hear arguments first this morning in case twelve five three six mccutcheon versus the federal election commission has more think mr chief justice and may it please the court because aggregate contribution limits are an impermissible attempt to equalize the relative ability of individuals to participate in the political process by prohibiting contributions that are with in the modest based limits congress has already imposed to combat the reality or appearance of corruption these limits simply seek to prevent individuals from engaging in too much first amendment activity these limits cannot be justified on circumvention grounds because the concerns the government hypothesizes are already addressed by because multitude of more direct anti circumvention measures  because becker imposes numerous direct circumvention measures for instance we have your american provisions on earmarking cantar contributions for particular candidate we have coordination restrictions on coordinate expenditures with a candidate there candidate smith can only give him twenty six hundred dollars but he has a lot of supporters and they give each of them forty of them gets a brainstorm and each of the forty put son and it says sam smith this money goes to people like sam smith great people now we can give each of those forty five thousand dollars they are there's a couple of problems with that hypothetically or first of all they're based one that's both on what can be given to a park five thousand dollars and on what a pack can give to a candidate five thousand dollars and still we have is my five thousand dollars have a pac that is going to contribute only to one candidate you know no they'll contribute to several because they'll get more than one and at that point then you don't have the kind of traceability you're talking about because there's more money coming into the pac than can find its way to only five very contested senate races and one hundred pacs say that they're going to support those five candidates so a donor gives five thousand dollars to each of the one hundred acts which support those candidates the pac divides up the money one thousand dollars goes to each candidate the tornado or those pacs one hundred thousand dollars goes to each of the of the senate candidates in the five most contested races twenty times what the individual contribution limits allow a couple of responses to the error mean first of all we're talking about scenarios where there isn't coordination at all between the end of the first person who makes the contribution and the candidate later on that's receiving it all of his one hundred thousand dollar donors stero not all that many of them he can keep them all in his head in a mental rolodex but they're not actually donors to him at that point they're contributing to pac that in your hypothetical is contributing to multiple different five of the most contested senate races and one person gives one hundred thousand dollars to each of five candidates who if they win become the five senators that are most attuned to donors and he knows who's given him one hundred thousand dollars each of those five senators who gets in on the strength of these contributions that are twenty times what the individual limits allow i don't think it works to think of these as direct contributions in excess of the limits because the pac is limited itself and how much it can contribute so you would have to we're trying to do because it's hard to do an oral argument but what we're trying to do in both i think our cases is that we looked up all the rules in the regs or my law clerk and what she discovered and it may be wrong because all look at it again is there has been no significant change in the earmarking rules in any of the rules that you're talking about but for one change since one change the one change is the change that although contributions made by political committees a stab or finings or maintained or controlled by a single person will count as one so what you're seeing in these hypotheticals is simply the construction on precisely the same situation that existed while being careful to have not one person control the four thousand packs which is pretty easy to do and if you want to say is this a reality turn on your television set or internet because we for more than the statute itself and specifically they cover these instances of a pac that is only going to be contributing one candidate which is where a lot of the concern comes from and i just want to be clear what your answer to justice kagan was her hypothetical is  regulations is this because we would the other side concede that this is true i but i doubt they wouldn't see that it's true but you know i think that if you look at it if you have a bunch of pacs that are getting contributions from the same group of that gives money to the five most the candidates in the five most contested senate races i just don't think any f e c would say that that's your mark and well i may have an overly suspicious mind but i don't know if i saw one hundred tax circumvention so you know i think that gets to get into why this doesn't have the kind of coordination you need to make you want to other one there are one hundred fifty house candidates with completely safe seats right and there may be you know thirty or forty or something like that in their party who don't have safe seats so the one hundred fifty gets together and they say we're going to run a joint fundraiser and anybody can contribute twenty six hundred dollars each of these candidates one hundred fifty of them right so that makes about four hundred thousand dollars and then these one hundred fifty candidates with completely safe seats just transfer all this money to the one person who doesn't have a safe seat so that's about four hundred thousand dollars for a primary in a general election that's about eight hundred thousand dollars that all goes to one candidate from one donor because of the a candidate can transfer two thousand dollars to a candidate for election and rats and hundred dollars that's a hard contribution limit on how much they can contribute but but i think all of this also gets to another column which is  problem here because if you're if you're talking about the scenario in your