The u. S. Supreme court has interpreted the piece of that that says, Congress Shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech to encompass spending money in elections or giving money to candidates or parties as a version of speaking. The theory being that clearly speech is standing on a Street Corner and speaking. It might be standing on a Street Corner and speaking with a microphone, although you would have to pay money for the microphone you have to buy it somewhere and certainly if you are speaking by taking out Television Advertisements in a system where we do not have government television, it is all commercial and you have to pay for advertising or mailings or phone calls or staff, all of that costs money. So the Supreme Court has said there are circumstances in which government may regulate the spending of money. There are others in which it may not. Which is which, we are going to decide when those cases come to us. It makes figuring out what to do and what the government may do in this area very complicated, particularly because the population, the members of the Supreme Court, change over time. So, as an example, Congress Passed in the 2002 in 2002, the mccainfeingold Campaign Reform act, which was designed to deal with problems that congress thought had arisen since the watergate lost 30 years before. Those laws were challenged in the court. They were almost entirely upheld by the Supreme Court. Then there was a change of one justice who retired. A replacement felt differently, and the court since then has gone back and struck down important pieces of the law they had just upheld. So if youre congress so if you are congress writing a law, you do best, but youre not sure what the court is going to do, and the court itself may not depending who is on it at that point. The final piece of the structure that complicates life is that we have, as i am sure all of you do, administrative agencies whose job is to interpret, to explain and to enforce the laws passed by congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. In our case, the Principal Agency in this area is the federal Election Commission, which i was a commissioner of some time ago. Commissioner weintraub is now. That agency is essentially evenly balanced between the parties, not more than their six commissioners, not more than three, which has meant three republicans, three democrats of both major parties. That requires four votes of the six to adopt regulation or enforce the law. The good news is that no one party has control and can use it against the other party. That was the design. But it requires the commissioners have to be conceded have to be sincere about wanting to do the work because you have to be compromised and agree. What has happened in the last five years ago or so with the current federal Election Commission, which again depends who is on it, is that the commission has split 33, 3 republicans and three democrats, on most major votes. An important piece of our system, which is the agency that is supposed to say you have to disclose your funding, you cannot do that, you violated the law, has not been able to function. There is no policeman on the beat, and the result is that things get wilder and wilder because nobody is there to stop them. That is our structure, in terms of how we get laws, who interprets them, the fecs job, and what it does and what it does not. Let me summarize the system that we currently have as part of that structure. Congress has said that there is a limit to how much individuals may contribute to political candidates and political parties. Those limits have been upheld by the Supreme Court, and they are not particularly high. It is 2600 for an individual giving to a candidate, more if that individual wants to give to a party committee, but not a great deal more. The practical limit of what you can give to the Party Committees, the three Party Committees directly, is going to be about 100,000. A lot of money in any country, but not enormous given what is being spent in our elections. Congress said, and the Supreme Court has agreed so far, that corporations and unions may not give directly to candidates or parties, only individuals, only u. S. Citizens and permanent residents, so not foreign governments, foreign countries, foreign individuals. That money is required to be fully disclosed so that every citizen will know who is giving to the candidates and the parties over a very low threshold, 200. Above that, their contributions are going to be disclosed. Parallel to that, though, the u. S. Supreme court said it is permissible to limit how much individuals give directly to candidates and Party Committees, but it is not permissible under our First Amendment right of free speech to limit how much individuals can go out and spend on their own to advocate the election and defeat of a candidate. So you have two different systems here. You have the give money to candidates and parties that can be limited, spend it on your own, go out and take your money by Television Advertisements and save vote for obama, vote for romney, defeat so and so they are terrible, reelect soandso, they have done a great job for our state. That cannot be limited in terms of what individuals spend, and after a case called Citizens United, which you will hear referred to, it cannot be limited as to what corporations and unions can spend very congress had said about 100 years ago corporations and unions cannot spend money in elections. That had been the case in this country until Citizens United in 2010. So there has been a significant change in our system with the Supreme Court saying that corporations and unions, again, u. S. Corporations and unions, have the same rights as u. S. Individuals to spend unlimited amounts of money. What the