Word: feingolds
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...need to rewrite them. Until now, the problem with passing anything that would seriously change the way bribes flow through politics is that the politicians who would have to rewrite the laws have the greatest interest in not changing them. Arizona Republican John McCain and Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold have been hollering in the wilderness for two years, trying to persuade their fellow Senators to clean up the system. They would ban the unlimited soft-money contributions that both parties depend on (more than $250 million, a historic record, last year) and reward candidates who abide by voluntary spending limits...
There were some indications last week that the President had really come around. Clinton invited McCain and Feingold to the White House for a 45-minute strategy meeting, his first such session with members of Congress for any piece of legislation this year. He promised to "put a tremendous amount of his own time into the issue," Feingold says. And he talked seriously about how to apply pressure to the bill's Republican opponents in Congress without turning the effort into a partisan bloodbath. "We have to be very diplomatic and very clear that both sides are going to have...
...McCain-Feingold starts out this session as another long shot. But Feingold came away from the meeting upbeat: the President described fixing campaign finance as second only to balancing the budget. And McCain said Clinton promised to push for it "at every available forum," starting with his State of the Union address...
...will take much more than a motivated President to pass McCain-Feingold. Its enemies are legion and passionate and constitute one of the most peculiar assemblies ever to conspire in Washington. As a cause, killing the bill unites the Christian Coalition with the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Right to Life Committee with the National Education Association. "We don't agree with the A.C.L.U. on very much, but we're going to work very closely on these issues," says Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the N.R.L.C...
...Feingold refers to the ringleader of the resistance, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, as "the Grim Reaper of campaign-finance reform." But majority leader Trent Lott is the key player, and he resists reforms like free TV time for candidates and public financing of campaigns, which he calls "food stamps for politicians." Feingold insists that Lott doesn't "want to be tagged as the person who killed campaign reform. He's leaving the door open." But privately, aides to the G.O.P. leadership say it's pretty well shut...