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American Morning

Senate Debates Campaign Finance

Aired March 28, 2001 - 11:22   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Senate debate continues on efforts to reform campaign finance laws. To Capitol Hill now and CNN's Jonathan Karl -- hi, Jonathan.

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, at issue right now is this question of hard money. It's a central issue for whether or not McCain-Feingold and their effort to reform the campaign finance system succeeds or whether it fails.

Hard money are those direct contributions you can write directly to candidate to be spent on their campaigns. The limit on that right now is $1,000, $1,00 is the most you can write to a candidate.

There's two competing proposals on the floor of the Senate right now to raise that limit, one offered by Senator Fred Thompson, which would raise the limit to $2,500. A competing amendment offered by Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Republican Thad Cochran would raise it to $2,000.

It may sound like not much of a difference, $2,000, $2,500. But it really gets to the question whether or not this whole effort succeeds because Democrats have said they will go no further than $2,000.

Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, the top Democrat in the Senate, said that he would end up voting against the McCain- Feingold if there were an amendment in there raising the hard money limit any further than $2,000. So intense negotiations going on right now.

Most of the negotiations actually happening in the cloakrooms right off the Senate floor, trying to come to compromise between these two positions. We will see showdown on this later today when there will be a vote, side-by-side votes, on both the competing proposals about two hours from now.

Now, if we don't have an agreement by then, we'll have those side-by-side votes. But again, serious negotiations going on right on the Senate floor and off in those cloakrooms trying to come to compromise between those two positions, Daryn.

KAGAN: Jonathan, what are the Democrats concerned about that hard money limit going over $2,000? KARL: Well, the Democrats are making the point this is supposed to be debate about reforming the campaign finance system and limiting the amount of money that goes into politics, not raising it. So they are, many Democrats would like to see no increase whatsoever in this. Republicans other the other side point out that this $1,000 limit that candidates are living under was set back in 1974. If you adjusted for inflation, the rate now would be well over $3,000. So you have two very different visions of what campaign finance reform is playing out on the Senate floor.

You also have another factor, which is some Democrats, especially those from states like California, Illinois, and New York, who very expensive media markets know it's very hard to raise enough money to run your campaign if you're only allowed to raise in $1,000 chunks. So there are some Democrats that are very sympathetic to the Republican position that you simply need to raise the limit how much money individuals can give the candidates.

KAGAN: Jonathan Karl on Capitol Hill, we'll check back with you in a little bit.

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