FECA

The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) is the foundational US law governing the financing of federal elections. Enacted in 1971 under President Nixon to address the rising cost of television advertising in campaigns, it was substantially amended in 1974 following the Watergate scandal to introduce overall spending caps, contribution limits, and a public financing system for presidential candidates. The Supreme Court's 1976 Buckley v. Valeo ruling struck down caps on expenditure and candidate self-funding as unconstitutional restrictions on speech, but upheld contribution limits, disclosure requirements, and the public financing framework. That judgment established the constitutional architecture FECA has operated within ever since. The law created and empowers the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as its enforcement body.

FECA's coordinated-spending caps limit how much a party committee can spend in direct coordination with its own candidates: currently $61,800 to $3.7 million per Senate race depending on state population. These caps are the subject of NRSC v. FEC, a case argued before the Supreme Court on 9 December 2025 in which the National Republican Senatorial Committee argues the limits are unconstitutional. Justice Brett Kavanaugh signalled at oral argument that the caps had weakened parties relative to outside groups, and the conservative majority appeared ready to strike them. A ruling is expected by end of June 2026.

The significance of the challenge is structural: if the caps fall, the legal firewall between party committees and individual campaigns dissolves. Currently, super PACs such as the Senate Leadership Fund must run genuinely independent operations, spending billions in parallel rather than in direct coordination with candidates. Remove the coordination cap and party committees could spend without ceiling alongside named candidates, fusing message, targeting, and field operations in ways the post-Watergate architecture was designed to prevent. The Democratic committee-cash lead, the $12.6 million edge the DCCC held over the NRCC as of May 2026, would lose its structural value if spending coordination became uncapped for both parties.