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Page Number: 77.0

26 

MCCUTCHEON v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

sulting  firm.  In  any  event,  this  single  swallow  cannot
make the plurality’s summer.

Thus,  it  is  not  surprising  that  throughout  the  many
years  this  FEC  regulation  has  been  in  effect,  political
parties  and  candidates  have  established  ever  more  joint 
fundraising  committees  (numbering  over  500  in  the  last
federal  elections);  candidates  have  established  ever  more 
“Leadership  PACs”  (numbering  over  450  in  the  last  elec­
tions);  and  party  supporters  have  established  ever  more
multicandidate  PACs  (numbering  over  3,000  in  the  last 
elections).  See  Appendix  C,  Tables  2–3,  infra,  at  42–43; 
FEC, 2014 Committee Summary (reporting the number of 
“qualified”  (or  multicandidate)  PACs  in  2012),  online  at 
http://www.fec.gov/data/CommitteeSummary.do  (all  Inter­
net  materials  as  visited  Mar.  28,  2014,  and  available  in 
Clerk of Court’s case file).

Using  these  entities,  candidates,  parties,  and  party
supporters can transfer and, we are told, have transferred
large sums of money to specific candidates, thereby avoid­
ing  the  base  contribution  limits  in  ways  that  Examples 
Two  and  Three  help  demonstrate.    See  Brief  for  Appellee
38–39,  53–54;  Brief  for  Campaign  Legal  Center,  et al.  as 
Amici Curiae 12–15;  Brief of Democratic Members of the 
United  States  House  of  Representatives  as  Amici  Curiae 
28–29.  They have done so without drawing FEC prosecu­
tion—at  least  not  according  to  my  (and  apparently  the 
plurality’s)  search  of  publicly  available  records.    That  is 
likely because in the real world, the methods of achieving 
circumvention are more subtle and more complex than our 
stylized  Examples  Two  and  Three  depict.  And  persons
have  used  these  entities  to  channel  money  to  candidates 
without  any  individual  breaching  the  current  aggregate
$123,200  limit.  The  plurality  now  removes  that  limit,
thereby  permitting  wealthy  donors  to  make  aggregate 
contributions  not  of  $123,200,  but  of  several  millions  of 
dollars.  If  the  FEC  regulation  has  failed  to  plug  a  small