Cite as: 596 U. S. ____ (2022) 3 KAGAN, J., dissenting Still, the conduct targeted by Section 304 threatens, if anything does, both corruption and the appearance of corruption of the quid pro quo kind. That is because the regulated transactions—as Members of Congress well knew from experience—personally enrich those already elected to office. In allowing those payments to go forward unrestrained, today’s decision can only bring this country’s political system into further disrepute. I In assessing a law’s burden on speech, this Court’s decisions all distinguish between restricting expenditures and restricting contributions. See, e.g., Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 19–23 (1976) (per curiam). (The majority glosses over that core distinction, for reasons that will soon become clear.) According to settled precedent, expenditure restrictions—caps on a campaign’s or candidate’s electoral spending—impose the greatest burdens on expression. The First Amendment, as the majority notes, “has its fullest and most urgent application” when a “legislative limit” prevents a candidate from “us[ing] personal funds to finance campaign speech”—that is, speech “on behalf of his own candidacy.” Ante, at 10 (internal quotation marks omitted). By contrast, laws focused on third-party contributions to a campaign (a category the majority mostly prefers to ignore) typically “entail[ ] only a marginal restriction” on First Amendment interests. Buckley, 424 U. S., at 20. Take, for example, a simple limit on the amount someone can donate to a campaign, like the federal $2,900 ceiling. That kind of restriction, we have reasoned, in no way interferes with the donor’s “freedom to discuss candidates and issues” through independent spending. Id., at 21. And it has only an indirect effect on the campaign itself. To be sure, the cap makes raising money (for speech and other things) harder: It forces candidates “to raise funds from a greater number” of people and generally results in the campaign taking in less money