However, if he would have paid off the old card (the one with the $20,000 limit) and left it open then the math shakes out like this… $25,000 in aggregate limits and $2,500 in aggregate balances = 10 percent utilization (very good).
In its McCutcheon v. FEC decision yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to strike down the overall, or "aggregate," limit on direct campaign contributions.
In the absence of aggregate limits, a joint fundraising committee could potentially link up to as many as hundreds of other committees and receive checks in excess of $1 million, supporters of the limits argue.
Instead, they contend that aggregate limits are too low and that the caps in general are simply unconstitutional.
"This is not about base limits, this is about aggregate limits," McCutcheon told HuffPost.
In other words, aggregate limits wouldn't foster corruption, because using money to influence a campaign is much easier with the sort of independent expenditures that Citizens United makes possible.
Earlier decisions allowed the aggregate limits in order to prevent donors from using multiple contributions to get around the cap, by giving to numerous committees that might pass the money around and get it to the candidate anyway.
In striking down the aggregate limits on contributions that people can make to politicians and political parties, but leaving in place the limits on contributions to individual candidates (currently $5,200 per election cycle), the Court didn't go as far as it did in the Citizens United ruling, in 2010.
He also noted that with the explosion in independent electoral spending, the aggregate limits are not "stopping big money in politics".
Chief Justice John Roberts's majority opinion in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Supreme Court struck down aggregate limits on campaign donations, offers a novel twist in the conservative contemplation of what Nazis have to do with the way the rich are viewed in America.
