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

DATE: MONDAY, October 9, 1995                   TAG: 9510090117
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CAMPAIGN FINANCE

FALLING FACE down in the mud can be an uplifting experience if you've been sloshing ankle-deep through the muck while trying to ignore the fact that it has rained. There's no more denying just what kind of a mess you're in.

Perhaps the Packwood diary will be such a whop in the face for Congress regarding the influence-peddling involved in campaign finance.

Bob Packwood was disgraced, of course, by his bizarre harassment of women on his Senate staff and visiting lobbyists, but the personal diary that corroborated many of the allegations against him also revealed the corrupting influence of large campaign contributions on a Washington insider.

This is the kind of mud that splatters anyone around, and the political embarrassment of being so sullied probably has much to do with the fact that tough, bipartisan legislation to reform the system has been introduced in the Senate for the first time in more than a decade.

A bill introduced by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russell Feingold, D-Wis., would establish voluntary spending limits for Senate candidates, provide free television time for those who abide by the limits, ban special-interest political-action committees, and close the loophole in the current campaign-finance law that allows national political parties to launder money for state parties and candidates, avoiding federal regulations on the size and source of political contributions.

Some of the details will need to be changed. The outright ban on PAC contributions, for example, may well be ruled unconstitutional. The bill's sponsors have conceded as much, offering a more reasonable fallback provision: a limit on total PAC contributions to any candidate of no more than 20 percent of the state spending limit, and on individual PAC donations of $1,000 per election (for a total of $2,000 for a primary and general election).

State spending limits would depend on each state's voting-age population, and range from $950,000 in smaller states to $5.5 million. These are still huge sums, but considerably less than the $26.4 million spent in Virginia's Robb-North campaign last year.

The Senate already has passed a resolution to act on campaign finance reform by the end of this Congress. Whatever its details, with reform legislation expected to be introduced soon in the House, perhaps lawmakers finally will bow to the wishes of the 87 percent of Americans who say they want to limit what's spent to get elected.

by CNB