March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Countdown to reform

The glacier of campaign-finance reform scraping along in the House may pick up momentum now that Rep. Gerry Solomon of New York has signed on to the freshman’s version, drafted in part by Maine Rep. Tom Allen. Building support for this important bill is essential in the two weeks before the vote.

Rep. Solomon, a Republican who has announced his retirement, is chairman for the House Committee on Rules, and, as such, has the ability to establish rules for the finance-reform vote that can help it or hurt it. A reform bill last month opposed by many Republicans, for instance, came under a suspension-of-rules provision that prevented amendents to the proposal and required a two-thirds majority for passage.

The bill sponsored by freshman Reps. Allen and Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., will be heard with its better-known cousin, the Shays-Meehan proposal, under open rules. This means that there will be more time for debate, amendments and discussion, allowing House members to craft a proposal that the majority can support. After years of gamesmanship on this issue, an honest, open vote on these bills is welcome.

The choice between the freshman bill and Shays-Meehan is between a good start with a better chance of passage and a stronger bill with less support. Both bills are bipartisan, but the party in power — the GOP — is leaning toward the freshman bill: Of its 76 co-sponsors, 26 are Republicans. Some long-term advocates of campaign finance reform don’t like the freshman effort because it could have the effect of encouraging soft money for campaigns to be sent to state parties instead of the current practice of sending to the national organizations.

That’s a possibility and would require states to set limits on the soft money they can receive. But the freshman bill is valuable in other areas. For instance, it would ban the practice of national parties collecting soft only through state parties and would stop states from transfering that money among themselves. In addition, the bill improves the methods by which candidates disclose fund-raising activity and makes some headway in reducing the likelihood of attack ads.

No one, not even Reps. Allen and Hutchinson, will argue that the freshman bill is all the nation must do to repair a campaign finance system that has gone out of control in recent years. The question, after years of empty bills and congressional sleight of hand that has produced nothing, is where to begin. Congress could do worse than use the freshman bill as its starting line.


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