Cite as: 518 U. S. 604 (1996)
Opinion of Breyer, J.
tures. See, e. g., AO 1984-15, ¶ 5766, at 11,069 ("Although consultation or coordination with the candidate is permissible, it is not required"). In these circumstances, we cannot take the cited materials as an empirical, or experience-based, determination that, as a factual matter, all party expenditures are coordinated with a candidate. That being so, we need not hold, on the basis of these materials, that the expenditures here were "coordinated."
The Government does not advance any other legal reason that would require us to accept the FEC's characterization. The FEC has not claimed, for example, that, administratively speaking, it is more difficult to separate a political party's "independent," from its "coordinated," expenditures than, say, those of a PAC. Cf. 11 CFR § 109.1 (1995) (distinguishing between independent and coordinated expenditures by other political groups). Nor can the FEC draw significant legal support from the footnote in Democratic Senatorial Campaign Comm., 454 U. S., at 28-29, n. 1, given that this statement was dicta that purported to describe the regulatory regime as the FEC had described it in a brief.
Nor does the fact that the Party Expenditure Provision fails to distinguish between coordinated and independent expenditures indicate a congressional judgment that such a distinction is impossible or untenable in the context of political party spending. Instead, the use of the unmodified term "expenditure" is explained by Congress' desire to limit all party expenditures when it passed the 1974 amendments, just as it had limited all expenditures by individuals, corporations, and other political groups. See 18 U. S. C. §§ 608(e), 610 (1970 ed., Supp. IV); Buckley, 424 U. S., at 39.
Finally, we recognize that the FEC may have characterized the expenditures as "coordinated" in light of this Court's constitutional decisions prohibiting regulation of most independent expenditures. But, if so, the characterization cannot help the Government prove its case. An agency's simply calling an independent expenditure a "coordinated expendi-
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