Good Friday morning. Today is April 27th and you're listening to the Cato Daily

podcast with Anastasia Glova. Election coverage in recent days is all about how much money the candidates have raised.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama collected record sums and Mitt Romney hit over 20 million dollars in the first quarter of 2007.

Is the intersection of money and elections a cause for concern?

Not according to Cato Scholar John Samples, author of the Cato book,

The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform.

There's been a lot in the headlines about the record fundraising numbers that candidates are

setting this season. Is there anything to worry about here?

No, there's rarely anything to worry about money and spending in politics.

I mean, there's been a lot of evidence shown in congressional elections that more spending

is associated with better informed voters and with

the voters who are less informed becoming more informed than the voters who

already informed becoming more informed. In other words it helps the less

informed voter more. This kind of notion that spending is bad has been around

for a long time. It's sort of an emotional response response people believe money shouldn't have anything

to do with politics but the fact is we can't have any kind of political activity without

some kind of spending and generally speaking spending is a sign of a competitive and vibrant kind of election.

Well what about the charge that money buys candidates?

Well, there's not much evidence that we found in the congressional

elections about that. That is that the votes done by members of Congress are

related to their campaign contributors.

And also you have to keep in mind in the current system, certainly we have a world where

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