scenario there's only one person who can even make a contribution at that point after the first twenty six hundred dollars this is not only right you're exactly right miss murphy one person could make an eight hundred thousand dollar contribution to a house race or eight hundred thousand dollars goes a long way and then what these one hundred fifty candidates can do is they can do it for every single other candidate in a contested seat so take your thirty or forty house contested seats and it becomes a conduit for a single person to make a eight hundred thousand dollars contribution to a candidate in a contested district i think even if you accept this scenario where all of these candidates are independently deciding to give all their money to one candidate you can't have a law that is designed to prevent this one person from circumvention by prohibiting everybody else from engaging in contributions that don't m so what percentage is there any information on what percentage of all contribute are able to contribute over the aggregate i don't have a percentage on how many are able i mean we are talking about a large number of individuals we certainly are talking about more individuals than his first amendment rights were implicated by the provision that issuing davis for the little we're little we only prohibits a speech or two percent  they want the effect of the aggregate limits is to limit someone's contribution of the maximum out to about nine candidates right that's right if you're talking about is car is there a way to eliminate that aspect while retaining some of the aggregate limits in there which is not a necessary consequence of any where you have aggregate limits or are there alternative ways of enforcing the aggregate limitation that don't have that consequence well it's certainly a necessary scheme in which there's a distinct limit on contributions to candidates alone i think though it aggregate limits in general are always going to have this effect of prohibiting people from giving contribution of the don't themselves which give corruption concerns and that's why if the government is really concerned about the things it's talking about there are narrower avenues to get at them if the concern is joint fundraising committees i'm not a little confused so i'm confused because we're talking in the abstract this decision was based on a motion to dismiss and there is a huge colloquy about what happens and doesn't happen we don't have a record low well i mean i can go into the news is just this prior suggested it's very hard to think that any candidate doesn't know the contributor who has enough money to give not only to himself or herself but to any of his or her affiliates who are supporting him or her it's nearly common sense hard to dispute so you're saying it can't happen but i don't see charges of ordination going on that much i guess i'm not sure what you're talking about happening i mean if you're just talking about knowing that some individuals are making contributions to other candidates or state parties who are not going to share those pap that's what it says and then it says make a donation to help smith pack support republican or you like or democratic candidates period and they have an address or not doesn't take a genius to figure out what they're going to do with the money and maybe smith will get a pretty good share now if smith has four hundred people who figured this out he will have four hundred times five thousand times one person now you say that really couldn't happen because the designation we haven't found a designation rule that would stop it but been just to suit a minor is saying i don't know and i don't either because there's been no hearing there's been no evidence presented there is nothing but the smiths two points your honor first of all the case was briefed on cross motion for injunctive relief so at the government had an opportunity to make a record and  that i can't figure it out it might have been nice to have the you know the lower court tell me what the law is but we don't normally require a record to decide questions of law and you shouldn't need one here either because it's based limits are facial decision and you're taking a position that the long stops corruption and you're suggesting that the government is incapable of showing  under strict scrutiny to begin with this is a severe restriction on political speech and likely to address this question about the restriction on s it has been argued that these limits promote expressen remote democratic participation because what they require the candidate to do is instead of concentrating fundraising on the super affluent the candidate would then have to try to raise money more broadly in the electorate so that by having these limit i disagree with that for this reason first of all this limit the aggregate limit on political parties places like minded political parties in the position of competing against each other rather than collaborating against each other all the national political parties on the republican side in the state local parties compete against each other for an artificially limited pool of money from each contributor the same is true on the candidate side they compete against each other for the same artificially limited pool of money even though each individual contribution to the candidate or to the party is limited by the basements the federal election commission regulations and just aspire i would i would propose that you look at section one ten point one eight which  which pacifically prohibits a pack of the nature you describe if a person contributes to a pact with knowledge his contribution is going to a particular candidate that is an earmark under the under the president of the federal election commission  is it is it correct that the consequence of this provision has been very severe with respect to national political parties it is your own and particularly in the current environment where the national political parties  side much of the money that used to go to them now goes to pacs isn't that what has happened exactly right so that this is really you know turning the dials on from regulating elections now i ask myself why would why would members of congress want to hurt their