Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 9, 1990                   TAG: 9003091763
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

CAMPAIGN FINANCE BILL EMERGING

The Rules Committee approved the Democrats' ideas for reform on a 7-3 party-line vote, but lawmakers acknowledged the action was intended only to get serious negotiations started. Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, said he intends to bring the issue before the full Senate as soon as it completes action on a clean air bill and crime legislation - possibly late this month or early April.

"The Senate now knows that the issue is not going away," said Oklahoma Sen. David Boren, the primary author of the Democratic bill.

Boren and his key ideological opponent on the issue, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., both said their hopes for a compromise were buoyed by an outside panel's endorsement Wednesday of limits on how much candidates can raise from political action committees and out-of-state donors.

The six-member task force appointed by Mitchell and Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas called for "flexible" spending ceilings with a provision that would exclude small contributions from in-state donors from the total.

Boren hailed it as the first bipartisan recognition of the need for some form of spending ceiling while McConnell praised the distinction between "good money from those who can vote for you and bad money from special interests and other outsiders who can't."

However, there is still widespread disagreement on how much political action committees, or PACs, should be reined in and the role of now-unreported, so-called "soft money" in politics.