enjoyed during their golden age. Some practitioners and political observers even question whether this would be desirable, given the high level of corruption that was associated with the parties of that era and the financing improprieties that captured headlines following the 1996 elections. BibliographyWall Street Journal. Campaign Finance Outlook. September, 17, 1997. P. 14Greayson, James. The Histoyy of Elections: 1800-1950. Waveland Publishers, Ontario Canada. P. 124New York Times. Candidates for Sale. January, 23, 1998. P. 12********------------------------------------------------------------------------A COMPARISON OF H.R. 2183 AND H.R. 3526Members of Congress proposed more than 125 campaign finance reform bills in the House and Senate during the 105th Congress. However, only two of these received serious attention in the House. H.R. 2183, sometimes referred to as the House Freshman bill, was introduced by Reps. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) and Tom Allen (D-ME), and H.R. 3526, commonly referred to as the Shays-Meehan bill, was introduced by Reps. Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Martin Meehan (D-MA). The Shays-Meehan bill was similar to the latter versions of S.25, the McCain-Feingold bill, which fell victim to a filibuster in February 1998. H.R. 2183 and H.R. 3526 were different from one another, but both would have had major implications for political parties had they become law. Party Fund Raising and Spending in Elections Had it been enacted, H.R. 2183 would have raised the amount of money that individuals could contribute to a national party from the current $20,000 per year to $25,000 per year (see Table 1). It would have encouraged individuals to give more contributions to national parties because it proposed to exempt national party contributions from the $25,000 aggregate annual limit for contributions to candidates and PACs. Just as important, the bill would have repealed the current limits on coordinated expenditures, opening the...
