The nation's recent success at reforming the way our political campaigns are conducted provides an important case study in the fragility of any bipartisan project. In 2002, after years of open and vigorous debate over every nuance, members of both parties in Congress acted together to pass - and President Bush signed - the most important campaign finance reform in a generation.

The Supreme Court subsequently upheld the vast majority of the law. Unfortunately, forces are now hard at work to undo some of the hard-won progress made by leaders in both parties and in all three federal branches of government through insidious legislative chicanery.

The bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 was a principled congressional response to the public's growing, and accurate, sense that American politics was increasingly on the auction block. The so-called "soft money" system, in which corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals evaded legal limits on donations to candidates by giving vast sums to the political parties, had plainly become a civilized form of influence peddling. And sometimes, it wasn't very civilized.

Typical of the era was a memo from the leader of one of the national political parties to the head of the pharmaceutical lobby in Washington, in which the party operative "asks" the drug industry for a $250,000 contribution "in order to keep the lines of communication open" so that Congress could "continue passing legislation favorable to your industry."

That kind of strong-arm tactic had become the rule, rather than the exception, and it was practiced with disturbing skill by members of both parties.

By outlawing those contributions, Republicans and Democrats put an end to a deeply damaging practice that was corrupting our politics and distorting the public policy process. And, contrary to the predictions of reform opponents, the new law actually helped reinvigorate the national political parties by forcing them to return to their natural function - reaching out for support and funding from average citizens, rather than special interests - and the parties added millions of new small contributors in 2004, and raised more cash than had ever been raised in hard and soft money combined.

Unfortunately, in a closely divided electorate, the pressure to raise enormous amounts of campaign cash remains inexorable, and some in Congress are refusing to accept success. Instead, they are attempting to use arcane procedural tactics to quietly open loopholes in the law that will allow them to raise funds in excess of reasonable limits.

This month in the Senate, members have been attempting to pass a measure that would go a long way toward recreating the soft-money phenomenon. Attached to an important funding bill scheduled for quick consideration is a "rider" - in legislative parlance, a measure that is not relevant to the underlying purpose of the bill - that would allow so-called "leadership political action committees (PACs)" to transfer unlimited amounts of money to the national parties.

While the details are complex, the end result is simple, and bad for our democratic system.

Today, members of Congress may only raise limited amounts of "hard money" - including up to $4,200 per election cycle from an individual - to support their own election campaigns. These longstanding caps are designed to limit the influence that any donor will have over any federal official.

But legislators may raise an additional $5,000 per year (or $30,000 over a senator's six-year term) for a leadership PAC. They may then use these funds for certain political purposes, but are prohibited from using it on their own campaigns and are strictly limited on how much they may transfer to the national political party committees.

Under the proposed measure, however, leadership PACs would be able to contribute unlimited amounts to the political parties - and the parties could then spend that money on the legislator's own campaign, under his or her direction.

The proposed measure would therefore turn a reasonable $4,200 contribution limit into a $34,200 limit for senators, with vastly increased potential for buying undue influence with the officeholder and his or her political party.

This move has both the potential, and the apparent purpose, of allowing leadership PACs to do what the national political parties now cannot: raise large amounts of "soft money" in excess of contribution limits.

Worse, the rider would explicitly limit leadership PACs to sitting members of Congress, conferring an enormous benefit on already almost invincible incumbents and putting challengers at a potentially fatal fund-raising disadvantage.

Senators of both parties must again work together to remove this provision and thereby protect this rare, bipartisan accomplishment that repaired and strengthened our democracy just three years ago.

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Kirk L. Jowers is the director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics.