This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, April 2, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown in an important First Amendment victory against regulation of campaign speech,

the Supreme Court has struck down so-called aggregate contribution limits to campaigns.

Trevor Burris, a research fellow at the Cato Institute breaks down the ruling.

Well, we know that now aggregate limits, meaning the amount that a person can

contribute in total of all their contributions to both political committees and

packs and candidates don't exist anymore as a First Amendment because the

First Amendment does not allow them to exist under the narrow holding of 5-4 that the Supreme Court released not

the narrow holding of 5-4 that the Supreme Court released today.

The sky is not falling.

This is not Citizens United.

Two, this is not the carte blanche for these people to now, rich people to now take over our political system.

It's a sort of a small adjustment that's not going to affect a ton of people because not many people give that much money to political campaigns.

Now just to be clear on what the issue is, this is not about contribution limits

overall.

overall.

you giving to 535 incumbents or, and that this, the argument was this has some sort of unique

corrupting power that some number below that doesn't have. That was the argument. In the Buckley case, which is sort of the foundation of modern campaign finance jurisprudence, they make a difference between contributions, things you give to a candidate, and expenditures things that you spend on your own behalf.

And they allowed the government to limit the contributions.

At that time, it was $1,000. Now it's $2,600 for primary in general means you can give a candidate $5,200.

And the government has said that that is corrupting, but is below the corrupting limit.

So they are not very concerned that $5,200 is going to corrupt candidates.

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