*EPF515 07/13/01
Congressional Report, July 13: Campaign Finance Reform
(House fails to vote on measure) (360)

The House of Representatives July 12 stalled action on campaign finance reform, on procedural matters pertaining to how to conduct the voting rather than on the merits of the proposed legislation.

Republican and Democratic party leaders each blamed the other side after the House voted 228 to 203 to reject the Republican leadership's ground rules for debating the issue. Democrats called the Republican effort "unfair," and Republicans said the Democrats had ulterior motives in claiming that Republicans were not interested in reform anyway.

House Republican leaders originally scheduled a vote for the bipartisan Shays-Meehan bill, which called for a ban on so-called election campaign "soft money" -- the unregulated donations that unions, corporations and individuals give to political parties.

Crafted by Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays and Massachusetts Democrat Martin Meehan, the proposal was similar to one passed by the Senate in April that was co-sponsored by Arizona Republican John McCain and Wisconsin Democrat Russell Feingold.

The procedural vote rejected by the House would have required each amendment to the proposal to be voted on separately, while its sponsors wanted the series to be offered as a single package. Some Democrats, particularly African American and Hispanic members, wanted late changes because they feared the complete loss of soft money would make it harder to increase minority voter participation in elections.

The future for campaign finance reform is now in doubt. However, McCain said he hoped that after tempers cool down, the two sides would work out an agreement on how to take up the issue again.

A recent USA Today/CNN/Gallop Poll found Americans favor Congress passing new campaign finance laws 65 to 25 percent.

The House passed similar versions of Shays-Meehan in 1998 and 1999, but in each case the legislation died in the Senate. This time there also was a rival version to Shays-Meehan, sponsored by Ohio Republican Robert Ney, which would have limited but not banned soft money.

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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