This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, June 28, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Supreme Court Monday threw out the so-called clean elections regime in Arizona's

governor's race.

In doing so, the High Court has dealt a serious

blow to public financing in political races. John Samples, director of the Cato Institute's

Center for Representative Government, talks about the decision and the potential

chilling effects of those kinds of regimes.

Justice Roberts basically argued that you spending money on your own campaign to speak triggers a government entity to then pay your

opponents some sum of money with which they may then speak in a public arena.

The idea is to level the playing field.

Justice Robert, Chief Justice Robert said,

this is burdensome and significantly burdensome.

Is it fair to say that, look, another person's speech cannot be viewed as substantially burdensome

to someone else who is speaking?

The big picture here is the First Amendment doctrine about freedom of speech that the government should not be involved in chilling speech, reducing speech in some way through policies.

In this case you have matching funds that are aimed as you say at leveling the playing field and what they do is tell people who are privately financed if you raise money beyond a certain level, the government

will take tax money and give it to your opponent, and then that is a cost or a burden on your

fundraising that will lead you to not do it and therefore there's this

empirical question do you not do it and if so then there's a chilling effect on

speech.

Isn't it sort of a problem of piles?

...