FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April
10, 2002
LIEBERMAN
RESPONDS TO HOUSE VICTORY
ON
STEALTH PAC LEGISLATION
Pushes for Bipartisan Fix
WASHINGTON
- Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.,
commended his House colleagues Wednesday for stopping in its
tracks an amendment that would have undermined the so-called
527 stealth PAC law, an important campaign finance reform
authored by Lieberman and enacted two years ago to rid the
nation’s electoral campaigns of undisclosed campaign cash.
The House voted 205-219 to defeat a popular tax bill
because it contained the provision, sponsored by Rep. Bill
Thomas, R-Calif., chairman of the House Ways and Means
Committee.
“This is a major rebuke to those who would waste no
time in trying to undermine our campaign disclosure laws,”
Lieberman said, noting that the landmark McCain-Feingold bill
had recently been signed by the President.
“The ink is barely dry on the President’s signature
on a bill to rid our system of soft money and yet opponents
are already busy plotting to find new loopholes.
“Now that the House has put a stop to this, we can
move on to a bi-partisan solution to the double-reporting
issue that Senator Hutchison and I have proposed.”
The Thomas amendment came in response to a legitimate
complaint – that a number of state and local candidates and
PACs must report the same activity twice.
The Thomas bill, however, threatened to create new
loopholes by offering too broad an exemption that would have
allowed alleged state PACs that don’t report all their
activity on the state level to avoid the federal reporting
requirement.
Lieberman and Senator Kay Baily Hutchison, R-Texas,
introduced an alternative measure in the Senate Tuesday
(S.2078) to address the duplicate reporting issue. Their proposal exempts state PACs if they report all of their
large contributions and spending on the state level.
The Hutchison-Lieberman proposal was approved by the
Senate last year but died in conference.
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