Feingold in the Senate and Shays-Meehan in the House)

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision limiting how much political parties can give directly to candidates' campaigns isn't quite a green light for banning soft money as proposed in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, but at least it's not a red light. That should help achieve passage when the bill, already cleared by the Senate, comes up in the House shortly. The ruling doesn't deal directly with soft (unregulated) money, but it does reaffirm the basic notion that large amounts of money can be a corrupting influence in the election process and hence can constitutionally be limited.

WASHINGTON -- Mr. Campaign Reform -- Sen. John McCain -- joined the fight against punch-card ballots and their various evil chads and dimples the other day with yet another congressional hearing on how to prevent a repeat of November's Florida presidential election fiasco. The focus once again was on voting equipment and how its shortcomings disenfranchised millions of voters and how voting irregularities of one kind or another deprived minorities of their right to cast ballots and have them counted.

WASHINGTON -- With the Senate's expected approval today of sweeping changes in campaign finance laws, Sen. John McCain and his reform-minded allies are preparing to savor a long-sought triumph. After struggling for more than a decade, they are on the verge of what is being described as a landmark victory in the fight to reduce the influence of big money in politics. But who wins in the long run -- assuming that the House approves the measure and President Bush signs it into law -- could be an entirely different matter.

WASHINGTON - Tired of pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into politics every year, a growing number of corporate CEOs are not waiting for new campaign finance laws to rein in political money. They've simply quit giving the big bucks. Steve Palko, the president and co-founder of Cross Timbers Oil in Fort Worth, Texas, donated about $150,000 a year to politicians, including unregulated "soft money" donations to political parties. Finally, he decided he could no longer justify it. "This way of doing business, I think, erodes the public confidence in the system," he said.

WASHINGTON -- McCainism, the McCarthyism of today's "progressives," involves, as McCarthyism did, the reckless hurling of imprecise accusations. Then the accusation was "communism!" Today it is "corruption!" Pandemic corruption of "everybody" by "the system" supposedly justifies campaign-finance reforms. Those reforms would subject the rights of political speech and association to yet further government limits and supervision, by restricting the political contributions and expenditures that are indispensable for communication in modern society.

WASHINGTON - In a gesture to a former rival, President Bush met at the White House yesterday with Sen. John McCain, whose unwavering demand for campaign finance reform could pose a direct challenge to Bush from within his own party. Bush and McCain, bitter opponents in the Republican presidential primaries, spoke for about 45 minutes and explored their differences over how to clean up the way political campaigns are financed - a high-stakes and divisive issue in Washington. McCain said after the meeting, which Vice President Dick Cheney attended, that he had had a "productive and good conversation" with the president.

WASHINGTON -- On Congress' first working day after the inauguration of the second President Bush, Sen. John McCain and six other Republican lawmakers showed up with Sen. Russell Feingold and two other Democrats to demonstrate their solidarity behind campaign finance reform. Together, they are co-sponsors of the McCain-Feingold bill in the Senate and the companion House bill offered by Republican Rep. Christopher Shays and Democrat Martin Meehan. The two bills would, among other things, ban all unregulated or "soft money" contributions in federal elections.

AS ELECTION DAY recedes into history, the fund-raising frenzy has been tallied, and the situation is bleak. Not just because the average U.S. senator spent over $5.5 million to win election, or because the two major presidential candidates spent over $300 million in hard money, or because the amount spent in the 2000 elections is up more than a third from 1996, or that the moneyed interests that invested in their candidates are set to receive the requisite...