Byron Dorgan: “We learned about all kinds of abuses with soft money and attack ads thinly disguised as issue advertising. Well, here we…”

“We learned about all kinds of abuses with soft money and attack ads thinly disguised as issue advertising. Well, here we have on the floor of the Senate today a piece of legislation that says, ``Let us reform the system we have for financing campaigns.'' One of the important pieces of this reform, the centerpole for the tent, in my judgment, is the ban on soft money. Now, what is soft money? People who are not involved in political campaigns may not know what this term soft money means. It is the political equivalent of a Swiss bank account. Soft money is like a Swiss bank account. It is where somebody takes money that is often secret, from an undisclosed source, with nobody knowing where it comes from, how much is there, how it got there, and it is used over here in some other device, ostensibly to help the political system and not to be involved in Federal elections. But what we now know from the range of campaigns that have gone on in recent years is soft money is a legalized form of cheating that has been used to affect Federal campaigns all across this country.”