GOP Filibuster Stalls Reform of Fund Raising : Politics: Campaign financing legislation hits roadblock on way to conference committee. Republicans accuse Democrats of cynicism.

WASHINGTON — With time running out and bills stacking up, the Senate was hogtied by a Republican filibuster Friday as lawmakers plunged once more into partisan rancor over the Democrats’ version of legislation to reform the way political campaigns are financed.

Driven by their fear of an angry electorate that increasingly sees Congress as a dysfunctional institution, Democrats were pressing hard for passage of campaign finance reform. It is one of the few major items on President Clinton’s legislative agenda that still stands a chance of clearing both the House and the Senate this year.

But Republican senators, charging that the Democrats’ idea of campaign reform was little more than a cynical attempt to preserve their party’s numerical edge in Congress, fell back on an obscure version of the filibuster to keep the legislation from going to a conference with the House until next week.

“Anybody who has ever watched a football game knows what’s going on here,” said Sen. David Boren (D-Okla.), “They are running out the clock in an effort to kill this bill.” The Republican strategy was to deny the Democrats any significant legislative achievements before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, he said.

The bill seeks to curb the runaway costs of congressional campaigns with limits that would cap spending for Senate campaigns at between $1.2 million and $5.5 million, depending on population of the state, and between $600,000 and $800,000 per House race.

Candidates who comply would receive matching funds financed by voluntary taxpayer contributions, fees imposed on PACs and other lobbyists and by a tax levied against the campaign receipts of lawmakers who don’t comply.

Blasting the Republicans for their “unprecedentedly obstructionist tactics,” Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) forced his colleagues into a rare overnight session Thursday to make life as miserable as possible for the opposition.

Republican senators took turns speaking and catnapping on cots in a marbled anteroom off the Senate chamber. They were using a series of procedural motions to keep the bill, passed by the Senate months ago, from finally moving to a long-stalled conference with the House.

Republican filibustering has become a “common tactic,” Mitchell complained as the debate dragged into its second day Friday, but “never before in the history of the Senate have we had a filibuster on trying to go to conference with a bill.”

But even after the nearly sleepless night, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the GOP’s chief point man on campaign finance, was making no apologies for trying to kill what he called “this turkey of a bill.” McConnell said Republicans opposed the bill because it will divert tax dollars to politicians’ campaign coffers while selectively restricting the kinds of fund raising that most benefit the GOP.

“I make no apologies for trying to kill . . . an entitlement program for politicians,” McConnell said.

Even if the measure gets to conference, it faces another formidable obstacle: A major division between House and Senate leaders over how far the bill should go in banning campaign contributions from political action committees.

The Senate version bans PAC contributions entirely. The measure approved by the House, whose members are much more dependent on special interest money for their campaigns, retains the current limit of $10,000 per PAC in a two-year election cycle.

While the filibuster ground work in the Senate to a halt, lawmakers in other parts of the Capitol were near agreement on another reform bill that would greatly tighten regulations on lobbyists and ban them from buying gifts, or even picking up the meal tabs, for members of Congress and their staffs.

Almost as divisive as campaign finance reform, the House and Senate differences over the gift ban were tentatively worked out Thursday night. The measure would bar members of Congress from receiving any meals, entertainment, travel or other gifts from lobbyists and impose a $20 limit on such gifts from other sources, except for a lawmaker’s personal friends or family.

“It doesn’t get much more restrictive than this,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich), who worked out the compromise with Rep. John Bryant (D-Tex.).

Congressional aides warned, however, that it could still be vulnerable to stalling tactics on the House and Senate floors because, like campaign finance reform, the gift ban must overcome a lot of opposition, both overt and covert, from Democrats and Republicans alike.

However, with polls showing that the public’s confidence in their elected officials has sunk to new lows, fears of voter retribution in November have forced most Democrats to reluctantly go along with the strict new campaign and lobbying limits being pushed by freshman lawmakers and other reformers.