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Opinion of Scalia, J.
which is severely limited by the Act, is more likely to assist cash-strapped challengers than flush-with-hard-money incumbents? See A. Gierzynski & D. Breaux, The Financing Role of Parties, in Campaign Finance in State Legislative Elections 195-200 (J. Thompson & S. Moncrief eds. 1998). Was it unintended, by any chance, that incumbents are free personally to receive some soft money and even to solicit it for other organizations, while national parties are not? See new FECA §§ 323(a) and (e).
I wish to address three fallacious propositions that might be thought to justify some or all of the provisions of this legislation—only the last of which is explicitly embraced by the principal opinion for the Court, but all of which underlie, I think, its approach to these cases.
(a) Money is Not Speech
It was said by congressional proponents of this legislation, see 143 Cong. Rec. 20746 (1997) (remarks of Sen. Boxer); 145 Cong. Rec. S12612 (Oct. 14, 1999) (remarks of Sen. Cleland); 147 Cong. Rec. S2436 (Mar. 19, 2001) (remarks of Sen. Dodd), with support from the law reviews, see, e. g., Wright, Politics and the Constitution: Is Money Speech? 85 Yale L. J. 1001 (1976), that since this legislation regulates nothing but the expenditure of money for speech, as opposed to speech itself, the burden it imposes is not subject to full First Amendment scrutiny; the government may regulate the raising and spending of campaign funds just as it regulates other forms of conduct, such as burning draft cards, see United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367 (1968), or camping out on the National Mall, see Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U. S. 288 (1984). That proposition has been endorsed by one of the two authors of today's principal opinion: "The right to use one's own money to hire gladiators, [and] to fund 'speech by proxy,' . . . [are] property rights . . . not entitled to the same protection as the right to say what one pleases." Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U. S. 377,
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