Soft Money Soft money is a loophole that has developed in recent years to provide candidates, contributors and political parties a means to evade federal contribution limits. Federal law prohibits corporations and labor unions from contributing any money to federal campaigns. To evade these restrictions, soft money contributions are given by individuals, corporations, unions or others directly to designated non-federal accounts of the national political parties. In the 1996 election, soft money paid for so-called issue ads intended to influence the presidential election. Thus, the soft money contributions are laundered through the political parties in a way that allows federally illegal money to nonetheless be used to influence federal elections.
Soft money is a scandal.
This loophole has given a rebirth to the kinds of huge individual and corporate contributions in the political process that have not been seen since Watergate. Electric and magnetic fields produce waves that move through space at different frequencies, and the set of all possible frequencies is called the electromagnetic spectrum. The portion of the electromagnetic spectrum which is usable for radio and television transmission is about one percent of the total spectrum. The airwaves are owned by the public. Television broadcasters receive a license to use and profit from the public s airwaves.