WASHINGTON — With passage of campaign finance reform all but assured in the Senate, opponents are looking for ways to defeat the bill in the House or in negotiations between the two chambers.
If the Senate passes the legislation on Monday, as was expected, the House then could reject it, go along with the Senate version word-for-word or pass its own measure. The last option was seen as mostly likely, lawmakers said Sunday.
In that case, a small number of senators and House members would be appointed to a conference committee that would work to resolve differences in the two versions and send a compromise back to both chambers for passage.
Those negotiations may offer an opening for the legislation's foes.
"Clearly the conference is a time to negotiate with the (Bush) administration and see if we can come up with a bill that actually improves the system," Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a leading Senate opponent of the legislation, said on "Fox News Sunday."
President Bush has been circumspect about whether he would sign the bill into law. He said last week that he would sign any legislation that "improves the system" now in place.
McConnell already has said that if the bill passes Congress, he plans a lawsuit to challenge it as an unconstitutional infringement on the right to free speech.
The Senate bill sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., would ban "soft money" — the unlimited, loosely regulated donations from unions, corporations and individuals that now flow to the political parties. They amounted to $480 million in the past two years.
The bill would restrict late campaign broadcast advertising by outside groups and political parties that support or attack candidates but escape regulation because they stop short of explicitly advocating anyone's defeat or election.
The third main provision would ease 27-year-old restrictions on donations to candidates and parties for use in direct campaign activities, including raising the individual contribution limit to a candidate from $1,000 to $2,000.
Although the House has twice previously passed campaign finance legislation, McCain acknowledged Sunday that the bill could face significant challenges there this time.
"It's not a perfect bill, but certainly by banning soft money, we're going to take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the American political campaigns, and we think that's very beneficial," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Meanwhile, the timing of the House debate remains unclear. Some opponents may want to push the debate back to the fall.
Rep. Thomas M. Davis, R-Va., the chief fund-raiser for GOP House members, for example, said he and other Republicans have other priorities that should come first, including tax cuts, President's Bush's budget and education.
Davis also said he would "never underestimate" the power of Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the House's third-ranking Republican, who has pledged to defeat the McCain-Feingold bill.
Others, including Rep. Martin T. Meehan, D-Mass., said they believe House Speaker Dennis Hastert "will do the right thing" by scheduling debate on the issue as soon as possible.
Another question on Capitol Hill is whether McCain would be appointed to a conference committee by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who introduced a competing campaign finance bill that failed, told CNN's "Late Edition" that McCain does not represent "the interests of the Republican conference."
The Senate's top Democrat, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, said, though, he would use one of his party's slots to appoint McCain.
"John McCain deserves to be in the room when the final details are decided," Daschle told CBS' "Face the Nation." "If Senator Lott isn't prepared to do it, I will."