GOP Targets Spending Limit

House Republicans are gearing up to push campaign finance legislation that would scrap post-Watergate restrictions on the total amount of money individuals can donate and parties can spend on candidates.

House Democratic leaders, who see the GOP gaining a huge financial advantage, yesterday protested the bill, as did campaign finance advocacy groups.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the bill's chief sponsor, said the measure makes a "a few modest changes" in the 2002 campaign finance law that "will restore freedom and fairness to the political economy of our nation."

But Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) wrote House Democrats that the bill, to be taken up next week by the House Administration Committee, would "enable wealthy individuals and interests to pour unlimited amounts of hard money into elections."

A person can donate $101,400 to federal candidates and parties in each two-year election cycle. The Pence bill would eliminate this limit. The limit an individual can contribute to a candidate or a political party would not change. Instead, individual donors could give Republican or Democratic committees a total of more than $1.1 million every two years: $53,400 to each of the three major (national, senatorial and congressional) party campaign committees and $20,000 to each of the 50 state parties.

Critics of the legislation contend that an enterprising donor could give $1.1 million to one campaign by giving the maximum allowed to all national and state committees, and asking them to put it into one race.

Lifting the limit would also allow any donor to make $4,200 contributions to any number of federal candidates.

Leaders of campaign finance advocacy groups charged that the House GOP leadership was undermining existing law to limit the influence of interest groups just when House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) are at the center of controversies involving lobbyist-paid trips and campaign contributions allegedly tied to favorable action on Indian gambling proposals.

"Representative Ney should be promoting legislation to clean up Congress and his own House, not legislation that brings more special-interest money into politics," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook.

The Pence legislation, which is co-sponsored by Rep. Albert R. Wynn (D-Md.), would also allow the parties to spend unlimited amounts in behalf of House, Senate and presidential candidates. In Senate races, for example, the limit on the total given by parties ranges from $2.1 million in California to just over $100,000 in such small states as Vermont and Wyoming; under the Pence-Wynn bill, there would be no limits.

So far in the 2005-2006 election cycle, the three national Republican committees have far outraised their Democratic counterparts, $63.9 million to $38.7 million; GOP committees have $37.5 million cash on hand with no debt, while Democratic committees had $15.6 million with $4.4 million in debts, for net assets of $11.2 million.

Wynn's co-sponsorship has angered some Democratic colleagues. He said yesterday he is trying to "educate" his critics to show the bill could benefit the Democratic Party.

The Senate is considering separate campaign finance legislation, which Democrats have denounced. Senate Democratic leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said it is "clear to supporters of McCain-Feingold [the 2002 campaign finance law] that Republicans see this bill as an opportunity to subvert that reform legislation to their partisan benefit, not as an opportunity to advance reform."