Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act and actions: fact sheet
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 tightens political campaign financing particularly in the areas of “soft money” and “issue ads.”
The House bill in the 107th Congress was H.T. 2536 and the Govtrack link is this. It was introduced by Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Marty Meehan (D-MA), the latter of whom introduced the bill to repeal the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell”. In the Senate it was introduced by John McCain (R-AZ) and Russ Feingold (D-WS) in 2001.
The Congressional Research Service Summary is here.
The full text of the bill (as it became law) in Govtrack is here.
The “final” FEC rules as to how the law applies to the Internet were announced March 24m 2006, and are available here in PDF format.
A District of Columbia circuit judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (9/2004) would create controversy by ruling that, on its face, the 2002 law requires the FEC to take a position on Internet issue ads and links. The opinion is hard to find on the Net with a direct link, but it can be found here near the top of the page on the Agonist as a dynamic pdf link. An important development later, recall, was the Supreme Court ruling in the Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, et al., (findlaw opinion is here in 2007, which would limit the reach of the law in cases where the intention was to discuss an issue rather than endorse a particular political candidate. The Supreme Court’s website has a pdf copy of the opinion, here.
There was an Online Freedom of Speech Act H.R. 1606 introduced in the 109th Congress, govtrack link here.
It failed to pass, and appears that it may not be needed because of the FEC action and Supreme Court ruling, although some people will argue that it is still needed. The similarly numbered bill in 110th is about a different issue.