Bill to End Campaign Donor Limits Gaining

When Congress considers campaign finance reform this fall, advocates of clamping down on big-money contributions would appear to have the high ground. But in fact, the most popular of the 70-some pending proposals would go in the opposite direction: Eliminate all donation limits and simply toughen disclosure requirements.

Just such a bipartisan bill has, with little notice, gained 54 House co-sponsors. And the surprising success of its author, Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Rocklin), underscores how difficult it will be to impose a ban on so-called soft money, the unregulated contributions given to political parties by individuals, labor unions and corporations.

“I think the voters understand that this is freedom of speech, that you’re never going to ban money from politics, and that if you did, you’d have a system that’s far worse than the one we have now,” said Doolittle, a conservative in his fourth term in Congress.

“There are a lot of things that are ambiguous around here, but the 1st Amendment is about as crystal clear as anything I’ve ever seen,” he added. “It says that, amongst other things, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.”

Doolittle and others, including the Supreme Court, consider political contributions a form of speech.

But die-hard reformers, such as Ellen S. Miller, head of Public Campaign, said any law that eliminates or increases contribution limits would amount to “deform, not reform.”

It’s far from certain that Congress will enact any campaign finance reform legislation.

For one thing, the plethora of competing proposals, each with its mind-numbing details, clouds the picture. And the chasm between the proposals that would ban soft money and those that would eliminate contribution limits altogether further highlights the difficulties ahead. Also, in the Senate, where the rules facilitate obstructionist tactics more than in the House, many powerful members, including Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), are dead-set against wholesale reform.

Still, reformers such as Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) plan a September showdown on the issue. Their allies in the House have vowed to do the same, convinced that legislative guerrilla tactics will generate a groundswell of public support for campaign finance reform.

The looming debate comes even as many officeholders and the two major political parties are raising money at a breathtaking pace.

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Intended for party-building purposes, soft money often is funneled to individual candidates instead. Last year, the parties got $263 million in soft money, which figures prominently in the unfolding fund-raising irregularities allegedly committed by Republicans and Democrats alike.

And in the first half of this year, the parties already have raised a combined $34 million in unregulated funds--more than double the amount they rang up during a comparable period after the 1992 presidential election. At the same time, many individual members of Congress already have raised $1 million or more, albeit in contributions limited under regulations set in 1984.

Under those regulations, individuals may give directly only $1,000 to a candidate per election. That same individual may give up to $5,000 to a political action committee (PAC) or state or local parties that support federal candidates.

Doolittle, 46, contends that these limits have forced donors to “operate outside the system, where they are unaccountable and more irresponsible,” he argued.

“The only thing that’s ever worked in the area of so-called campaign reform is disclosure. Anything that attempts to regulate or ban contributions ultimately is not successful because it’s a system that, if you ban it over here, it spills out over there. it spills out wherever it can,” Doolittle said.

If contribution limits are abolished, he said, donors will give directly to candidates, and not resort to subterfuge, thus allowing donations to be easily tracked.

Specifically, Doolittle’s bill would:

* Repeal limits on how much individuals and PACs may give to federal candidates or parties and how much parties can contribute to candidates.

* End partial taxpayer financing of presidential election campaigns.

* Require electronic filing of campaign reports, including every 24 hours during the final three months of a campaign. The Federal Election Commission also must post all campaign reports on the Internet.

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Doolittle said his proposals would create a system that “will scare some people in Washington because it will require them to do something very rarely considered around here: Trust the American people, once informed, to make good decisions.”

He and his co-sponsors claim their bill would “level the playing field” for challengers. But critics argue the opposite, saying that special interests would give even more money to officeholders.

Doolittle’s bill is a far cry from the most talked about reform proposal to date, which was offered by McCain and Feingold and has won the backing of reform-minded groups like Common Cause as well as President Clinton. It would, among other things, ban soft money, something Clinton and three former presidents--Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush--also have advocated.

But the bill’s specifics remain something of a mystery because McCain and Feingold have all but shouted from the Capitol dome that they are willing to negotiate and compromise--so long as the bill “levels the playing field” for challengers and eradicates what they view as the undue influence of special-interest groups.

For instance, whereas McCain and Feingold initially wanted to outlaw PAC contributions, they now have agreed to merely halve the current contribution limit. Also in flux is a proposal that candidates who agree to voluntary spending limits receive free TV time.

Most other reform proposals also would ban soft money and strengthen disclosure requirements.

Among these is a bipartisan measure by 30 House freshmen that also would index to inflation the limits on individual and PAC contributions to candidates.

While most reformers remain keen on setting deadlines for congressional action--Clinton’s initial deadline was July 4th--Doolittle takes a longer view.

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“This is a multiyear effort,” he said, adding that he already has met his first objective. “We’ve changed the terms of debate. We have succeeded at least in not making the situation worse by enacting undesirable campaign reforms,” he said.

His next step is to push his own bill.

“If you had said, six or eight months ago, that this would end up being the bill with the broadest support in the House, no one would have believed it,” Doolittle said. “But I’m happy. We’re turning things around.”