The McCain-Feingold bill, which bans soft money, has our support, but Congress should make sure our First Amendment right to participate in the political debate is safe.

The first week of Senate debate over the McCain-Feingold campaign finance measure was serious and civil. Let's hope when debate resumes today it continues on that plane. This could be the year Congress finally acts to curb the corrupting influence of money on our political system.

Both sides are well aware of the problem: Politics is now such a high-dollar game that Americans feel detached from their own government, believing big-money individuals and organizations can buy the kind of access that average citizens cannot. And they are right. Money not only talks, it opens doors.

The problem is obvious. The debate is over what can and should be done about it.

The centerpiece of McCain-Feingold is a ban on "soft money" -- the unregulated and unlimited amounts of money unions, corporations and wealthy individuals launder through the national political parties to circumvent the legal limits on how much candidates for federal office may receive from individual donors. Soft money was at the center of the 1996 Clinton-Gore fundraising scandal, but both parties are guilty of playing the game.

We support a ban on soft money, even though we acknowledge there are some First Amendment concerns with outlawing contributions ostensibly intended to go toward party building and get-out-the-vote campaigns. However, the major parties have been so dishonest in the way soft money was used and enforcement of the law so lax, that we are willing to let the courts grapple with the constitutionality of how far soft-money restrictions may go.

We are under no illusions that a soft-money ban by itself will cleanse our campaign system or promote more honest political debate. Whatever restrictions are imposed on fundraising, candidates will still have to raise money. The result could well be that lobbyists and wealthy donors would be able to buy the same access for less money. Even so, we think it's time to get soft money out of the system and see what happens.

That said, we oppose another key part of McCain-Feingold that would stifle issue advertising in the weeks leading up to an election. An amendment written by Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and James Jeffords of Vermont would amount to a gag rule for corporations and unions that wanted to use television advertising to hold incumbents accountable for their voting records. This, reformers believe, would reduce the influence of special interests. Good intentions sometimes make bad law, and this amendment is especially offensive to the letter and the spirit of the First Amendment. If this provision becomes law, it would face a constitutional challenge that the reformers almost certainly would lose, given the past rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Our right to engage in political debate during an election, as individuals or collectively, is one of the most fundamental and abiding rights we have as Americans. The First Amendment was written with the protection of political speech in mind.

At its core, the issue-ad provision of McCain-Feingold rejects this fundamental right. By limiting when and how independent groups may advertise, McCain-Feingold attempts to reduce the volume of those with deep-pockets. It creates a First Amendment with an asterisk -- the government reserves the right to stifle speech in the name of leveling the playing field. Incumbents have plenty of advantages over their challengers without any new restrictions on issue advocacy.

Under McCain-Feingold, unions and corporations would be barred from sponsoring television ads which mention the name of a political candidate, within 30 days of the primary and 60 days of the general election. If the farm workers' union wants to inform the public about the anti-labor record of an incumbent at the very moment people are paying attention -- near an election -- it would be prohibited by law from doing so using television.

Proponents of campaign finance reform saw what happened when campaign contributions from individuals were limited to $1,000 per election: To circumvent the law, the big money was sent to political parties as soft money. Reformers fear, and with good reason, that when soft money is banned, big donors will simply support their candidates and issues through independent expenditures. Money will not have been removed from politics, simply redirected. Can we then expect another assault on First Amendment rights in the name of campaign reform?

The urge to control issue ads and the speech of independent parties has to be curbed. Disingenuously, reformers refuse to acknowledge the damage they are prepared to do to the Bill of Rights in the name of cleaner elections. They act as though curbs on issue advertising are merely a limit on money and not speech, but the U.S. Supreme Court has said otherwise.

What reformers need to recognize is that democracy is not enhanced by muzzles and gags. Here's what the Supreme Court said in its 1976 ruling in Buckley vs. Valeo: "The First Amendment denies government the power to determine that spending to promote one's political views is wasteful, excessive or unwise. In the free society ordained by our Constitution, it is not the government, but the people -- individually, as citizens and candidates, and collectively, as associations and political committees -- who must retain control over the quality and range of debate on public issues in a political campaign."

Congress should keep these words in mind as it proceeds on McCain-Feingold. For us, the bottom line is this: Ban the soft money, but don't diminish the First Amendment rights of citizens and organizations to participate in the political debate.

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