By a unanimous vote Thursday, the six members of the Federal Election Commission agreed that leadership PACs could not raise unlimited contributions to fund independent expenditures.

A leadership PAC associated with Tea Party-aligned freshman Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) had asked to create a segregated account to raise unlimited money to produce independent expenditures designed to aid like-minded politicians. The name of this leadership PAC is the Constitutional Conservatives Fund.

The three Democratic commissioners and three Republican commissioners agreed that by definition, leadership PACs are directly or indirectly established, financed, maintained or controlled by a federal candidate or a federal officeholder. Other groups that become super PACs and raise unlimited amounts of money for political advertisements and independent expenditures are not controlled by federal politicians.

Thus, the commissioners said, all funds received by a leadership PAC are subject to the $5,000 per year contribution limit outlined in the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971.

The Constitutional Conservatives Fund, the commissioners wrote (.PDF here), “may neither receive unlimited contributions from individuals nor receive any contributions from corporations and labor organizations for the purpose of financing independent expenditures.”

According to research by the Center for Responsive Politics, there are more than 370 leadership PACs.

Dan Backer, the attorney for the Constitutional Conservatives Fund, expressed disappointment with the FEC’s decision.

“I believe the Commission misapplied the law, and the result is a dangerous precedent that when the Constitution prevents regulation of a particular form of speech, the speech may then be banned outright,” Backer told the Huffington Post. “It’s up to my client (CCF) to decide whether to go to Court, though I think their interest in defending their rights to Free Speech & Association may be best served by doing so, and it’s a logical next step.”

Super PACs rose in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling last year.

There are more than 240 super PACs that have expressly declared their intentions to the FEC to raise unlimited amounts of money to fund independent expenditures.

In previous years, if a PAC wanted to expressly advocate for the election or defeat of a federal candidate, it could only raise money $5,000 per donor per year. Now, there is no limit on how much money a donor can give to such a group, and many wealthy donors have doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars — even millions.

Notably, many super PACs are operated by the former top aides of the candidates that they are designed to benefit — and by law, whom they are not allowed to coordinate with. Yet all the major presidential candidates have super PACs designed to boost their electoral prospects, and allies of several members of Congress have also started such groups.



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