Last shot at reform

The House has a final chance starting this week to pass a meaningful campaign-finance reform measure. For once, there is a small hope that something good might happen.

The signs are encouraging. Dozens of poison-pill amendments that were introduced to stop reform have been defeated with strong bipartisan support. For instance, a convincing majority defeated a substitute bill that called merely for a commission to study campaign-finance reform for another year. The country needs more studies on reform as much as Al Gore needs donations form Buddhist nuns. Another bill would have invalidated the entire Shays-Meehan reform package if even one minor point was found to be unconstitutional, but it too was defeated.

Voters might think that the outrageous campaign solicitations in 1996 marked the worst of the money-grabbing and that the spotlight on how politicians raise funds would have shamed them into more respectable methods. Those would be the voters who have not been paying attention. The GOP has accepted $13 million of the $16 million in soft money spent by Big Tobacco over the last decade and guess which party defeated one of its own members’ anti-tobacco bills? The liquor, beer and restaurant industries, reliable sources of soft money, really showed their hospitality this session in campaigning against a national .08 standard for drunken driving. With hundreds of thousands of alcohol dollars going to the two major parties, supporters of the national standard were told to hit the road.

The point is that citizens don’t need to read a schedule to find out what Congress is debating; they just need to check which industry is contributing heavily to the parties. It hasn’t stopped with the heightened interest about reforming the system and it won’t stop until a ban is approved by Congress.

Shays-Meehan stops the soft money. A milder bill by freshmen Reps. Tom Allen of Maine and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas comes close to that standard and is an important backup if the Shays-Meehan bill fails.

The Senate failed in its chance to pass reform; the House has one last chance before the next election to offer something of substance to the American public. Voters must make sure they deliver or hear about it in November.