Campaign Finance Bill Seen Gaining in Senate
Democrats Narrow Gap with GOP 'Gang of 5'

By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 30, 1993 8:54 AM

With a conversation here and an amendment there, Senate Democrats have narrowed the gap separating them from five Republicans whose votes are needed to pass President Clinton's embattled bill to overhaul Congress's loophole-ridden campaign finance laws.

While the most serious disagreements remain unresolved and odds may still favor continuation of partisan deadlock on the issue, several key players indicated Friday at the end of the first week of debate on the measure that they are hopeful about reaching agreement.

"We still have a long way to go, but they {the Democrats} have done a lot of things," said Sen. John H. Chafee (R.I.), one of the Republican mavericks who has laid down a list of conditions that have formed the basis for the most serious bipartisan negotiations on the issue within memory.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) thinks "it may just be possible to strike a deal in the next couple of weeks," said Mark Buse, a legislative aide to McCain who has been working with the senator on the issue.

Sen. James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.) "feels really good" about the prospects for a deal, considerably more optimistic at the week's end than he was at the beginning, said Susan Russ, the chief of staff to Jeffords.

Because Sen. Bob Krueger (D-Tex.) could be unseated in a special election June 5 and because Democrats cannot count on the vote of Sen. Richard G. Shelby (D-Ala.), it may take the votes of all the Republican mavericks to shut off a filibuster threatened by the Senate GOP leadership.

With the loss of Krueger and Shelby, Democrats would be down to 55 votes, five short of the 60 needed to end delaying tactics by imposing cloture. Thus the importance of this new "Gang of 5": Chafee, McCain, Jeffords, William S. Cohen (Maine) and Dave Durenberger (Minn.).

The campaign finance bill before the Senate closely resembles earlier Democratic drafts, with modifications by Clinton, including new constraints on contributions from lobbyists.

The bill would set voluntary spending limits, with incentives, including federally financed "communications vouchers" for purchase of advertising and postage, to encourage candidates to comply. It also would seek in a variety of ways to curtail the influence of special interests in campaigns, including a ban (in the Senate bill) or restrictions (in the House bill) on contributions to federal candidates from political action committees (PACs), which corporations, unions and other groups set up to channel money to favored candidates.

With spending ceilings as the centerpiece of the Democratic bill and Republican leaders ruling out any ceilings, efforts to reach a bipartisan compromise have failed. The five mavericks are less rigidly opposed to spending limits but have other complaints about the legislation, which they outlined in a nine-point letter to Democratic leaders earlier this month.

In what amounts to a two-track strategy, Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), the bill's chief sponsor, has been addressing some of the complaints by acceding to amendments on the Senate floor while meeting privately with the Republicans and Senate Democratic leaders to resolve some of the bigger issues.

To overcome objections that the House was insisting on looser rules, the senators reached early agreement to ban PAC contributions in House as well as Senate races, with a $1,000 limit as a fallback position for both houses in case the ban is ruled unconstitutional. House Democrats, who are insisting on retaining the current $5,000 limit on PAC contributions along with new restrictions to limit aggregate PAC contributions to one-third of a candidate's spending ceiling, are seething at the Senate's action.

Democrats also accepted amendments from McCain and Chafee to tighten rules against the use of campaign funds for personal purposes and to ban out-of-state fund-raising more than two years before an election.

Together, these agreements addressed or resolved about half of the Republicans' complaints about the bill. But other, more difficult issues remained to be resolved, including taxpayer financing, which Democrats regard as necessary to secure compliance with spending ceilings in light of a 1976 Supreme Court ruling that bans mandatory ceilings.

As a substitute, Durenberger has proposed a gross receipts tax on campaign contributions, which, as an inducement for compliance with ceilings, would be waived if a candidate agreed voluntarily to abide by the limits.

But it may be hard to bridge the gap on this issue, Durenberger said Friday. "They {Democrats} just don't seem to be able to get off of their own proposal for public financing," he said.

Less optimistic than his colleagues, Durenberger said his pessimism stems from fear that the House would not go along with any agreements reached in the Senate. As a result, he said, he and his colleagues might vote for cloture and for the bill if they can reach agreement with the Senate Democrats on all key points, while reserving the right to join in a filibuster if the bill comes back from the House in an unacceptable form.

This, however, could bring all the players back to the very thing they want most to avoid: a filibuster.