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 as
a last-minute change been sneaked into the campaign-finance bill
to help Democrats? That's what a lot of Republicans are charging
on the floor of the House today.
Whether they're
right depends on how one reads the latest version of the Shays-Meehan
bill, the version introduced Tuesday night. The bill bans soft money-the
less-regulated contributions that fund party building, get-out-the-vote
efforts, etc.-after this November's election. If they have soft
money left over after the election, the parties can use it to pay
off debts.
Under a plain
reading of the relevant provision, a party could therefore take
out a loan for hard money-the highly regulated money given to individual
candidates-now and then pay it off, after the election, with soft
money. That helps the Democrats because they have less hard money
and more soft money than the Republicans.
Congressman
Chris Shays's office says that current law forbids this kind of
swap, and his bill leaves that aspect of the law untouched.
Opponents of
Shays-Meehan deny this. In other sections of the bill, Shays-Meehan
specifically refers to previous law to make clear it is not being
superseded. This section of the bill contains no such reference.
Therefore, they argue, a court would-or, at least, reasonably could-conclude
that lawmakers left out the reference because they did intend to
overturn the previous law. Shays's "Dear Colleague" letter
does nothing to refute this point.
Democrats who
vote for this bill will surely be hoping that the DeLay interpretation
is correct.
Whoever's right
about this disputed provision, what is quite clear is that nobody
is sure what is in the law the House is voting on tonight.
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