Posted on 03/25/2002 11:16:37 AM PST by Pay now bill Clinton
Bush Will Sign Campaign Finance Bill
Mon Mar 25,10:19 AM ET
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) said on Sunday he would sign landmark campaign finance reform legislation with only a slight hesitation, reflecting his ongoing concerns about the measure.
The legislation to reduce the influence of money in politics won final congressional approval last week, and Bush has pledged to sign it soon.
The bill would ban unlimited contributions known as "soft money" to national political parties, limit such donations to state and local parties and restrict broadcast ads by outside groups shortly before elections.
Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, whose investigation of Bill Clinton's sex life resulted in the president's impeachment in 1998, is to lead a legal challenge that will seek to knock down most of the measure as unconstitutional.
Bush said he felt the campaign bill did not fully address the need to require identification of who is funding so-called independent groups that introduce "scurrilous, untrue" television advertisements in the last days of a campaign, as he said happened to him in his 2000 presidential campaign.
"I've always thought that people who pump money into the political system, we ought to know who they are," he said.
Bush said that nonetheless the "bill is a better bill than the current system," but that some parts of it might not stand up to a court challenge.
The point is that the Supreme Court is needed to watch over the excesses(politics) of the legislative and executive branches, which will happen because politics has always been part of the human experience.
Politics over principle?
Again?
for the 17,643rd time?
Isn't that how we got into this mess?
Given what Congressman Billybob has said about the bill, and based on what I have heard about the matup between the Common Cause types and McConnell's duo (Starr and Abrams) that occured recently, it seems that this bill is set to be voided for the most part (corporate and union contributions, the disclosure provisions, and the increase in hard-money limits being the only party that have a good chance of making it, IMHO). The provisions struck down are going to be PERMANENTLY killed.
The debate here seems to be one of how best to protect the constitution. The Supreme Court cannot give advisory opinions. Frankly, I think it's time to put a stake in the heart of this crap permanently. That meant this had to become law. After Enron, the only viable way for Bush to avoid a firestorm of lies and still kill this bill would be to sign it, and let SCOTUS handle it. And this is going to be killed permanently, not delayed by a veto.
A veto would only delay the inevitable until a Dem got elected in 2004 or 2008. But if SCOTUS strikes down stuff as unconstitutional, they will NEVER be able to bring it back barring a constitutional amendment.
We've got a President that thinks long-term, and this is a good thing, not a bad thing. That political capital is being saved for Supreme Court nominations and Social Security reform, as well as for if the going gets tough for the war. Let's give this guy the room to screw ALL the Dems, not just SOME of them.
Most likely, a party injured by the new law would file a suit challenging its constitutionality. The suit would proceed through the court system, eventually reaching the Supreme Court. SCOTUS would then be free to rule on the issue at hand.
Exactly! Which does not mean we should excuse those excesses in our politicians simply because SCOTUS exists.
And even though I still don't see where he and he alone can decide that a bill is unconstitutional, perhaps he WANTS some of the bill, like the $2000 hard money.....and perhaps he believes this is the best way or the only way he'll ever get it.
It's in every post. You don't have to spell it out.
You'll pardon me if I dismiss this as the same old hand-wringing and excuse-mongering that conservatives have been making for republican failures of principle for the last 3 or 4 decades.
You see the results.
Same old... Same old.
It happens all the time on here, ever notice?
No wonder people don't take you seriously.
Ah yes, the obligatory OWK insult, no Constituional thread on FR would seem the same without one.
Why do you act like politics is not part of the process?
Most conservatives are rational and sophisticated. Inflexible and sanctimonius people are distasteful to work with or even be around. Sometimes there is addition through subtraction. If you want to withdraw from the major political party system, fine. Don't kid yourself, though, you'll be just part of a dysfunctional family of noisy eunuchs venting on an internet message board.
That is the answer to your question.
The first veto ever made was on Constitutional grounds.
You made a post earlier that said the article didn't represent everything the President said was accurate. I agree with that.
He's angry that he was personally attaked by a campaign ad. Here's more from the letter that I clipped that Jefferson quote from:
"Nor does the opinion of the unconstitutionality, & consequent nullity of that law, remove all restraint from the overwhelming torrent of slander, which is confounding all vice and virtue, all truth & falsehood, in the U. S. The power to do that is fully possessed by the several State Legislatures. It was reserved to them, & was denied to the General Government, by the Constitution, according to our construction of it. While we deny that Congress have a right to control the freedom of the press, we have ever asserted the right of the States, and their exclusive right, to do so. They have accordingly, all of them, made provisions for punishing slander, which those who have time and inclination, resort to for the vindication of their characters. In general, the State laws appear to have made the presses responsible for slander as far as is consistent with its useful freedom. Inthose States where they do not admit even the truth of allegations to protect the printer, they have gone too far."
Just because the President is upset about an attack ad that was presented late in the campaign, is no reason to sign into law legislation (he himself admits is constitutionally questionable) that would prevent it.
Are we going to debate the meaning of "no" as in no law?
How's the pay?
A veto merely delays it until the Dem in the White House signs the thing, and a Dem DOJ aggressively defends all of the bill. With Bush, he signs it, but I have a feeling that this DOJ will not be that aggressive. And CongressmanBillybob has pointed out repeatedly that most, if not all, of this bill will be tossed out.
That means it is killed PERMANENTLY. I'm sick of this every year. I'd like to see this killed PERMANENTLY.
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