political parties can i ensure i yes or to myself well ordinarily the national political parties will devote their money to elections in those states where the incumbent has a good chance of losing so in fact if you're an incumb who cares about political parties i don't want money to go to my opponents and if you if you turn down the amount of money that the national political parties have that's that what's less money that can be devoted against you if you are challenged in a close race isn't that the consequence of this let me see you and raise you one there are separate limits here your honor for candidates ample political parties the effect of this is to insulate the incumbents from competing with hard cap on the number any contributor can give to all candidates and a separate cap on that on the amount that contributor so so i already did in one summer before bakra i spent several weeks reading the record before the district court that very lengthy case on this and it was filled with testimony by senators and congressmen that a handful of people can give hundreds of thousands of dollars they know who those people are and that those people do have undue influence which means in first amendment terms that the individual who in fact has wonderful ideas and convinces others even by paying three cents to buy the internet or something has t a shot because it will influence people not ideas but the money now there was a record here there is no record showing whether this aspect does or does not have the same tendency that is why i ask how can i decide this on the basis of theory when the record previously showed the contrary of what's been argued and in fact at least might show that even in respect to these lines we're honored this case comes to the court as an as applied challenge mr mccutcheon does not want to go through does not want to go through the committees you're talking about he wants to write checks directly to the candidates and directly to the committees he is constrained by the aggregate limit but he can count like set everyone wants to write checks to a test he can give his special number seven hundred seventy six if he if he wanted to give a contribution to every candidate running for a federal congressional c congressional and senate he would be limited to eighty six dollars for some but mr hurting their own case it would be something over with thousand dollars right because he association by applying this aggregate list was always there if you don't go off the aggregate limits people will be allowed to put together the national committees and all the state committees and all the candidates in the house and the senate it comes to over three and a half million dollars so i can write checks totaling three and a half million dollars to the republican party committees and all its candidates or to the democratic party committees and all its candidates even before i start writing independent pacs now having written a check to for three point five or so million dollars to a single party's candidates are you suggesting that that party and the members of that party are not going to owe me anything that i won't get an special treatment because i thought that that was exactly what we said in mcconnell that when we talked about soft money restrictions we understood that you give three and a half million dollars you get a very very special place at the table so this is effectively two to reintroduce the soft money scheme of mcconnell isn't it no no your honor it is absolutely not because mcconnell dealt with a situation where there were you were not considering the base limits the soft money by definition was not subject to the base limits to take your example of the joint fund raising committee the joint fund raising regulation which consumes more than three pages in the in the federal code of federal regulations it's set one of two point one seven it specifically reaffirms the base limits it specifically reaffirms the anti your marking restriction and it says that the joint fundraising committee must inform all contributors of those restrictions so we're ganis a situation where the money will leave the contributors hand he loses control over it and the person the money making money right goes to a single party and indeed i could make this even worth i could say let's say the speaker of the house or the majority leader of the house  solicit this money from particular people so solicit somebody to ante up his three point six million dollars and then you know justice kennedy said and mcconnell the making of a solicited gift is a quid  recipient of the money and to the one who solicits the payment so the speaker the majority leader can solicit three point six million dollars to all the party members and you're telling me there's just no special influence that goes along  we know from the citizens united decision your honor that gratitude and influence are not considered to be quid pro quo corruption so i think that's what you're talking about that is not the sort of corruption that would sustain this limit especially in light of the severe restrictions on political committees one of the concerns in buckley was the dairy industry which contributed to hundreds of pacs supporting president nixon's reelection that is no longer possible those were all created by the dairy industry or by the nixon campaign is that correct that's not as i understand  i read the lower court decision in buckley that is correct and addition you also have that also how is it acknowledge him so you have a pick by him of code of federal regulations for it of the federal election commission which did not exist at the time of the thank you counsel thank generally mr chief justice and may please the court aggregate limits combat corruption and let me start by explaining exactly how the aggregate limits combat corruption both by blocking circumvention of individual contribution limits and equally fundamentally by serving as a bulwark against a campaign finance system dominated by massive individual contributions which the dangers of quid pro quo corruption would be obvious and inherent in the corrosive appearance of corruption would be overwhelming now the appellant's in this case have tried to present the case as though the