On the afternoon of March 26, the Senate debated a measure styled "Joint Resolution 4," sponsored by Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. The resolution proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution authorizing Congress and the states to "set reasonable limits" on contributions to, and expenditures by, candidates for all public offices. A new constitutional amendment would be necessary to authorize such limits because an old constitutional amendment -- the first one -- stands in the way.
An unbroken, quarter-century-long string of Supreme Court decisions hold that the First Amendment forbids even "reasonable" limits on campaign contributions unless those limits are necessary to combat corruption. Under the same line of high court rulings, the Constitution will not tolerate any limitation on campaign expenditures unless the money in question comes from general tax revenue in a publicly financed election.
Joint Resolution 4, in other words, was a proposal to abridge the Constitution's elemental protection of political speech. And when the debate was done, 40 senators voted to do just that, with Montana's absent Max Baucus announcing through the clerk that he had intended to join them. All forty-one of these people, incidentally, would vote for the McCain-Feingold bill a few days later. Such is the nature of modern "reform."
When so many U.S. senators decide that the First Amendment needs curtailment, you'd think some people would get upset -- leading journalists especially. But no. The next day's New York Times restricted mention of the Hollings resolution to the final sentence of a 1,000-plus-word story the paper ran on page 18. In the same issue, breezily dismissing complaints that the McCain-Feingold bill, too, would impede free speech, the Times's lead editorial boasted, "This page . . . has a record of vigilance on the First Amendment." Oddly enough, "this page" failed to notice the Hollings resolution at all.