The Mcain Feingold Bill

Funds donated by corporations, unions and individuals to political parties are known as soft money. This money is supposed to be used for general party building actions such as voter registration. Since soft money is not used to support individual candidates, it is not regulated under federal campaign laws, and there are no restrictions placed on the amount that can be donated.

However, soft money has been used to pay for political ads that do not agree with particular candidates by disapproving their views. Since these ads often feature a candidate by endorsing their views. Despite repeated attempts, Congress has consistently unsuccessful to ratify campaign finance reforms that would limit or

There are many key points of the Shays-Meehan bill, many are similar to the McCain-Feingold bill, such as (1) stopping the use of soft money, (2) stopping the use candidate ads posing as “Issue Ads”, (3) Greater public disclosure, (4) Greater Public Disclosure, and that (5) Wealthy candidates will only be allowed to spend $50,000 on their campaign. By entirely closing this loophole of corruption (how candidates practically sneak soft money into their campaigns), the new ban upholds the prohibitions on corporate and union campaign contributions, and limitations on individual donations, in existing federal law.

“The House’s finest moment of this Congress will soon become the Senate’s great opportunity. the House’s action on campaign finance reform is a demonstration of courage, conviction, and bipartisanship. It shows that clear majorities of both houses, when permitted to vote want to remove the blight of soft money from our national politics. Now it’s up to the Senate to complete the job. (Baker, 1997, Common Cause)

The national party committees spend part of the soft money themselves, but transfer the bulk of it to state party accounts in order to evade federal laws and contribution restrictions. The state parties spend their money on activities such as television advertising or voter registration drives which affect federal campaigns.

The Shays-Meehan bill enables non-union associates covered by a collective bargaining agreement call for them to make payments to a union to oppose to financing union political activities unrelated to collective bargaining, and to have their payments proportionally reduced. (Cited Analysis of Shays-Meehan Bill pg. 2)

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Some topics in this essay:
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