“Limiting campaign spending is limiting free speech.”

This was directly at issue when the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in June 2026 (NRSC v. FEC), striking down limits on coordinated spending between parties and candidates. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that spending caps "impose a severe and direct restriction on free speech and infringe fundamental First Amendment values," and that only the risk of actual quid pro quo corruption — not spending itself — can justify limiting it.

Brad Smith, Institute for Free Speech (spending limits are speech limits): "When government limits expenditures of money in order to limit an activity, it is limiting the targeted activity." He compares it to capping how much a church can spend or how many issues a newspaper can publish: "If that's not a Freedom of Speech issue, I don't know what is." Rep. Jim McGovern (money and speech aren't the same thing): "Having more money doesn't make speech any freer; it just lets you say something on television more often than someone who doesn't have as much money... Money does not equal speech. It never has, and it never should." Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, DISCLOSE Act sponsor (a middle path — don't cap it, expose it): rather than limiting how much can be spent, his bill would require dark-money groups to disclose their donors, calling it "a commonsense step to bring sunlight back into our elections and restore accountability" — sidestepping the free-speech fight entirely by targeting anonymity, not spending itself.