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President
signs bill for campaign finance GREENVILLE, S.C. — Without fanfare, President Bush signed landmark campaign finance legislation Wednesday as he opened an aggressive multimillion-dollar fund-raising swing. Within hours, multiple lawsuits challenged the new law. “This legislation, although far from perfect, will improve the current financing system for federal campaigns,” Bush said in a written statement released after White House aides telephoned bill sponsors with news of the signing. Here, on the first stop of his quick swing through South Carolina and Georgia gathering $3 million for Republican candidates, Bush denied that his low-key enactment of the bill was any kind of statement on his ambivalence toward it. “I wouldn’t have signed it if I was really unhappy with it,” Bush told reporters as he met with emergency and rescue workers at a Greenville fire station. He said he saw no contradiction in signing the bill on a day of heavy fund raising. “I’m not going to lay down my arms. I’m going to participate in the rules of the system.” After the speech to emergency workers, Bush headlined a $1.1 million fund-raiser for Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and then flew to Georgia to help collect $1.5 million for Rep. Saxby Chambliss. Thursday, he hopes to raise more than $1 million for Texas Attorney General John Cornyn’s bid for the Senate. Graham told donors at his fund-raiser: “Enjoy every minute of it. You paid for it.” The bill will “make American politics more palatable,” said Graham, who voted in favor of the bill and was a vocal supporter of Bush’s 2000 GOP rival, Sen. John McCain — the most visible sponsor of campaign-finance legislation. Back in Washington, the National Rifle Association was first in line to file its legal challenge at the federal courthouse a few blocks from the White House. The legislation “eviscerates the core protections of the First Amendment by prohibiting, on pain on criminal punishment, political speech,” said a legal complaint filed on behalf of the NRA and its political victory fund. Bush had already said he would stay out of the inevitable litigation. “This legislation is the culmination of more than six years of debate among a vast array of legislators, citizens and groups. ... It does represent progress in this often-contentious area of public policy debate,” Bush said in his written statement. “Taken as a whole, this bill improves the current system of financing for federal campaigns and therefore I have signed it into law.” That’s not how the NRA saw it. “We are proud to be one of the first plaintiffs to formally ask the federal court to invalidate these new limits on the political speech of ordinary citizens because we believe that this law cannot be allowed to stand, not even for a moment,” NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said in a statement on the association’s lawsuit. |
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