issue or whether there were some corrupting potential in giving contribution to and the nineteenth candidate after someone has already contributed to them the maximum to the eighteen but that's not what this case is about the parents are not arguing that the aggregate limit is drawn in the wrong place they are arguing that there can be no aggregate limit because the base contribution limits do all the work and so what that means is that you are taking the lid off the aggregate contribution limit and as justice kagan in her question earlier indicated that means that an individual can contribute every two years up to three point six million dollars to candidates for party parties national committees and state that's that's because they can transfer the funds among themselves and to a particular candidate the possibility of prohibiting those transfers perhaps a way of protecting against that corruption appearance while at the same time allowing the individual to contribute to however many house candidates he wants to contribute to and i mean the concern is you have somebody who is very interested say in environmental regulation and very interested in gun control the current system the way the anti aggregation system works is he's got to choose is he going to express his belief in environmental regulation by donating to more than one people there or is he going to choose the gun control issue so mr chief justice i want to make two different points in response to that question the first is that restricting transfers would have a bearing on the circumvention probably wouldn't eliminate all circumvent risk it would have a bearing on the problem but there is a more fundamental problem here it's a problem analogous to the one that was at issue a soft money mcconnell which is the very fact of delivering a three point six million dollars check to the whoever it is the speaker of the house the senate majority leader whoever it is who solicits that check the very fact of the living that check creates the inherent opportunity for quid pro quo corruption exactly the kind of risk that the court identified in buckley only apart from where that money goes after it's delivered what is real brainwork what is the framework for analyzing it i agree with you on the aggregation but it has this consequence with respect to limiting how many candidates an individual can support within the limits that congress has said don't present any danger of corruption so what is the framework for analyzing that to give you your argument with respect to the transfers and the appearance they are but it does have that other consequence on something we've recognized as a significant right so let me make a specific point about that and then work into the framework the specific point is this the it's the aggregate limit would have the effect of restricting the ability of a contributor to make a maximum contribution to more than a certain number of candidates that's true we sweet can't help but acknowledge that it's math but that doesn't mean that that individual cannot spend as much as the individual wants an independent expenditures to try to advance the interest of those candidates or the interests of the causes of those candidates stand for that mr mccutcheon for example can spend as much of his considerable fortune as he wants on independent expenditure advocating evoke gratitude and it is not the evil of big money three point two million an individual can give back to an independent panic and spend right the foundation it's not that we're stopping people from spending big money on politics that the foundation of this court's jurisprudence in this area is the careful line between independent expenditures which this court has held repeatedly do not create a sufficient risk of quid pro quo corruption to justify their regulation and contributions which do not talk and that eliminates some of the arguments that have been made here which are arguments against big money in politics there's big money can be in politics and the thing is you can't keep it to the republican party or the democratic party but you can start your own pac that's perfectly good but that's a benefit to our political system why i do think we have limits on contributions to political parties in addition to limits on contributions to candidates and i think that does help establish the point here which is that the candidates are not hermetically sealed off from each other and parties are not hermetically sealed off from candidates that they are you know you're on the same team and we limit the amount that and indeed that individual can contribute to a political party as well as the amount an individual can contribute that if they actually does very much of all i don't i'm looking for an answer here it's not that i have one at all it is rather basic the point i think it's being made now i mean as i understand it the whole reason is no doubt the campaign limits take an ordinary person and they say you cannot give more than and such an amount there are apparently from the internet two hundred people in the united states who would like to give one hundred seventeen thousand dollars or more we're telling them you can't you can't support your beliefs that is a first amendment negative but that tends to be justified on the other side by the first amendment positive because if the average person thinks that what he says exercising his first amendment rights just can't have an impact through public opinion upon his representative he says what is the point of the first amendment and that's a first amendment point so i that's basic i think now once that's so congress has leeway and you are saying and i've seen all over the place but that's why we don't want those two hundred people to spend more than one hundred seventeen or one hundred twenty thousand because the average person thinks the election is after the election all the actions are affected by the pocketbook and not by the merits of the first amendment arguments ok and now you say that person can do the same thing anyway just call it independent and what independent you can spend forty million you can spend fifty million and all that does is sort of mix up the messages because the parties can't control them now that's i