National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Comm’n · ¶126

Today, that constraint disappears. With no limits on coordinated expenditures, the party can serve as the candidate’s checking account. It can pay for everything John Smith (or any other candidate) needs—advertising of course, but also more prosaic things like catering, rent, and utilities. See supra, at 5–6. So the party can take any or every one of those $550,000 checks it receives from the John Smith Victory Fund—which, recall, the Fund has received from an individual or a corporate or interest group—and convert the money (in full) into a direct benefit for the candidate. What is supposed to be just the sum of an individual or group’s capped donations to 51 separate party committees instead goes in a single straight shot to John Smith, the candidate. And then that can happen again and again and again.

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