The bill was approved by the U.S. Senate April 2, and moves to the House of Representatives. If it is passed by the House, it may run into trouble in the White House, where President George Bush has not committed himself to signing it. If he does, opponents have already announced they will challenge its constitutionality.

The bill, sponsored by Senators Russell Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin, and John McCain, an Arizona Republican, would ban so-called soft money, the contributions of tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars by large corporations, wealthy individuals, and by union political action committees (PACs) to political parties. The Republicans and Democrats took in a total of nearly $500 million in such funds over the past two years.

In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, the candidates themselves raised substantial sums--$133 million for Gore and $192 million for Bush--in addition to the money raised by their two parties.

McCain, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 against George Bush, made campaign finance reform a central plank in his platform.

The bill would increase the caps on regulated contributions for the first time since 1974. It would double the amount individuals may contribute directly to a candidate, from $1,000 to $2,000. The $2,000 limit would be indexed to inflation. The measure would also increase the total contributions individuals may make per year to all federal candidates, parties, and PACs from $25,000 to $37,500, also indexed to inflation.

In addition, the bill would prohibit corporations, interest groups, and labor unions from paying for broadcast advertising clearly referring to a specific candidate within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election.

An alternative measure, proposed by Nebraska Republican senator Charles Hagel and supported by Bush, would have limited, but not banned, soft money, and would have tripled the current caps on direct contributions. The Hagel measure failed, but backers of the McCain-Feingold bill did adopt one part of Hagel's proposals, a step to tighten disclosure rules for political spending and advertising.

Kentucky Republican Senator Mitchell McConnell, a leader of the opposition to the bill who says the soft-money ban will hurt the two big political parties, asserted that political spending "will not be reduced; it just will not flow through the parties," going instead to ad hoc committees.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), joining forces with James Bopp, Jr., general counsel for the anti-abortion-rights National Right to Life Committee, is opposing the bill, charging that restrictions on campaign donations violate the First Amendment to the U.S. constitution, which states that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech."

In an effort to assuage critics' assertions that McCain-Feingold limits issue advocacy by prohibiting advertising referring to a candidate by corporations and unions in the period leading up to the elections, Sen. Paul Wellstone, a liberal Democrat from Minnesota, added an amendment that expanded the prohibition to all "outside interest groups." Wellstone has said the bill "will let us get away from the obscene money chase."

An ACLU news release quoted Joel Gora, Brooklyn Law School professor and ACLU consultant on campaign finance issues, saying that "you shouldn't have to register with the government in order to criticize it."

In his book Unfree Speech:the Folly of Campaign Finance Reform, Bradley Smith, a member of the Federal Election Commission, gives the example of Suffield, Connecticut, resident Leo Smith, who designed a web page to urge viewers to support former president William Clinton during the impeachment debate in 1998, and to defeat the local Republican congresswoman, Nancy Johnson, who was supporting impeachment. The FEC ruled that Smith's action was an independent expenditure in favor of Johnson's opponent, and thus subject to reporting requirements of the campaign finance laws.

This isn't the first time the Democrats and Republicans have carried out highly publicized efforts to "reform" campaign finances. At the turn of the century, in response to widespread sentiment against the influence of capitalist millionaires, Congress passed a number of measures regulating campaign contributions by the "trusts" and requiring public disclosure of contributors.

In 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal that resulted in the resignation of former president Richard Nixon, Congress passed a series of measures in response to popular outrage against capitalist political corruption, including limits on campaign contributions and spending and a "tax checkoff." The latter allows taxpayers to contribute $1 of their tax return to a fund to finance candidates from the two "major" parties and any "minor" party that received at least 5 percent of the vote in the last election, something that only the rightist Reform Party has achieved to date. Thus the "reform" had the effect of bolstering the big business parties.

Like the current measures, the post-Watergate regulations were celebrated as the end of graft. Sen. Edward Kennedy exclaimed in 1974, "At a single stroke, we can drive the moneylenders out of the temple of politics. We can end the corrosive and corrupting influence of private money in public life."

The Militant wrote at the time that "supporters of the law, such as Common Cause, a self-styled 'citizens' lobby' that helped write it, claimed the legislation would limit corporate influence in elections and make candidates responsible to the ordinary voter." The law required candidates to file frequent, detailed reports identifying contributors of more than $100 and those they pay for printing, rent, and other services.

The Socialist Workers Party went on a vigorous campaign to explain the law would do nothing to solve the problem of political corruption or make capitalist parties such as the Democrats and Republicans more accountable to working people. The socialists explained the law did pose a significant threat to political freedom and would further restrict expression outside the two big-business parties. The SWP pointed out that making lists of contributors public would open those who wanted to support the socialists' campaigns to harassment and victimization by the FBI, local cops and other police agencies, or right-wing groups.

The Supreme Court struck down the limits on campaign spending in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, but upheld those on contributions and campaign disclosure. In that ruling, the Court also conceded that parties or candidates could be exempted from the public disclosure requirements if they could show that disclosure might lead to harassment of their contributors.

The Socialist Workers Party filed a lawsuit against the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) demanding exemption from the public disclosure requirements, citing years of documented government harassment of the party, its candidates, and its supporters. The party won broad support for its suit. In 1979 a federal court issued a consent decree granting the exemption, for which the party has successfully won a renewal each time the exemption expires.
 
 
Related article:
The sham of campaign 'reform'  
 
 
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