Supreme Court said, though, is that that money should be disclosed and is required to be disclosed under the law reads so if i give to a candidate or a party committee, the candidates and Party Committees disclose it. If i as an individual spend the money on my own so i take out an ad that says vote for smith it could say paid for by Trevor Potter, and i would be required to file with the government something that says i took out this ad to reelect smith, and it cost me 2 million. That would be legal, but i would have to disclose it. A new development would a new development has occurred which sounds confusing, so bear with me instead of my taking out an ad in my own name, paid for by Trevor Potter, or a corporation or a union which, according to the Supreme Court, can now do the same thing doing that and saying paid for by general election by General Electric committees have formed called super pacs, which are political committees that disclose their donors, and they can take all of this corporate and individual money and run the ads in their name prince of the individuals and corporations who have an unlimited right to speak can put their money into a super pac. It will run the ad, and it will say paid for by americans for a better tomorrow. Now, when you watch the ad, you may not know who americans for a better tomorrow is, but it is public information. The press can go to the fec and find out who the donors were, and it can say most of the donors were corporations were labor unions. There is another type of group that is spending money this year. That is called by the press dark money, which means money that is not disclosed as to its source. So those are not super pacs, they are ngos. They are nonprofit organizations that are created by individuals or corporations. Their principal purpose is not supposed to be to engage in politics, because otherwise they would have to file with commissioner one traumas with commissioner weintraubs agency. Their disclosure should be regulated by a different agency, the Internal Revenue service that focuses on taxes. But for a variety of reasons, it is not doing anything about those groups. So we have ended up in a situation which was never envisioned by congress, which passed the laws, and, confusingly, was apparently never envisioned by our Supreme Court when he changed the laws because the Supreme Court said that even though corporations and unions can spend an unlimited amount in elections, it will be disclosed. What happened is that corporations, unions, and individuals who are willing to disclose who they are, give to a super pac, which reports at the federal Election Commission, spends an unlimited amount, and you know who the donors are. If they want to hide who they are, they give to one of these ngos. They are referred to by their designation under the tax code, so you will hear 501 c 4, 501 c 6, 501 c 7. Do not worry about it. What it is is an organization that spends money in politics and for a variety of reasons that are peculiar to our administrative system, do not have to do not end up disclosing their donors. Now, personally, i think they are required to disclose their donors by law. I think that is what the law says. That is what the Supreme Court said it says. But my friend commissioner weintraubs agency does not have four votes to enforce that law. Now, i will say commissioner weintraub is one of the three votes who has been trying hard to enforce that law, but there is not a majority. So we have a peculiar administrative failure, where an Administrative Agency is not doing its job, and the only way in our system to get it to do its job is to sue it in court. And people who do not like their failure to enforce the law and provide disclosure have sued it in court. But the case is still stuck in court, the agency is still not ordered by a Court Finally to enforce the law, and the result is we have a great deal of money being spent, which commissioner weintraub is going to tell us about, and a lot of it literally hundreds of millions of dollars is not as disk is not disclosed as to the source of the funding. As a result of Citizens United and the introduction of corporate and union money to our elections, we have also a great deal more money being spent in elections than we traditionally historically have, in a system which does not have public funding for house and senate candidates. So the election you are seeing this year is totally privately funded if the money is by candidates and parties, it is limited and disclosed. If it is by these outside groups which are supposed to be independent of candidates and parties, it may or may not be disclosed, depending on whether it is through a super pac or one of these ngos. Thank you very much. With that, commissioner 112 will tell you how bad the system is in practice, in terms of the amount commissioner weintraub will tell you how bad the system is in practice in terms of the amount spent. Republicans and democrats frequently disagree on issues of Campaign Finance and the First Amendment in this country. However, trevor and i frequently agree. So you are not getting a representative sample of the debate that usually takes place between democrats and republicans on these issues. I want to take a step back. I think there are really important principles at play here. One issue that is really important in this country is that our courts in particular have been extremely protective of the right of every citizen to criticize the government and to do so without fear of any kind of penalty or reprisal. That is a bedrock principle. It is an important principle. And it is important to remember that, because if you watch the tv ads and they are often ugly and unpleasant to watch i think one has to take a step back and say, why do we allow