think the question that's being asked and i think that that is a very serious question and i'd like to know what flows from it is it true so what what are we uncoordinated just all on his own costing five hundred thousand dollars don't you think that second person has more access to the candidate who says one of the candidates is successful than the first i think that was at the root of justice scalia's question and justice breyer let me try to answer this with an analogy if i could justice kennedy i think the right way to think about it is this if somebody thinks the secretary of defense is doing a great job they can take out an ad in the washington post spend five hundred thousand dollars on that ad saying secretary of defense has done a great job and they would have an undoubted personal right to do that no one could think that there's a content it's hard to imagine a content neutral justification for  that the secretary of defense has done a great job by giving the secretary of defense of maaza roddy nobody would think that there was a first amendment ground that could be that could be invoked but we'll talk just here about we're talking here about campaign contributions isn't  illegal for a candidate to take campaign contributions and use it to buy a maserati we we yes it is but the point well and i don't see it all that well it really gives it get the i think it does if i may justice alito because i think that the district court's opinion is that what i see are why old hypotheticals that are not obviously plausible and lack certainly lacked any empirical support you've chosen to use the same hypothetical the district court used about the three point five million dollar contribution that would be that that could be given by a coordinate which involves all of the house candidates and all of the senate candidates in a particular year getting together with all of the all of the party's national party committees plus all of the state party committees and then and that's how you get up to three point five million dollar figure isn't that right yes but how how realistic is that how realistic is it that all of the state party committees for example are going to get money and they're all going to transfer to one candidate for forty eight nine of them it's going to be a candidate who is not in their own state and there are virtually no instances of state party committees contributing to candidates from another state and the other part of that that seems that dubious on its face is that all of the part all of the candidates for the house and senate of a particular party are going to get together and they are going to transfer money to one candidate they're really you know you cited in your brief example the best examples i take it of of contributions from some candidates to other candidates they are very small isn't that true yes but i think they're true justice alito i think that with all due respect i think the point your honor is making confuses two different ways in which the these laws compact the risk of corruption the first one is that handing over of the large check and whether it's a three point six million dollars check for every one or two point two million dollars check for the house candidates or a one million dollar check for all the state committees the very just just as the court found mcconnell with respect to massive song money contributions in the inherent risks of of corruption there there's an inherent risk of corruption and that's why in india as i said we have limits on how much you contribute to a political party how it and that's a mark from how it gets transmitted lest the money is transferred to you have to get it from the person who wants to corrupt to the person who is going to be corrupt and unless the money can make it from a to b i don't see where the quid pro quo argument i think that the i think that the way these joint fundraising committees work is you hand over a single check to a candidate who solicits it could be any candidate who sets up a joint fundraising committee says give to me and give to the rest of my team and so the handing over the check to that candidate is seems to me to creates a significant risk of indebtedness on the part of that candidate even though a lot of the money is flowing through to others you know mission the party leaders are often going to be the ones who solicit those not only them but everybody understands have a mouse and then i'm sure you if i may just make her point mr chief justice on the third point i think is that every every candidate in the party is going to be affected by this because every candidate's going to get a slice of the money and every candidate is going to know that this person who wrote the multimillion dollar check has helped not only the candidate but the whole team and that creates a particular sense of indebtedness and of course is that every member of the party is likely to be every day every office holder in the party is likely to be lean on by the party leadership to deliver legislation that people are bothering them these these aggregate limits might not all stand or fall together but it's just take this example if you can just take a minute and walking through this step by step you have somebody who wants to corrupt a member of the house and this person's strategy is to make contributions to multiple house candidate it's with the hope the expectation the plan that those candidates are going to transfer and transfer the money to the member that this person wants to corrupt and how is that person going to accomplish that given the earmarking regulations and and the limits on how much one member can contribute to another  you know i think that that i think it's possible but i think if somebody had that goal that circumvention goal but by far better ways of achieving it would be giving significant and you've taken the aggregate caps off would be making significant contributions to state parties and national parties who are free to transfer money among themselves without restriction and by and by making contributions to pacs well if you know if i mean if you're not going to defend the application of the aggregate limits in that he person gives to member a with the hope that member a is going to give it to