ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 22, 1996 TAG: 9606240027
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
AFTER MONTHS (not to mention years) of stalling, the U.S. Senate plans to take up campaign-finance reform early next week. Expect the usual shilly-shallying.
A filibuster to keep the issue from ever coming to a vote is likely. This, of course, would allow the honorables to keep making pious statements about the need for reform while they continue to suck in huge contributions from special-interest groups in exchange for . . . what? No strings attached? Just the generosity of the well-heeled, with nothing sought in return?
Or possibly the senators will resort to a favored cop-out: another study. As if the issue hasn't been studied more times than McDonald's has sold Big Macs.
Virginia's Sen. Charles Robb has indicated he'll vote to quash a filibuster, and will support the bipartisan reform proposal that would, among other things, encourage voluntary spending limits.
And Virginia's Sen. John Warner? Well, from one so recently refreshed by voters, one who declared his primary win a victory for all the people of the commonwealth, you might think he'd vote next week in the interests of all the people of the country.
Think it. Just don't bet on it.
Sen. Warner, sad to say, has over the years rushed time and again to the defense of a scuzzy campaign-finance status quo that is nothing less than a national scandal.
A status quo in which some 4,600 political-action committees now give, on average, $95 million a year to federal candidates. (And you thought the citizenry ran the country.) A status quo in which huge amounts are diverted to political parties or for "issue advertising" to circumvent existing campaign-finance limits. (Hey, it works for the incumbents, and they're the ones who make the laws.)
There's no need to go back too far in Warner's 18-year Senate career to get his drift:
In 1990, despite the fact that he faced no major-party opposition, he raised nearly $1.9 million for his re-election campaign, nearly $700,000 of which came from political-action committees. In 1991 and again in 1992, he voted against bills that would have greatly restricted PAC contributions. He also has supported filibusters that have effectively killed campaign-finance reform.
This year, while appealing to Democrats and independents to enter the GOP primary and vote for him because he puts principle ahead of politics, Warner raised $2.5 million in campaign contributions. Of that amount, about 31 percent came from fat-cat PACs: defense contractors, bankers, real-estate developers, oil companies, airlines and the like.
Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock, the state's largest private employer, and its parent company, Tenneco Inc., gave Warner at least $23,500 in ``bundled'' gifts. Bundling is a cute way to skirt existing limits on contributions - a practice that would have been halted by reform bills Warner has voted against.
If, miracle of miracles, Congress passes the Bipartisan Clean Congress Act (sponsored in the Senate by Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Fred Thompson of Tennesee and by Democrat Russell Feingold of Wisconsin), it's not likely to go into effect this year. Warner, in other words, wouldn't have to scrimp for the general election, where he's being challenged by a wealthy Democrat, Mark Warner.
The senator should, in any case, vote against the filibuster next week and allow the reform proposal to go to a vote. He should do so, one might say, as a matter of principle.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESSby CNB