this . The court sees this as a form of protecting the rights of citizens to criticize their own government and the candidates and the officeholders. There are different ways one might go about doing that. It is particularly interesting, particularly in international group, to take a look at some of the different ways that one could come to these issues. In this country, our courts have very libertarian perspectives. They believe strongly that the best way to encourage the most robust debate on issues of public concerns is by having no limits on spending that goes behind these political ads. That way this side can spend all they want, the other side can spend all they want, and in the end all the issues will be fleshed out and we will have a great, robust debate. That is not the only way one could look at this. If one travel a little bit to the north and i understand we have some canadians in the room their courts believe they are protecting free speech rights, they look at it in a different way, and they say when you have no limits, that allows wealthy people to dominate the debate and drown out the voices of others. So the way to protect the most robust debate and make sure that everybody has a chance to get their points across is in fact to have some kind of limit on spending. So you have two countries sidebyside with similar histories and similar legal backgrounds, and yet their courts and laws have evolved in a did have evolved in very different ways, and there are different conclusions on the regulating of Campaign Finance, money and politics. I agree with what magnus said earlier, that enforcement is a key component of Campaign Finance regulation or any system of Civil Enforcement of laws. If you are going to have laws and nobody is enforcing them, you might as well not have the laws because you are left with a system of allah terry compliant of voluntary compliance, and some people will voluntarily comply. Particularly candidates themselves will be most motivated to comply with the laws because they have a reputation interest at stake. They do not want people out there saying they are lawbreakers because then people will not want to vote for them. But the further you get from the candidates, the less that constraint comes to bear. So when you have these groups that are removed from the candidates and are running ads, and it is not transparent who is behind them, no one is really accountable for the message, then you get into some political messaging that is very ugly and very negative and not necessarily reliable in its truthfulness because no one is being held accountable for the message. So when we talk about money and politics, the first question Everyone Wants to ask is, how much money is being spent . There is a lot. This year we will probably end up spending close to 4 billion on this election. The president ial election, two years ago, we spent between 6 billion and 7 billion. The 2016 president ial race will undoubtedly be even more expensive. People listen to that number and it makes headlines, and they think, wow, that sounds like an awful lot of money. In fact, we probably spent more money last week on halloween, a holiday where children dress up in costumes and we hand out candy and we have parties, then the 4 billion we will spend on this election. It is a very large economy. It is a big country with a lot people and economic actors. The key is not how much money is raised and spent, but how is it raised and spent. Is it done in a way that is transparent . Is someone accountable for the money that is raised and spent and the messages put out there. When no one is accountable, the message becomes a lot less reliable. Is it done in a way that there. When no one is accountable, the message becomes a lot less reliable. Is it done in a way that promotes citizen participation . One of the problems with having all these negative ads out there, which is more likely and more prevalent when we have more independent spenders, when the money gets further from the candidates, is that the voters get turned off. Sometimes they say that they are just not interested in participating. Small donors are less interested in participating because they see the wealthy donors are giving so much. Why should i give 25 when there is a billionaire out there who is giving 25 million . What is my 25 going to do . Voters say i see all these negative ads and i think i do not want to vote for any of these candidates. So i think there is that negative ramification that can discourage participation. And of course the bottomline concern is, is this money being raised and spent in a way that is legal, that is not corrupting of the entire process . I think there are a lot of people in this country who have concerns about that. I should say that the 33 splits that trevor alluded to on our commission they are prevalent, but it does not work the way you think it might work. It is not a question of the three democrats protecting democrats and the three republicans protecting republicans in enforcement matters. There is an ideological divide on the commission that the republicans on the commission believes in this more libertarian view. They believe that the First Amendment protects all this money that is being raised and spent and that we should not be regulating it. The democrats believe that there are laws on the books particularly laws about disclosure that have been upheld, that should be given force. We should investigate groups that appear to be engaged in political activity and are not registering as political committees. Although it sounds like a partisan dispute, it is really more of an ideological dispute about how the laws should function in terms of regulating politics. Now, why does it matter who is behind these ads . As i said, pa