member b if the person even implies when making the contribution to that person wants it to go to be that's earmarked  house is going to be done i think i think mcconnell and colorado republican to this court said that your marking is not the outer limit of the government's authority to regulate here and the reason the court said that is because a lot of this can be done with winks and nods and subtly and so i so i don't think it's a case that you're marking would work to prohibit that but i also think that the when you're talking about aggregate limits they're part of an overall system of regulation and i think that they work to keep the to keep the circumvention risk in check and they work to make sure that you don't have the kind of problem that you identify what would you think because just listening to your dialogue and you heard this is pretty tough we try to construct some hypotheticals and and the council says no i've got this part wrong or that part wrong or the other one and they may be right and we can't do this figuring out all these factual things in an hour frankly i may be right i e not sure there hasn't been a full hearing it seems to me there are things to explore in respect to the circumvention who is right you do change the hypothetical slightly or wash your things to explore in respect to the question of whether being able to write a three point six million dollars check to a lot of people does lead the average person to think my first amendment speech in terms of influencing my representative means nothing there are things to explore in terms of the relationship between what is permissible namely spend forty million dollars independently and what isn't permissible he money spending more than one hundred seventeen thousand none of these have been considered they would seem relevant so what do you think about going into these matters in a district court where the evidentiary aspects of them can be explored at some like well i think just as prior that the statute can be upheld under the current state of the record i am i understand i take your point but i do think that you had a substantial record in buckley had a substantial record in mcconnel but that substantial record bears directly on the question of whether massive aggregate contributions post the inherent danger of corruption and the corrosive appearance of corruption and that the case can be decided on that basis literally the government in the proceeding  didn't suggest in response to th from the party that money without these limits the money would flow to the candidate to the party organisation but now instead of going to the pac s what is your response to that well but we take that constitutional first amendment framework of this court's decisions as a given the court has the court has determined that independent spend interests do not present a risk of quid pro quo corruption that allows their regulation that contributions in direct contributions to candidates and to parties can post at risk and therefore i mean i and to encourage what should i say you know the drive by pacs for each election isn't in the consequence so i think the answer is we don't know one way or another whether that's the cons quo corruption and the appearance of quid pro quo corruption here and as and as regulated with respect to that risk in congress of course free to take this into consideration say you say it's three point five million dollars if you assume somebody that gives the maximum to every possible candidate and party can contribute to throughout the united states three point five million just to put that it's in perspective how much money is spent by political parties and newspapers that that spend a lot of money in indorsing candidates in promoting their candidacy i suppose but you know you have to put in that money to that is money that is directed to political speech when you add when you add all candidates together and you've got a maximum of three point six million dollars that is about four hundred fifty people you need to round up less than five hundred people can fund the whole shooting match and that i think is part of the problem here is that you're going to create a situation if you take off the aggregate limits in which there's a very real risk that both that the government will be run by and for those five hundred people and that the public will perceive that the government is being run of and for those five hundred people and that is why we have these aggregate limits and why they need to remain in place it's the consequence is just to get back to my prior question the consequence is you're telling somebody who doesn't want to give three point four million but wants to contribute more than nine house candidates just up to the maximum which you know five thousand or the double cycle you're telling him that he can't make that contribution however modest certainly within the limits congress has said does not present a problem of corruption to attend candidate i appreciate the argument you're making about the three point whatever million dollar check and the need for the aggregate limits to address that i understand that point but what do you do with the flip side i mean you can't pretend that that is pursued with no first amendment cost quite apart from the one that's there it seems to me a very direct restriction on much smaller contributions that congress said do not present a problem of corruption i take that point mr chief justice but i think you're right you asked earlier about the right analytical framework i think the right analytical framework on the first amendment is to think about this in terms of content neutrality the government's interest in preventing corruption and the appearance of corruption which is why i brought up the example of  because i mean there it's completely content neutral you don't care who the tenth is but then that would not be i would think that would be a content based justification because the you're not true you're not trying to prevent corruption of the appearance of corruption by doing that and there's no other neutral justification i can think of for why you would impose such a rule but the point is with respect to elected officials and the giving of money to the elected officials