McCain breaks spending limits

[Drocket]

John McCain has officially broken the limits imposed by the presidential public financing system, according to spending reports filed last week by the campaign.

The senator from Arizona has spent $58.4 million on his Republican primary effort. Those who have committed to public financing can spend no more than $54 million on their primary bid.

McCain's lawyers contend that the spending cap no longer applies. The senator was certified to enter the matching-funds program last year when he was starved for cash. But once he started to win, he decided to hold off. On Feb. 6, after his Super Tuesday victories, he wrote to the Federal Election Commission to announce he would withdraw. His lawyers said that gave him freedom to spend as much as he wanted.

But David Mason, chairman of the commission, wrote to McCain's campaign last month to alert him that the commission had not yet granted that withdrawal request, and that the commission would first have to vote on the matter. One snag is that the commission has four vacancies and therefore lacks a quorum to consider the matter.

Meanwhile, McCain's fund-raising has surged, now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee. McCain's campaign said last week that it sees no ambiguity in the law. "The FEC regulations specifically state that candidates who do not receive public funding payments from the US Treasury are exempt from the primary spending ceiling," a senior McCain official said.

Link (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/24/mccain_breaks_spending_limits/)


Now that the office of the president is officially above the law, McCain IS the most experienced candidate!

[Osborn F. Enready]

McCain is a scham, hopefully people will demand he step down from the race.

McCain is Bush 3, and I don't know how people got talked into the second sequel..... oh yes, they had "Gore" to pick from.... look at what the lesser of two evils gets.... failure.

[ViolaLee]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-u3WbiCcQ8

Yesterday afternoon, FDL's Jane Hamsher filed a complaint with the FEC charging John McCain with violations of campaign finance law for spending beyond limits imposed by his decision to take public financing.

McCain has claimed he is backing off that decision, and justifies it with the fact that he never received any of that public money. However, the law clearly states that he is bound by those limits if he uses the promise of those funds in order to secure campaign loans -- something he absolutely did.

You can read the complaint here (http://action.firedoglake.com/page/petition/mccainfec), as well as join the effort as a co-signer. The more, the merrier, so join us in this effort to hold John McCain accountable for the laws that he himself (hypocritically, it's now clear) has championed.

Daily Kos: State of the Nation (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/26/115057/233)

By his own admission, John McCain is breaking the law. His latest spending report has him $4 million over the limit he imposed on himself when he accepted public financing.

We're not about to let this stand, so on Tuesday we filed an FEC complaint against the McCain campaign (check out the video of delivery to the right). Now we're set for a second larger delivery, on behalf of the thousands of Americans who won't stand by while John McCain breaks the law.

Firedoglake (http://action.firedoglake.com/page/petition/mccainfec)

If he doesn't want to take the money, he needs to file in order to get out of public financing. He can't just change his mind after filing to take the funds. John McCain is a campaign finance criminal.

[4Reaganomics]

McCain is a scham, hopefully people will demand he step down from the race.

McCain is Bush 3, and I don't know how people got talked into the second sequel..... oh yes, they had "Gore" to pick from.... look at what the lesser of two evils gets.... failure.


Isn't that the truth. It seems that our election choices have come down to who will screw up the least

[Osborn F. Enready]

The TRULY conservative thing to do would be for the party to disallow McCain to continue, on conservative values ALONE. If he can't be counted on to balance his campaign budget, that is a laughable prelude to his view of a balanced national budget.

If his honesty is in question now, (as if it couldn't be) how can he possibly be nominated by the PARTY as the most viable candidate?

The democrats have totally screwed the voters in Michigan and Florida, and now the Republican voters have been screwed by a campaign fraud, they should just not count ANY of the votes, hold a new primary in all states, and put forth a new crop to pick from, since now third parties may actually be able to afford to run(only requiring millions of dollars to run for a year, as opposed to hundreds of millions campaigning for multiple years) and the public "could" demand equal ballot access, IRV voting with verifiable paper ballots and total vote tabulation oversight by the public before sanctioning the vote.

If only....

[ViolaLee]

Michigan and Florida screwed themselves, with the Republican majority's help in those states, by passing the bill to move ahead the primaries before Super Tuesday, against RNC and DNC rules. The Democrats didn't do that. The states with Republican congresses did it.