Two years of debate on campaign-finance reform and a schedule glaringly empty of substantial legislation this session has given the House all the time it needs to hold a clean vote on reform. House members who actually want the measure — as opposed to those who just want to talk it to death — need to demand a fair vote now.

Instead, they are facing one more obstacle from opponents — or make that 258 obstacles. That’s the number of nongermane amendments that have been attached to a dozen finance-reform bills. Most of those bills aren’t worth passing and should be killed with or without the amendments, but there are enough good bills in the bunch to provoke as much public cynicism over the House’s behavior as was produced by the Senate’s embarrassing failure last week to approve a cigarette bill.

There is one bit of good news in the House. Republicans had an opportunity to join party-member Rep. William Thomas of California, who wanted an amendment that would have invalidated an entire reform bill in the event that any part of the bill was found unconstitutional. Earlier, however, GOP freshman and Democrats wanting reform agreed to oppose poison pills directed at any of the

bills. They voted down the Thomas amendment in a clear show to leadership that reform has bipartisan support — enough support to pass something that will end soft-money contributions.

That should worry Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and friends, who last week collected $10 million in soft money at a single fund-raising dinner. But the Thomas amendment was just one of hundreds, and leadership no doubt will find other ways to delay an honest vote on reform. By sticking together, reform-minded House members can weather these distractions and force a vote on a bill of substance.