Republican Leadership Pushing to Defeat Shays’ Campaign Finance Reform Bill
By Justin Hill
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12–House Republican leaders have vowed to fight the campaign finance reform bill co-sponsored by Rep. Christopher Shays (R-4th) from becoming law after Shays bucked his party’s leadership last month by forcing the bill to a House vote next week.
At a meeting with Republicans Wednesday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) likened the coming vote on Shays’s bill to “Armageddon”, the final battle between good and evil, Shays said. An official at the meeting told the Associated Press that Hastert said to his colleagues that Republicans “might lose the House” if the bill passes.
“I think he’s dead wrong,” Shays said yesterday of the Speaker, adding that the Republicans and Democrats roughly raise the same amount of campaign money. “If [the bill] doesn’t pass we will continue to see the abuses” in government caused by unregulated “soft” money, he said.
The House is scheduled to vote next Tuesday on the rule governing debate on the bill and to vote on the bill itself the following day. Under the rule that the House Rules Committee approved yesterday, the House would also debate and vote on a last-minute substitute sponsored by House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas).
A spokesman for Armey said that the legislation was “close to completion.”
Hastert feels that Shays’s bill would “enhance the power of special interests, especially Democratic special interests,” said John Feehery, spokesman for the Speaker.
The Shays-Meehan bill would ban soft money donations which corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals can now make to political parties. It would also forbid independent interest groups from broadcasting political advertising in the period right before an election.
Shays said he was unsure if he has enough votes to pass his bill, which is similar to the McCain-Feingold measure the Senate approved last year. But many believe in the wake of the Enron scandals, this is the best chance in years to bring about the significant changes in campaign spending rules.
“It’s hard to know how my colleagues will respond to various pressures,” he said. “Each member will have to vote their conscience.”
In addition to Armey’s substitute, the House will also have to deal with another substitute bill that House Administration Committee chairman Bob Ney (R-Ohio) is offering. Shays and Marty Meehan (D-Mass.), the co-sponsor of the bill, said they feared amendments that could either “gut the bill” or shatter the coalition that has formed in support of the bill.
“The Ney bill is an opportunity for members who don’t want to vote for reform to pretend they are,” Meehan said. “It’s more to cover their butts” than to accomplish anything.
Last summer the House GOP leadership managed to shelve Shays’s bill but last month Shays and campaign finance reform supporters forced the bill to the floor after securing 218 signatures -the necessary majority of all House members -on what is called a discharge petition.
A number of interest groups have been active in pushing for passage of real campaign finance reform.
“[We have been] mobilizing hundreds of groups across the country in favor of Shays-Meehan,” said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen. He said the non-profit group’s members were sending 1,000 letters to Congressmen urging members to vote for Shays’s bill.
For his part, Shays said, “I’m just trying to answer questions that people have about the bill.”
Published in The Hour, in Norwalk, Conn.
