01:23 PM ET 06/11/98

U.S. House rejects campaign finance amendment

By John Whitesides

	    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives Thursday
overwhelmingly rejected a politically charged constitutional
amendment to allow restrictions on campaign financing, which
even its sponsor opposed.
	    The House voted 345-29 against the amendment that would have
let Congress and the states restrict spending and contributions
on political campaigns.
	    Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the third-ranking Republican in the
House and a staunch opponent of reform, said he offered the
amendment only to make the point that the proposals pending in
the House would unconstitutionally restrict free speech.
	    ``It confronts head-on the troubling notion that most of
these substitutes don't pass the constitutional smell test,''
said DeLay, who voted against the measure.
	    But supporters of overhauling the nation's campaign finance
laws rejected DeLay's argument, saying the Supreme Court had
never ruled against the type of soft-money bans included in the
leading reform proposals.
	    Soft-money donations go to political parties rather than
directly to candidates.
	    ``This is an attempt to drag a red herring across the whole
debate,'' said Rep. Tom Allen, a Maine Democrat and co-chairman
of a bipartisan group of freshman lawmakers who developed one of
the prime proposals.
	    ``Whenever the anti-reformers say 'Free Speech,' they really
mean 'Big Money,''' Allen added.
	    DeLay's move served as an opening jab at Democrats in what
promises to be a drawn-out and chaotic campaign finance debate.
The amendment was first proposed last year by House Democratic
leader Richard Gephardt.
	    Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, fired back at
DeLay, saying the Texan was only for free speech ``as long as
it's expensive.''
	    Gephardt said Thursday the rules of the debate set by
Republican leaders were a ``travesty'' and amounted to a
filibuster.
	    The election-year debate promises to be unwieldy and
difficult, with 11 proposals scheduled for consideration and
more than 250 possible amendments on file.
	    The House will vote later Thursday on a rule allowing the
amendments. Reform advocates said it was clear given the little
time scheduled for debate on the issue in the last two weeks
that Republican leaders planned to drag it out through the
summer.
	    ``It would take until 2025 to finish the bill at this
rate,'' Gephardt told a news conference.
	    House Republican leaders committed in March to a
wide-ranging debate on campaign finance laws after an attempt to
squelch the issue backfired and a petition drive forced the
matter.
	    Reform advocates said they would not hesitate to resurrect
the petition if it became clear the debate was not moving.
	    The leading proposal, introduced by Connecticut Republican
Christopher Shays and Massachusetts Democrat Marty Meehan, would
ban unlimited soft-money donations to party committees and more
tightly restrict ``issue ads.'' Those ads theoretically do not
target individual candidates and are therefore not subject to
federal disclosure laws.
	    The so-called ``freshman bill'' introduced by Allen and
Arkansas Republican Asa Hutchinson would ban soft-money
donations at the federal level and boost disclosure
requirements.
	   
REUTERS@