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Not only did someone get "cute" but as the law was written, Congress banned any money, hard and soft, in the context of this thread, but the Court made a statutory change and read any to mean "soft" money, trying to read into the word "any" money the kind of money that Congress was trying to limit with the rest of BCFR.

The dissenting opinion of Justice Kennedy:

The majority.s upholding §323(d) is all the more unsettling because of the way it ignores the Act as Congress wrote it. Congress said national parties "shall not solicit any funds for, or make or direct any donations to" §501(c) nonprofit organizations that engage in federal election activity or to §527 political committees. The Court, however, reads out the word "any" and construes the words "funds" and "donations" to mean "soft money funds" and "soft money donations". See ante, at 72 ("This construc- tion is consistent with the concerns animating Title I, whose purpose is to plug the soft-money loophole"). The Court's statutory amendment may be consistent with its anti-soft-money rationale; it is not, however, consistent with the plain and unavoidable statutory text Congress has given us. Even as construed by the Court, moreover, it is invalid.

The majority strains to save the provision from what must seem to it an unduly harsh First Amendment. It does so by making a legislative determination Congress chose not to make: to prefer hard money to soft money within the construct of national party relationships with nonprofit groups. Congress gave no indication of a prefer- ence to regulate either hard money or soft in this context. Rather, it simply proscribed all transfers of money between the two organizations and all efforts by the national parties to raise any money on the nonprofit groups' behalf. The question the Court faces is not which part of a text to

Cite as: 540 U. S. ____ (2003) 23 Opinion of KENNEDY, J.

sever and strike, but whether Congress can prohibit such transfers altogether. The answer, as the majority recognizes, is no. See ante, at 71 ("[P]rohibiting parties from donating funds already raised in compliance with FECA does little to further Congress' goal of preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption of federal candidates and officeholders"). Though §323(f) in effect imposes limits on candidate contributions, it does not address federal candidate and officeholder contributions. Yet it is the possibility of federal officeholder quid pro quo corruption potential that animates Buckley's rule as it relates to Acts of Congress (as opposed to Acts of state legislatures). See 424 U. S., at 13 ("The constitutional power of Congress to regulate federal elections is well established"). When one recognizes that §§323(a), (b), (d), and (f) do not serve the interest the anticorruption rationale contemplates, Title I's entirety begins to look very much like an incumbency protection plan. See J. Miller, Monopoly Politics 84.101 (1999) (concluding that regulations limiting election fundraising and spending constrain challengers more than incumbents). That impression is worsened by the fact that Congress exempted its officeholders from the more stringent prohibitions imposed on party officials. Compare new FECA §323(a) with new FECA §323(e). Section 323(a) raises an inflexible bar against soft money solicitation, in any way, by parties or party officials. Section 323(e), in contrast, enacts exceptions to the rule for federal officeholders (the very centerpiece of possible corruption), and allows them to solicit soft money for various uses and organizations.