t the framme, the bipartisan reform act -- mccain- feingold put contribution limits on money that parties taken. because table four and five go back to 2000, it lets you see that after mccain-feingold, the party is managed very quickly to replace all the soft money they lost. mccain-feingold did no harm to the political parties. they did this through three devices. one, they got a lot more support from small donors. two, the committee's collected more from members of congress. 3, the dnc and rnc got help from the presidential candidates. as a result, or because of it, the parties became the most important players in congressional elections. in the closing months, the parties were spending more in competitive districts then the candidates, other groups, through most of the decade. the situation looks different here. the parties are still raising a lot of money. almost all of the money comes from the national committee and most of that can be attributed to a fund-raising committees. if you look at the dnc, you the amount of money form small donors is -- you see the economy from small donors