Word: hastert
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Smelling blood, House Speaker Dennis Hastert is rallying opponents around a rival measure introduced by G.O.P. Representative Robert Ney, which caps soft-money donations to national parties at $75,000. Ney has already succeeded in peeling off Wynn, along with about half a dozen G.O.P. Representatives who supported the Shays-Meehan bill in the past...
...keep 56 members of the Hispanic and Congressional Black Caucuses from defecting, the bill's chief sponsors, Republican Christopher Shays and Democrat Martin Meehan, added last-minute sweeteners to allow these groups to raise some soft money for their get-out-the-vote programs. But House Speaker Dennis Hastert had managed to drain support for the Shays-Meehan bill with a substitute drafted by GOP Rep. Robert Ney which capped soft-money donations to national parties at $75,000. With the outcome too close to call, Hastert ordered the Rules Committee to rig the floor procedure for considering the measure...
...Knowing they probably couldn't survive the fusillade, Gephardt mobilized to defeat the "rule," which governed floor activity. He could count on practically all Democrats supporting a procedural vote the party's leadership wanted. But to win, some Republicans had to be convinced to defy their Speaker, a heresy Hastert wouldn't forget. McCain dialed up the pressure. At one point he hauled seven GOP congressmen into Gephardt's Capitol office and, looking each one in the eye, asked if they'd "vote against the rule." Each said...
...they get him out of this fix? Fletcher got some Republicans to bolt from the Norwood bill to sign on to his. But even with Hastert and the GOP leadership behind him, he doesn't yet have a majority. Many moderate Republicans are holding off and only a few Democrats have defected to his measure. "A lot of Democratic members would like to vote for this bill but they're getting unprecedented pressure from their leadership to vote against it," Fletcher tells TIME. Fletcher isn't helped by the fact that the Senate finally passed the Kennedy-McCain-Edwards bill...
...seems to be out the window as well. Time may be working against the GOP. "The patients bill is getting tilted more to the left the longer it hangs out there," worries a House Republican leadership aide. "We might as well do it and get it over with." Hastert is now mulling whether to bring up the bill as soon as he can after congressmen get back from their July 4th recess...