although i'll just tell you my worry is bigger than general verrilli's worry. he worries that 400 people will fund the whole shooting match. my worry is that once 400 people realize they can put funding in like that, there'll be 800 of them or maybe 1,200 of them, that more money will move into the system because people will realize just how far their money's going to go, just how much influence their money can buy. >> that takes us to a world where money plays an even more powerful role in politics than it does now. and i'll just say, i mean, i believe in the first amendment. but it's hard to imagine money playing a bigger role than it did in 2012. and yet it looks like we're heading in that direction in 2016. >> but can it be worse than it is now? >> you know, i actually was one of the people who thought it couldn't. but it never occurred to me that the supreme court would be striking down contribution limits. so we actually could see something that's much worse than we have now. this is a deregulatory court. and in citizens united made it very difficult to r

election commission, which did not exist at the time of 26 alderson reporting company >> general verrilli. >> mr. chief justice, and may it please the court -- aggregate limits combat corruption. let me start by explaining exactly how. aggregate limits combat corruption both by blocking circumvention of individual contribution limits and, equally fundamentally, by serving as a bulwark against a campaign finance system dominated by massive individual contributions in which the dangers of quid pro quo corruption would be obvious and inherent and the corrosive appearance of corruption would be overwhelming. now, the appellants in this case have tried to present the case as though the issue were whether there were some corrupting potential in giving contribution to the nineteenth candidate after someone has already contributed to -- the maximum to the eighteenth. but that is not what this case is about. the appellants are not arguing the aggregate limit is drawn in the wrong place. they are arguing that there can be no aggregate limit because the base contribution limits do all the work. and