<P> The Act was amended again in 1976 , in response to the provisions ruled unconstitutional by Buckley v. Valeo , including the structure of the FEC and the limits on campaign expenditures , and again in 1979 to allow parties to spend unlimited amounts of hard money on activities like increasing voter turnout and registration . In 1979 , the FEC ruled that political parties could spend unregulated or `` soft '' money for non-federal administrative and party building activities . Later , this money was used for candidate - related issue ads , which led to a substantial increase in soft money contributions and expenditures in elections . This in turn led to passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ( `` BCRA '' ) , effective on January 1 , 2003 , banning soft money expenditure by parties . Some of the legal limits on giving of `` hard money '' were also changed by BCRA . </P>
when did the federal election campaign act place limits on hard money but not on soft money
1979