Campaign finance bill glides toward Monday vote

Arizona Senator John McCain

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Senate is wrapping up work on a long list of amendments Friday as it moves toward a Monday vote on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance overhaul measure.

Senators continued to hobnob on the Senate floor Friday as they took care of a last list of amendments to the bill. Sen. John McCain of Arizona -- who with his counterpart Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin has toiled for six years on the measure -- praised the presumed end product.

"We've come a long away and narrowed the gap from our original language to what we all agree is a reasonable compromise," McCain said Friday morning on the Senate floor.

VIDEO CNN's Jonathan Karl says a vote on the McCain-Feingold bill is postponed to next week Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     MESSAGE BOARD Campaign finance reform

The measure stays true to the Arizona Republican's original intent, which was to eliminate so-called soft money contributions from the democratic process. Individuals and corporations have donated millions of dollars to both major parties in recent years, ostensibly for use in "party-building" activities.

But McCain and his allies have argued that the money is donated to skirt election laws loopholes and inevitably manages to be spent to support individual campaigns.

Current law limits donations to individual campaigns to $1,000 per year, or $2,000 per election cycle. That "hard money" limit would be raised to $2,000 per year and $4,000 per cycle if the current version of the bill becomes law.

The bill represents the most sweeping overhaul of federal campaign law in 27 years. Following next Monday's late afternoon vote, it moves to the House, where many rank-and-file members have expressed support, but leaders of both parties are voicing reservations.

A similar bill did pass the House in each of the last two congressional sessions.

Supporters of the Senate bill cleared what they called their last major hurdle late Thursday afternoon by defeating an amendment that would have killed the measure if a court deemed any one of its provisions unconstitutional.

By a 57-43 vote, the Senate tabled -- essentially rejecting -- a "non-severability" amendment sponsored by Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tennessee.

"Non-severability" means that if one portion of the law were to be declared unconstitutional, the entire law would be invalid.

The issue arose because in the past federal courts have rejected attempts to overhaul campaign finance rules on the grounds that they violated the First Amendment's free-speech guarantees.

The concern was that some parts of the McCain-Feingold bill could face the same fate. By making the bill non-severable, supporters claimed, the whole measure would have been put in jeopardy by a successful court challenge of one provision.

Frist said that was not the case: The amendment was "narrowly focused" on a portion of the bill concerning the airing of campaign ads.

Feingold, D-Wisconsin, said the purpose of Frist's amendment was obvious: "If you vote for this amendment, you will be seen to have voted for maximizing the chances of the enemies of reform to prevail against the wishes of the Senate and the will of the American people."

Once the chamber turned back the amendment, the Senate's most vocal opponent of McCain and Feingold's brand of campaign overhaul, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, took to the floor to tell his colleagues he now expected the bill would pass, and they would now have to get used to an atmosphere of millions of fewer dollars available to both parties.

Academics, Hollywood and billionaires, McConnell warned, would now be able to exert an undue influence on the political process.

"This is a stunningly stupid thing to do, my colleagues, and don't think anybody out there is going to save us from this," McConnell said. "This bill is going to be passed ... and if I was a betting man, I'd say it was going to be signed into law.

"I just want to welcome you to a hard-money world," McConnell said.

Democrat Christopher Dodd of Connecticut responded, "Yes, it is a new world. And I think it is a better world."

McCain and his compatriots celebrated.

"We are gratified by the size of the vote," McCain said of the defeat of the Frist amendment. "Several senators who had not given us their vote before gave us their help today."

The next steps

As the Senate moved toward its Monday vote, red flags arose about the measure's fate in the House. Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, said the Senate bill has "constitutional flaws" and is unlikely to be approved in the House in the same form that it passed the Senate.

"I have a hard time seeing the balance in the Senate bill because it unilaterally disarms one side. And I think there are some inherent flaws, some constitutional flaws in the Senate bill," Hastert told reporters.

If the House and Senate pass different bills, the language will need to be reconciled. That concerns proponents because it means renegotiating the hard-fought agreement and new votes in the House and Senate.

Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Missouri, echoed Hastert's concerns about taking up the Senate bill -- which in its current form boosts the cap on hard-money donations to federal candidates while eliminating the unlimited soft-money donations. Gephardt opposes raising the hard money limit.

"I didn't notice the Senate wanting to put the House bill that we passed, twice, on their calendar, unchanged, and have no amendments on it," he said.

Leaving open a window for compromise, Hastert added, "However, I think campaign finance reform will come to the House, and I want to see what the bill looks like in its entirety before I make a decision how we will proceed."

McCain said Thursday afternoon he was "guardedly optimistic" about the bill's chances for success in the House.

President Bush supports banning soft money contributions by corporations and unions, but has been opposed to placing a ban on contributions by individuals. However, he is leaving himself room to sign a campaign finance overhaul if it reaches his desk.

"This is a bill in progress. It is a bill that continues to change, and I'll take a look at it when it makes my desk," the president said at a White House news conference Thursday.

A number of outside groups praised the progress of the bill.

"This is not the utopian comprehensive solution to campaign finance," said Scott Harshbarger of the advocacy group Common Cause told the Associated Press. "But this is a tourniquet to stop the bleeding."

CNN's Kelly Wallace, Bob Franken, Ted Barrett, Randy Lilleston and Ian Christopher McCaleb contributed to this article.

Senate to vote on McCain-Feingold measure Monday
March 29, 2001
Senate agrees to higher 'hard money' contribution limits
March 28, 2001
Hagel's 'soft money' limits fall in Senate
March 27, 2001
Senate OKs 'real setback' to McCain-Feingold bill
March 26, 2001
Senate OKs first change in campaign finance bill
March 20, 2001

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin
The White House

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