BUCKLEY v. VALEO
1
Opinion of WHITE, J.
increased the labor costs of those who publish newspapers, which are in turn an important factor in the recent disappearance of many daily papers. Federal and
state taxation directly removes from company coffers
large amounts of money that might be spent on larger
and better newspapers. The antitrust laws are aimed
at preventing monopoly profits and price fixing, which
gouge the consumer. It is also true that general price
controls have from time to time existed and have been
applied to the newspapers or other media. But it has
not been suggested, nor could it be successfully, that
these laws, and many others, are invalid because they
siphon off or prevent the accumulation of large sums that
would otherwise be available for communicative
activities.
In any event, as it should be unnecessary to point out,
money is not always equivalent to or used for speech,
even in the context of political campaigns. I accept the
reality that communicating with potential voters is the
heart of an election campaign and that widespread communication has become very expensive. There are, however, many expensive campaign activities that are not
themselves communicative or remotely related to speech.
Furthermore, campaigns differ among themselves. Some
seem to spend much less money than others and yet
communicate as much as or more than those supported
by enormous bureaucracies with unlimited financing.
The record before us no more supports the conclusion
that the communicative efforts of congressional and
Presidential candidates will be crippled by the expenditure limitations than it supports the contrary. The
judgment of Congress was that reasonably effective campaigns could be conducted within the limits established
by the Act and that the communicative efforts of these
campaigns would not seriously suffer. In this posture
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents