Russ Feingold: “on April 2 of this year, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass the McCain-Feingold bill and ban soft money. Even…”

“on April 2 of this year, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass the McCain-Feingold bill and ban soft money. Even before the roll was called on final passage and 59 Senators voted ``aye,'' the Senate's foremost opponent of reform declared that he relished the opportunity to bring a constitutional challenge to the bill. ``You're looking at the plaintiff,'' the Senator from Kentucky announced. Opponents of reform have consistently expressed confidence that the courts will strike down our efforts to clean up the campaign finance system. They regularly opine that the McCain-Feingold bill is unconstitutional, and, despite clear signs to the contrary in the Court's opinion last term in Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, express great certainty that the Supreme Court will never allow our bill to take effect. Well, in its decision yesterday morning in FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, the Court again dumped cold water on that certainty. The court held that the coordinated party spending limits now in the law--the so-called ``441a(d) limits''--are constitutional. It ruled that the coordinated spending limits are justified as a way to prevent circumvention of the $1,000 per election limits on contributions to candidates that the Court upheld in the landmark Buckley v. Valeo decision in 1976. In my view, the decision makes it even more clear that the soft money ban in the McCain-Feingold bill will withstand a constitutional challenge.”