This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, June 27th, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

In the last of its rulings for this term, the Supreme Court has struck down the so-called Millionaires Amendment,

an especially punitive part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

John Samples, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Representative Representative Government comments on yesterday's ruling.

The Supreme Court confronted another part of our favorite law, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, a particularly

bad part of it, called the Millionaires Amendment, which had the effect of essentially changing the rules of the game if some candidate faced

a self-funding person that is a wealthy person, but not exclusively so that was funding their own campaign.

In that case, McCain-Feingold said, well the contribution limits that apply to everyone

don't apply to the opponent of the self-funding

candidate and the Supreme Court said well you know that's a burden on First Amendment rights

of the self-funding candidate in an electoral

context that really just penalizes people for exercising their First Amendment

rights. So goodbye millionaires amendment. So in this context, injuring the First Amendment rights of the self-funding campaign,

that means by triggering the extra fundraising and spending that their opponent can then do.

The fact that that is you exercising your First Amendment right actually triggers the ability

of your opponent to raise and spend a great deal more money.

Right, that's the penalizing part. I mean in the opinion itself, it's the notion really that

in an electoral context, two people or more are vying for one office.

And if you do something because someone chooses what is perfectly legal right to self-fund their campaign,

you put conditions on it that essentially make it easier for their opponent, the self-funder's

opponent, to raise money, to spend money therefore. for their

...