6 FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N v. TED CRUZ FOR SENATE KAGAN, J., dissenting the limit is so low as to preclude effective advocacy. See supra, at 3–4. There is no reason to treat Section 304 differently. In fact, its restriction on post-election contributions for loan repayment probably has much smaller indirect effects on a campaign’s or candidate’s speech than the contribution ceilings this Court has approved. (Again, just think of all the multi-million-dollar donations those ceilings prevent.) So the majority’s view cannot be right. And more fundamentally, the majority fails to appreciate what Section 304 has an indirect effect on: lending, rather than spending, money. In the majority’s view, those two activities count as one and the same. See ante, at 10–11. But they are not, in an obvious way. The expenditure of “personal funds” for speech, this Court has observed, “reduces the candidate’s dependence” on donors—precisely because he is not trying to speak on their dime. Buckley, 424 U. S., at 53. The loan of personal funds has the opposite effect, as further shown in this opinion’s next part. When a candidate lends substantial funds to his campaign, he wants (maybe desperately needs) them returned; he thus risks—indeed, invites—dependence on donors, who alone can make him financially whole. Section 304 responds to that difference in whether a candidate is speaking independently, or instead relying on others’ largesse. The provision at most deters a single mechanism for financing electoral activities, because it carries a heightened threat of corruption. II Preventing quid pro quo corruption or its appearance is a compelling interest by any measure. See Federal Election Comm’n v. National Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U. S. 480, 496–497 (1985). Quid pro quo corruption— which extends beyond criminal bribery to “less blatant and specific” arrangements—“subver[ts] the political process” and threatens “the integrity of our system of representative