barkingmoose

I got an email from Sen. John McCain’s Straight Talk America organization today (I’ve been on his mailing list since registering my support for his 2000 presidential campaign). The message was regarding a significant development in the effort to pass campaign finance reform. After passing a reform bill in the Senate last year, a similar bill was stalled in the House by the Republican leadership. But in the wake of the Enron collapse, the spotlight has shifted to the influence of corporate “soft money” contributions, and the bill’s backers have now secured 218 signatures (including the names of 20 GOP members) on a petition to force a vote on the issue.

I read an article earlier this week in the New Yorker that put the whole episode in perspective, making a strong case for the elimination of large corporate donations which cloud politicians’ judgment in cases like this. McCain sums it up: “[A]s the Enron scandal has shown again, until we clean up the way we finance our campaigns and reduce the overwhelming influence of soft money donors, all of us will continue to work under a cloud of suspicion, where the public always assumes that we serve our own interests before the country’s.”

Just getting the bill to the floor is a victory, but it doesn’t ensure passage. I’m still rooting for my man McCain, though.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2002 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.