By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Senate rejected an effort yesterday to begin rewriting campaign finance legislation piece by piece, turning aside a call from critics to increase 27-year-old limits on donations to candidates.
The 52-47 roll call was the first in a rapid-fire series of votes on changes that Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., proposed to the campaign finance bill.
The Senate began voting on eliminating the ban on unlimited "soft money" that is at the core of the legislation by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and replacing it with limits on such donations.
First though, McCain-Feingold supporters lined up behind a section of the Hagel bill that tightens disclosure rules for political spending and advertising.
The 52-47 vote was on a Hagel provision that would have tripled "hard money" donations - those made directly to candidates - from the current $1,000 per year for individuals to $3,000. It would have increased the total a person could donate to candidates, parties and political groups from the current $25,000 to $75,000.
While the hard-money increase in the Hagel measure was rejected, efforts were under way to come up with a compromise to raise the ceiling in effect since 1974.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a backer of McCain, said that under Hagel's measure, a couple could still contribute $540,000 every election cycle in hard and soft money. "The Hagel bill is so watered down, has so many loopholes in it, it is like Swiss cheese," he said.
McCain contends the measure offered by Hagel, a close friend, would make the current system of money politics even worse by reaffirming the legality of soft money. "I don't think Americans want us to do that," he said.
The Senate is in its second week of debate on the McCain-Feingold bill, with a goal of coming to a final vote by the end of the week.
Hagel said his bill provides a middle ground on campaign finance that does not raise the constitutional free-speech problems that McCain-Feingold might face; would not weaken the influence of political parties, particularly at the state level; and would win the president's signature.
"We believe our campaign finance proposal would pass constitutional muster," Hagel said. "What good does it do to pass legislation we know will be struck down by the courts?"
The constitutionality issue came to the forefront Monday when the Senate passed, 51-46, a proposal by Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., that would ban late-campaign advertising by advocacy groups such as the National Right to Life Committee and the Sierra Club.
Wellstone said his provision was needed to close a loophole in the McCain-Feingold bill that would keep corporations and unions from paying for attack ads in the final 60 days of an election but keep nonprofit groups from placing an identical ad.
McCain said he liked the idea of the Wellstone amendment but voted against it because of significant questions about its constitutionality. He said the passage of the Wellstone amendment, supported by numerous Republican opponents of McCain-Feingold, made it more important to fend off an amendment expected later this week that would nullify the entire legislation if the courts found just one part of it unconstitutional.
McCain-Feingold says nothing about increasing the $1,000 limit on individual contributions, although both sponsors have acknowledged that they will have to accept some increase in the 27-year-old ceiling.
"There's legitimacy to the fundamental argument that $1,000 in 1974 is not $1,000 today," McCain said.
But some supporters of McCain-Feingold are uncomfortable with raising the hard money limit.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., called it a "cost-of-living adjustment for less than 1 percent of the American public that can afford to write a $1,000 check. ... It is incredible to me that we would even entertain such a thought as part of the campaign reform mechanism."
