The Revenue Act was not the most important legislation of 1971 regarding campaign finance reform. From the late 1960s Congress had been preparing a thorough reform of the system, and the scandals of Bobby Baker and Thomas Dodd involving financial issues, as well as the increasing amount of money spent by candidates in every presidential election, only confirmed the necessity of the reform. The ineffectiveness of the earlier regulations, and the financial situation of the Democratic Party after the 1968 election cycle during which it generated huge debt, sped up the decision of the legislators to announce the largest campaign finance bill up to that point.

The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), signed into law by President Richard Nixon in early 1972, addressed various issues referring to the proper conduct of election campaigns on the federal level of government. Its major provisions concerned two types of limits, which were set for the amount of contributions and the amount of spending for media advertising, depending on the type of election, the contributing entity, and the character of the contribution. For instance, for media campaigns candidates were now able to spend as much as 10 cents per voter of the eligible voting population. FECA also limited the amounts candidates and their immediate families could themselves contribute to their electoral efforts. The law provided for a more complex system of quarterly public disclosure of receipts and expenditures. It now required the inclusion of every expense of $100 or more, and on the donation side it asked for every receipt of $100 or more, including the donor's name, address, and occupation. The imposition of these restrictions was problematic, because in order to assure the enforcement of the laws, the Act gave the control over the disclosure system to various federal entities. House candidates were obliged to report to the Clerk of the House, Senate hopefuls to the Secretary of the Senate, and presidential candidates to the U.S. General Accounting Office (today the Government Accountability Office). In addition, candidates and campaign committees had to report to the appropriate secretary of state, depending on where the campaign funds were spent. It did not take long for this to prove ineffective.