Senators Discuss Campaign Finance Bill
Wed Feb 27, 7:40 PM ET

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The leading adversaries on campaign finance legislation, Sens. John McCain and Mitch McConnell, searched Wednesday for a way to clear out the last obstacles to a final vote.

McConnell, R-Ky., the main opponent of the measure that bans "soft money" donations to national political parties, presented McCain, R-Ariz., the bill's co-sponsor, with a dozen "technical changes" that he said would satisfy some of his objections.

McCain said he would review the list and get back to McConnell on Thursday.

The Senate passed the bill last April to ban unregulated soft money donations to the parties and restrict "issue ads" in the final days of a campaign, often thinly disguised means to attack opposing candidates. The House approved a similar bill on Feb. 14, and Senate supporters want to pass the House bill without change and send it to President Bush for his expected signature.

Still looming, however, is a possible filibuster by opponents that would require 60 votes to overcome. McConnell said after his meeting with McCain that he was "not in favor of letting the bill go forward as it is."

McConnell insisted that his proposed changes were minor and technical in nature, in which case the bill would not have to go back to the House or to a House-Senate conference.

McCain said he'd "been at this issue for seven years" and would not agree to any changes that would further complicate final passage.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Wednesday that if a deal could be worked out so there were no objections to moving ahead, he would be ready to act on the bill this week. If not, he said, he would take up the bill after completing work on an energy bill, probably in mid-March.

Bush, at a White House meeting Wednesday with congressional leaders, asked if it was true that a loophole in the bill exempts American Indians from spending limits. The lawmakers agreed to look into the matter, a senior White House official said.

White House aides also repeated that they still expect Bush to sign the bill.

The offices of the bill's sponsors, McCain and Sen. Russ Feingold , D-Wis., in the Senate and Reps. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. and Martin Meehan, D-Mass., in the House, said the legislation has no provision about Indians but leaves current law intact.

That would treat Indian tribes as individuals and subject to the regulated "hard money" cap, now $1,000, for what an individual can give a candidate. But tribes, like political action committees, are not subject to the $25,000 aggregate hard money cap for what an individual can give to parties and candidates in a year.