What is the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA)?

The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA, Pub. L. 92-225) was signed by President Richard Nixon on February 7, 1972, replacing the Federal Corrupt Practices Act of 1925, which had lacked effective enforcement mechanisms. The original FECA established mandatory public disclosure of contributions and expenditures in federal election campaigns -- a transparency requirement designed to let voters see who was funding which candidates. FECA required committees to file periodic reports with the Clerk of the House, the Secretary of the Senate, and the Comptroller General, disclosing all contributions over $100 and all expenditures. It also set a ceiling on candidate media spending at 10 cents per eligible voter per year. Watergate-era campaign finance revelations, including secret cash contributions to President Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign, created immediate pressure for far stronger regulation.

Congress enacted sweeping 1974 amendments (Pub. L. 93-443), signed by President Gerald Ford on October 15, 1974, that transformed FECA into the comprehensive campaign finance regulatory structure that still governs federal elections today. The 1974 amendments created the Federal Election Commission as an independent, bipartisan agency with exclusive civil enforcement authority. They established for the first time hard dollar limits on campaign contributions: individuals could give no more than $1,000 per candidate per election and $25,000 in total to all federal candidates and party committees per year; political action committees (PACs) could give no more than $5,000 per candidate per election. The amendments also established candidate expenditure limits -- a ceiling on how much a campaign could spend in total -- and created the presidential public funding program, offering matching funds to primary candidates who demonstrated broad support by raising $5,000 in each of at least 20 states, and a general election grant to the major-party nominees who agreed to a spending cap.

The constitutional validity of FECA's key provisions was addressed in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), a landmark per curiam Supreme Court decision. The Court applied First Amendment analysis to political spending for the first time. It upheld contribution limits: contributions may be limited because they raise the danger of quid pro quo corruption or its appearance, and limiting contributions does not prevent the donor from spending money to advocate independently. It struck down candidate expenditure limits: caps on how much a candidate or supporter may spend on political expression -- beyond the amount given directly to a candidate -- violate the First Amendment because spending money to communicate political views is itself protected speech. Buckley also struck down limits on independent expenditures (money spent to advocate for or against a candidate without coordinating with the campaign), upheld disclosure requirements, and struck down FECA's original FEC appointment mechanism as a violation of the separation of powers (Congress had appointed four of six commissioners, but FEC commissioners exercise executive power). The 1976 FECA amendments (Pub. L. 94-283) corrected the appointment mechanism, reconstituting the FEC with commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

FECA has been amended twice more in the decades since Buckley. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA, Pub. L. 107-155) added a ban on 'soft money' contributions to national party committees and restrictions on corporate and union-funded 'electioneering communications' -- broadcast ads naming a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), held that corporations, unions, and associations may make unlimited independent expenditures not coordinated with any candidate's campaign, enabling the formation of super PACs. As amended and as interpreted by these Supreme Court decisions, FECA is now codified at 52 U.S.C. Section 30101 et seq. (formerly at 2 U.S.C. Section 431 et seq.; the Code was reorganized and renumbered in 2014).

For the 2028 presidential election, FECA's core provisions govern every aspect of campaign fundraising and spending. Contribution limits -- set at $1,000 in 1974 and adjusted by the FEC for inflation each election cycle under BCRA's framework -- restrict how much individuals and PACs may give directly to a candidate's campaign committee. Disclosure requirements mandate that committees raising or spending more than $1,000 register with the FEC, and that all contributions of more than $200 be itemized and publicly reported at fec.gov. The presidential public funding program remains on the books but has not been used by a major-party general election nominee since 2004, when both George W. Bush and John Kerry accepted the general election grant; Barack Obama declined in 2008 and raised far more in private funds, and every subsequent major-party nominee has followed. Under FECA as shaped by Citizens United, unlimited independent expenditures and super PAC spending are legal for 2028 provided there is no coordination with a candidate's official campaign.