Subject: Political integrity......
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 094717 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru@hotmail.com
--------------------------------------------------
......."The bottom line to this bill is about restoring political
integrity to the political system."
.....In the above quotation, Congressman Christopher Shays (R, of Conn.),
one of the two sponsors of the Shays-Meehan bill (reported below), has
properly described what is at issue in the latest attempt to "reform" the
U.S. political fund raising system.....Shays-Meehan is not "what is really
needed," but it is better than nothing at this point.......If any of you
are in position to help push this legislation through, I urge you to
help!!!
......We are being told that, even if it passes the House, Shays-Meehan
will not get "a hearing" in the tightly controlled Republican Senate....
....Perhaps, but let's "test em."......I have slowly been forced to the
conclusion that it is time to start throwing out that majority Republican
Senate crowd of "big money, big industry" ***lackeys*** anyway.....And
such a test of their true "lackey status" might make it easier....In
particular, It is time to "ditch" Seanator Kit Bond (R) of Missouri, who
is up for reelection this November......With the possible exception of
Senators Trent Lott (R) and Mitch McConnell (R) -- who are not up for
reelection this year -- Bond's record is that of one of the biggest
"lackeys" of all......guru.......
_________________________________________________________________
08:21 PM ET 08/03/98
U.S. campaign finance plan wins House vote
By John Whitesides
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A proposal to dramatically change the
way political campaigns are paid for won an improbable victory
in the House Monday night but still faced a likely roadblock in
the Senate.
The bill, considered all but dead four months ago, was
approved 237-186 by the House, with 51 Republicans voting in
favor and 11 Democrats against.
``This was an historic vote,'' jubilant Republican Rep.
Christopher Shays of Connecticut, co-sponsor of the plan to ban
soft money contributions to political parties and restrict issue
advocacy advertisements, told reporters afterward.
The proposal, sponsored by Shays and Democrat Rep. Marty
Meehan of Massachusetts, faces more hurdles in the House later
this week, when additional campaign finance measures will be
considered. The proposal with the most votes wins.
But advocates of changing the laws that regulate U.S.
political campaigns said the plan's 237 votes would be hard to
compete with.
President Clinton, back from a weekend fund-raising trip to
the posh Hamptons in New York that raised $2 million for
Democrats, said the vote was ``a breakthrough in the fight for
bipartisan campaign finance reform.''
``The breadth of its support, from members of both parties,
showed that reform is an idea whose time has come, even in the
face of persistent obstruction by the Republican leaders of
Congress,'' Clinton said.
The Shays-Meehan proposal had survived weeks of debate and
votes on 19 ``poison pill'' amendments that backers said were
designed to strip away support and splinter their bipartisan
coalition.
They said the political system's growing thirst for cash,
and fund-raising scandals after the 1996 election were the best
evidence of the need to revamp the system.
``The bottom line to this bill is about restoring integrity
to the political system,'' Shays said.
But opponents said the measure would unconstitutionally
smother free speech, protect incumbent lawmakers and create a
new set of bureaucratic regulations with fresh loopholes.
``What you're talking about is limiting the speech of our
constituents and hiding behind the name of reform,'' said Rep.
Tom DeLay of Texas, the third-ranking Republican in the House.
``This is not reform, this is not good government, this is
political disarmament,'' he said.
National political parties already have raised more than
$115 million in soft money during the first 18 months of the
1998 election cycle, a study by the nonpartisan watchdog group
Common Cause found.
The Shays-Meehan bill would ban those unregulated soft money
donations, which go to party committees rather than individual
candidates. It would also restrict more tightly ``issue
advocacy'' ads within 60 days of an election.
Those ads theoretically do not target individual candidates
and are therefore not subject to federal disclosure laws.
Shays-Meehan supporters said they hope their margin of
victory will be large enough that many of the remaining
proposals will be withdrawn. Rep. Sander Levin, a Michigan
Democrat, described the winning margin as ``an awesome number.''
Rep. Tom Campbell, a California Republican and sponsor of a
competing proposal who has also backed the Shays-Meehan bill,
said after the vote he would withdraw his plan.
But the biggest roadblock to getting the bill passed into
law remains the Senate, where a 52-vote majority backed a
similar bill earlier this year but supporters could not attract
the 60 votes needed to break a Republican-led filibuster.
Senate Republican leaders have made it clear they have
little interest and little time to take up the issue again in
this legislative year.
But Shays-Meehan supporters said they hoped victory would
create enough momentum to force the Senate to give the bill
another chance.
The main threat to Shays-Meehan among the remaining
proposals was considered to be the so-called ``freshman'' bill
developed by a bipartisan group of first-term lawmakers.
That proposal, led by Rep. Asa Hutchinson, an Arkansas
Republican, and Maine Democratic Rep. Tom Allen, would ban soft
money donations at the federal level and boost disclosure
requirements.
^REUTERS@
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html