House readies for campaign finance battles

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sponsors of the high-profile campaign finance overhaul bill that passed the Senate in April are exerting pressure on House members Monday, as the lower chamber prepares to debate competing proposals.

Sens. John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, sought to promote the spirit behind their successful Senate legislation Monday by appearing at two campaign finance rallies -- in New York and Boston, Massachusetts -- and granting several interviews.

That spirit is to be carried into the House by Reps. Chris Shays, R-Connecticut, and Marty Meehan, D-Massachusetts, whose campaign finance bill mirrors the major provisions of the McCain-Feingold bill, primarily by calling for a ban on soft money donations to the major political parties.

VIDEO CNN's Eileen O'Connor reports on the fundamentals of campaign reform as viewed in the House (July 9) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

"Our goal here is to get this bill through the House and have the differences [from the Senate bill] be very small," Feingold said Monday morning on CNN.

To the intense consternation of House GOP leaders, Feingold and McCain have been lobbying possible swing votes in the House in recent days as the debate approached. The Republican leadership supports an alternative measure that caps soft money donations at $75,000, in most cases.

That bill is sponsored by Reps. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and Albert Wynn, D-Maryland.

"Soft money" is the term used to describe the unlimited amounts of cash that may be pledged by individuals or organizations to the parties. That money is to be used, according to federal election guidelines, for "party building" purposes, but McCain and others have argued for years that it often is used to benefit individual candidates.

Their companion bills would set limits on so-called issue ads -- political advertisements ostensibly about an issue, but with the practical effect of hurting or helping a specific candidate. McCain and his supporters argue that a large percentage of soft money donations are spent on such radio and television spots.

McCain and Feingold initially had sought to have issue ads banned entirely, but a compromise provision inserted into their bill during Senate consideration now calls for a moratorium on the distribution of such ads 60 days out from election day.

At present, individual candidates are only eligible for "hard money" contributions, which are severely limited, and are watched closely by the Federal Election Commission. The McCain-Feingold and Shays-Meehan bills would raise hard money limits to make up for the massive funding shortfall the parties anticipate if they can no longer count on pledges of soft money.

In opposition to the Shays-Meehan bill, the Ney bill would not impose caps on soft money donations to state and local party organizations.

McCain said Monday that the proposals recommended by Ney weren't fixes at all.

"All the scandals we have known in the past, the $50,000 coffees, and nights in the Lincoln Bedroom … would be allowed under this sham piece of legislation," he told CNN.

House members will return to Washington from their July Fourth break at noon Tuesday and will dispatch a number of smaller bills, including an agriculture spending measure, before turning their attentions to the two campaign bills Wednesday.

The battle for the House began in earnest Sunday, when supporters of both bills took to the late-morning airwaves.

"We're closer than we've ever been," Meehan said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

But Shays and Meehan warned that if the Ney-Wynn bill prevails, lawmakers would have to go through a conference committee to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions. With a vast gulf separating the Ney-Wynn and McCain-Feingold bills, they predicted a campaign finance bill would not be signed into law this year.

"If [Ney-Wynn] gets to conference, this bill is dead because we allow the opponents of reform to write it in the House," Shays told ABC on Sunday.

Meehan agreed, saying the Ney-Wynn bill was nothing more than a ploy to kill reform efforts.

"Everyone knows that public interest legislation dies in conference committee," Meehan said. "This is a game."

But Ney defended his bill as a solid reform measure, and he criticized aspects of the Shays-Meehan legislation. Specifically, he said the bill's proposal to ban issue ads 60 days before an election "gags the American people from their right of opinion."

Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who has been one of the primary foes of campaign finance reform, called the Ney-Wynn bill "a step in the right direction" and said the Shays-Meehan legislation was "fundamentally un-American" because it would limit what outside groups and political parties could say close to elections.

-- CNN's Ian Christopher McCaleb contributed to this report.