there is this content neutral justification that just doesn't exist with respect to any other entity out there in the world and yes it's not free of first amendment cost and we acknowledge that but that but that cost is mitigated and this is not a prohibition that you can you can't make it at the maximum but you can make less is there any way to prevent the concern you have about the three point whatever is million dollar check without imposing a limit on the person who wants to support ten candidates rather than well i suppose you could try to calculate an aggregate contribution limit that's different  higher than the one that's here now but the problem with that is that the appellant's aren't making that argument they're making the argument that you cannot have the only argument they've made in this case is that you cannot have aggregate limits because base contribution limits to all they're working they're making the argument that there are that the regulations that already exist about transfers from one entity to another prevent a lot of what your complaint what your what you are worried about but if they're not sufficient they could be bolstered the aggregate limits are a very blunt way of trying to get out that get at the problem that you're that you're worried about that's their argument what are is that wrong there's nothing more that could be done to prevent transfers from joint fundraising committees or from one member to another or from state parties to candidates so again i apologize for repeating my so justice alito but circumvention is not the only problem of these very large checks is a problem a direct corruption problem and none of the alternatives that the points of identified address that problem i just don't understand that you mean that the time when the person sends the money to occurring when it's transferred just to the person who has power and want and they want to corrupt i beg to differ your honor i think what it does is create the sense of indebtedness on the part of the recipient and on the part of the party leadership when it's delivered at the end that's the inherent risk of corruption in that situation it's it's quite parallel to mcconnell that's why we have aggregate limits on what you can give to a party because these people are not hermetically sealed off from each other they're all in the same team they all have an interest in each other's success and so party leaders in particular are going to feel sense of indebtedness and they're less restrictive alternatives don't deal with that but now going to if i could i'll try to address the circumvention problem you know they and what they've done is come up with a whole series of things that you would have to is not one thing that you would have to do to take care of this poem you have to say no transfers you have to say segregated account you have to say no giving money to pacs who have indicated that they're going to give money to candidates once you've already given money you have to do five or six things to deal with the risk of corruption the idea that that's a less restrictive means it seems to me like a significantly more restrictive means and it's going to impose first amendment cost of its own i'm sure the pacs are going to say what do you mean we can't say who we want to give money to we were hit over really it seems to me it seems to me fanciful to think that the sense of gratitude that an individual setter or congressman is going to feel because of the substantial contribution to the republican national committee or democratic national committee is any greater than the sense of gratitude that that senator or congressman will feel to a hack which is spending an enormous amount of money in his district or a nice state for his election i mean  it seems to me the latter is much more identifiable and there is nothing in the law that excludes that so apparently that's not too much of a risk while justice s i'm not here to debate the question of whether the court's jurisprudence is correct with respect to the risk of corruption from independent expenditures it is what it is what we accept it and but and the line is that there is and this question is consent there is an unacceptable risk when profound when you're talking about the kinds of contributions that can be made if you take if you take the lid off on aggregate contributions if justice scalia's critique of the situation proves correct and it is deeply disabling to candidates and parties congress can address that by changing the contribution in general i suppose that if this court is having second thoughts about its rulings that independent expenditures are not corrupt and we could change that part of the law really a very close parallel to this rather karl and i think without a regular you think about it but if you're really talking they don't think about it that way and so that's why i've been pushing this idea you see of let's go into this record pertains and they really does go to the same problem and therefore i think it bears upon it and it's it's ample evidence that would justify upholding these are the limits and i would strongly urge the court to do so thank you thank you general i'm is mostly you of the multiple prophylactic measures that make or contains to the extent those aren't sufficient there are much more narrowly tailored ways to get at this as the questions from justice laid on the chief justice pointed out what we're really hearing today is a corruption argument but a the questioning revealed once you accept the corruption theory that the government is putting forward here there really isn't a way to continue to draw a line between independent expenditures and the three point million dollars check to all of these different individuals that isn't small but use limited amounts because they're certainly going to be just as much gratitude to the individual who spends three point six million dollars directly supporting one candidate through ads on that candidate's behalf so what we really have is the system that's forcing money out of the most transparent way possible to make contributions which is directly to the candidates and the parties and perhaps if there's no for the question thank you thank you count so the case is submitted